Capitalism and the State are Abusive Parents
In which Dip does the classic anarchist move of tying multiple systems of oppression together: they frame capitalism and the state as an inseparable couple, to point out the importance of simultaneously divesting from both.
Earlier this week, we talked about the failing Rules-Based Order, aka the Liberal International Order. Feel free to check those conversations out, but the gist is that it’s ridiculous to see a set of “norms” and “codes of conduct” as able to create and maintain a peaceful geopolitical situation.
With the current US administration obviously moving away from such “norms,” and the (rest of the) “free world” calling foul, it is clear that capitalism and the state are antithetical to “freedom,” “fraternity,” “equality,” or any of the amazingly modern ideas that are often not contextualized with slavery and colonialism, which are so terrible they can’t help but bring modernity into question.
Being critical of capitalism is common enough to warrant constant reminders. The state doesn’t get nearly the same amount of scrutiny. That thing that many a political perspective loves–the vaunted idea(l) of “freedom”–can’t happen with either of these concepts in play, if you ask me.
Photo by Tyler Prahm on Unsplash
Definitions are in order before we go any further. It’s worth being clear that these are how I understand the concepts: other folks will describe them differently! Capitalism is, at its core, a system of private property, where an individual owner, be they a person, organization, or a state, has the “right” to use, abuse, destroy, and enjoy/deploy the products of their property. This becomes especially powerful (and pernicious) when applied to the means of production–the ability to make things–being owned in this way. Means of production can be fields, factories, workshops, natural resources, server rooms, social media platforms, slaves, and anything else owners can use to make money from the productive output of machines and/or labor.
This is often paired with the drive to have the things being made (e.g. products) priced in such a way that generates profit (or surplus), where the amount that the owner receives is more than they paid for the labor and the means of production used to make the things. Private ownership and generating more out of something than one put in are critical pieces, where the latter allows the former to persist, and the former encourages the latter.
The state, meanwhile, acts as the gatekeeper, arbiter, and facilitator for capitalism’s interactions. All of the economic, legal, social, political, and cultural relations within a society are only seen as “legitimate” in their interactions with their given state, in ways it deems valid or legible. Governments–a worthwhile component to mention–are the bodies that “run” the state. They are the concrete form that the state takes in the world.
This is notably different from “society” or “community” in a general sense. Communities are, in the absence of a state and/or its influence, often organized around multiple poles of power, rather than there being one all-encompassing, “real” power (regardless of its ability to genuinely fulfill this role)–and a bunch of petty challengers. I think of Harold Barclay’s People Without Government, seeing that many different peoples dealt with (and dealt with) questions of power differently than the supreme-state mode that dominates the world now. The absence of a state is not the same as the absence of reliability or understanding or safety.
This is critical to understand, especially if it is understood that capitalism and the state work together, like a couple that can’t get enough of each other. Given the ways in which we live “under” these systems, and that said relationship could be reasonably called “paternalistic,” an analogy is in order. One I find useful, for capitalism and the state, (plus many other systems of oppression) is thinking about those systems as a collective or (meta-)communal form of abuse. In this instance, capitalism and the state are acting as abusive parents, causing trouble for all who are subject to their discretion.
Capitalism’s abuse comes from, beyond obvious transgressions like overwork and alienation, its take on individualism. It imagines “the self” as a quantifiable, boxable thing that orients around “freedom” in doggedly economic terms. The capitalist-parent will tell its children to work hard, to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and to be the best, so that they can “win” under the “meritocracy.” What gets left out of this rhetoric is often what is considered to be “working hard”; cleaning floors for 80 hours a week is not considered as intrinsically meaningful, except for in the rare instances it can be used as an example of a “successful” person “paying their dues.” Buying (into) a company and pretending you built it, though? Well, shoot; you might be self-made!
The hard part about this fiction, (and it is a fiction, if the lack of social mobility is anything to go by) is that the truth of the matter is unimportant. Inequality is necessary; even if there were social mobility in a general and reliable sense, the starting place would still have to exist in order to move out of it. With private property at any level, the fact that someone else is forever restricted from using that thing, save for the whims of the owner, necessitates economic differences which can only be structured hierarchically. The capitalist-abuser weaponizes that by extending uneven access to… everything, including inarguable necessities like shelter, food, water, joy, and belonging.
From the perspective of the “child” of capitalism, (referring to relation rather than age) there is essentially a lottery at play, where their place of birth and identity markers play a large role in what benefits they can access, if any.
So far, this likely tracks for many people who are anything left-of-center, even in American terms. As the polycrisis deepens, it’s difficult to argue in favor of capitalism while having a perspective rooted in… caring… about life. However! The state needs to be seen as the other partner in this abusive diptych we’re discussing.
On a basic level, the state loves its partner. Breaking up is hard for most, but it’s essentially impossible for these two, unless the world was able to cook up even more harmful systems they could evolve into. Capitalism is too erratic; without a state to back it up, it’d fall over onto itself. Someone needs to manage everything and arbitrate disputes. While they always talk about breaking up, especially in a place like the US, that’s all it is: talk. Given how disaster-prone this system is, having someone come in to (poorly) clean up (while sowing the seeds of further disaster, or, at best, kicking the disaster-can down the disaster-road) is quite useful.
This is also why movements to end capitalism by using the state run into issues. The state, with its lawful evil alignment, is able to support capitalism’s chaotic evil, where both to expand their shared and respective influence.
Given this, I’m unconvinced at the existence–actual, intended, or imagined–of an anti-capitalist or “worker’s” state. Even if the state owns the things, that is still something that is not accessible to anyone besides a select few. If people within a community cannot decide what to do within that community or what happens there, there is no way for that to be socialist, in my view.
Socialism is the decolonial, anti-antiBlack, and anti-antiIndigenous movement or process to smash alienation, the implementation of direct distribution, and the establishment of shared stewardship models for land, labor, and life, alongside the generalization of education practices as to be rooted in experiences and awareness of the world, among a bunch of other world-changing things.
That can’t happen under a “transitional” regime that “forgets” it is such. Trusting a system to act differently than it’s designed, based on desire and “cunning” alone (that is often zhuzhed up in pretty or otherwise attractive analysis, as no one ever tells someone they're going to deceive/trick/oppress them outright), is like trusting an abuser to stop being harmful without any accountability.
If the intent in responding to the ills and horrors of the world is to end them, there can’t be a reliance on the very things that cause them. Dispensing with the state and capitalism is not meant–at least on my tongue–to be a request to return to “good old days” or to ignore “human nature.” It is meant to reckon with the impossibility of those propositions, by taking seriously the harm that the world, as it is currently ordered, is causing.
So–yes, there should still be an “economy”: things should still be made and distributed. Yes, people should be able to organize amongst themselves, finding out how to work with each other to meet shared and personal needs, along with addressing shared and personal problems. The point is this: the way to do those things without pyramids of privilege and power is… to do them without pyramids of privilege and power. The abusive parents have to be broken up with, and their kids (so, us) need to lean into taking care of themselves. They’re capable of that and so much more.
An earlier version of this essay appeared on Dip’s personal blog.
