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In all of this talk about globalization, we hear some people talking about how capitalism has always been global, and others discussing how global capital is a recent phenomena.

They are both right.

Capitalism has had a global presence and been the primary global force for 100s of years, but only within the last 70 years have the people in charge of capitalism (the ruling class) come to be truly “globalized”. Now the move is toward the global free-flow of capital.

If we are to oppose this, and offer up solutions on what to do about it, we have to first understand what capitalism is to us. It is only from such an understanding can we begin to come up with workable solutions.

WHAT IS CAPITALISM?

Capitalism is not just an economic system, nor is it just a political system. It is both at once, and more.

Class.

The first thing we have to understand in order to understand capitalism is class. Class is not an economic category, as we are often led to believe. Class is determined by much more than how much money one makes.

In order to understand class, we have to first understand how we relate to the capitalist system through the work that we do. Does the work you do produce profit for someone? Do you receive only the equivalent of a small portion (if anything) of what you produce or enable to be produced? If you are a blue or white collar waged-worker, a student, an unemployed person, a homemaker, an artist, or a farmer the answer is most likely a resounding "YES!”.

The second thing we have to understand in order to understand class is our power-relation to capitalism. Do you have the power to hire & fire people? Do you have the power to create and/or enforce laws, start wars, etc.? Do you have the power to impose wage-slavery? Do you own and control the means of production / reproduction? Do you have any real power over the people who do any of the above? If you are a blue or white collar waged-worker, a student, an unemployed person, a homemaker, an artist, or a farmer the answer is most likely a resounding "NO!”.

Answering "yes" to the first question and "no" the second set of questions means that you are working class, a member of what is sometimes called the proletariat [1]. It means that the majority of the fruits of your labor (whether that labor is producing and distributing commodities or reproducing [2] the labor necessary for the production and distribution of commodities) are taken from you in exchange for a fraction (if anything) of what you deserve. It means that you have very little, if any, real social power over the capitalist system.

Opposing the working class is the ruling class. The ruling class are those who receive the majority of the fruits of our labor, those who have the power to hire and fire people, to create and/or enforce laws, start wars, etc., those who own and control the means of production / reproduction, etc. They are corporate CEOs, upper and middle management, politicians, the police forces and agencies, the WTO / IMF / World Bank / TABD / etc., all national governments, and more.

Capitalism is the struggle that rages between these two classes. The notion of middle class is invoked by the ruling class to obscure this struggle, but the middle class is a myth. There has been no middle class for a long time.

However, the working class does not sit idly by. Through absenteeism, workplace theft, sabotage, strikes, riots, insurrections, grassroots community-building, workplace organizing and movements against sexism, racism, homophobia and the destruction of the environment, and much more, we fight the ruling class.

Capitalism does not change only in response to its own needs. While the capitalist system is changed in minor ways by the competitions of the ruling class, constant working class attacks are the source of capitalism’s major changes. The ruling class has to keep reinventing capitalism in response to our attacks. Every change in government (from "democratic" republics, to fascism, to totalitarianism), every change in management forms, every war, etc. is in some way an attempt to destroy working class power. However, nothing they do can destroy the class struggle (since class is necessary to capitalism), they can only obscure the division, and momentarily weaken us.

It is important to note here that while the ruling class is aware of the class struggle, and wages it willingly, the individuals in that class do not always work well together, have ideological differences, compete with one another, and are sometimes unaware of how what they are doing effects us. As an example: black members of the ruling class from the US probably do not often knowingly perpetuate racism. By being capitalists, however, they must do so because the system is set up to maintain and strengthen cultural (and national) divides.

The Market.

The basis of the economic aspect of capitalism is the market. The capitalist market (like all markets) is based in exchange, whether this is in the form of exchanging two bushels of corn for a pig, or an ear of corn for $.25 US.
The market has developed from being based on direct exchange to money-mediated exchange. Money-mediated markets have reached their consummate form in the capitalist market. The capitalist market itself has developed from local "small business" markets into national markets into international corporate markets.

It is through the market that the ruling class creates, maintains and develops its economic power. It takes the fruit of our labor (commodities) jacks the prices up well beyond what it cost them to have us make them, and sells them back to us. That is: we have to give back to them the money they gave us for doing the work just to survive, and, if we're lucky, get a little enjoyment out of our lives.

Now, a common fallacy is that we can return to small-business markets, and that in this way things would be better. This perspective misses two important points: 1) even if it were possible to turn back the clock in this way, it was from this basis that global corporate capitalism grew. Since markets must expand to survive, we would eventually be back to where we are now. And 2) those markets were also based on class division.

The market is the economic arm of capitalism, and there is no example in history of a market system that didn’t involve a class structure, and the accompanying power and wealth inequalities.

Money, Wages & Competition.

Exchange is an alienating force. Exchange encourages us to view that which we exchange (including ourselves for wages) as an object with an exchange (and now, monetary) value. That is, to view everything in terms of what we can get for it, instead of as something to be used and shared. This puts a distance between us and everything else, and necessarily alienates us from what we produce, what we use, from the planet, and increasingly from one another [3]. With money, this exchange value is expressed though a mediator which alienates us even more.

