Questions about Capitalism and Class

I have listened and enjoyed your music for a long time, but I can't help but think that sometimes your political views are a bit simplistic about the "upper class". My family, among most others, has worked hard to receive our financial status, and to make a long story short, sometimes, in practice, anarchy and communism aren't all they're scratched up to be. I know you don't like to stereotype, but this dogma that you have to cheat, steal, and lie to make money simply isn't true. I feel, as long as we help the less fortunate, we deserve a nice lifestyle in accordance with our work. I don't know about the UK, but Canada is a Socialist country. We get health care from the government, but I pay 40% out of my paycheque for that. As it turns out, that's not enough! Our healthcare costs are so high that 30-50% of the provincial budgets go to healthcare, leeching money away from everything else. I just wanted to give you my perspective, and also to ask, do you think higher income families are inherently evil?

No I don't think they are 'inherently evil', and in fact I think there's no such thing as 'evil' - it's a word which takes away the real reason for things. That's the semantics out of the way. If you're asking whether I'd put all the 'upper classes' against the wall, then no, of course not. The class system is full of generalisations and exceptions but that doesn't mean it isn't way of trying to figure out why some people are happily rich and some unhappily poor. 'This dogma that you have to cheat, steal, and lie to make money simply isn't true.' That's right, it isn't true. And I wouldn't ever say that. What I would say is that if you stand back from your own family, from your life in Canada (arguably the country with the best quality of life in the world... according to your government's own statistics), as I stand back from mine in Britain (with my computer and car and TV etc), you'd see that most people (yes, most) don't have that same quality of life. Don't have clean water, communications, adequate food or shelter, etc. But wait - those people are growing and picking our coffee and our sugar, they're working in our diamond and lead mines, and they're doing 12-hour shifts in factories producing our trainers and jeans. Now that right there is an inequality on a mass, generalised scale, and that inequality has come about because some people, some rich bosses and leaders, are (as you say) cheating, lying and stealing. I don't think it's 'evil' - I think it's capitalism, and I don't think it's fair.
Now I don't think that you or I should just feel guilty and jack our jobs in and stop eating sugar, but I do think we should realise we are in the middle of all this inequality and try to do something about it. OK that's one aspect of it.
The notion of 'upper class' may mean something different over in Canada, but here in Britain the 'upper class' are (more generalisations) very rich, have assured wealth (inherited wealth), and have power. Having power is crucial - it defines the class. These aren't hard-working people who've made some money and bought themselves a nice house and a car etc, they're the gentry and generals and old boys of this country who end up making decisions for us all. They're all gung-ho about a bloody colonial war against Iraq, obviously - but will any of them actually go and fight? Of course not. So I'm assuming you're not 'upper class' in that sense and so I think there's plenty of dialogue to be had between us, common ground, something worth talking about or arguing about. Here, most of who I see as 'the upper class' aren't on any level able to enter into a dialogue. There is no common ground. Politically, socially, culturally. And that defines my relationship with them, and I can't ignore a whole section of people who are lording it over the rest of the world.
Here's a statistic: Comparing the wealth of the 225 richest people in the world compared with what is needed to achieve universal, worldwide access to basic social services for all. It's estimated that the additional cost of achieving and maintaining universal access to basic education for all, basic health care for all, reproductive health care for all women, adequate food for all and safe water and sanitation for all is roughly US$ 40 billion a year. This is less than 4% of the combined wealth of the richest 225 richest people in the world.
OK, another one: Despite a worldwide glut of food, 18 million people die of starvation, malnutrition and related causes every year, according to a newly released Johns Hopkins University study. And U.N. statistics show that more than 800 million people are chronically undernourished. Isn't that a basis for a (yes, you're right, it's simplistic) hatred of 'the upper classes'? I think that if we don't generalise a little in order to target where the problems are, we're letting people get away with this wholesale terror. Actually I think the crux of this answer would also be in knowing what you mean by 'nice lifestyle'. And yes, you're right - self-styled anarchists (like me for instance) aren't 'all they're scratched up to be'. I can be totally stupid and totally wrong. No argument there.


You cite examples of child labour abuses, problems with NAFTA and corporations moving down to Mexco, along with some other things. I agree completely that what these big businesses are doing is immoral, and are exploiting people for profit. However, just because corporation is large, does it have to have immoral practices? I have yet to see one today, but theoretically a corporation can be just as moral, environmentally friendly, etc. as any locally owned store. Do you think that the concept of big business is immoral, or do you simply feel that the practice of big business in our society today is immoral?
There's a big co-operatively-run wholefood company in Halifax, near where we live, called SUMA. It employs a few hundred people and it's annual financial turnover is huge. Yet it still manages to have a policy of 'equal pay, equal say'. Everyone there from the computer experts to the lorry drivers to the order-pickers to the canteen staff all get paid the same and all have equal voice to shape and direct company policy. So of course 'big business' isn't necessarily bad. The danger is that most business starts at the very beginning from a grounding of divided labour - a boss, hired workers, hierarchies, pay structures depending on the type of work within the company... thus the stage is set for inequality right through the company. And if the company is based on this inequality, then it stands to reason that it's policies towards other people outside the company will be based upon the same inequalities. As it gets bigger, the inequalities, the cop-outs, the in-house resentments, get bigger too. Pop and rock groups flounder and split often because they're built on a system where the singer or writer is paid more than the bass guitarist or accountant or bus driver. All very well when no-one's earning any money, but as soon as the hit singles start happening... watch how the bassist resents the rich singer, watch how the singer suddenly flaunts his/her power over the bus driver. This we see all the time.

