Anti-capitalism
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{{dablink|This article lists ideologies opposed to capitalism and describes them briefly. For arguments against capitalism, see [[criticisms of capitalism]].}}
[[Image:Anti-capitalism color.jpg|right|thumb|300px|An [[Industrial Workers of the World]] poster ([[1911]]).]]
'''Anti-capitalism''' describes a wide variety of movements, ideas, and attitudes which oppose [[capitalism]]. Anti-capitalists, in the strict sense of the word, are those who wish to completely replace capitalism with another system; however, there are also ideas which can be characterized as ''partially'' anti-capitalist in the sense that they only wish to replace or abolish certain aspects of capitalism rather than the entire system.
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== Notable ideologies, viewpoints, and trends ==
=== Anarchism ===
{{main|Anarchism and capitalism}}
[[Anarchism|Anarchist]] philosophies argue for a total abolition of the [[state]], with many anarchists opposing capitalism on the grounds that it entails social domination (through [[inequalities of wealth]]), involuntary relations and coercive [[hierarchy]] (through the perceived pressure on individuals to engage in [[wage labour]]). Some forms of anarchism oppose capitalism as a whole while supporting some particular aspects of capitalism, such as [[market]]s (supported by some [[mutualism (economic theory)|mutualists]]) and [[private property]] (supported by some [[individualist anarchism|individualist anarchists]]). There is a current trend on the Right to designate radically libertarian and pro-capitalist politics as 'anarchist'; for example [[anarcho-capitalism]], [[agorism]] and [[crypto-anarchism]]. These radically pro-capitalist political philosophies often appear to have anarchist tendencies in that they require a subordinated and minimal state in the context of a capitalist economy, however, they cannot ever advocate the abolishment of the state since it is required under their ideology to be the protector of private property, contract and the market system. In this way, despite the current vogue to appropriate the name 'anarchist' among those on the Right (libertarians, 'anarcho-capitalists', classical liberals), anarchism is a Left-wing political movement through and through, since it stands resolutely opposed to both state power and capitalist social/economic organization (whereas liberal capitalists/libertarians embrace both in certain ways). Unsurprisingly, the history of anarchism is intricately intertwined (although often in a complicated way) with labor radicalism, socialism and communist movements.
=== Ecofeminism ===
[[Ecofeminism|Ecofeminists]] criticise capitalism for defining the natural world as simply a body of resources to be exploited and reshaped to serve human purposes and interests. They also see it as inherently sapping the relationship between humans to one another and to the natural world. Ecofeminists see capitalism as a patriarchal construction "based on the colonization of women, nature, and other peoples."<ref>{{cite book|last=Mies|first=Maria|coauthors=Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva|authorlink=Maria Mies|title=Ecofeminism|pages=298|year=1993|id=ISBN 1-85649-156-0}}</ref>
=== Fascism ===
According to [[Stanley Payne]], one of the world's leading experts on Fascism<ref>Roger Griffin. ''The Nature of Fascism''. Routledge. 1993. p. 6</ref>, the common aim of all fascist movements is elimination of the autonomy or in some cases complete existence of large-scale capitalism.<ref>Not necessarily in conflict such as the well known quote by [[Mussolini]] that the facist state is the corporate state (should it turn out to be attested). In this case what is referred to are the smaller corporations of [[corporatism]] rather than powerful large scale capital formations.</ref><ref>Payne, Stanley (1996). ''A History of Fascism''. Routledge. ISBN 1857285956 p.10</ref> This view is supported by right-wing [[libertarians]] who argue that fascism is a form of anti-capitalism because fascist governments made private corporations and other private individuals who owned the means of production to work to serve national interests, thus undermining property rights, and to employ more labor on the workers than is profitable for the employer. Italian Fascism is marked for anti-capitalism the law of "[[Fascist socialization|socialization]]".<ref>Calvin B. Hoover, ''The Paths of Economic Change: Contrasting Tendencies in the Modern World'', The American Economic Review, Vol. 25, No. 1, Supplement, Papers and Proceedings of the Forty-seventh Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association. (Mar., 1935), pp. 13-20.</ref> Fascism protected the land owning elites and is regarded as a reaction against the rising power of the working class.<ref>Fascism Encyclopedia Britannica</ref> The [[Nazis]], due to a belief in a [[Jewish conspiracy]], were particularly vocal in their opposition to [[finance capitalism]], interest charging, and "profiteering."<ref>Frank Bealey & others. Elements of Political Science. Edinburgh University Press, 1999, p. 202</ref> Some writers argue that fascism represented a "[[third way]]" between [[Marxism|Marxian socialism]] and capitalism.