Hi, I'm mejeffdorchen and welcome to The Moment of Truth, the funhouse on the outskirts of capitalism's grim iron city.In the mainstream media, the portrayal of the protesters at the WTO conference in Seattle has been ambivalent. The media don't seem to know what they're supposed to think about them. It's probably due in part to their inability to portray the protesters as an undifferentiated mass. There was a labor demonstration followed by what the media call "confusion" and some environmentalists and some more of what the media call confusion. And some police violence and some more of what the media call confusion. What the media are unable to grasp is that about 50,000 people connected with dozens of different groups gathered in visceral opposition to corporate feudalism. It wasn't the peasants revolting. It wasn't hoodlums. It was a spontaneous coalition of dissatisfied citizens whose only obvious connection to each other was their opposition to the threat of global capitalism doing away with popular input in world economic affairs.
The WTO convened to hash out trade agreements without the involvement of the people. So? What interest could the people possibly have in trade agreements? It doesn't really concern them. They aren't traders. They don't trade. Why should the WTO, or any global economic organization, consult the people of the globe when discussing what to do with the globe and who on the globe gets to do it? After all, capitalism has won the war of guiding philosophical principals. It alone has emerged from the twentieth century virtually unscathed, while communism, fascism, and democracy have all withered.
Capitalism is the only religion in the west that is practiced without an iota of hypocrisy. Catholics will give lip service to the poor while doting on their bejeweled pope in his glittering palace. Jews will cry out against their own oppression throughout biblical history and up to the present day, and then turn around and oppress or contribute to the oppression of others. Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, all will espouse ideals they cannot possibly put into practice in their daily lives. And the more lofty, generous, ascetic, compassionate, transcendental, optimistic, humble, or loving those ideals are, the more impossible will it be to avoid compromising them in the daily business of staying alive, let alone happy, healthy or free.
But the capitalist never compromises. He espouses greed, and if he chooses he can pursue a greedy purpose throughout his life and never suffer for it, nor need he ever miss a meal in pursuit of profit. No one ever starved to death by being greedy. Greed, possessiveness, selfishness, self-service, self-interest, self-aggrandizement, self-protection -- these are pure traits. They need never be in conflict with reality as it is sold to us by capitalism. Even if a capitalist weakens and gives in to some abnormal compassionate impulse, gives something to the public or to the poor, he need not do penance for practicing socialism behind the back of the almighty dollar. No. Because he can always say, completely consistent with the beliefs of capitalism, "It's my money and I'll do whatever I want with it."
This is theoretical premise from which all capitalist theory and practice derives. It is this notion that leads Steve Forbes to seek to free capital from the bonds of taxation (that is, forced public service) so that it may soar to ever more lofty heights. It is this premise that leads fiscal conservatives and libertarians alike to champion "letting the people keep their money," while supporting policies that really let only the rich keep their money and take some of the poor's as well. Greed. The pure, unhypocritical greed of the rich. It's their money, and they can do what they want with it. It's their money.
How did it get to be their money? Or more provocatively, what entitles them to label certain things "theirs"? It's their money. Because they are the rich. God belongs to the spiritual. Art belongs to the aesthetes. Law to the jurists. Medicine to the healers. And money and property belong to the rich. There is no need to ask, where did your property originate? Whom did it belong to first? How did you get it? Do you deserve it? Should it be returned to its previous owner? If there was no previous owner, was it perhaps collectively occupied by some entities who considered ownership of it to be unthinkable? Do others affected by your use of it have the right to a voice in determining your use of it? These questions are just so much unnecessary clutter. These questions pollute the purity of the premise of capitalism: "It's mine and I'll do what I want with it."
The wealth of the world belongs to the rich, whether the worker thinks he owns some of it or not. The wealth of the world belongs to the rich, in fact or in potential. It is the manifest destiny of the rich to own everything. Capitalism envisions its destiny as one of perfect freedom. It sees itself unfettered, in free flight, soaring in a universe where it alone exists, without the obstacles of noncapitalistic organizations or societies imposing noncapitalistic ethics on it.
And maybe capitalism should rule the universe uncontested. Here was the WTO in Seattle, sitting there divvying up the world, and a bunch of noncapitalist protesters were trying to impose noncapitalist ethics on it. And, do you know, every single one of those protesters was a hypocrite? Complain and whine as they might, they're all enjoying the fruits of the greatest economy in history. Where do they get off trying to limit the very forces that allow them to live at the high standards American citizens expect? Hypocrites, every single one of them, from the fringiest anarchist who hacks around the internet which capitalism provided the technology for to the most mainstream environmentalist whose Birkenstocks are manufactured in factories that create waste at least in some degree, all noncapitalists are stained with hypocrisy. Not so the capitalist. Greed is his creed; straightforward, uncomplicated and uncompromised greed.
And isn't it likely that, since capitalism is so uncomplicated, since it is the one belief system that doesn't contradict itself, since even science, with its paradigmatic monopoly on the way we understand events in the world, understands that its very investigations alter that which it investigates -- isn't it likely that, since of all belief systems, philosophies, ethical systems, and guiding principles, capitalism alone is not internally contradictory -- isn't it likely that this is so because capitalism is in fact the one true faith?
I mean, it's pretty hard to believe otherwise. Why so much human energy wasted pondering the dizzy complexities of the paradox-ridden richness of the cosmos? Why not accept the simple, straightforward creed of greed? Isn't its simplicity and purity proof of its superiority to all other creeds?
But the nagging question for some is that perhaps capitalism is alone among philosophies in encountering no conflicts within itself for a different reason. Systems of ethics, philosophies, sciences, they all run up against logical anomalies within themselves. Maybe not finding such anomalies within itself is not the only way capitalism differs from other systems of ethics, philosophies, sciences. Maybe capitalism differs from other systems of ethics, philosophies, sciences in that it isn't a system of ethics, a philosophy, or a science. Maybe capitalism is actually the absence of ethics, philosophy and science. Maybe that would account for capitalism's logical purity. Maybe capitalism is what you get when you abandon all intellectual, ethical and spiritual inquiry. Maybe capitalism is simply the prelogical reflex of an entity to try to persist and make more of itself. Like the amoeba, like the most rudimentary form of life.
If so, then capitalism, that which is on the verge of ruling us all, is a force that has not evolved since life itself began. Maybe that's why it seeks to supersede all other systems -- it's the id that has been at war with all forces of the mind, heart, spirit and community that seek to tame it, to civilize it. It's possible that we are on the verge of being condemned to live under the uncontested rule of the most basic, unevolved, brainless, brutal, stupid, vicious force in all of biology.
That seems like something worth protesting against.
This has been mejeffdorchen with the Moment of Truth.
Notice: The copyright on these essays will only be invoked if someone besides Jeff Dorchen tries to make a profit with them or uses them without giving Jeff credit.
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