Capitalism isn’t just a leftie word

Last week, I posted something on LinkedIn about brands posting about the death of the Queen.

A couple of commenters replied, seeking to justify what their companies had done by saying that employees looked to their company for emotional solidarity. Now I don’t know about you, but to me an employer is an organisation that recompenses you for your contribution to their bottom line. You work for them, they pay you (usually not enough) for the hours you spend doing stuff to help their business run and, ultimately, make a profit that isn’t (mostly) distributed to the employees. I’ve never held any romantic notions around a company being a ‘family’ - I’ve been made redundant far too many times to be deluded enough to think that if a company has to choose between continuing to employ someone or make a profit, they will agonise over the decision. (OK, I accept that there are some companies, usually small enterprises, where the owner does consider their staff, just to head off any “not all employers” responses.)

I think it’s a pretty uncontroversial thing to say that large companies and multinational corporations don’t really care about their employees: they will pay staff the absolute minimum (when was the last time an employer paid more than you were asking for?) and dispense with their services as soon as it suits them. That was made crystal clear when P&O Ferries sacked 800 of its staff earlier this year and replaced them with agency workers earning less than minimum wage. They openly put profits before people, saying that it would "not be a viable business" without the changes.

Here’s a thing, P&O: if you can’t pay staff a decent living wage, then your business isn’t viable. A company that actually cared about its staff would find other solutions - like not paying a £270m dividend to shareholders in 2020.

I’m sure that many people would view my opinion as cynical, but it’s anything but. I believe that I’m being honest and empathetic towards people and not fetishising an entity that only exists to make money.

Going back to my LinkedIn post, I responded to the commenters: “… if citizens - whether customers or employees - are looking to a corporation or employer for emotional solidarity, it is a damning indictment on how we've all been brainwashed to believe modern capitalism has all the answers to societal issues.”

One of the commenters replied, saying: “I don’t think it’s got anything to do with capitalism whatsoever. It’s not emphasising a belief in an economic system” and, later, “the idea that companies posting about the monarch’s death is some sort of indicator of the erosion of the fabric of society is utterly absurd.” Talk about not having the faintest clue what I was talking about - and then making up a conclusion that was a universe away from my actual point.

To be honest, the responses baffled me, until I realised that the problem was my use of the c-word: capitalism.

Because in our culture, using the word capitalism in any kind of negative sense is only done by crazy Marxists who are hell-bent on violent revolution and turning the whole world into a facsimile of the Soviet Union. It’s an orthodoxy that has only been reinforced since the collapse of the USSR in the early 90s: capitalism had won the Cold War, its economic and moral dominance taking us to what political scientist Francis Fukuyama rather prematurely called ‘the end of history’. Communism was defeated and capitalism was now the only game in town. Russia embraced capitalism and, within a decade, so had China.

That’s the narrative now. Capitalism is A Good Thing and any questioning of how it operates makes you nothing less than a fanboy of Joseph Stalin.

The thing is, capitalism isn’t just an economic system: it never has been. It existed long before Marx published his critique of it (in three exhausting volumes) between 1867 and 1894. It has been with us since the first trader made a profit, long before even Christ turned the moneylenders out of Jerusalem’s Second Temple (I always love the irony of rapacious capitalists also claiming to be fervent Christians). True, capitalism has been the driving force behind human exploration, the progress of civilisation and technological advances for thousands of years. But it is also responsible for wars, colonialism, genocide and slavery. And The Apprentice.

And in the last 40 years or so, it has increasingly exerted its power over politics and society in Western economies. The philosophy of neoliberalism has taken hold, which has seen capitalism using its profits to influence politicians, leading to the repeal of regulations that previously reined in tendencies towards exploitation and naked greed. Under neoliberal capitalism, citizens become consumers, inequality is natural and any attempt to create a more equal society is a form of foolish heresy: ‘the free market’, as the most efficient way of economic organisation, is the only thing that matters.

The reality is that since neoliberal capitalism took hold in the 1980s, the rich have got richer and everyone else has become poorer. Numerous studies in the last decade have highlighted how individuals are harmed by neoliberal capitalism because it promotes competition and, as a result, undermines people’s sense of solidarity and social security. The rich say that they acquired their wealth through merit, totally ignoring the fact that their advantages – education, inheritance, class, etc – are the reason that they’re rich. The other side of the coin is that the poor blame themselves for not being able to achieve the success that they are constantly exposed to (including in ‘entertainment’ shows such as Keeping Up with The Kardashians), even when there’s little they can do to change their circumstances. It’s no wonder that society is having to deal with epidemics of self-harm, eating disorders, depression, loneliness, anxiety and social phobia.

Capitalism is so much more than an economic system: it not only affects every aspect of our society, it also affects us as individuals. And, for most of us, the effects are negative. As inequality increases, more research studies are finding that social mobility, life expectancy, physical health and educational attainment are all increasingly being undermined.

So the next time you hear someone use the word capitalism in a negative sense - and that’s going to become more commonplace in the next few years, as more of us start to join the dots and realise that it is the cause of extortionate fuel prices, wages that don’t keep pace with inflation, the inability to afford a decent place to live, etc - don’t assume that they have a hammer and sickle tattoo somewhere on their body. Some of us understand that capitalism can be less harmful, in more Keynesian forms.

Oh, and don’t rely on your employer for emotional solidarity. Corporate organisations are not human and don’t have emotions. Working for them is an economic exchange. They understand that: you should too.