<ref>Peter Davies and Dereck Lynch. Routledge Companion to Fascism and the Far Right. Routledge 2003, p. 101</ref> In most cases, however, Fascism had no principled commitments in the economic realm and was willing (in its German and Italian incarnations, for example) to buck both powerful capitalists as well as working-class radicals when it helped enable the ideological goals of the fascists. Thus, Fascism rejected both the liberal-capitalist system in which the market rules all although it also rejected any form of radical social/economic change such as that envisioned by socialists and communists. Fascists upheld the ownership aspect of private property - including private property over productive capital and the means of production<ref>A private statement made by Hitler on March 24, 1942. Cited in ''Hitler's Secret Conversations.'' Translated by Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens. Farrar, Straus and Young, Inc. 1953. p. 294</ref> - but said that property was to be regulated to ensure that "benefit to the community precedes benefit to the individual."<ref>Richard Allen Epstein, ''Principles for a Free Society: Reconciling Individual Liberty With the Common Good'', De Capo Press 2002, p. 168</ref> Hitler stated in ''Mein Kampf'' that "the attitude of the State towards capital would be comparatively simple and clear. Its only object would be to make sure that capital remained subservient to the State" and also made a clear distinction between "capital which is purely the product of creative labour and ... capital which is exclusively the result of financial speculation" <ref>Adolf Hitler, ''Mein Kampf'', Murphy translation</ref>. In this way, Fascism never aspired to overthrow capitalism and stood opposed to those ardently in support of liberal capitalism and those ardently against it. Thus, despite its radically Right-wing and racist social goals, the outlook of fascism with respect to capitalism was deeply conservative and unwilling to heartily embrace it or seek to fundamentally transform it.
The quote famously attributed to Benito Mussolini "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power" is probably apocryphal<ref>[http://www.publiceye.org/fascist/corporatism.html "Mussolino on the Corporate State" Chip Berlet]</ref>.
Marxists argued that fascism is a form of government control instituted to protect capitalism during a period of crisis or revolution.<ref>[[Daniel Guerin]], ''Fascism and Big Business'', excerpted at http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/guerin/1938/10/fascism.htm</ref> Fascists have operated from a [[Social Darwinism|Social Darwinist]] view of human relations. Their aim has been to promote "superior" individuals and weed out the weak.<ref>Alexander J. De Grand, ''Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany'', Routledge, 1995. pp. 47</ref> In terms of economic practice, this meant promoting the interests of successful businessmen while destroying [[trade union]]s and other organizations of the [[working class]].<ref>Alexander J. De Grand, ''Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany'', Routledge, 1995. pp. 48-51</ref> Lawrence Britt suggests that protection of corporate power is an essential part of fascism.<ref>Britt, Lawrence, 'The 14 characteristics of fascism', ''Free Inquiry'', Spring 2003, p. 20.</ref> Historian [[Gaetano Salvemini]] argued in 1936 that fascism makes taxpayers responsible to private enterprise, because "the State pays for the blunders of private enterprise... Profit is private and individual. Loss is public and social."<ref>Salvemini, Gaetano. ''Under the Axe of Fascism'' 1936.</ref> Economic liberals, such as [[Ludwig von Mises]], allege that fascism is an offshoot of socialism, and thus [[collectivist]] and anti-capitalistic. Mises believed this despite the fact that fascism fought violently to suppress and destroy left-wing movements (i.e. socialists and communists) and despite the fact that the most successful forces of resistance against fascism were socialist and communist. But according to Mises, fascism maintained an illusion of respecting private property, since individuals could not use their property how the wished because the government frequently enacted regulations (on behalf of government allies in the business sector) that were not in line with the functioning of a [[free market]]. <ref>von Mises, Ludwig. ''Socialism'' 1951.</ref> Historian [[Robert Paxton]] contends that fascists' anti-capitalism was highly selective. Even at their most radical, the socialism that the fascists wanted was a "national socialism": one that denied only foreign or enemy property rights (including that of internal enemies). They did, however, cherish national producers.<ref>{{cite book | last = Paxton | first = Robert | title = The Anatomy of Fascism | publisher = Knopf | location = New York | year = 2004 | isbn = 1400040949 }}</ref>
=== Participatory Economics ===
[[Participatory economics]], often abbreviated parecon, is a proposed economic system that uses participatory decision making as an economic mechanism to guide the production, consumption and allocation of resources in a given society. Proposed as an alternative to contemporary capitalist market economies and also an alternative to centrally planned socialism or coordinatorism, it is described as "an anarchistic economic vision", although it could be considered a form of socialism as under Parecon, the means of production are owned by the working class. It emerged from the work of activist and political theorist Michael Albert and that of radical economist Robin Hahnel, beginning in the 1980s and 1990s.
