What is capitalism and how can we get rid of it?
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It is now widely accepted that we live in a capitalist society and ‘Capitalism’ is being talked about more and more, mainly because of the Occupy Movement and the Anti-Capitalist demonstrations. But what is ‘Capitalism’ and do the people who demonstrate against it know what it is?
I don’t believe they do.
I am sure that one aspect capitalist society that we can all agree upon is the market. All wealth is produced in the form of commodities to be sold on the market with a view to making a profit. Even the salaries and wages we receive are the price we receive in exchange for giving up our time to an employer. We sell our time and abilities. This simple exchange of commodities reveals two classes; the buyers of labour power and the sellers of labour power. It doesn’t take a lot of thought to conclude that the seller in a market will try to force the price up and and the buyer will try to force the price down.
So capitalism consists of two classes in conflict over the price of labour power and a market.
The vast majority of humankind is forced onto the job market in order to obtain a ‘living’ while a small minority own the world and its resources. Furthermore, the market by definition is limited by the profit motive
It is this class conflict and the market which should be the focus of an ‘anti-capitalist perspective’ To get rid of capitalism we need to get rid of the market and the buying and selling of labour power.
Nationalisation of the banks is in no way anti-capitalist and no matter where you look – China, Russia, USA or Europe – there is a market and the buying and selling of human labour power.
The vast majority of groups claiming to oppose capitalism, including the Occupy Movement and the anti-capitalist protesters are not opposed to the buying and selling of human labour power and the market.
So although ‘capitalism’ is being talked about more, is it helping the socialist case? Or is it, like socialism, being misunderstood and distorted?
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"What is capitalism and how can we get rid of it? Join The Debate!I propose the following definition, inspired by the wonderful century-old formulation of our Object and Declaration of Principles.It describes as concisely as I can the essence of what Marx called the social base of the capitalist mode of production. I deliberately avoid what Marx called its social superstructure, since we hold that to be derivative of the base.Capitalism is a system of society based upon the ownership and control of the society's means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the society's ruling [or capitalist] class; and also based upon the society's working [or ruled] class being freed from such ownership and control, and being itself free of ownership by the ruling class; and consequently based upon society's working class being compelled to perform society's necessary labour without control over its mode of labour, and hence based upon its members living out their social existence without control over their own lives.This definition distinguishes capitalism from other exploitative modes where the ruled classes are not themselves free — as in chattel slavery — or are not freed from ownership of their means of living — as in feudalism. Modified: Sat, 03/11/2012 – 12:48pm. "…without control over its mode of labour." originally read "…without control over its means of living,"
twc wrote:Capitalism is a system of society based upon the ownership and control of the society's means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the society's ruling [or capitalist] class; and also based upon the society's working [or ruled] class being freed from such ownership and control, and being itself free of ownership by the ruling class; and consequently based upon society's working class being compelled to perform society's necessary labour without control over its mode of labour, and hence based upon its members living out their social existence without control over their own lives.The fundamental thing which sets capitalism apart from other modes of production is the constant need to reproduce and enlarge capital for its own sake. In this sense neither the capitalist nor the working class is in control.In another sense of the word, 'control' of the means of production is in the hands of the working class, after all it is workers who operate the vast productive and administrative machinery; they are just doing so in the interests of capital.After all it would be possible to have a capitalist system without a capitalist class. It's the law of value that governs capitalist society and it is that which must be overcome.
