The Pressing Need To Fix Capitalism
To Ward Off The Nightmare Of Communism
Introduction
This post is in response to Elle Griffin’s writing prompt about fixing Capitalism.
Short-term Need To Fix Capitalism
When we have a high-paying job and splurge on things we can afford, Capitalism seems like a great thing.
But, one of the repercussions of Capitalism is lay-offs. This is because the purpose of Capitalism is the oft-bandied ‘maximisation of share-holder profit’, which means, among other things like reducing wastage, paying employees the bare minimum, while trying to maximise the work output from them.
This means that as long as your pay falls within the range Capitalists are comfortable with, your life will appear rosy and have the semblance of richness where you buy everything within reason.
But when your pay crosses this comfort zone because you have accumulated enough experience, knowledge and skills, Capitalists have a decision to make.
Should they retain you or replace you with someone worse who will accept less pay? It may seem like they should prioritise quality.
But put yourself in their shoes. If you were a Capitalist, would you care about how awesome your employee was or how less you can pay them for a reasonable quality of work.
If you find it difficult to imagine this, think about someone you may have employed, like a maid or a gig worker. Do you care if they are the best in the world at what they do or if they do a good enough job at a reasonable price? Obviously, it’s the latter choice that we would make.
But for people who are laid-off or grappling with the cost-of-living crisis, wondering how they will pay for their kids’ education and if they will run out of money or their lifespan first, it’s an existential crisis that deserves a solution.
Long-term Need To Fix Capitalism
If the immediate impact of Capitalism isn’t fixed soon enough, it will lead to disaffection. This is what the Marxists are waiting for.
They hope to ‘capitalise’ on worker anguish. This is a textbook method of fomenting a revolution straight out of Aristotle’s Politics where the numerous poor are pitted against the rich few.
The purpose of all revolutions according to Aristotle is to grab power. Even our reading of history tells us the same thing. All revolutions use people’s problems as an excuse but after the revolution, the new rulers forget the people.
So, we can be sure that Marxism is only to gain power and will not help us solve the ills of Capitalism.
What will be the future under Marxism then? Their aim is to establish Communism, but what does this mean?
According to the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the features of a Communist state will be:
Abolition of marriage (if we look at all the features and think of the reason, we would realise that this also includes relationships).
Abolition of parental custody of children. The state will look after the education and upbringing of children.
Abolition of prostitution.
Establishment of a ‘community of women’, which will reduce women to the status of shared resources like electricity. Instead of one-to-one relationships between a man and a woman, a woman will be assigned to a man presumably only to have babies.
These features tell us that the purpose is to discourage bonds between people so they are loyal only to the state.
In addition, Marx believed that Communism was more efficient than Capitalism. Not satisfied with this, towards the end of the manifesto, he talks about maximising the output of workers (sounds a lot like Capitalism, doesn’t it?)
We already see this in China where workers work longer hours than elsewhere. So, far from being a solution to Capitalism, Communism is just a worse form of Capitalism.
How To Fix Capitalism
This tells us that there’s an urgent need to fix Capitalism but how do we do it?
The main problem with Capitalism both in the near-term and long-term is low pay. So, to fix it, we need to turn the current thinking on its head and look at maximising pay.
Obviously, the Capitalists will not do it voluntarily and governments will have to get involved.
But the money power of Capitalists will allow them to successfully lobby corrupt governments.
This may call for a revolution but it must not have anything to do with Marxism, which anyway sounds like a copy of ideas from Plato’s Republic.
An intrinsic motivation for Capitalists to change is the sobering thought that if Marxists have their way, Capitalists will be killed for their wealth.
Are there other ways to fix Capitalism? Capitalism doesn’t just exploit workers, it also exploits customers using ‘price point’, which is just a euphemism for fleecing the customer as much as possible.
So, Capitalism doesn’t just pay you less, it also tries to take away as much of that pittance as possible for products and services that you need.
One way to fix this is to cap the profit that a company can make. This isn’t a revolutionary concept.
When I was a civil engineering student in the early 2000s, as part of estimation, we were taught that it was ethical to include a maximum of 10% as the profit in estimates.
If a hazardous occupation like civil engineering is allowed to ethically make only 10% profit, there’s no reason cushier industries should make more.
Another approach is wealth tax. There must also be a cap on the wealth of individuals. If you think this is unfair, consider that there was talk of Jeff Bezos becoming the first trillionaire before he moved from Amazon to focus on Blue Origin and his financial trajectory became humbler.
Does someone really need a trillion dollars when it’s possible for a millionaire to retire early?
That’s a million times the bare minimum needed to retire early. How does it help if someone hoards this much unnecessarily when there are multitudes struggling to make enough money to meet even their basic needs?
In other words, Capitalism allows an infinite accumulation of wealth, while Communism allows zero wealth for bourgeois.
We need a middle ground where there’s a reasonable cap on a person’s wealth.
Conclusion
From the above, it’s clear that to fix Capitalism, we need a redistribution of wealth as has been suggested here.
We can’t let the bloodthirsty Marxists do it because that won’t end well for any of us.
References
Republic by Plato
Politics by Aristotle
Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels