We need a way of assessing not
just what is wrong with capitalism, but what is desirable about alternatives.
03 September 2019
Why Be Anticapitalist?
We need a way of assessing not
just what is wrong with capitalism, but what is desirable about alternatives.
In How
to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century, Erik Olin Wright has
distilled decades of work into a concise and tightly argued manifesto analyzing
the varieties of anti-capitalism, assessing different strategic approaches, and
laying the foundations for a society dedicated to human flourishing. This is an
urgent and powerful argument for socialism, and a unparalleled guide to help us
get there.
For many people, the idea of
anticapitalism seems ridiculous. After all, look at the fantastic technological
innovations in the goods and services produced by capitalist firms in recent
years: smartphones and streaming movies; driverless cars and social media;
cures for countless diseases; JumboTron screens at football games and video
games connecting thousands of players around the world; every conceivable
consumer product available on the Internet for rapid home delivery; astounding
increases in the productivity of labor through novel automation technologies;
and on and on. And while it is true that income is unequally distributed in
capitalist economies, it is also true that the array of consumption goods
available and affordable for the average person, and even for the poor, has
increased dramatically almost everywhere. Just compare the United States in the
half century between 1968 and 2018: the percentage of Americans with air
conditioners, cars, washing machines, dishwashers, televisions and indoor plumbing
has increased dramatically in those fifty years. Life expectancy is longer for
most categories of people; infant mortality lower. The list is unending. And
now, in the twenty-first century, this improvement in basic standards of living
is happening even in some of the poorer regions of the world as well: look at
the improvement in material standards of living of people in China since China
embraced the free market. What’s more, look what happened when Russia and China
tried an alternative to capitalism! Even aside from the political oppression
and brutality of those regimes, they were economic failures. So, if you care
about improving the lives of people, how can you be anticapitalist?
That is one story, the
standard story. Here is another story: the hallmark of capitalism is poverty in
the midst of plenty. This is not the only thing wrong with capitalism, but it
is the feature of capitalist economies that is its gravest failing. In
particular, the poverty of children who clearly bear no responsibility for
their plight is morally reprehensible in rich societies where such poverty
could be easily eliminated. Yes, there is economic growth, technological
innovation, increasing productivity and a downward diffusion of consumer goods,
but along with capitalist economic growth comes destitution for many whose
livelihoods have been destroyed by the advance of capitalism, precariousness
for those at the bottom of the capitalist labor market, and alienating and
tedious work for the majority. Capitalism has generated massive increases in
productivity and extravagant wealth for some, yet many people still struggle to
make ends meet.
Capitalism is an
inequality-enhancing machine as well as a growth machine. What’s more, it is
becoming ever clearer that capitalism, driven by the relentless search for
profits, is destroying the environment. And in any case, the pivotal issue is
not whether material conditions on average have improved in the long run within
capitalist economies, but rather whether, looking forward from this point in
history, things would be better for most people in an alternative kind of
economy. It is true that the centralized, authoritarian state-run economies of
twentieth-century Russia and China were in many ways economic failures, but
these are not the only possibilities. Both of these stories are anchored in the
realities of capitalism. It is not an illusion that capitalism has transformed
the material conditions of life in the world and enormously increased human
productivity; many people have benefited from this. But equally, it is not an
illusion that capitalism generates great harms and perpetuates eliminable forms
of human suffering. Where the real disagreement lies—a disagreement that is
fundamental—is over whether it is possible to have the productivity, innovation
and dynamism that we see in capitalism without the harms. Margaret Thatcher
famously announced in the early 1980s, “There is no alternative”; two decades
later, the World Social Forum declared, “Another world is possible.”
That is the fundamental
debate.
The central argument of this
book is this: first, another world is indeed possible. Second, it could improve
the conditions for human flourishing for most people. Third, elements of this
new world are already being created in the world as it is. And finally, there
are ways to move from here to there. Anticapitalism is possible not simply as a
moral stance toward the harms and injustices in the world in which we live, but
as a practical stance toward building an alternative for greater human
flourishing.
What is capitalism?
Like many concepts used in
everyday life and in scholarly work, there are many different ways of defining
“capitalism.” For many people, capitalism is the equivalent of a market
economy—an economy in which people produce things to be sold to other people
through voluntary agreements. Others add the word “free” before “market,”
emphasizing that capitalism is an economy in which market transactions are
minimally regulated by the state. And still others emphasize that capitalism is
not just characterized by markets, but also by the private ownership of
capital. Sociologists, especially those influenced by the Marxist tradition,
typically also add to this the idea that capitalism is characterized by a
particular kind of class structure, one in which the people who actually do the
work in an economy—the working class—do not themselves own the means of
production. This implies at least two basic classes in the economy—capitalists,
who own the means of production, and workers, who provide labor as employees.
Throughout this book, I will
use the term capitalism to designate both the idea of capitalism as a market
economy and the idea that it is organized through a particular kind of class
structure. One way of thinking about this combination is that the market
dimension identifies the basic mechanism of coordination of economic activities
in an economic system—coordination through decentralized voluntary exchanges,
supply and demand, and prices—and the class structure identifies the central
power relations within the economic system—between private owners of capital
and workers. This way of elaborating the concept means that it is possible to
have markets without capitalism.
For example, it is possible to
have markets in which the means of production are owned by the state: firms are
owned by the state and the state allocates resources to these firms, either as
direct investment or as loans from state banks. This can be called a statist
market economy (although some people have called this “state capitalism”). Or
the firms in a market economy could be various kinds of cooperatives owned and
governed by their employees and customers. A market economy organized through
such organizations can be called a cooperative market economy.
