…and why we must overcome it!!
Capitalism is a mode of production, the whole arrangement of society organized for the production of goods that meet our needs — like food, clothing and housing.
It’s not only an economic system, but it also includes a political system, and a system of beliefs, that all reinforce each other. For example, how is it that one person is allowed own a factory that a hundred people work in? It’s only because we have been taught to believe in the right to private ownership.
Capitalism is based on class divisions. Under capitalism, there are two main classes that are in conflict with each other: capitalists and workers. The capitalists own the means of production — the factories, land, and raw materials. They own it not because they worked for it, or because they’re better people or because they deserve it, but usually because they or their ancestors stole it. The wealth of the capitalist class in the US was built on genocide, land theft, and slavery. Most wealth is inherited from those historical crimes. And today they increase it through wars of conquest and the global exploitation of workers.
Capitalists dispossess the working class so they can force us to work for low wages. Because we don’t own land or factories or raw materials, we can’t produce what we need. So our only option is to work for them.
Our labor increases their wealth, while they pay us as little as they can get away with. Wages are supposedly set at what we need for our survival—to pay our rent and feed our families. But we all know that it’s never enough. When we’re organized, we can fight for higher wages, but individually we’re caught in a bind: we can either work for what they offer, or we can starve.
The big scam of capitalism is that wages are supposedly a fair trade of money for the amount of time that we work. But capitalists are not buying our time—they are buying our labor power, our ability to work. When we produce goods for them, they sell them at a price higher than what they paid us. Where did this extra value come from?