DJP: The fundamental thing which sets capitalism apart from other modes of production is the constant need to reproduce and enlarge capital for its own sake. In this sense neither the capitalist nor the working class is in control.In another sense of the word, 'control' of the means of production is in the hands of the working class, after all it is workers who operate the vast productive and administrative machinery they are just doing so in the interests of capital.After all it would be possible to have a capitalist system without a capitalist class. It's the law of value that governs capitalist society and it is that which must be overcome.Fundamentally Wrong but Consequentially Right!Unfortunately, I must take your list of fundamentals as a critique of mine. My critique of yours is that they are omnipresent and pervasive but they are not fundamental. They are consequential.The capitalist base is solely about ownership and control of the social system's resources and instruments of production, and the social relations that coalesce around them.Everything else is consequential upon this, is a consequence of this — is not fundamental. In that sense, everything else is an instance of a consequential possibility. These instances can only be understood in terms of the fundamental. Our goal is to change fundamentals, and let the consequentials follow in their wake..Challenge 1.The need for capital to be capital — to expand — arises precisely from the capitalist social system's base.Can you explain how capital expansion — though apparently fundamental — isn't consequential upon private ownership and control of society's resources and instruments directed toward the production of surplus value?Challenge 2.Marx showed that the capitalist social system arose out of rudimentary forms of capitalist ownership and control that existed sporadically in pre-capitalist societies, where the worker found himself doubly free of being owned himself and of owning his means of production. [Land-owning feudalism's achilles heal was that it allowed some workers to own their personal means of production — otherwise the capitalist class couldn't haven't arisen from them to now own all of society's means of production.]Can you explain how capital arose [=fundamental to its becoming] if not on the social ownership basis outlined above?Challenge 3.Marx spent most of Capital Vol 2 analyzing a Simple Reproduction model of social capital flow — one in which individual capitals necessarily expand as capital [as you say — that's what capital must do or hopes to do in order to be capital] — but in which overall social capital remains constant. Sure, it was an investigatory model for him, but he saw it as a theoretical possibility — much as our non-class conscious opponents, the Greens, crave their variety of Capitalism to become in actuality.Can you explain how — if expansion is fundamental — capitalism can't survive in something like a steady state, where the capitalist class is still extracting surplus value, carving up the same amount between themselves, just [unfortunately] not more of it?Challenge 4.If Capitalism's need "to enlarge for its own sake" is fundamental, and not derivative from the constitution of its base, what do we call a society in which capital is not enlarging, but shrinking — as now.Can you explain what system we are currently living under since it isn't fundamentally expanding at the moment?Challenge 5.Growth, contraction or steady state. It is always fundamentally capitalism as long as capitalist relations of ownership and control of society's resources and instruments persists.Can you explain why it's not possible for capitalism to exist indefinitely — even when it attains a possible state of utter chaos — if capitalist relations of ownership and control of society's resources and instruments remain in tact?Challenge 6.You assert that in one sense workers are practically in control and in another sense that nobody is in control, only avaricious capital is.If we are concentrating on fundamentals of the capitalist social system — I make the counter assertion that both forms of control are powerless to subvert the fundamental [absolutely indispensable] control that matters in capitalist society — the capitalist class's control of the use of all of society's resources and instruments productively in its own interest [what Marx calls productive consumption] to extract surplus value and not for social need.In passing, materialists fully understand that both classes are mere agents of the system. However, eventually our class does get to control the currently-uncontrollable capitalist social system when we eventually abolish it, and then craft ourselves a social system that we can consciously control. To perform this momentous act, we should not delude ourselves over where the only fundamental control [or lack thereof] resides.A minor point. It has never has been necessary for the ruling class to control its social system — which before socialism couldn't be done anyway. It is sufficient for it to control that piece of the social system that's essential to its class interest — always to control use of the resources and instruments of production.Do you really believe in a fundamental sense that capitalists have no real control over production in their own class interest, even if they exercise it within the possibilities of a social system which controls them?Challenge 7.You claim the law of value is fundamental. Omnipresent perhaps. Marx spent his working life to show how it appears fundamental to us — acts like a law of nature, though often as much in the breach as in the observance — but it is totally consequential upon the base's production process. The law of value takes pride of place in the capitalist pantheon of pervasive fetishes, alongside money and the fetish of all fetishes — capital. It definitely derives from the base, and will be abolished when we abolish the fundamental capitalist base.Can you explain how the Marxian law of value is not a necessary social law, consequent upon production being carried out under capitalist conditions of ownership and control of society's resources and instruments, and that vice-versa that the system is a consequence of the fundamental law of value?Challenge 8.You claim it is possible to run capitalism without a capitalist class. Really?Every disappointed-capitalist, wistful humanist, radical economist and everyday do-gooder agrees wholeheartedly.Can you explain why we go to the bother of engaging in a fundamental class struggle to remove capitalism and so capitalists, if the inessential capitalist class [a benign target of misguided attack] isn't fundamental in any way whatsoever to capitalism?Challenge 9.Our Party Object concentrates exclusively on ownership and control of society's resources and instruments for social production.Can you explain why, if our Object is fundamentally correct in doing this, the similar ownership-and-control approach to describing capitalism offered in an earlier post is fundamentally [it may be totally inadequate] wrong?Our century-old Object and Declaration of Principles are the banner under which the working class will reclaim the social system. It says better than anything else in such small compass what is fundamental about capitalism. That has always and ever will be our fundamental case!
