What is Capitalism?

Capitalism is an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit. By and large, the two types private owners that profit the most under capitalism are the investor and the landlord. This largely refers to those who have made a business out of investing and property rental.

It's a system that's run by and incentivizes greed, that has created a huge wealth disparity between the mega-rich that own most of the means of production and the workers who staff their factories and businesses.

There is huge waste of resources and serious threats to mankind in the rivalry and arms race between imperialist and social-imperialist powers. There is cutthroat competition among the capitalist countries, while third world countries and people demand emancipation and development. All these are putting every capitalist country in dire straits.

Workers under capitalism are directly hurt by the owner's goal to maximize profit. To make more money, the owner want to cut down on as many costs as possible - which often means the worker's wages. If wages rise too high, owners will outsource the production to poorer parts of the world where labor is cheaper in order to save money.

Capitalism moves into every area of work and community, harnessing all of social life to its pursuit of profit. It converts nature, labor, science, art, music and medicine into commodities, and commodities into capital. It transforms land into real estate, folk culture into mass culture, and citizens into debt ridden workers and consumers.

Often, workers become discouraged and exhausted dedicating such a huge portion of their lives to doing work that ultimately benefits somebody else. They experience alienation and depression as a result. The metric with which capitalism judges the health and ability of its citizens is ability to work, as seen in the legal definition of "disabled".

Private profit gained by capitalists becomes frozen in unproductive assets or wasted on luxurious, conspicuous spending by a few. It contributes to unnecessary and bloated costs of administration, like excessive salaries, allowances and bonuses for the bosses and the high, unnecessary costs of private economic competition and bankruptcies.

Most crimes and legal cases today relate to capitalism because they relate to private property and poverty.

To understand capitalism, one first has to strip away the appearances presented by its ideology. Capital annexes living labor in order to accumulate more capital. The ultimate purpose of work is not to perform services for consumers, or sustain life in society, but to make more and more money for the investor, irrespective of the human and environmental costs.

Capitalism results in alienation and division of labor.

To better understand capitalism, we must also understand its opposite: socialism.

Also check out Marx's criticisms of Capitalism

What is Socialism?

Socialism is a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

The purpose of production under socialism is to produce to meet the needs of the people. Socialism represents a fundamental change in the capitalist relations of production: it is the antithesis of capitalism.

Socialism is a democracy. All of the freedoms we currently enjoy are carried over, except for allowing the exploitation and oppression of people under the guide of individual freedom and the right to own property. Freedom of thought and belief is respected in socialist countries.

Some authority will still exist, but it will not be an authority with coercive apparatuses for the private gain of any exploitative class or group. Unlike the current police and military.

Education at any level is open to workers and their children without any cost.

The military policy of a socialist state is truly defensive and is opposed to aggression from its own side or from another.

Socialism would achieve greatness in the advancement of science, technology, agriculture, industry and defense. This is because these fields, under capitalism, are chained to the narrow-minded interest of billionaires. When these chains are removed, great strides are possible. This is also because so many people are born into situations where their full potential will never be realized because of systemic poverty.

Given some time, socialist society can make the quality of life and education of the current upper-middle class available to all. If this were possible, there wouldn't be a need for or the instruments of class coercion.

It is not an impossible dream to anticipate the growth of productivity to the point that all members of society need to work for a far lesser number of hours than now and have more time for creative endeavors and a social life.

A long period of socialism is theorized to create the economic, social, political and cultural relations that will make a classless society, communism, possible.

"We do not claim that Marx or the Marxists know the road to socialism in all its completeness. That is nonsense. We know the direction of this road, we know what class forces lead along it, but concretely and practically it will be learned from the experiences of the millions who take up the task." - Vladimir Lenin