Capitalism

Zdravko Mršić

Croatian politician (Retired)

Corresponding Author: Zdravko Mršić, Croatian politician (Retired), e-mail: zdravko.mrsic@zg.ht.hr

How to cite this article: Mršić Z. Capitalism. Sci Arts Relig 2022;1(1):118-120.

Source of support: Nil

Conflict of interest: None

CAPITALISM HANGS FROM THE BRINK OF HISTORY

The review you are reading is the first of two parts of the account of the state into which capitalism has brought our species. In the first part, I will try to explain why our species in general must no longer suffer from capitalism. In the second part, I will try to present the situation in certain areas of life, which shows that capitalism affects people, families, nations, and the whole species to such an extent that the species as a whole must push it from the edge into the abyss of history.

Capitalism is the latest and final pattern of civilization, determined from the beginning (1) by seizing power from the human community and removing power from it, (2) tying power to property, and (3) establishing a religion or belief system binding on all subjects of power, which before the establishment of civilization were members of living communities, which ruled themselves. Before the establishment of civilization, property belonged collectively to communities, which elected their own leaders. In contrast, in civilization the most valuable and largest part of property (land, other real estate, people, knowledge and work, army and infrastructure) belonged to the ruler, who was nevertheless taken to have responsibility for space and people. Living togetherness and leadership in communities is an inheritance of the biological evolution of life and the cultural evolution of our species. Religion as a means of power led people to replace the desire for well-being and the satisfaction with earthly with the hope of a blissful life after death. (Jesus’ good news is the only system of belief calculated to restore the original communion that brings prosperity and satisfaction to one’s own life. Jesus did not hold to power and authority).

The peculiarity of capitalism as a civilization is that power is tied to cash or free capital, which belongs to individuals who have no responsibility for space, people, nature, living communities, climate, or life in general. The only concern for capitalists is their own gains. Capitalists use their earned and unearned money to create manufacturing, service, and banking enterprises, which exploit the labor and knowledge of others, but the earnings belong only to the owners of the enterprises. In capitalism, people, nature, and money are commodities. (Money is not any more a means of exchange, but a commodity for resale and profit). Capitalism has its secular religion or belief system in liberalism, which preaches that the greatest possible good will come about by caring only for one’s own gain. Capitalism created liberalism as a belief system by combining Adam Smith’s insane idea of an invisible hand that spontaneously corrects market errors with social Darwinism—as a forgery of Darwin’s idea of evolution—which replaced adaptation to circumstances with the struggle for survival inside species. “Stronger oppresses!” In civilization, people were transformed from members of the community into subjects of rulers, and in capitalism they were transformed into market rivals and gladiators. (On the contrary, Jesus of Nazareth believed that people should be “neighbors” and that life should be enriched by togetherness).

Capitalism as a system of ordering living communities is the idea and product of Europe. Capitalism began to develop during the Renaissance, when the northern Italian and Adriatic cities (Genoa, Milan, Florence, Venice, and Dubrovnik) accumulated huge capital through European and Eastern trade. Later, due to the invasion of the Ottomans, the trade moved to the Baltic and the Atlantic. The wealth that flowed into the Netherlands through this trade enabled the country to rule Europe in the 17th century and to establish an overseas empire. This pattern of conquest was later taken over by the French and English, the Belgians, and the Dutch. The largest and most enduring empire was created by the English, who took advantage of the Industrial Revolution at the turn of the 19th century.

Europe as a whole created industrial capitalism. When the United States overtook Britain industrially, the capitalism of large corporations and large banks began to form in them. Financial capitalism was created, in which both manufacturing enterprises and nation-states became servants of capital and fell into debt bondage. The core of capitalism has moved from Europe to the United States. Finally, the globalization of business – marked by the establishment of the World Trade Organization on 1st January 1995—created a free world market, which de facto became the world political system of financial capital.