Ownership and Control in CapitalismThe production necessary for running and maintaining a Socialist social system will be based upon the work the working class already performs for the Capitalist social system. That's an indispensible precondition.Capitalism, with its crucial dependence on objective science and engineering, involuntarily educates its working class for running and maintaining socialism. That running-and-maintaining education was perfected long ago, and generations have graduated with honours from that school.But we can't graduate as a united class until we educate ourselves to unmask the insidious capitalist superstructure that is able to create inverted impressions or benign impressions of power relations in capitalism.Marx worked a lifetime — entirely on our behalf — to dispel the illusion that the working class's running and maintaining of capitalism is its actuality.Its actuality is far worse. The legally and socially free worker finds himself dispossessed of and disempowered over the instruments he must necessarily work with. The only socially necessary possession this legally and socially free worker has and controls is his own ability to use those instruments owned and controlled by the equally free and socially free capitalist class.But the legally and socially free worker has no choice but to sell the very thing he owns and controls in the service of the capitalist — his ability to labour. In other words, when he accepts employment he voluntarily [legally and socially] parts with his one legal and socially free possession.But in this legally and socially free transaction with his employer, the legally and socially free labourer also trades away his own socially-necessary upkeep by his employer for his own vaunted legal and social freedom. In times of need, the free worker must therefore prostrate himself at the mercy of a social system where he quickly disillusions himself over who is actually running and maintaining the social system he formerly deluded himself he ran and maintained. He rapidly discovers that the legally free and socially free worker, himself, is responsible for his own upkeep — that is the sum total of his finally remaining ownership and control — freedom that reminds him of slavery![Yet, even worse than slavery is his situation in times of need, for the legally and socially free worker finds himself unable to upkeep himself unlike a slave, who [with great social foresight] has effectively traded his own personal freedom in exchange for his socially-necessary upkeep at his master's own expense.]We all know what Marx thought about the actuality of the worker's running-and-maintaining of capitalism in the service of the capitalist's owned-and-controlled resources and instruments of labour. Ownership and control trump running and maintaining. The power relationship is entirely one way, as it legally and socially should be, if you happen to legally and socially own all the means of working, apart from the will and ability to perform it yourself.The worker's sole legally and socially free possession — his concrete ability to work — is viewed in an entirely different light by the capitalist, who now owns and controls it, and so is now able [legally and socially] to employ it in his own interest.The worker's dearest posession is now viewed purely abstractly as the variable part of the capitalist's very own [owned and controlled] capital, destined ultimately to be indistinguishable in the form of money from the rest of his very own capital that currently exists in the form of his very own [owned and controlled] resources and instruments that he supplies the labourer with to perform his labour process.In the capitalist process of production, the worker's now alienated [no loner legally or socially his own] concrete labour circulates away from him to the capitalist in the form of the capitalist's sought-after capital. To add insult to injury, the labourer's traded freedom [ownership and control] is now legally and socially free to be abused to gain the capitalist more labour than his upkeep. That's exactly how the capitalist, through his ownership and control and the labourer's non-ownership and no-control, is able to expand his capital.In the only applicable capitalist sense, does any capitalist really care if the labourers actually run the show? That way, it's a perfect illusion of capital.The answer to the reverse charge that — the capitalist doesn't control capital — is clearly shown above to be absolute nonsense. It's the other side of this insidious illusion.The capitalist only needs to control capital in the essential way for him — by owning its material components — the resources, instruments and voluntary labour of the working class.In controlling the labourer's labouring process, the capitalist controls the production process of capital. Do we really think that the capitalist's capital expands by chance, and that the power of capitalist ruling class ownership and control [legal, social or otherwise] has nothing at all to do with it?
twc wrote:Can you explain how capital expansion — though apparently fundamental — isn't consequential upon private ownership and control of society's resources and instruments directed toward the production of surplus value?The production of surplus value is the expansion of capital. How could it be otherwise? In fact how can capital be capital if it does not reproduce and enlarge itself?In fact what you're asking me is "Can you explain how the production of surplus value isn't a consequence of the fact that society's resources and directed toward the production of surplus value?" You yourself in the question seem to be acknowledging that the production of surplus value is a (OK, not the) fundamental defining characteristic of a capitalist system.Besides being a class society there at least two other fundamental factors that make a capitalist system.1. That production is primarily the production of commodities and 2. That the production of surplus value is the direct object of productionI don't think I need to answer many of the other points you raise because, good and interesting as they are, they do not follow from what I was saying.The point I was considering is this, the capitalist class is compelled to put capital into circulation in order to reproduce themselves as capitalists. But is this really in their interest as human beings? In the end we get an outcome where all people, regardless of class background, end up living in a world that is environmentally damaged and under the constant threat of nuclear war, etc. Now, of course, it is the working class which suffers the most and as it also this class which physically reproduces capital that is why we focus our attentions upon them. But ultimately capitalism is a system that goes against the interests of all people and that is why there are capitalists that are socialists.So what I'm getting at, and I know you'll agree, is that what we are facing are social relations, not individuals.
