We cannot fix capitalism

The right to property in capitalism is not absolute and is always superseded both in law and common practice by the right of powerful people to make a profit. While the right to personal property is a fundamental human right that cannot be taken away from people neither by governements or the banks or the multinationals, its sanctity under capitalism is vastly overstated. To begin with, it must be mentioned that rights only make sense as inherent to human beings. Them being unconditional is stressed ad nauseum in the UN Charter. That means, nobody can give them or take them. They exist before the human is even born. In our world they exist only if they are profitable to someone else. Which is to say – we have no rights. We only have priviledges that can be taken away by the “free market” at every point. But there is a danger in being too pessumistic here. A proper account of how human rights work, how they are treated in capitalist and so called socialist societies shows a lot about how the propaganda system works both within and outside the western bubble.

Human rights largely fall into two categories – political and economic. Political rights are what we largely consider freedoms in our world such as freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom to own property. At the drafting of the UN charter atfer the European powers have almost destroyed each other and the world, the western powers agreed that guaranteeing such rights will avoid the worst cruelties of human history such as the fascist genocide. The rest of the world’s countries insisted that mere freedoms are not enough and that in order for humans to live with dignity rights such as food, healthcare and roof over your head have to be included as well. Except the US and a few authoritharian countries, both the economic and political rights are recongnized universally in most countries around the world. This means every government assumes it as their duty to organize society in such a way that people’s innate economic and political rights are taken seriously. A commitee from the UN is to be accepted in every country where its success in proactively realizing these rights are tracked. How well this process actually works in practice is something everybody knows. The only question is – why is it that there is such a disparity around the world with regard to enforcing these rights? Why is it that despite beint so obviously oligarchic, the western countries are much less repressive and abusive against the average person?

The picture the capitalist is trying to sell to the world usually has this flavor. Usually there are two societies that we are comparing – the absolute evil – Soviet Union or North Korea where people’s rights are non existent. They are compared with the imperfect good – us democratic societies – where for better or worse, with all of their unfairness things are much better. And since in one society the freedom to do business was denied and in the other it is very much encouraged, we see it as all the confirmation we need. Every society that calls itself socialist is doomed to be evil while every society that calls itself capitalist will become a democracy (eventually if we just don’t interfere with big business). Without even trying to get into the specifics, the effect of this picture is pretty clear. It forces us to accept all the nonsense of our system uncritically. The predatory nature of this system can never be challenged without being dismissed as either naive or evil or both. At the height of anti-communist hysteria in the US, being vocally against the US coups in some 3rd world banana republic will get you immediately labled as a Stalinist. The same would happen if you criticised the fact that the system is basically rigged by the rich against the average person. The lack of univeral healthcare, the privatisation of public infrastructure, the war against worker’s right to unionize in the workplace – no matter how well argued your point of view, it will always die on the same iceberg – the “best” countries of the world have been capitalist, while some of the worst called themselves socialist. It certainly doesn’t matter that the countries with the worst human rights record are capitalist. That many countries were forced to become brutal dictatorships under the direct or indirect pressure of capitalist governments. That Lenin and his followers killed the working class movement and surpressed the workers’ councils as soon as he got to power. Before the basic worker/consumer protections, abolishment of child labor and unionizing rights became a normality in Europe they were dissmissed as socialist fantasy by the ruling class, unssucessfully surpressed at first in the west and successfully surpressed in the so-called communist countries.