Money is the economic mediator of commodity exchange, and is itself a commodity – perhaps the most sought after commodity since the more you have of it the more of everything else you can have, including power in the system, and thus over people [4].

Wages are what we receive in exchange for being enslaved by the system. In order to live we must rely on wages: wages from having a job, wages for being unemployed (welfare), gifts and donations from people with a waged job [5], etc. Those who do not rely on wages in some way are usually dead or part of the ruling class.

Wage differentials are used by the ruling class as another way of dividing us. The employed are divided from the unemployed, waged parents are divided from their unwaged children, waged spouses are divided from their unwaged spouses, etc. Wage differentials make us compete with one another.

This competition often takes the form of racism, sexism and nationalism. White vs. non-white, men vs. women, Americans vs. Mexicans, etc. It is one of the many ways the ruling class has duped us into fighting amongst ourselves, thus ignoring the real problem: capitalism, and the real enemy: the ruling class.

Interlude I: Racism, Sexism, Homophobia / Heterosexism

So far, we have dealt with these forms of oppression as means of dividing the working class. While this is certainly the root cause of these forms of xenophobia in capitalist society [6], we do not say it to devalue or homogenize the varieties of exploitation and suffering people are subjected to through these oppressions. Instead, we wish to encourage recognition of the common source of oppression in capitalist society (class exploitation) and suggest that there is a common solution: class solidarity to destroy capitalism.

However, no simple “unite and fight” strategy will enable this. People of color, women and queers deal with specific oppressions that can not be easily understood by white people, men and straight people since they do not share the same experiences. Thus, people of color, women and queers must often organize autonomously within the class to deal with the specifics of their exploitation. White people, men and queers have an obligation to respect these autonomies, and learn from their class siblings. It is only through such autonomy can true class solidarity be built.

In addition to this, racism, sexism and homophobia / heterosexism must be confronted and destroyed by all of us, and it must start with all of us confronting our own prejudices and beginning the process of their destruction in our daily lives.

The State.

All class societies have a hierarchical governing structure. For the ruling aristocracy under feudalism, it was the monarchy. For the ruling class under capitalism, it is the state. The state is the collective will and voice of the capitalist ruling class. Thru the illusion of class-neutrality, it enables exploitation. The state came into being as part of the bourgeois revolutions of the 1600 & 1700s, in which the bourgeoisie (who were then the middle class) overthrew and absorbed the aristocracy, and thus became the ruling class.

The state has taken many forms. It is Republican when it is possible to quiet class struggle via the democratic illusion. It is Fascist when the ruling class must use overt violence and force to try to smash working class power. It is Totalitarian when the ruling class consolidates its entire rule in the state mechanism [7]. However, the majority of states are some combination of these three general forms, though they usually lean toward one. Thus the US, the UK, France, etc. are more generally Republican; Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Spain under Franco, Argentina under Peron, etc. were more generally Fascist; and the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, etc. were/are more generally Totalitarian.

In all forms the ruling class has used nationalism as a means to divide the international working class. The ruling class encloses areas of state control within imaginary lines (borders), and then uses these borders to try to trick working class people into focusing on some illusionary national identity which obscures class struggle by creating false links between the national ruling class and working class. In this way the ruling class confuses our class, somewhat subverts our global character, gets us to fight amongst ourselves, and even kill one another in their wars.

In the solutions being offered to the problem of globalization, one is the regression to nationalism. The idea being that if we go back to being exploited by a national ruling class, things will somehow be better. In addition to reinforcing capitalism by making use of one of its social relations, this has the effect of restoring the borders within the class. The working class has always been a globalized class in the sense that each member of the working class has more in common with our class siblings world-wide, of all cultures, than we do with those who exploit, oppress, repress, degrade, enslave & insult us.

Another solution has been that we can somehow use the state to our advantage. Not surprisingly, according to both liberals and conservatives should vote for change. Absurd! It amounts to begging the jailers for a nicer jail. They say the state can be reformed (or even that capitalism can be reformed), and use as evidence the relatively minor reforms we've forced the ruling class to give us over the years. However, these reforms exist only as a result of mass protest and direct action, not the ballot box, and usually represent the least radical demands. It also neglects the fact that after these reforms are legally made, they are almost never enforced unless we demand their enforcement as a class. Though, when reforms are enforced, the penalties for the perpetrators (who are, of course, also ruling class) are usually of the sort that makes it cost effective to continue to break the law.

Another solution being offered is to overthrow the capitalist system and replace it with a different capitalist system. The followers of those who created state-controlled capitalism [8] (Totalitarianism) in Russia, China, etc. suggest that we do the same all over the world. They call this "communism" or "socialism" [9], but in reality it is the opposite of communism / socialism in that it is, well, capitalism. Institutionalized hierarchies are one of the hallmarks of class societies; the state is the institutionalized hierarchical form of control for capitalism. By trying to use the state, re-create the state, or use institutionalized hierarchies in any form we reinforce and strengthen capitalism by legitimizing and (re-)creating capitalist social relations.

