Capitalism is based on private property. Private property is a state-organized system of lethal force to produce conditions of deprivation of the many on behalf of the individual. By establishing my private property rights to a parcel of land, the state enforces my ability to exclude all 8 billion people on the planet today, and every single person who will ever be born afterward, from ever being able to use my land even to simply exist on it. When that system underpins your society, you can easily see how capitalism is based on taking advantage of the poor to the point of killing them directly or indirectly en masse.
For example, I establish private property rights over a large portion of the country. How? The state literally gave it to me. Then, I subdivided it up and sold it to many people. They individually build fences on the land and now animal migration paths have fundamentally changed, water downstream is now undrinkable, and everything on that land is completely inaccessible to anyone unless the owners each make profits on it - even that means people starve. Don’t like it? Get a job! From whom? Well, the people who own the land have work for you to do and they can pay you because they hoard the resources under private property law. In fact, basically everyone has to work for someone who owns private property. That’s why the path out of poverty and to “financial independence” is by acquiring “assets” (private property) that generate “revenue” (profits) like rentals. Because you own and they don’t, they have to pay you to live. Renters have no choice but to rent from someone who owns something, and owners will always charge more than it would take for the renter to live there by themselves, because the owner must make a profit or they will let the would-be-renters be unhoused and die in the street.
This is the foundation. Mass deprivation enforced by state violence. There’s a reason sheriff’s departments exist to evict tenants but not to recover stolen security deposits. There’s a reason cops will gun you down for running away from a shoplifting scene but won’t take a police report for stolen wages. All of capitalist society is organized around the mass deprivation that is private property and the protection of the owner’s “right” to profit simply by owning something and they will send the FBI to imprison you for downloading music and movies but nothing can be done with a corporation that knowingly causes lead poisoning in millions of children.
Capitalism cannot be reformed. Private property must be dismantled for society to advance and without private property, capitalism ceases to exist.
Capitalism is based on private property. Private property is a state-organized system of lethal force to produce conditions of deprivation of the many on behalf of the individual. By establishing my private property rights to a parcel of land, the state enforces my ability to exclude all 8 billion people on the planet today, and every single person who will ever be born afterward, from ever being able to use my land even to simply exist on it. When that system underpins your society, you can easily see how capitalism is based on taking advantage of the poor to the point of killing them directly or indirectly en masse.
For example, I establish private property rights over a large portion of the country. How? The state literally gave it to me. Then, I subdivided it up and sold it to many people. They individually build fences on the land and now animal migration paths have fundamentally changed, water downstream is now undrinkable, and everything on that land is completely inaccessible to anyone unless the owners each make profits on it - even that means people starve. Don’t like it? Get a job! From whom? Well, the people who own the land have work for you to do and they can pay you because they hoard the resources under private property law. In fact, basically everyone has to work for someone who owns private property. That’s why the path out of poverty and to “financial independence” is by acquiring “assets” (private property) that generate “revenue” (profits) like rentals. Because you own and they don’t, they have to pay you to live. Renters have no choice but to rent from someone who owns something, and owners will always charge more than it would take for the renter to live there by themselves, because the owner must make a profit or they will let the would-be-renters be unhoused and die in the street.
This is the foundation. Mass deprivation enforced by state violence. There’s a reason sheriff’s departments exist to evict tenants but not to recover stolen security deposits. There’s a reason cops will gun you down for running away from a shoplifting scene but won’t take a police report for stolen wages. All of capitalist society is organized around the mass deprivation that is private property and the protection of the owner’s “right” to profit simply by owning something and they will send the FBI to imprison you for downloading music and movies but nothing can be done with a corporation that knowingly causes lead poisoning in millions of children.
Capitalism cannot be reformed. Private property must be dismantled for society to advance and without private property, capitalism ceases to exist.