[[Inclusive Democracy]] as envisaged by Takis Fotopolous, can be viewed as a form of participatory economics. Here, all decisions are taken by demos, and basic economic needs could be met for all based upon a certain amount of work. Additional non-necessary items could be earned by contributing above the minimum required to meet society's needs. This approach is markedly anti-capitalist as well as anti-market, including an absence of ability to accumulate wealth, where each person earns for himself only, thereby avoiding the imbalance of power inherent in a capitalist system.<ref> Takis Fotopolous International Journal of Inclusive Democracy vol.4 no.2, [http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/journal/vol4/vol4_no2_takis_finnish_interview.htm] (2008).</ref>
=== Religious aspects ===
[[Islam]] [[Riba|forbids]] lending money at interest, the mode of operation of capitalist [[finance]]. However, [[Islamic banking]] has been developed to allow Muslims to avoid this problem.
[[Christianity]] traditionally forbade [[usury]] but "Christian Europe", over time, abandoned identifying every form of lending at interest as usury. Traditionally, Christianity has been the source of many other criticisms of capitalism, particularly its [[economic materialism|materialist]] aspects. Many early and pre-socialist moverments<ref>[[Diggers]],[[Levellers]], etc.</ref> as well as later ones drew principles from Christianity (see [[Christian socialism]] and the [[Social Gospel movement]]) and against the "values" of [[profiteering]], greed, selfishness and hoarding . Most Christians do not oppose capitalism entirely but support a [[mixed economy]] in order to ensure "decent" labour standards and relations, as well as economic justice. Nevertheless, there are also many [[Protestant]] denominations (particularly in the [[United States]]) who are reconciled or ardently in favour of capitalism, particularly in opposition to secular socialism.
=== Socialism ===
[[Image:Kapital.jpg|thumb|225px|right|A Soviet anti-capitalist poster (1920).]]
[[Socialism]], very crudely speaking, stands resolutely opposed to any social or economic order in which the major means of production are privately owned in favor of a system of social or public ownership,<ref>[http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9109587 "Socialism"] ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]''. 2006. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.</ref>. Although many nominally socialist parties and activists have advocated policy prescriptions that already assume the capitalist order (for example living wages, rent controls, health and education subsidies, progressive taxation, social spending), socialism as an anti-capitalist strain of political thought and practice amounts to a far more radical rejection of the fundamental organization of capitalist society. According to socialists influenced by Marxism, this rejection is premised on a rejection of the exploitation of the working-class under the wage system, a rejection of the concentrated ownership, in the hands of a small elite, of the productive machinery and capital needed to produce, as well as the socially alienating conditions borne out of capitalist social relations (which tend to pit people against one another, encouraging both avarice and fear in evaluating other human beings).
According to socialists of virtually every stripe, capitalism and democracy are not synonymous. For socialists, the problem with capitalism is precisely that it is not democratic through and through. What this means is that although, broadly speaking, the political system in many capitalist societies is democratic, the distribution of power in the economy is anything but. The accompanying political system to capitalism, liberal democracy, occludes the economy from the realm of democratic procedures. This is a major part of liberal ideology (laissez-faire), and is premised on a strict commitment, over and above democracy, to a capitalist economy, private property, negative rights and so on. In this way, the most fundamental and determining aspects of the social order (its economic organization) is designated under liberal democracy as "off-limits" for democratic procedures. For most socialists, however, the question of democracy does not depend solely on a set of fixed procedures about voting, but on how power is distributed in the economic realm, on how the major decisions in society are made (i.e. decisions about where to invest resources, how to allocate the social product, what and how to produce, etc.). Thus some socialists, such as Rosa Luxembourg, distinguished between 'bourgeois democracy' (parliamentary democracy under conditions of capitalism) and 'socialist democracy' (democracy under conditions of economic emancipation from capitalist hierarchies).