Democracy and Capitalism weren't bad ideas to begin with. I mean, I do think that the govt is WAY too involved with our person rights..but don't you think that people do need to be told what's just plain wrong some time? I mean if not, how could you tell someone that it's wrong to kill? Or to hurt some one else? Or to take food from a starving child? I mean...there are crazy people...and people full of hate and violence. How can society ever have a standard to prevent these people from doing these things if there is no law. If we let everyone decide for themselves what is right or wrong...how can we ever tell some one that it's not ok to kill their father or rape their sister or molest a nephew?

Democracy and capitalism aren't the same thing... we love democracy: everybody having a say in a fair and equal environment. We're not as keen on capitalism... with its imposition of wage labour, sweatshops, exploitation, child labour, class system and insistence that profit motive excuses the worst kinds of cruelty and inequality. Having a state and a voting system isn't a sign of democracy. In Britain all that changes are the faces, Blair quite openly states that the Labour Party act in the interests of business... and it's a myth that the wealth trickles down from the multinationals into the hands of the people, now globalisation is in full swing companies are in a position to reduce wages to the level of the poorest countries. This week a computer company called Pace (which operates from Shipley just outside Leeds) told its workers that it was shutting up shop and moving to Mexico unless the workers would agree to reduce their wages to the levels paid in Mexico. That's happening everywhere. And as for taking food from a starving child: Nestle does it everyday when it cons mothers into using tinned baby milk in countries which don't have facilities for sterilisation. Children die every day as casualties of profit. The myth is that the state protects us from ourselves and that the government is all that's between us and a "Mad Max" situation. The law always falls second to what's socially acceptable. Taking drugs is against the law but people still do it for recreation because in youth circles it's socially acceptable. When we encourage each other to be better people we are, that's basic human instinct rather than law. But in order to bring out the best in each other we have to eradicate poverty. Scratching a living amidst worry and hardship doesn't bring out the best in us, and we take our unhappiness out on those around us.

I recently read a book called "Understanding History in China" by Paul Cohen. Cohen talks about Marxism and how it is an extremely ethnocentric and parochial ideology because it predicts that the entire world will be made over in the Western image, that every society will eventually proceed from capitalism to state socialism. This makes me wonder whether anarchism is equally parochial with its assumption that the struggle toward a stateless society is the most deisarable course for every society, that everyone would prefer to live in a "free society" and that everyone would behave like a Westerner if they weren't somehow brainwashed. After all, freedom is something that people in the West tend to value.

Shit, that's a complicated question! Marx did predict that the whole world would be made over in the western image and he was right. Capitalism has conquered the world. It just so happened that capitalism developed in the west and has proved the most aggressive all conquering economic system the world has ever seen but to be fair that's not Marx's fault. He just understood the nature of capitalism, that capital has to constantly expand itself. It has to expand itself geographically around the world and expand itself into more and more areas of our life. Hence the privatization of public space, Malls etc. Also think of how many more areas of life have come under market relations in the last 20 years. There has been plenty of Marxism that saw history following iron laws with capitalism a necessary step in the evolution to communism. Some of that tendency can be found in Marx. The idea that the world will be made in one image, guided by a small elite of professional revolutionaries is completely discredited. That experiment is over. If you look at the present worldwide anti-capitalist movement that's come together around anti-Globalization struggles the question is turned on it's head. The starting point has been people struggling and fighting back in their own way against the conditions they've found themselves in. Landless peasants in Brazil squatting land, environmentalists in Britain reclaiming streets, Auto-workers in Korea striking and demonstrating. In the past a lot of these struggles have been seen as limited and reformist. The difference now is the recognition of a common enemy, Global capitalism. Roughly the same policies are being implemented the world over, enforced by the same global institutions; WTO, IMF, world bank, etc. This makes the recognition of the same enemy so much easier. Add to that speeding up of the circulation of information and coordination through email and the Web and you get the possibility of a real global movement not led by the west, a globalization from below. The old Marxist Leninist idea of a unified socialism being imposed the world over has been rejected. Instead there's a huge diversity of projects, of fighting back but also attempts to create different ways of living. You could imagine these different lines of flight out of capitalism leading to a world which contains many different worlds. Once we've escaped from the all conquering rules of capitalism, you could see history beginning, with people free to develop all sorts of creative experiments in how to live as full human beings. Anarchism is one tradition feeding into all this. With the discrediting of state socialism it's been proving pretty useful, but that's the only way it can lead. By example. Like the Reclaim The Streets party protests, a good idea can sweeps around the world. As to the idea that freedom is merely a western value, well obviously we disagree. The desire to have control over your own life has been a fundamental force in human history. Unfortunately so has fear of freedom. The struggles round the world that we're witnessing now come down to one thing: What is it to be a human being?