Imperialism & Empire.

Originally, the ruling class was also divided into nations. Strong ruling classes engaged one another in imperialist battles for rulership of regions outside of their borders. In the process, they would weaken and absorb smaller local ruling classes [10]. When the strong ruling classes attacked other strong national ruling classes world wars would explode. World War 1 was fought between two allied groupings of national ruling classes. World War 2 was fought between one more tightly allied ruling class grouping and two loosely allied ruling classes. By the time of the Cold War (which could be thought of as World War Three) it was between two ruling classes, both of which were internationalist in character.

With each world war the bloc of allied ruling classes which included the US and the UK became less and less nationally centered and gradually more internationalist in character [11]. This can be seen in their organizational activities. After WW1, the League of Nations (which eventually became the United Nations) was created to draw the national ruling classes together in one collective voice and will, one global state body. After WW2 two more-or-less competing blocs formed [12] based on which type of capitalism they used. On the free-market side they formed NATO, and on the state-controlled side they formed the Warsaw Pact.

On the NATO side the ruling class agreed, at the meeting at Bretton Woods, on the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT), which created the IMF, the World Bank, and (after the fall of the Warsaw Pact) the WTO, the idea being to increase the international flow of capital. This firmly internationalized the ruling class on the NATO side, and begun globalization in earnest. Imperialism, in a proper sense, ended.

With the fall of the Warsaw Pact, the ruling class in these nations was formally integrated into the international ruling class, and the region was opened to the free-market capitalism of the NATO/GATT side of the world. With the recent formal (soon to be official) inclusion of the remaining state-controlled capitalist countries (China, North Korea, etc.) into this fold, one form of capitalism has come out on top, with the international ruling class as the rulers of a global empire, with no center and no national ruling class on top [13].

Inturlude II: The Destruction of the Environment

Capitalism is destroying the planet. The capitalist logic of growth dictates that capitalism must consume and expand or die. For this reason “green capitalism” is a myth. The logic of growth and the logic of responsible use are irreconcilable. We must overthrow capitalism and its destructive consumptionism and learn how to use resources responsibly, or we will parish.

This is because we are part of nature. We are materially interdependent with the rest of the planet. One of the most dangerous aspects of class society is that along with its other alienations comes human alienation from the rest of nature. In order to pursue a path of consumption, the ruling class has to blind us (and perhaps itself) to the fact that such consumption makes the environment unable to sustain human life.

Notes:

1. Members of the working class can also include those from outside the class who have given up their privilege and joined the struggles of the class.

2. Reproduction is the process which enables production. As an example a homemaker engages in reproduction by making food for the waged members of the household, helping to raise children who will become new members of the working class, etc.

3. It is easy to see how the objectification of other people can come from this habit of seeing everything in terms of what we can get for it, and thus easy to see what some people have called the "economic basis of sexism".

4. Working class power, on the other hand, is the power to destroy capitalism. Any attempts to gain power over capitalism can only strengthen it by re-creating hierarchical social relations.

5. Including allowances from a waged parent, wife, etc. as well as what is received from panhandling, though a charity organization, theft, etc.

6. Which developed into their current forms under capitalism.

7. The states which utilize this form are mistakenly called "communist" or "socialist" to this day, in spite of the fact that there is nothing communist or socialist about them.

8. They call themselves Leninists, Stalinists, Maoists, etc. Sometimes they also call themselves Marxists, but their ideas are actually in complete contradiction to Marx.

9. They also sometimes call their parties communist or socialist (as in the "Socialist Workers' Party” or the "Revolutionary Communist Party"), but as capitalists they are obviously not communists or socialists.

10. More-or-less. Eventually, these weaker ruling classes would often use nationalism to dupe the local working classes to dump the imperialist powers off their back. After this, naturally, they would take over the business of capitalism on a national level, utilizing one of the previously mentioned general state forms. They would then usually join a ruling class bloc (discussed in more detail below). Which bloc they joined usually depended on which form they chose, and which group they had been fighting. Republican and Fascist states had usually been fighting with Russia or China, and went with NATO/GATT. Totalitarian states had usually been fighting NATO/GATT, and would usually go with The Warsaw Pact or link up with China.

11. However, the necessity of maintaining national borders and the illusion of national rule as a means to attempt to curb working class power is apparent.

12. Though they still were still joined via the UN... makes you wonder how much competition was really going on. Some have suggested that this divide was created on purpose to divide and thus weaken the working class, in order to subvert a possible revolutionary upsurge, similar and possibly more successful than the one that followed WW1. Seems a bit like conspiracy theory, but so do many things that are certainly true, so... who knows.

13. Many people will try to push this point, and say that it is obvious that the ruling class of the United States is on top, is the center, when you consider the actions of the US military. Nevertheless, this is an illusion, perhaps a purposeful one. The US Military is the single strongest in the world, and as such has become the police force of the international ruling class.

on to the ideas!