twc wrote:You assert that in one sense workers are practically in control and in another sense that nobody is in control, only avaricious capital is.If we are concentrating on fundamentals of the capitalist social system — I make the counter assertion that both forms of control are powerless to subvert the fundamental [absolutely indispensable] control that matters in capitalist society — the capitalist class's control of the use of all of society's resources and instruments productively in its own interest [what Marx calls productive consumption] to extract surplus value and not for social need.I'd also agree with this, it just depends in what sense you are using the word control.
twc wrote:You claim it is possible to run capitalism without a capitalist class. Really?I am of course talking about state-capitalism. But I guess more accurately I should have said 'a class of individual capitalists' I hope that's answered your question, good post!
Hi DJP,Just a quick immediate heartfelt response, without a second glance to edit what I'm now sending you.I'm so pleased that you didn't take offence, as none was intended.We, all of us participants in this debate, are thinking things through out loud as we go along — on the run — to clarify our own views as much as to convey them, with a vague hope of finding common ground,I'm sure I probably read far too much into what you were saying that I should ever have read into it. You certainly alarmed me, and that must have come through in my response.I take the approach, on this forum, that our case, being social and ultimately for all mankind, is too big to be a respecter of personal feelings over views held. But it must always be a respecter of human beings, which is about all we can do that's fine in this social system.As an advocate in another thread for not forgetting morality [which I only ever intended in the sense of respecting our common sociability, which it is hard to watch being daily eroded before our eyes] I have unbounded respect for the members of the SPGB.You tirelessly fight as G. B. Shaw once said about Party predecessor William Morris that "he was on the side of Karl Marx contra mundum". One day the world will come to be made to realize that the Party is the only organization that this poor long-suffering world [human and natural] has as its one consciously true friend, on its side — pro mundum.We need to win it!For socialism.
twc wrote:I have unbounded respect for the members of the SPGB.Which tends to suggest that you're not a member. And if not, any particular reason why not?
I'm a life long member of a Companion Party of the World Socialist Movement — an overseas companion socialist party of the SPGB.[That may explain my delay in sometimes responding quickly,]
Sorry, but prepare for my usual defensive barrage…DJP: In fact how can capital be capital if it does not reproduce and enlarge itself?Answer: From the standpoint of social appearances…1. When the world-wide social system can't realize its world-wide capital outlays on the world-wide market, as now, without massive world-wide write-downs. That's how! World-wide destruction of capital, capitalists and labour — the calamitous consequence of precisely the failure of world-wide capital to live up to world-wide delusional expectations. Yet, surely this horrific spectacle of world-wide capital contracting is a perfect example of capital being its normal itself. Continued capital expansion is the great capitalist delusion, as many racing pulses and burnt fingers are finding out, courtesy of capital being forever its very own expanding-and-collapsing self.2. Should you counter that, despite world-wide capital contracting, some individual capitals continue to prove that they really are capital by individually expanding, I counter this by reminding you that the socialist case is social — not individual — and that basic socialist theory is sterile if not applied to actual social instances [an observation best made by Hegel "All theory is grey, but green is the tree of life"].3. World-wide money capitalists are feverishly engaged in the business of what Marx called "fictitious capital" — a furious world-wide swindle over carving up the world-wide surplus value among their world-wide powerful selves. This is no marxian basic textbook example of individual capitalist factory owners expanding their individual capitals in their own working-class factories. We are talking about glamorous world-wide money capitalists here. Some respect, please! They don't dirty their hands in expanding surplus value; they already own most of it.So, in the application of theory, we find that everything appears different in its concrete instances [that derive as consequences of its pure abstract theoretical base] from the purely abstract theoretical base itself. This is precisely the import of Marx's profound observation that "If appearance and reality directly coincided, there'd be no need for science".