In contrast to these two kinds
of market economies, the distinctive feature of a capitalist market economy is
the ways in which private owners of capital wield power both within firms and
within the economic system as a whole.
Grounds for opposing capitalism
Capitalism breeds
anticapitalists. In some times and places, the resistance to capitalism becomes
crystallized in coherent ideologies with systematic diagnoses of the source of
harms and clear prescriptions about what to do to eliminate them. In other
circumstances, anticapitalism is submerged within motivations that on the
surface have little to do with capitalism, such as religious beliefs that led
people to reject modernity and seek refuge in isolated communities. Sometimes
it takes the form of workers on the shop floor individually resisting the
demands of bosses. Other times anticapitalism is embodied in labor
organizations engaged in collective struggles over the conditions of work.
Always, wherever capitalism exists, there is discontent and resistance in one
form or other.
Two general kinds of
motivations are in play in these diverse forms of struggle within and over
capitalism: class interests and moral values. You can oppose capitalism because
it harms your own material interests, but also because it offends certain moral
values that are important to you.
There is a poster from the
late 1970s that shows a working-class woman leaning on a fence. The caption
reads: “class consciousness is knowing what side of the fence you’re on; class
analysis is figuring out who is there with you.” The metaphor of the fence sees
conflict over capitalism as anchored in conflicts of class interests. Being on
opposite sides of the fence defines friends and enemies in terms of opposing
interests. Some people may be sitting on the fence, but ultimately they may
have to make a choice: “you’re either with us or against us.”
In some historical situations,
the interests that define the fence are pretty easy to figure out. It is
obvious to nearly everyone that in the United States before the Civil War,
slaves were harmed by slavery and they therefore had a class interest in its
abolition, while slave owners had an interest in its perpetuation. There may
have been slave owners who felt some ambivalence about owning slaves—this is
certainly the case for Thomas Jefferson, for example—but this ambivalence was
not because of their class interests; it was because of a tension between those
interests and certain moral values they held.
In contemporary capitalism,
things are more complicated and it is not so obvious precisely how class
interests over capitalism should be understood. Of course, there are some
categories of people for whom their material interests with respect to
capitalism are clear: large wealth holders and CEOs of multinational
corporations clearly have interests in defending capitalism; sweatshop workers,
low-skilled manual laborers, precarious workers, and the long-term unemployed
have interests in opposing capitalism.
But for many other people in
capitalist economies, things are not so straightforward. Highly educated
professionals, managers and many self-employed people, for example, occupy what
I have called contradictory locations within class relations and have quite
complex and often inconsistent interests with respect to capitalism. If the
world consisted of only two classes on opposite sides of the fence, then it
might be sufficient to anchor anticapitalism exclusively in terms of class
interests. This was basically how classical Marxism saw the problem: even if
there were complexities in class structures, the long-term dynamics of
capitalism would have a tendency to create a sharp alignment of interests for
and against capitalism. In such a world, class consciousness consisted mainly
of understanding how the world worked and thus how it served the material
interests of some classes at the expense of others. Once workers understood
this, the argument went, they would oppose capitalism. This is one of the
reasons many Marxists have argued that it is unnecessary to develop a
systematic critique of capitalism in terms of social justice and moral
deficits. It is enough to show that capitalism harms the interests of the
masses; it is not necessary to also show that it is unjust.
Workers don’t need to be
convinced that capitalism is unjust or that it violates moral principles; all
that is needed is a powerful diagnosis that capitalism is the source of serious
harms to them—that it is against their material interests—and that something
can be done about it. Such a purely class interest–based argument against
capitalism will not do for the twenty-first century, and probably was never
really entirely adequate. There are three issues in play here. First, because
of the complexity of class interests, there will always be many people whose
interests do not clearly fall on one side of the fence or the other. Their
willingness to support anticapitalist initiatives will depend in part on what
other kinds of values are at stake. Since their support is important for any
plausible strategy for overcoming capitalism, it is crucial to build the
coalition in part around values, not just class interests.
Second, the reality is that
most people are motivated at least partially by moral concerns, not just
practical economic interests. Even for people whose class interests are clear,
motivations anchored in moral concerns can matter a great deal. People often
act against their class interests not because they do not understand those
interests, but because other values matter more to them. One of the most famous
cases in history is that of Frederick Engels, Marx’s close associate, who was
the son of a wealthy capitalist manufacturer and yet wholeheartedly supported
political movements against capitalism. Northern abolitionists in the
nineteenth century opposed slavery not because of their class interests, but
because of a belief that slavery was wrong. Even in the case of people for whom
anticapitalism is in their class interests, motivations anchored in values are
important for sustaining the commitment to struggles for social change.
Finally, clarity on values is
essential for thinking about the desirability of alternatives to capitalism. We
need a way of assessing not just what is wrong with capitalism, but what is
desirable about alternatives. And, if it should come to pass that we can
actually build the alternative, we need solid criteria for evaluating the extent
to which the alternative is realizing these values. Thus, while of course it is
vital to identify the specific ways in which capitalism harms the material
interests of certain categories of people, it is also necessary to clarify the
values that we would like an economy to foster.
“Deserves to be widely read.
In 150-odd pages, Wright makes the case for what’s wrong with capitalism, what
would be better, and how to achieve it. This is the rare book that can speak to
both the faithful and the unconverted. You could buy it for your skeptical
uncle or your militant cousin: there is something here for the reader who needs
persuading that another world is possible, and the reader who wants ideas for
bringing that world into being.”
– Ben Tarnoff, Guardian
