All Barriers To Corporate Capitalism Have Been Removed
Whatever you may think about communism or religion, you must admit their existence helped ameliorate the worst aspects of capitalism. We all had a day off from work, not because corporations thought we needed to chill a bit, but because The Bible stated that the Sabbath was a day of rest. In order to lessen the appeal of communism, capitalist countries had to offer their people some sort of social safety net. In other words, as bad as capitalism was at its lowest point thus far — the era when children were sent to work long hours in coal mines and canneries and textile mills — we have yet to see the worst of it.
The prevalent beliefs we have now, libertarianism and identity politics, offer no resistance to capitalism. The former cheers it on, naively believing it is possible to keep a barrier between government and corporate influence. The latter only seeks to make sure the worst abuses of capitalism are foisted upon man and woman, black and white, gay and straight alike. So long as the coal sorters and the CEOs are both able to be transgendered, the system is deemed to be fair.
The worst era of capitalism thus far — the era which people like Upton Sinclair, Frank Norris, and Nellie Bly documented and railed against — was one in which values of a pre-capitalist era were still prevalent. Family units were still strong and extended. People still sought out strong community ties. People discussed local politics locally, on the front porches of neighbors and in the bars. People met with each other, looked out for each other, lent each other a cup of sugar or a couple of dollars to help them through a rough patch. People shared space and food from their gardens in ways we can no longer imagine, because our lives have been uprooted by capitalism from the values all pre-industrial societies were built on.
Previous generations had the opportunity to escape from the capitalist system. As fraught with risk as such an action could be, people had the chance of moving westward and starting over. Today, they are more than likely burdened with debt from a young age and unable to escape their creditors. There is no place to go and no hope of escaping the past.
There is no ideological opposition to corporate capitalism nowadays. Few would even seek to oppose it or find alternatives. A 4th generation of people raised on television — the ultimate amplifier of consumer values — has entered adulthood. There are few people now alive who have not been immersed in the values projected by the marketers of conspicuous consumption from the moment they were born. There is no art, no music, no programs, no storytelling, that is not dependent upon corporate approval, at least none capable of garnering a sizable audience. Should an artist gain a certain amount of followers, they will either be coopted or marginalized.
A century ago, Christians and communists alike opposed sex work and gambling because they believed such things were both exploitative and bad for society as a whole. But now there is no prominent ideology that even cares about what is good for society. What’s good for the market will lead to the best of all outcomes, so the story goes. And what is best for the market, we are told, is corporations of ever-increasing size and power gathering control of every aspect of our lives.
It is hard to imagine another era or society in which power was so completely invested in one small segment of people and so thoroughly propagated by such an efficient bureaucracy. The age of serfdom, perhaps, but serfs had too great a tie to the soil and thus to nature to have their values stray too far from it. The Soviet Union, perhaps, but the Soviets at least made sure to educate their populace so that they had access to knowledge from beyond the time period in which they lived. Nazi Germany, maybe, but the tools of propaganda they had were little more than newspapers, the radio, and torchlight parades. Even the Nazis did not have access to the most private correspondence and data of their people the way corporations and the corporate-owned government of the present do.
Even those who sense or experience that the system is working against them have little context to allow them to explain what is happening. Few of us can imagine resisting the complete corporate control of our lives in even the smallest of ways, let along finding an alternative to a world in which corporations dominate every aspect of our lives.
Find one aspect of your life that does not involve a corporation inserting itself between you and your fellow humans, you and nature, you and your own thoughts. Meditate, take a walk, grow a plant from seed, do something. Try it and you will realize just how difficult it is. It will be like peeling back the layers of an onion. Keep peeling. Find something you can enjoy that does not involve Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or Bayer AG. Find something, and you will find yourself. Find something, and you will find your power. Find something, and you will find joy you did not know you were missing.
There is more to this life than what they can sell you in a 30 second commercial. There is food that is more nutritious than a Big Mac. There are stories more worth telling than what you will find on Family Guy. What humanity truly needs is not something corporations can provide for us. You’ll have to take my word for it until you experience it for yourself.