* [[Revolutionary Socialism]] argues for the total abolishment of capitalist social relations (class society), private property and profit-driven production. Against the drive to reform capitalism or make its allegedly abhorrent qualities more palatable, revolutionary socialists reject the capitalist order as such and advocate a different form of social and economic organization. For many 20th century socialists influenced by "Marxism-Leninism", the road to socialism required social ownership of the [[means of production]] and the eventual abolition of the [[state]] apparatus, with an intermediate stage, of indeterminate length, during which state power would be used to eliminate the vestiges of capitalism. Some [[Communist state|states, in rhetoric, identified themselves with Marxism]] claimed to be abolishing capitalism, although many Marxists (particularly Trotskyists) have described them as [[state capitalism|state capitalist]], rather than anti-capitalist.<ref>Friedrich Pollock, "State Capitalism: Its Possibilities and Limitations," Studies in Philosophy and Social Science, IX, 2 (1941), 200-255.</ref><ref>Tony Cliff, [http://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1955/statecap/index.htm ''State Capitalism in Russia''] (1955).</ref>
* [[Anarchism]] is an anti-capitalist strain of thought and political practice that shares much in common with the socialist critique of capitalism. The distinguishing feature of anarchism, however, is its strict rejection of any use of state power as a means of achieving revolutionary change. This is to say, anarchists and revolutionary socialists agree on the need to overthrow the capitalist system, the need to liquidate the hierarchies and social relations borne out of it, on the need to abolish the capitalist state/political apparatus. Where anarchists and revolutionary socialists stand opposed in on the question of how to go about doing this and what society might look like post-capitalism. For anarchists, the state is an instrument of repression that cannot by used for emancipation or progressive change. Thus, anarchists advocate a 'from-below' approach to radical social change that eschews state power altogether. The argument between revolutionary socialists and anarchists is thus largely one about tactics; many socialists attack anarchists for being unrealistic and unmoving in their commitment to a set of preconceived tactics that do not take into account particularly historical moments or contexts.
* [[Social democracy]] is a partially anti-capitalist political view that has grown out of the [[reformism|reformist]] wing of the socialist movement. Moderate socialists known as Social democrats wish to mitigate what they see as capitalism's most negative effects through the creation of a [[mixed economy]] and a [[welfare state]]. In the early 20th century, Many early social democrats (such as Karl Kautsky, of the German SPD) were committed to the end goal of abolishment of the capitalist system, however, they ardently believed (contrary to revolutionary socialists such as Lenin) that a gradual reformism through the medium of parliamentary democracy would yield this transformation over time. Modern social democrats, particularly those of a Scandinavian mold, no longer argue for a complete transformation of capitalism, but rather accept its basic tenets. The question is then no longer how to radically transform society, but how to mitigate its contradictions, tensions and problems through reformist policies. Thus, many social democrats in the post-WWII era advocated strong labor unions to counterbalance the tremendous power of ownership, heavy progressive taxation to mitigate the inequalities borne out of capitalism as well as selective social/public ownership of key industries such as energy, health care and education. The goal sought by social democrats is thus not inherently anti-capitalist, but meliorist, that is social democracy looks to create a balance of power between opposed classes in capitalist society rather than abolishing class organization altogether.
=== Other aspects ===
There are also strands of [[conservatism]] that are uncomfortable with liberal capitalism. Particularly in continental Europe, many conservatives have been uncomfortable with the impact of capitalism on culture and traditions. The conservative opposition to the French revolution, the Enlightenment, and the development of individualistic liberalism as a political theory and as institutionalized social practices sought to retain traditional social hierarchies, practices and institutions. There is also a conservative [[protectionism|protectionist]] opposition to certain types of international capitalism.
==See also==
*[[Anti-Globalization]]
*[[Capitalism]]
*[[Corporatocracy]]
*[[Critique of capitalism]]
*[[Fascist socialization]]
*[[Post-capitalism]]
==External links==
* David E Lowes (2006) [http://zedbooks.co.uk/book.asp?bookdetail=3837 The Anti-Capitalist Dictionary], Zed, London. Explains concepts and issues from an anti-capitalist perspective and shows how they have changed over time.
* Summit Sieges and Social Forums; a Rough Guide to the Anticapitalist Movement, D., Stockton and R., Brenner, et al, London, 2004
* The Anti-Capitalist Manifesto; A., Callinicos, Polity: London 2000.
* [http://www.infoshop.org/ Infoshop.org] - Anarchists opposed to capitalism.
* [http://www.marxists.org/ Marxists Internet Archive] - Archive of Marxist and anti-capitalist literature.
* [http://www.mises.org/etexts/mises/anticap.asp] ''[[The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality]]'' book by the economist [[Ludwig von Mises]]
* [http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/w/x/wxk116/antic/ ''Anti-Capitalism: Modern Theory and Historical Origins'']
* [http://libcom.org/library/anti-capitalist-aufheben-10 Anti-Capitalism as an ideology... and as a movement]
* [http://www.tidsskriftcentret.dk/index.php?id=142 Anti-Capitalism : A Guide To The Movement] Directory of Groups and Organisations, June 2001.
* [http://www.studiesinanti-capitalism.net Studies in Anti-Capitalism]
==References==
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