Capitalism is coercion
Just ask Iran.
A couple weeks ago, I got a pool table. Since then, I’ve been playing pool for about an hour a day now. I see 15 minutes free, take a break and clear the table 3 times. Then I go back to doing what I was doing. I keep waiting for the novelty to wear off, but it doesn’t.
I sit all day for my job. When I play pool for a break, I’m on my feet. I’m moving around. I’m not looking at a screen. I’m not thinking about my problems. I’m solving the physical problem of sinking balls until I clear the table. And I smell the varnish from the wood on the table.
The varnish smells like burnt wood. The varnish is made of chemicals derived from petroleum. And that reminds me of America’s war on Iran. And every time Trump talks about what he’s going to do next to Iran, I think, “coercion”. When Trump strikes Iran, that’s coercion. That’s not negotiation.
Then I think of the war industry of America. War is an industry in America. It is at least a $1 trillion industry in America. All of the biggest companies in America have some contract related to war, to weapons, to logistics, to planning a war. War is coercion.
There are no wars for freedom because war is coercion. Freedom and coercion do not exist in the same room together. They cannot occupy the same space. They are antonyms.
I’m reading a book called, “The Origin of Capitalism” by Ellen Meiksins Wood, published in 1999, with a revised edition in 2017. I’m about halfway into it, and I’m planning on writing a review. Already, I can see where this is going. I’m already seeing how the coercion of capitalism rises in our history.
Wood makes a compelling argument that before capitalism, before the end of European feudalism, the people had access to the means of their subsistence. Buying off one official at a time, the wealthy slowly alienated the rest of the people from the means of their subsistence.
Through the courts, through the legislators, through institutional capture, the wealthy could harness the labor of the peasants. Then they called it “capitalism” and “freedom”.
If wealth concentrates in the hands of the few, those few can buy the laws and the decisions that are required to compel the labor of another person in service of those who are already wealthy.
War is an obvious example of coercion, but look around and see that more than half the working adults in America make $35k or less. That’s not a living wage when you add up rent, food, a car, and unaffordable healthcare. It doesn’t stop there. They can’t save money, and they know that if they stop working, they’re on the street. That is not a civilization.
In this world, the path to self determination, what we call “freedom” is money. If you remove money from the economy by extracting rents from it with wealth you already have, the people who are your customers become a captured market, and they lose their right to self determination.
Money is a public utility. There is no reason to hoard it. Soon to be trillionaire Elon Musk is hoarding money, and that’s not possible without coercion. Billionaires are a pretty good proxy for coercion.
“But capitalism is the best system ever!” No, it is not. We don’t know what other systems will be devised in the future for managing a civilization. And the literature is biased towards capitalism through institutional capture. Then there’s China.
China arguably has a better system. China has a strong and happy middle class. China helps you if you’re homeless, they don’t leave you writhing on the street on fentanyl. If you’re living in poverty, the government finds you and helps you out of poverty. In America we use poverty as a means of coercion.
In America, we permit rent seeking as a means of coercion. We use jails, fines, levies, fees and other legal devices as a means of coercion. Bankers like to include the interest on our home loans in “GDP”. We make the homeless visible as a reminder to the working class that if you don’t do what you’re told, you’ll be “grounded”.
The entire system in America, what we call “capitalism” is based on the assumption that people need to be coerced into doing something useful for society. Service in America is coerced, it is not a voluntary function of living in America. Not unless you have enough money that you can decide if you want to work or not.
Slavery is coerced labor, and if your economy requires coercion to get people to work, then you have a slave economy.
What Wood tells us in her book is that coercion is not required to get the work done. She found numerous examples in the literature of societies that didn’t turn to capitalism after feudalism. There was another way, not a third way, but a way to allow people to work together without alienating them from the means of their subsistence.
Some people do jobs that most other people don’t like because they believe in service. They like the feeling they get when they’re in service to others. We live to serve. There’s a janitor at my place of work. He’s Hispanic. He’s almost certain Catholic. He smiles while he cleans the counter tops,while he pushes a broom and scrubs our toilets. His religion says service is a virtue.
But there are some very wealthy people who get high exploiting the labor we like to perform for others. Every digit to the left of the decimal point on the bottom line is another line on the table for the billionaire.
I know a fireman who looks after the fire. –Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett
Nobody gives up that much wealth to one man without coercion, without deception, without the gifts of densely worded laws and contracts. Except maybe 54% of Americans who can’t read better than a 6th grader. Except maybe the 13% of Americans with an IQ of 85 or less. Or maybe intelligent people who trusted the people who run the biggest businesses not to engage in wealth transfers without informed consent.
A system of coercion implies a belief that people are motivated by pain. Such a system also implies that the wealthy must be advantaged so that they will not be taxed into poverty by everyone else.
I remember being told that in communism, everyone is poor together. The implication is that people are motivated by money. And people who have money expect to get something for their money.
Our system in America is not an advanced civilization. Such a system would not let people die in poverty, or impoverish them with massive health care debts, business rents, fees, fines, and levies. In America, nothing is free. They ding you for everything.
And Trump isn’t done raising the cost of living. He said a few days ago that he likes inflation. No one is checking his power. Why not?
The people who voted for Trump voted against other people, they didn’t vote for something positive. They wanted Trump to break the system. Well, he’s breaking it. He’s given the Trump Stamp of Approval to coercion.
So when I play on my big beautiful pool table, I’m mindful of everything that went into it. The wood came from a forest. The slate came from a quarry. The nails and screws came from a metal shop. The metals came from a mine. The cloth from wool and nylon. The balls were made from oil. The cue sticks are made of carbon fiber. And all of that is from human labor.
Then there are all of the civil services that made the manufacture of the pool table possible. Electricity, water, and gas were all used to make the table. Thousands of hours from thousands of people all made the pool table in my basement a reality. They were all cooperating.
And none of that required coercion. People don’t have to be coerced to work. If you teach someone a skill, they find joy in applying that skill to problems that need to be solved. People like to show off. They like to share their competency. We don’t have to be punished to solve a problem.
We don’t have to be punished for our mistakes. We suffer enough from our problems and mistakes. We need help with our problems and mistakes. Our brains are wired for helping people. We get the juice every time we help someone. We get the juice from our brains when we solve a problem.
So I don’t have to look very hard to find coercion in America. It’s everywhere. If we can’t see how we’re being coerced, we only need to look to the billionaires for evidence. They call the shots, just like Trump said. Trump is a pretty good proxy for what billionaires are thinking right about now.
When I think of coercion, I think of capitalism.
Write on.