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February, 2004




Capital Punishment

by Frank Scott



The primitive American welfare state that followed the great depression
of the 1930s, and was extended by the great society of the 1960s, served
to thinly mask the worst aspects of uncontrolled capitalism. These had
nearly brought the nation to revolution during the most miserable
economic chaos, and for more than generation, Band-Aids applied to the
worst wounds stopped some of the system’s bleeding. But that mutated
welfare state has since been under  steady assault , and it presently
hangs by threads, where there once were bandages. With  neoliberal
politics in control, public services and government supports are being
forced back to the domain of the market. The political economics of
capitalism are revealed, as never before, in all their ugliness.

Among the weapons of mass destruction inherent in this system , none is
more deadly than its assault on the planetary life support system.
Global warming is only one aspect of its attack, though it may pose the
most long term danger. But there are others which are more important in
everyday life, in that the  collateral damage they cause is  more
visible  than the less obvious environmental ruin . These other endemic
ills of capitalism are more costly in the short term, but just as
threatening to our long term future.  They should be uppermost in the
minds and actions of those who wish to improve the status of the human
race, rather than simply use most of it , politically, to pay the costs
of benefitting only some of it, economically.

Economic inequality has been the hallmark of capitalism since its
origins. It has never been more prevalent or obvious than  in modern
times. Previous generations may have suffered in general ignorance of
the root cause of their problems, but the present generation has no
excuse.  In recent years , though we have  experienced a steady rise in
middle class life styles, there has also been a material decline in
quality of life for many Americans, and for most people in the rest of
the world.

While the benefits of material progress have improved for many, they
have stayed the same for many more, while the costs have increased for
the majority who supply the profit margin. Progress has been real for
the developed world, but nonexistent for most people, even some here in
the USA. An example is in the fight against racism, an issue at the core
of America’s origin and development. Economic advances through legal
civil rights have helped bring more blacks from the under class  into
the middle class. But  poverty , school segregation and jailing rates
among blacks  are the same, or even worse than during the time of Martin
Luther King.

Those blacks who have been affirmed by social action to become
“african-american” have done better, but those left behind by the
system’s unequal benefits have done worse. in this they are not
substantially different from  whites  whose move up the economic ladder
is balanced by a move down for someone else. This is the nature of our
amoral and color-blind capitalist economics, and its politics  operate
to disguise that nature with myths about equality and democracy.

When awareness of class differences grow, the affluent are mobilized to
protect the system which has brought them rewards. More cosmetics are
applied to social problems,  but they are even less helpful than
bandages, which might aid  healing;  makeup only covers ugliness. Thus,
we face cosmetic campaigns for the presidency, with no mention of a
needed radical transformation in the basic structure of social reality.
Come November, we may change the executive staff of the massive
conglomerate that is corporate america, but we will do nothing about
changing the nature of the business. And that business  is to create
profit for some, loss for most, and danger for all.

That loss can be the ultimate one, as in the  dead and suffering in
nations like iraq, Palestine, Columbia and Afghanistan, to mention only
a few places where capital’s punishments are overt. The loss can seem
less bloody and more covert,  when it involves jobs, health, housing and
the other necessary means that sustain life . Those means, under
capital’s rules, create profits for a minority which owns or invests in
the commercial entities and institutions that control them. But heaven
help those who have to work for and purchase from those profiteers, if
they can’t afford the product.

The loss can be in human and civil rights,  creating profits for  the
commercial structure of political law, with its subdivisions of police,
courts and prisons. At every layer of economic society, there are costs
and benefits,  but their unequal distribution creates  pain for the
majority  who absorb the cost of creating benefits for the minority.

This is the system that is punishing a global majority through war, debt
and starvation, while it endangers all humanity as it damages  air,
water, the food supply and the earth itself, even where minorities live
seemingly affluent lives . Reforms  will not really make things better,
unless they are part of a larger program for radical transformation of
the system of political economics. Anything less will amount to applying
porous bandages to  wounds that are gushing  blood .

Humanity is fast reaching a point at which individual life may not be
maintained unless collective life is organized to democratically change
the foundation of our political economic system. The World Social Forum
now in progress in India, may have more meaning for our future than the
American presidential primaries which will dominate news for the next
few months. But while the world needs to mobilize to confront the
American Empire from outside, it is more important that Americans
mobilize to confront their system, from within. Capital’s punishment of
the planet is the problem, and Americans must ultimately play a major
role in providing a solution. If we don’t, they will, so we’d better.



Copyright (c) 2004 by Frank Scott. All rights reserved.

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frank scott
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