Is this the end?

Capitalism needs free labour, a work force that can be hired and fired at will. As Marx pointed out in his writings on the American Civil War, the North opposed slavery for utilitarian reasons not moral ones. Wages are paid after the work is accomplished, and when the work stops the worker must fend for himself. The investment in upbringing, education and upkeep does not concern the employer. This being so, there is a lot of wastage, and capitalism must have a plethora of labour if it is to succeed. It needs the constant renewal of young adults that results from mass migrations, either from the countryside to the towns or from one nation to another. Capitalism prospers on freedom and resists all forms of constraint. But its own liberty presents a double contradiction, as one freedom stops where another begins.

Capitalism uses labour to produce wealth. Its own freedom to use as it wishes confronts labour’s freedom to refuse that usage. This conflictive situation is arbitrated by the rule of law and the power of state, by the executive and the legislative, and by the minority decisions of universal suffrage. The freedom of capitalism opposes the freedom of labour, but cannot do without it. However, capitalism controls the means of production, and these include the mass media. That is, the top down diffusion of ideology, as opposed to the criss-crossing web. (Can a search engine be ideologically orientated? Or does its globality preclude all bias?) Capitalism and labour are fighting an asymmetric war.

Capitalism has a light side represented by industry and the production of wealth, and it has a dark side represented by finance and the production of money. The light side confronts labour. The dark side confronts other moneys. One conflict is open to a lopsided debate of ideas. The other is covert and imperialistic. Mass production depends on exchange, which in turn needs a measure of value as legal tender. But this currency only holds sway within national borders, a limit that hinders foreign trade. Frontiers interrupt financial continuity because of different currencies and their exchange rates that fluctuate constantly. A dominant trade partner, one who monopolises certain productions, will impose his currency as the standard. For centuries China held the monopoly on silk, tea and porcelain, and demanded payment in silver, its own legal tender. The English countered with an unlicensed opium trade that led to the Opium Wars, et cetera. After WW2, The US was the only major industrial nation not to have suffered severe war damages. For the following ten years or so, it was the only exporter of industrial goods. This monopoly imposed the US dollar as the universal currency used for pricing most commodities. Did this contribute to the illicit drugs trade and the various “wars” that have ensued?

Capitalism proclaims freedom at home, and practices imperial oppression abroad. In fact, the freedom of capitalism is its own, to the exclusion of all others, its freedom to use (exploit) the resources of planet Earth, including the renewable human resource, its freedom to accumulate and concentrate wealth by all imaginable means. Capitalism is a process, but it is not a faceless entity. Based on the private property of the means of production, its existence depends on a propertied class, an aristocracy with its sycophants and hangers-on who sustain and promote the status quo, a few millionaires and billionaires who are, by birth, marriage or acquisition, the slaves of mammon. Capital and labour are free, while property is bondage, the total submission of body and mind to the dictates of capitalist accumulation, always more.

Capitalism has its high priests, its beadles and its flocks of worshipers. And its church is universal. As there is no alternative faith, capitalism can only be reformed. So the modern day Luthers want to moralise the market, to abolish bonuses, to restore banking to its original Glass-Steagall purity. And, like the 95 theses posted in Wittenberg , this could be the prelude to a gigantic upheaval.