The globalization of business has, contrary to the efforts of capital also caused the globalization of our species. The inhabitants of Homo sapiens are no longer confined to individual states, which, until globalization, were managed by capital individually, but also unevenly: capital was more invested in spaces, which brought greater profits. Capital tamed, used, and exploited all states to turn them into internal free markets, through which capital ruled. In addition, capital has abused certain stronger states and their political systems to establish markets in certain unfit peoples, many of whom still do not accept capitalist “values” and the ideology of liberalism. Nations are unfit to capital if they believe that public affairs should be conducted for the welfare and well-being of the people, and not for the gain of capital.

To penetrate new markets and to subdue disobedient peoples, capital not only used trade and investment in the market, but also politics or state, ideology, warfare and intelligence interventions. During the 20th century utilizing the United States and some European countries capital provoked two terrible world wars, the Great Asian Wars, and countless military and intelligence interventions in other countries. Capital has sought by force and forcibly to direct the evolution of our species. In the current century, American capital no longer dares to drag nation-states into wars, but in order to tame the peoples (Russian, Chinese, Iranian, and others) regularly uses intelligence, provokes civil wars, and slaps US trade and financial sanctions on peoples. Capital reckons that mere use of interventions localizes disorder and does not escalate into a world war, which would in the globalized world destroy both capital and the species Homo sapiens. By abstaining from pushing states into a real war, capital shows both caution and concern.

The globalization of business and our species has created a huge living organism, which encompasses the whole species. Such a vast system, which should meet the living needs of all individuals, families, and peoples, cannot be managed through the market, because the effects of the market – which has its own rigid rules – are unpredictable. It is difficult to anticipate the evil effects of the market on species, as they depend on the acts of numerous selfish people and self-willed corporations. Capital cannot and does not want to take responsibility for individuals, families, peoples, and species, but neither for space, environment, and climate, on which human life and well-being and the continuation of life on Earth depend. In the new, difficult circumstances, power in turn should belong to those who wish and can take responsibility for space, climate, and life in general.

The irresponsibility of capitalists and the inability of capitalism to remove the troubles of life which it has caused itself deprive capitalism of its credibility and its need for existence. It happened, because capitalists don’t care about people and life, they care only about their earnings. Life is much more than the extraction of private income.

CAPITALISM MUST BE PUSHED FROM THE BRINK OF HISTORY

Capitalism has lost its credibility and its rational to exist, mostly because of the damage it has done to life. The evil intentions of capital are most revealed by the fact that capital has chosen as its means of governing people, the Earth and life not some human beings—as high priests, kings, and other rulers once were—but a dead, heartless, and unreasonable market. The market has no intelligence—neither human nor artificial. Since the establishment of global business, the world free market has captured and managed the whole species. The market provided people with jobs, food, clothing, shelter, and other material goods; it used to resell cultural goods to them; tried to heal human bodies and human souls; dragged people into vices; led them to experiment with their own lives; provided them with entertainment and the acquisition of experiences. The market has invaded all human communities including the family, and dispersed them. The market has forced individuals to compete with each other for material goods, social positions, money, and for success. The market has made people vulnerable gladiators.

The market has almost irreversibly ruined the Earth as the only place in the Universe to live. It has done so through excessive and the highest possible economic growth, the purpose of which is not to meet the material and cultural needs of life, but primarily to accumulate capital as a means of governing people. Our species and our limited, depleted Earth need the least possible economic growth. What is the purpose of the power of one set of people over another? Who needs commercial space travel?

Capitalism has disfigured the God-given climate, which is less and less generous for growth and development and even for the continuation of life on Earth. A deranged climate and an overheated Earth bring great misfortunes to ordinary people and a whole host of extreme climate phenomena such as melting glaciers and polar ice, thawing of frozen soil, floods, prolonged droughts, hurricanes, rising sea levels, desertification, and consequently human migrations. In capitalism, people are losing their homeland.