[Marx's unstated materialist implication, of course, is that it is precisely through the application of theory that reality and appearance do indirectly coincide for us. That is even more profound.]DJP: … the production of surplus value is the direct object of production.Yet you won't fully concede that this can only take place because the capitalist class owns and controls [and the working class doesn't own and control] the resources, instruments, and labour necessary for production to achieve this object. Instead, you venture an alternative opinion on why we support the working class.DJP: it is the working class which suffers the most and as it [is] also this class which physically reproduces capital that is why we focus our attentions upon them.Absolute drivel!We don't focus on the working class because it suffers the most. Why doesn't it just suffer in silence — show more mettle, courage and stoicism in the face of adversity — like its fellow suffering [but apparently less-suffering] companion in arms, the capitalist class?We support the working class because it's robbed [has no ownership in capitalist production] by the capitalist class and because it's ruled [has no control over capitalist production] by the capitalist class.All revolutions are against robbing-and-ruling within social production by the powerful [owning and controlling] minorities over the powerless [robbed and ruled] majorities. They are power struggles over ownership and control of social production. Suffering is consequential, not fundamental!We are getting so befuddled by the capitalist superstructure if we lose sight of our class interest — something that is apparently becoming a mere revolutionary phrase whose import is lost in the distant past, where it once had some significance we fail to know not what!DJP: I'd also agree with this, it just depends in what sense you are using the word control.You can't agree, if you do so with reluctant prevarication. Everything depends on understanding the only important sense.I claim that for socialists it doesn't "just depend" on what meaning we assign to control. On the contrary, it precisely depends fundamentally on what we mean by control. Everything depends on control.I assert that in the only significant sense for us, the capitalist class owns and controls the resources, instruments and labour of social production — and that is all the control it needs. Inversely, the working class doesn't own and doesn't control the resources, instruments and labour of social production — and that is all the control it must desire before it can introduce socialism — realize its [our] Object.In defending your claim that it is possible to run capitalism without a capitalist class, you add the rider — DJP: I am of course talking about state-capitalism. But I guess more accurately I should have said 'a class of individual capitalists'.If it's state capitalism we are talking about — what do you call the identifiable wielders of financial might in modern-day China, Bismark's Germany, Louis Bonaparte's France, Soviet Russia ?My point in responding has been to defend clarity, precision, and our own science toward realizing our Object.
TheOldGreyWhistle: "So capitalism consists of two classes in conflict over the price of labour power."You'd have to include the correlative — capitalism also consists of two classes in conflict over the price of goods and services. In other words, you assert that capitalism consists of two classes in conflict over price in its market.That's precisely how non-class conscious academic economists sum up capitalism to their satisfaction. They propagate the illusion that the market controls capitalism — instead of being controlled by it — but their professional role is to sustain this inversion, and so they rightly deserve their Nobel Prizes for theoretical exploits in service of capitalist deception.Yet every normal human being from the age of five upwards [beyond the confines of the economic theology of capitalist apologetics] senses that conflict over market price is a superficial view of something deeper going on beneath the surface.We can't avoid the market, but we should beware it! It is the breeding ground of the illusions of capital. It is where capital realizes itself — where capital conceals its actuality.A capitalist who realizes his capital in the market has little concern over how this alchemy actually occurs. His own class's economic theory amounts to a justification of the market. It is of no practical use for his day-to-day pursuits. Which is just as well, because not even its practitioners can apply it to actual markets.The capitalist market is a place where owners of commodities meet each other with exactly identical legal and social equality. It would not be a free market otherwise.It is wrong to think either party to a capitalist market transaction is robbed. The free market couldn't work that way. It relies on tacit fairness or it would collapse.So exactly how is the worker dudded? Well all production relies on three categories — think of them transitively as worker [subject], working instrument [verb] and resource [object]. The capitalist class owns the last two categories outright.Unfortunately, the free worker owns himself [especially his socially prized ability to operate-the-instrument-upon-the-resource].But the worker [as seller] must meet the capitalist [as buyer] on the labour market to actualize his possession, because he lacks the other two.So the worker voluntarily trades away his prized ability to operate-the-instrument-upon-the-resource to the capitalist to use as he wishes. In other words he voluntarily gives up ownership and control of the third category [subject] that the capitalist didn't own and control.In actuality he has freely, both legally and socially, volunteered away his ownership and control of production. And this on the free capitalist labour market, where equal faces equal.That's the most fundamental assertion that we can make about the free capitalist market.[In what contempt would we hold a slave who had willingly volunteered away his [in capitalist terms] "basic human right to own himself" for servility?]In the annals of human control — what else really compares with the willing servility of the capitalist worker? What else really matters?
