Anti-capitalism isn't Communism or Marxism -- the last communist nations on earth practice capitalism today. It isn't anarchism -- it says nothing about government or freedom. It isn't nihilism -- it's about improvement and change, not total destruction.

Capitalism has been defined as many things. Some claim it to be "natural" economics, as if anything natural could be invented by humans. This point of view ignores the fact that the laws favour those who have wealth. Others consider capitalism to be the economics of democracy, as if we could not vote for any other economic system.

Capitalism, by its' unnatural constraint on the free flow of wealth, decreases the quality of life for most, while only increasing it for the few. Consider all the aspects of life which can be regarded as contributing to the quality of life -- housing, food, education, health, the arts, and social activities. Does capitalism actually improve any of these things? Or is the reality just the opposite -- capitalism invariably decreases the quality of housing, food, education, health, the arts, and social activities?

Historical Precedents for Anti-capitalism

The ancient Spartans were anti-capitalists. They banned all forms of money, precious metals, and gemstones. Overnight, crime disappeared. The quality of life and all things in Sparta became the highest in all of Greece. Instead of focusing on the accumulation of wealth the people developed other ideals for living. Health, athletics, dance, music, social activities, artisanship, and of course, dominating other countries.

Without having to scramble for money every day, the craftsmen of Sparta focused on producing items of the highest quality. The furniture of Sparta was famous, both for its simplicity and durability. There was no ornamentation on Spartan furniture, yet the workmanship was exquisite. Joints were fitted perfectly, materials selected were flawless, all surfaces, visible or otherwise were carefully prepared and polished. Furniture from Sparta could often outlast almost any Athenian house it was placed in.

So abundant was the free time of the Spartans that they were virtually all musicians, with free communally owned instruments. Decadence and extravagance were eliminated as ideals while health and happiness became paramount. Without the icon of profit driving society today we'd approach the same ideal.

Our houses and apartments are built as compromises for profit, not for perfection or quality. They stand as pale imitations of what they could be. We spend our lives living in plasterboard boxes made of cheap materials fashioned to look like little suburban mansions. Their cheapness of construction is covered up with every manner of superficial adornment -- wallpaper, paint, face brick, plaster stucco, hollow cornices, fake ionic columns, fake fireplaces, cheap noisy ventilation systems or uncomfortable, inefficient, heating systems.

We build these live-in lies in the name of profit. Those on the low end have the worst of it. Small, noisy, apartments in neighbourhoods made unsafe by the prevailing social misery. Roaches, drafts, flimsy appurtenances and furnishings that fall apart before the interest is paid all stand in mockery of a failed ideal for living.

If, instead of sacrificing the quality of human life for the profit fantasies of a few, we built a world of lasting quality in all things, wouldn't everyone end up rich? Buckminster Fuller once said, "the world could have one billion billionaires."

When Lyndon Johnson declared a war on poverty following Kennedy's assassination, there seemed little doubt that the invincible United States could achieve this goal. This was as certain as the fact that the United States would win the war in Vietnam. Almost half the nation's wealth today is held by 1% of the population. Twenty-five years after the war on poverty began, the richest 1% hold twice as much of the nation's wealth, but the poor are no better off. In this system, the wealth flows from the poor to the rich and the laws guarantee their right to possess it in excess of what would be proper in a humane society.

The United States maintains nearly 15% of its people, and 20% of its children, in a state of perpetual poverty. The middle class works longer hours than the ancient Romans or Egyptians, yet supposedly the Western World has advanced. Where are the promised benefits of industrialisation if we work harder than anyone in human history? And, unlike the ancients,  our houses don't last a lifetime, hunger, poverty, and homelessness have increased, and crime is far beyond natural levels.

The Great Teacher once said, "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." If you want to see a rich Christian spout heresy, ask him to explain these words.

Consider again the wealth distribution in the Western World as compared to the natural wealth distribution that is found in nature, as manifested by every manner of food source distribution from bacteria to honeybees to birds. The natural form in which wealth, in terms of food and territory, are distributed among natural creatures is the normal curve, and there is still plenty of room for people to make themselves filthy rich, if that should remain their paradigm.

Consider the structure of our capitalist society. People are conditioned to be consumers from the earliest. They are given a minimal education -- learning just enough Maths to work for someone else, and just enough English to know what consumer items to spend their paycheques on. All of the things that are most important to human enjoyment and happiness are suppressed or minimised, while all the things they don't need are advertised heavily to give them mock importance.

What things do people naturally enjoy the most? In roughly this order they enjoy conversation, reading, romance, exercise, sex, dancing, enjoying music, watching athletics, playing music, creating arts and crafts, cooking, travelling on foot, experiencing nature, and numerous other activities that don't necessarily cost anything at all.

What do people spend most of their time and money on? Movies, consumer goods, cars, clothes, vacations, alcohol, dining out, junk food, drugs, gambling, professional entertainment, and a host of other activities that merely distract them from more beneficial and healthier aspirations. Consumer pleasures amount to nothing more than daily rewards for manifest lifelong disappointment and the habits of social and personal stagnation are inherited by each succeeding generation.