Liberalism as the ideology of capitalism is a racist ideology, which creates deep and perilous divisions in our species by geographical areas, income, living conditions, opportunities to contribute to communities, and human growth as a species, by developing human abilities and, devastatingly, by people’s satisfaction with their own lives and by acquisition of deep human experience. In capitalism, the rich are one lineage of people, and the ordinary folks are another. Capitalism is constantly creating new divisions in our species, but it has denied the only natural division in the species, and that is the gender division into men and women.

The coronavirus pandemic has clearly shown how many sick people there are in the world, how susceptible human life is to the slightest disturbance, and how sensitive and unstable the human immune system is. In capitalism, due to material abundance and due to the development of science and medicine, life expectancy was extended, but at the same time older and younger people became susceptible to many old and new diseases, mostly due to their own immodesty and love of power, messy life, experimentation in life (smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol, and drug abuse), market-induced stress and disorderly family circumstances, and due to people’s unnecessary efforts to control other human beings.

Capitalism has seriously disrupted people’s mental health, which is manifested not only in the suffering of individual human beings, but also in undesirable and vicious phenomena such as domestic violence, public violence and murder, and random violence that ruins young perpetrators. The evil in communities is not the result of activities of the unleashed ostensible Satan, but the consequences of mental disease and anomalies. Violence in interstate relations and civil wars in many nation-states were direct consequences of the accumulated capital and the power-hunger of the capitalists. Capitalists are now in confusion, because wars in a globalized world are also heavily affecting the stronger countries that initiate them. What kind of country has the constant warfare turned the United States into?

In their greed to amass additional capital, capitalists stirred up people to accumulate material goods. The new immodesty that capitalism has instilled in our species has become a multiple cause of the excessive depletion of natural resources and especially non-renewable energy resources. This process has corrupted the Earth and made the climate dangerous and often deadly. Although our species – through the systematic use of an extremely developed brain – has acquired not only conceptual thinking, but also self-awareness or the human spirit, humans do not crave the enjoyment of cultural goods, which are unlimited, but of material goods that are limited. Capitalism did not allow man as a species to reach maturity. Capitalism, which can only provide material goods, has hampered the maturation of man as a species. Capitalism has made Homo sapiens a “species with special needs.”

Capitalism has removed every kind of communion from our species. The removal of family togetherness is especially dangerous for our species. Until the establishment of capitalism family used to prepare our youth for life. The family was a training ground for life, in which every young human being was protected. In capitalism, children are unprotected because families are rare. Due to its capability of conceptual thinking, our species needs education longer than other animal species, which have only image thinking. Capitalism raises our young for the market, not for life, although a young person needs life education up to the age of twenty or as long as his brain develops.

The disturbances in the economic life brought about by the coronavirus pandemic have shown that in “emergencies” capital is unable to control and direct market, let alone that a disturbed market governs our globalized species and life on Earth. In the “most capitalist” countries, there has been a serious disruption of supply networks. Energy supply is disrupted. The whole transport system is disrupted: there are no empty containers in the places where they are needed and there are not enough drivers to operate the heavy trucks. The supply of industrial and automotive electronics is insufficient.

There has been a mass exodus of skilled professionals, who have literally been exploited by being underpaid and subjected to harsh working conditions: medical staff, slaughterhouse workers, drivers, skilled workers at online distribution centers, or seasonal agricultural workers. There has been an exodus of professional people into less demanding professions.

The market has let down both the consumer and the worker and betrayed capital. What happened is a general market failure. We are witnessing a deep economic and human depression, which is not caused as usually by the arbitrary use of capital, but by non-economic, natural, biological, and life factors. As a consequence, all over sudden everyone seeks salvation by the indebted nation-state: ordinary members of our species, businessmen, and grumpy holders of capital. Nation-states really need to get involved in correcting and improving supply networks. For the sake of that it is necessary for the nations to stand behind their states in lieu capital, that had turned the conduct of state politics into a puppet theater.

Capitalism must therefore be pushed from the edge of history and replaced by a negotiated economy and by mutual co-operation of nation-states. The state should have the last word. The new national and world political system for our globalized species I name politism.

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