Wages of Unbridled Capitalism - comments

There is much in this article that Socialist Banner and its regular readers can agree with .

"...The fact that poverty is a problem cannot be denied. But to condemn it without interrogating related problems and issues is, by all measures, escapist and self-defeatist. A comparative appraisal of poverty and unbridled capitalism the world over attest to the foregoing assertion. Hindsight reveals that the insatiable quest and rush for riches and raw money or the primitive pursuit of and accumulation of riches ordinarily associated with unbridled capitalism lies at the root of the myriad problems facing the world today...

... When capital is solely based on primitive accumulation, especially within an exclusive club at the exclusion of the majority, then it begins to attract prejudices and nuances of varying perspectives. In particular, it begets impunity. The feeling that everything is possible with money begins to assume centrality in public discourse. Money becomes an end in itself. This is particularly so in the so-called Third World countries, where education is anchored in money, and selfish and personal pursuit of happiness, to the detriment or total disregard of the collective good of society...

...Different classes begin to emerge at various levels with attendant considerations as to what a person owns and comes from, and which party they support. As a result, both intra-class and inter-class tensions begin to emerge depending on the prevailing prejudices, belief and nuances; usually with tragic consequences. This is where the curse of primitive capital lies...

...Instead of capital for human development, it becomes capital for human destruction. In the process, fear creeps in and usually it is fear of the unknown. People begin to seek refuge in primitive cocoons and related factors and prejudices emerge, usually tribal, ethnic, class, religion, culture and privileges. Conspiracies begin to emerge ranging from sabotage, elimination of the un-wanted, corruption, discrimination and marginalisation...Consequently capital begins to oil the wheels of injustice...

... Because people must protect themselves, private armies begin to emerge. Capital must therefore be used to procure weapons and related assortment; eventually people must be paid to do dirty work even if it means eliminating others. At times others must either be marginalised or frustrated because of the fear of their abilities or the so-called fear of the unknown. As a result poverty is created where it should not have been, and ironically, it is poverty created by capital. How many understand how capital is creating poverty in Africa?..

...Do we not we see democracy become dictatorship by capital? Whoever pays gets the vote, even if nothing other than making money through corruption and related vices is understood...

...Moreover why do we fail to give our people clean water but are quick to build dispensaries to sell drugs to those suffering and dying from water-borne diseases. What kind of research are our public health officers engaged in? Do we need to re-educate the elite sons and daughters of Africa?Quest for capital or raw money becomes the rule rather than the exception...

... As a result we produce professors and graduates who are no more than salesmen of western products, including raw capital...Imagine having doctors who cannot decipher malaria from headache, or stomach ache from heart-burn! Engineers and quantity surveyors who are concerned about how much money they can make from a given contract as opposed to quality of structures being erected...

... Social imperatives come before capital and not the other way round. Provide clean and drinkable water to all, as opposed to placing it at the behest of private commerce. The trend continues. First it was privatisation of land, apparently not for maximisation of production but increasingly as collateral for destructive capital. Remember vast land is hoarded land and is not under productive utilisation.
Now it is water.
What will be next? Imagine a situation where air is poisoned by vagaries of capital, and therefore human beings are forced to buy so-called treated air...

Where we do find ourselves in disagreement is the authors faith that somehow we can have the good bits of capitalism without the bad bits . The author describes this as "the socialisation of capital" , as if the present system of exploitation can be beneficial if placed in the right pair of caring hands and adapted to tackle the social ills of the world .

"The palliatives over which many worthy people are busying themselves now are useless because they are but unorganised partial revolts against a vast, wide-spreading, grasping organisation which will, with the unconscious instinct of a plant, meet every attempt at bettering the conditions of the people with an attack on a fresh side." - William Morris

Indeed, we see little wrong with people campaigning for reforms that bring essential improvements and enhance the quality of their lives, and some reforms do indeed make a difference to the lives of millions and can be viewed as 'successful'. There are examples of this in such fields as education, housing, child employment, work conditions and social security. However, in this regard we also recognise that such 'successes' have in reality done little more than to keep workers and their families in efficient working order and, while it has taken the edge of the problem, it has rarely managed to remove the problem completely.
What we are opposed to is the whole culture of reformism, the idea that capitalism can be made palatable with the right reforms .
In other words, although individual reforms may be worthy of support, the political strategy of reformism—promising to win reforms on the behalf of others—is a roundabout that leads nowhere. Those wanting to improve society should seriously question whether capitalism offers enough scope for achieving lasting solutions to the vast range of social problems to which it gives rise. Of course, some improvements are made and some problems are alleviated. Yet new kinds of problem also arise in a society which is changing ever more rapidly, seeking new ways to make a profit.