Capitalism

Go to college. Get a good job. Make money. Buy a house. Make a family. Send the kids to college. Retire. Die. And in all of that, you forgot to live.

I have obvious reservations about free-market capitalism as an economic theory; democratic socialism does a much better job of preserving our freedom and dignity. But more importantly, on a personal level I despise all that capitalism stands for. The idea that you must "work to live" is utterly repugnant and I am deeply offended by it.

Instead, I want to live to work, meaning that whatever task I dedicate my time and life to will have been freely chosen, fully embraced, and attended to with love and dedication. We remember most fondly those things we choose and cultivate, and for far too many work isn't among them. That is because most of us don't actually work: we have jobs instead, occupations, menial tasks in the service of someone else's interest, with the expectation that if we're good enough and don't cause too much trouble we'll be given a small piece of the pie, enough to survive on and retire on. Like rats, we are given a maze to the cheese that was rightfully ours to begin with.

"But resources are scarce and we must compete for them." No. Resources were scarce, and then competition was a necessity. But then we institutionalized it, and we made sure that resources did remain scarce, so that some could remain on top while the rest slithered below in a dog-eat-dog Dantesque vomitorium. Domestically, the most visible outcome is the thinning of the middle class and the growing income gap. Globally, after four centuries of capitalistic colonialism, the outcome is that 3.2 billion people live on less than $2 a day. That goes well beyond a measure of income, and it means instead that half the world doesn't even have the opportunity to improve upon their own condition. As George Monbiot had it, "If wealth was the inevitable result of hard work and enterprise, every woman in Africa would be a millionaire."

We call this a "meritocracy," where if you work hard, you succeed. But of course there is no need for such a thing to even exist in the first place. We are fast approaching a time with enough food, water, and shelter to go around and sufficiently advanced technology to serve us all. In a not-so-far future, we will have the ability to ensure long-term survival for all at very little cost. Instead, we continue to make our very existence conditional to servicing a machine that only needs to be serviced because it was designed that way. And redesigns, like revolutions, are healthy things.

You call this utopian? That is the highest compliment I could ever receive!


PS: By the way, don't mistake me for one of those fucking Occupy Wall Street people. Most of those are potheads with no fucking clue about economics, politics, philosophy, or really anything else. The right is right about that at least. But the ideas of the OWS movement are correct, and the intellectual -- and human -- basis for them is extremely sound.

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ADDENDUM

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Today in class, a student asked me a perfect question. As is traditional in some college courses in the humanities, the last day of lecture the kids get to ask whatever question they want and expect a honest, personal answer from the professor. This kid asked me what I think it would take for the world to become a better place. I looked at her straight in the eye and said: "No more money." She recoiled, her eyes blinking and her head snapping back just a little, like someone who has just seen a shocking image or has been flicked really hard on the forehead. From there on, I led my class in a 30-minute discussion of many of the ideas that I present in this post. Many were very sympathetic; others were vociferously critical. Overall, we debated it, which (I guarantee you) is more than I can say about any other class that these kids have ever been in. Mission for the day: accomplished!