Can a barter economy work, that is, one that ran on pure credit? Proudhon's Bank of the People was a farsighted experiment that would have demonstrated the superiority of a barter economy. The idea was to assemble working people of diverse skills such that anything anyone needed could be provided by someone else. Credits would be defined for the value of work or goods, whether carpentry, milk, health care, tailored goods, or whatever. Defining the values would not be difficult; after all, we do this with dollars already, except that instead of receiving flat rates they would receive true value. In Proudhon's Bank there would be no money, no interest or profits, and no absentee owners of the same -- it would simply facilitate the flow of goods in a near frictionless manner.

In such a system taxes could not be collected in terms of money, but only in terms of credit dollars towards human labour. Nor could interest be collected, since this also represents profit. The capitalisation of wealth, which holds human labour in suspension and diverts it to the whims of a few, rather than the needs of the many, would not be facilitated. Napoleon, who had considerable, capitalised wealth, had Proudhon imprisoned for a trumped-up charge of slander just prior to the opening of the Bank -- and the grand experiment collapsed before it began.

Those who, by fate or artifice, end up in key positions, squander the resources of the planet in their pursuit of personal, political, or nationalistic fantasies while the greater mass of men lead lives of perpetual irrelevance. Is this an admirable way for the human race to conduct its business?

Thorstein Veblen, author of Absentee Ownership, studied the American and European economies in detail. He noted that, wittingly or unwittingly, the goal of maximising profit leads companies to limit production through various means including managing supply and demand. He referred to these manipulations as economic sabotage, since they required reducing both production of goods and employment. It is worth noting here that contrary to modern economic theory, the demand for essential goods and services is universal -- everyone needs a house, medical care food, etc. The classic law of supply and demand only holds true for manipulated prices beyond the means of most people, and in an economy where people are kept unemployed.

In theory, a company could boost production to the maximum by allowing profits to approach zero. This necessitates increasing employment and increasing sales by improving quality.

Obviously, if every company that manufactured essential goods (i.e. food, housing, health care, etc.) increased production to either the maximum or the limit of consumer need, the benefits would be synergistic and possibility of eliminating poverty comes into focus. Without poverty, crime drops to natural levels, whatever those may be. Note that since the limits of consumer need would likely occur before production hit a maximum, there would still be profits, but they would exist in terms of the salaries paid and the goods produced for the people. The most enterprising managers, those who maximised production of high quality goods, would receive the highest salaries.

Most companies use resources and human labour to generate profits for absentee owners, whether corporations, sole proprietors, or stockholders. The company will maintain the highest prices for consumer goods that the market will bear, while simultaneously paying the lowest wages that the workers will tolerate. The company employees receive a fraction of what their true labour is worth while the quality of the overpriced goods is kept at a minimum. The owners, non-working profiteers, will sacrifice even human health and the environment in their greed for excessive profits. In general, owners who do not actively participate in the operations perform no function other than parasitism and the existence of such a practice highlights a fundamental flaw of capitalism -- corporate non-entities are guaranteed the right to profit while human beings do not even have a guaranteed right to subsistence.

Maximum production requires foregoing profits and, therefore, the elimination of payments to any parties who are not working. Only salaries and expenses can be paid out. In such a profitless company there is no drain on resources, and all resources can be efficiently devoted to increasing production and improving quality.

The profitless company is a self-owned entity in which the employees are the stewards. The company becomes an engine for generating essential goods and services and increasing employment. In a profitless system all prices drop to their natural levels and all workers are paid the true value of their labour.

When a complete range of companies goes profitless and single-source to each other, all of their costs begin dropping. The result is a synergy that could double or quadruple the GDP. The continuous construction of homes and other goods at cost would accelerate the standard of living and provide continuous employment. The reduced consumer costs would make everyone wealthy in the sense that they could live comfortably. Business taxes would also transfer to income taxes from increased employment, and so would not be negatively affected. By putting production before profit on a national scale we would effectively be prioritising poverty, which is the only cause worth pursuing in the modern world, and implicitly includes the control of all diseases, social and otherwise.

In profitless capitalism only those who work are paid although everyone would be guaranteed subsistence. The entire nation would ratchet itself up to a high standard of living without the drain on the economy produced by profiteering. The rich could keep what they have, but they would no longer be paid for doing nothing. Without interest paid on loans or capitalised funds being held in suspension, all available credit dollars would end up financing growth and production and thereby keep employment universal.

The beauty of profitless capitalism is that it puts all the people to work directly for their own benefit. Instead of the fruits of their labours being drained off as profits and diverted to useless enterprise, their efforts are immediately and directly used for improving the quality of life. The people would be actively solving all of their most pressing problems instead of sitting in stagnation. All of this from a simple shift of paradigm.

Profit is the icon of the modern economic world, leaving the quality of life a casualty of mindless competition. It's time for the Western World as de facto leader of the modern world, to consider abandoning capitalism and taking the first step towards a future where the entire human race, not just the privileged minority, could be wealthy enough to solve our more important problems. Perhaps until all diseases, social and otherwise, are cured, this should remain a non-profit world. Since most of us are bonded into non-profit employment anyway, the only differences we'd notice would be of the profound kind.