Hi TWC My opening comments were just that – opening comments: To invite debate. I agree that surplus value is not produced by workers receiving less than the market value of their labour power. But I do take issue with your assertion that the market is voluntary. It is voluntary in the sense that ( as Marx pointed out) the worker is free, free from property and free to starve. The worker is forced through economic necessity to enter the market. The 'free' market is a capitalist myth. By the way great posts
TheOldGreyWhistle,Yes, I fully understand.I had my ironic reason [which might have backfired] for using the term "voluntary" for it is legally and socially "voluntary" — to let people reconsider just how illusory, but really deceptively insidious, are their capitalist freedoms, etc. They turn out to be socially necessary consequences of the capitalist social base, which actually shackles them."Voluntary", of course, not! Unless you have the means, it's practically "necessary" — social necessity in operation.By the way, nothing I've said is different from what Marx discovered. He only hinted at some significant scientific things that he suppressed spelling out in full, mainly in order to avoid being misunderstood as an old-fashioned Hegelian mystic instead of the most modern materialist scientist, still ahead of us all.Marx has consciously seen further than any other scientist before or after about the nature of our social being. He felt he owed the working class everything. He showed mankind how, at last, to cut through appearance to reality. That's what we must do.
Subject and VerbLet us revisit the transitivity of worker [subject] — working instrument [verb] — resource [object] to see how it actually expresses itself in real social systems.Who's really subject and who's merely verb under capitalism?Worker—instrument—resource is the situation that prevails when the worker owns and controls instrument and resource.But we assert that the worker doesn't own and control instrument and resource. The ultimate proof that the worker has voluntarily relinquished ownership and control is expressed in the actual prevailing reality of the inverse transitivity — that which actually occurs in capitalist production:Instrument [subject] — labouring worker [verb] — resource [object].The worker is controlled in the working process by the things he doesn't control. He is demoted from the working process's subject to its mere verb.If the worker is a mere verb in his own workplace, the working class is collectively a mere verb in the social system at large.With Ownership and Control go Responsibility and AccountabilitySo, to assert that the working class is the subject of the social system [in which it's practically the verb] is to saddle it with responsibility for the social system it allegedly subjects. As alleged subject, the working class must now be held responsible for, and so accountable to its wretched self for, the poverty, degradation, destruction, war, famine, … endemic to the system it allegedly subjects.The insidious implications of the allegation of worker as subject of production is the final humiliation of his degraded status — the worker is now morally guilty for the mess he is forced, by actual lack of ownership and control, to be illusorily in ownership and control of. Can any further degradation await him? Any crueler mockery?And what does that allegation do to the socialist case? It trivializes the socialist case to merely expunging moral guilt for the mess the working class has allegedly wrought upon its own class and upon the world through its gross mismanagement of the world it's allegedly in charge of. Can humiliation go lower!But, let us now unmask the real subject of the capitalist social system. The capitalist class owns and controls the worker's conditions of working, and it legally and socially owns and controls the worker's labour. The capitalist class therefore owns and controls the whole social system in the only sense that matters — at the level of assigning responsibility and accountability for it. It owns and controls the mismanagement of the world it's legally and socially in charge of. [Apparently they don't teach management of the world in a Harvard MBA — only management of the working class.]Sheet home responsibility where it so obviously belongs!So the Capitalist Class isn't in Control?We therefore have no common interest with the capitalist class in any sense that matters — ownership and control. Any other sense is blather!Now to examine the assertion that neither class owns and controls the whole social system… [By implication, the allegation that both classes do have a common interest.]The illusion that the capitalist class isn't in control of capitalism — and so, not in control of the working class — rises primarily from our everyday popped illusions over the workings of capitalism. Capitalism always suggests opportunities and possibilities that can't be realized within it. Ever expanding capital growth that "pops" only to collapse in a heap. Non-class conscious politicians finding solutions that "pop" because the problem can't be solved under capitalism. Everyone wants X but it "pops" and they get Y. Things just don't work out as we believed they should.No wonder the disillusioned delude themselves that nothing can be controlled and that the poor dispossessed capitalist class controls absolutely nothing, least of all the working class. How very deluded, but how wonderful for capitalism that its very workings [or failure thereof] generate protective illusion.The non-class conscious desire an imagined capitalism without its popped disappointments. That is the very essence of illusion.We deterministically know why capitalism always pops the illusions it copiously creates. But the explanation is entirely deterministic, and is entirely about control, and not the absence of control.We oppose the capitalist class because it robs us [it legally and socially owns society's instruments and resources, and the working class's labour] and because it rules us [it legally and socially controls how we labour for it, and so controls our lives].The capitalist class owns and controls its very own mismanaged mess. We should relieve it of its responsibility.
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