Ezequiel Adamovsky - Anti-Capitalism

Text copyright 2008 by Ezequiel Adamovsky
Illustrations copyright 2008 by
Illustradores Unidos Translation copyright 2011 by Seven Stories Press

A Seven Stories Press First Edition
First English-language edition, May 2011
First published in 2008 by Era Naciente SRL in Buenos Aires, Argentina

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data TK

eISBN: 978-1-60980-366-7

v3.1

Anti-capitalists are those of us who feel that much of the suffering in the world is the result of an unjust social system: capitalism. Even though many men and women have resisted this system since its formation, many centuries ago, only in the past 200 years has this resistance become conscious. Since then, in many places, in many ways, anti-capitalists have struggled for a different kind of society.

In order to understand anti-capitalism, first we need to understand capitalism.

More than anything, capitalism is a social system. That is to say a way of organizing social life. For people to be able to live together, society must accept the same answers to a series of questions.

These questions can be answered in many ways. A social system is the set of answers that organizes a society. Throughout history, human beings have organized social life in many ways. Capitalism is just one of these historic systems, and it is fairly recent: it began to develop some 500 years ago.

Throughout history there have existed many societies with different degrees of equality. However, capitalism is an oppressive social system. A system is oppressive when there is a group of people that has power over the rest, and they permanently retain that power. Power means having the capacity to persuade other people to obey and to do certain things, even things that cause them suffering. The oppressed may obey the powerful because they are forced to, although generally they obey because the culture in which they were educated taught them they should obey because it is the correct thing to do, or that it is the only way they can survive. There are different kinds of oppression, according to how power is distributed among people.

There is gender oppression, for example, when males exert power over women, making women work for them, when women receive unequal pay and benefits for their work, or when women are coerced to behave in ways that please men. This form of oppression, called patriarchy, has existed in almost all of the past social systems, and it is still predominant today.

Other forms of oppression can be established between ethnic groups, for example, when whites dominate blacks, Christians dominate Muslims, or one nation dominates another, just by the fact that they are considered superior.

Capitalism is an oppressive class system. This means that there is a class of peoplethe dominant class. Because of the dominant classs position and attributes (or those they are said to have), they have the power to dominate everyone else. This is not to say that under capitalism the other forms of oppression have disappeared: class oppression can be combined with racial or gender oppression, to reinforce oppression.

Class power can be instituted in many ways; furthermore, it can be justified and organized through a series of institutions, norms, habits and ideas. In the Middle Ages, for example, feudal lords were considered noble due to their birth line and were given the duty of protecting the population from wars; this is why peasants had to pay taxes or work for them for free.

In India, it was believed that certain people who were considered descendents of gods had more importance than others, which is why they formed part of a superior caste. The inferior castes had to serve their superiors.

In the Soviet Union, officials and political leaders affirmed that they had the knowledge and authority to run society, and which is why they should occupy a privileged rank.

In all cases, society had developed a system of institutions, norms and beliefs to organize, legitimate and protect the dominant classs power. However, the capitalist classs power is instituted in a new way. Capitalist society is the first in which dominant classs power is not defined by birth right or by being a member of a closed group, but is fundamentally (although not exclusively) defined by the economic differences between people.

The dominant class under capitalismcalled the bourgeoisieis defined by the amount and type of economic resources that they control.

The bourgeoisie gain ownership of the means of production through the