I disagree with your anarchist attitude. Poverty exists in capitalism. Oh well, it exists in Absolutism and Communism as well. There is no freaking 'fair'. People get rich because they work to get there. You get poor by being a total slack-off and/or getting unlucky. Life is inherently unfair. The answer to society's problems is not to change the system. The system works. Maybe more people should think about the Christian ideal of compassion. If a brother is in need then help 'em out. Still, greed will always dominate business. It's a human emotion. You can't stamp out all of the bad in the world through violence and change. Finally, now the question: Do you identify with Nietzsche? You guys seem as radical and anti-Christian as him. Is he an influence to you and your rebel anarchy friends? Signed, A capitalistic republican American Christian (hehe.. put that in your fricken pipe and smoke it).

Your view of human nature is somewhat dark and not one we share. The level of cynicism is matched by naivety. "People get rich because they work to get there. You get poor by being a total slack off or unlucky" made me laugh. People work hard all their lives and what they end up with is no pension and years of being too scared to leave the house. Capitalism's based on exploiting the many to create wealth for the few, not on 'rewarding' hard work. And if the poor are simply lazy how do you explain the poverty of the depression years and the deprivation which comes from economic recession. Your theory would mean that there was an epidemic of laziness in the thirties, followed by a period of activity following the Second World War, and now we're all undergoing another 20 year sleepy spell. Similarly the idea that working class people suffer from more cancer, less access to education and struggle to pay bills because they were born with the moon in a bad sign is equally hilarious. Fate doesn't make people poor, a biased economic system does. State communism is no improvement on capitalism. Real communism is a different matter. Stalin preferred Franco's fascism to a workers' state, which is why he sabotaged the Spanish revolution in 1936. We don't care what the struggle to be human is called, anarchism, socialism, libertarianism, communism, up-yer-bum-ism... the label is less important than the idea that people deserve better lives than the ones on offer. As for Nietzsche being an influence... we're far more influenced by our families and friends than by dead philosophers. We steal slogans and ideas from him once in every blue moon but we're not paid up members of any Nietzsche cult. We steal ideas from everywhere... except from Jerry Falwell and his bigoted Christian mates.
Boff adds: American Christian - when you use the word 'fricken' or 'freaking', do you mean 'fucking'? Are you scared of writing the word 'fucking'? Do you have a problem with the word 'fucking'? Just wondered.

My issue is with the statement that it's okay to get pissed, as long as it's not hurting anyone. This is a classic Liberal (and therefore Capitalist) sentiment -- that an individual can do what she wants independent of society. Yes, getting pissed does hurt someone because the money that you spend getting pissed could be put towards the rent for a homeless person trying to get back on her feet. She is being hurt by your decision, as are many other people. I'm not calling for sainthood either -- I'm certainly just as guilty as the next person. But that doesn't make the behaviour morally justifiable. You said that you want to be a good person because doing so makes you happy. If being a "good" person made you profoundly unhappy -- that is, if you felt that you needed to be a stockbroker to be happy, would it be okay for you to be a "bad" person? If so, then how could you criticise capitalists, and if not, why is your happiness relevant?
,br> Happiness is absolutely relevant; why would anybody want revolution if all it promised was more unhappiness? I see revolution as a means to EVERYBODY getting a fair crack at happiness. When Emma Goldman said "It's not my revolution if I can't dance to it" she was talking about the pleasure principle. The fight is to build a fair society where everybody works together to supply food, shelter and safety and we still get to fulfil our individual desires... be frivolous, creative, fuck in the streets, play rock 'n roll, eat, drink and be merry. I'm not fighting for a more austere world but one where justice and joy are prized. I hate to say it, but the political left has overdosed on puritanism. The idea that if we all did without a bit more and didn't allow ourselves to have a good time the world would somehow be transformed. It's the Christian idea of sacrificing yourself for the less fortunate and all it does is reinforce the hierarchy between the haves and the have-nots. Giving away what you would have spent on a drink might make you feel good but it's not revolutionary. It is revolutionary to say there's no need for anybody to be homeless, there's enough empty houses, churches, buildings for us all to find decent living space. We have to break laws to change the world. We have to destroy the moral code that says you can only have what you can afford to pay for.