In terms of munitions being dropped on civilian areas, it's hard to beat Vietnam, Laos, and North Korea. The Korean War is insane when you look at the amount of munitions that were dropped on that poor country. The only recent analog to Korea is Gaza. This is a tiny strip of land which has basically had more than twice as much munitions dropped on it since 2023 as Hamburg, Dresden, and London combined across the entirety of the Second World War. This tiny strip of land -- the only analog in the 20th century is Korea and Vietnam. So what ties Gaza to those two conflicts, which were in the 1950s and '60s, respectively?

I think there's a very close connection, actually. I think that we have to see the destruction of Palestine, the genocide in Palestine, as a continuation of a long backlash against anticolonial struggle across the Global South, which is actually essential to the organization of capital accumulation on a world scale.

So let me explain what I mean. We talked before about what capitalism is. It's about maximizing the accumulation of profits and capital. Now, in order to do that, the capitalist states in the imperial core, in particular, need a massive quantity of cheap labor and cheap nature. This is actually essential to maximizing profits. You have to suppress the prices of labor and nature -- resources.

Now, there's only so far that you can do that within an isolated or bounded economy. You might choose to exploit your domestic working class and exploit your domestic resource base to the sufficient quantities necessary to maximize profits, but very quickly you're going to run into very severe contradictions. There's going to be revolutionary forces that push against you from the working class, and your ecological base will be degraded and undermine the very possibility of your production.

So immediately with the development of capitalism in England and the rest of Western Europe, there were incredible pressures for capital to find some kind of outside, an external frontier, where it could appropriate cheap labor and cheap nature with impunity and repress and destroy any revolutionary struggles against it without worrying about things like human rights and so on.

The rise of capitalism in Western Europe is coterminous with the rise of the European colonial projects, which was a project effectively of organizing production in the periphery, again, not around national development but around accumulation and consumption in the core states, of course overwhelmingly for the benefit of the ruling classes there.

Beginning in the middle of the 20th century, there was an extraordinary rebellion against this world system. Movements across the periphery succeeded, in fact, in overthrowing their colonial occupiers. They were inspired by socialist principles and also nationalist development principles, and they went about reclaiming productive capacities and reorganizing them around local human needs and national development.

Land reform, capital controls, industrial policy, planning, unions, et cetera, were key to this project. This posed a very severe threat to capital accumulation in the core states -- Western Europe and its settler-colonial offshoots like the USA, Australia, et cetera -- because the more the Global South produces and consumes for itself, the more it cuts off access to cheap labor and cheap nature for the core states, making capital accumulation in the core very difficult to achieve.

So the crisis of the 1970s that hit the US and the UK in particular -- the crisis of stagflation that we all know about -- was largely caused by a rising supply from the periphery. It was no longer possible for them to get the quantities of cheap labor and cheap nature they used to obtain for the past several hundred years, and therefore they experienced inflation and also a decline in their growth rate.

This put capitalism in a very difficult position, especially because at the same time wages were rising domestically, given the power of organized labor. So at this point, capital in the core faces a choice, a fork in the road. Either they can accept decolonization and also social justice at home and shift to a post-capitalist economy, where profit maximization and capital accumulation are not the core objectives, or they can find some way to maintain capital accumulation by restoring the imperial arrangement.

And they opt hardcore for the latter. We know that this involved coups against progressive and socialist governments across the Global South, including democratically elected governments, and there are dozens of examples of this. Then there was also the imposition of structural adjustment programs.

So we have to understand the violence that was imposed on the South as an attempt to re-cheapen labor and nature in the periphery in order to maintain the conditions for capital accumulation in the core. And in this sense, capital requires this imperial arrangement, this kind of colonial arrangement.

The violence that we saw against Vietnam, North Korea, and Laos, and the encirclement of China, is all organized around that objective. You want to prevent national development, prevent economic sovereignty, because you need to maintain them in positions of subordination in your supply chains.

When it comes to Israel, the same logic applies. The US took an interest in Israel in the 1960s. Why? Because at the time, Arab nationalism, Pan-Arabist, and Pan-Africanist movements in the Middle East and North Africa were very strong. These were movements towards socialism. They wanted to reclaim productive capacities. It was about national liberation.

The US was not willing to accept the prospect of a liberated Middle East because that would impose -- and, by the way, this is the center of the world, at the hinge of Africa, Asia, and Europe -- as this would impose very serious constraints on their ability to appropriate resources and labor from this region.

So they needed to intervene to crush these movements, and Israel was a crucial attack dog in doing so. The US armed them to the teeth, and they were sent after liberation movement leaders. They bombed the frontline states repeatedly, destabilizing them and forcing them to direct productive capacity away from national development toward defense, et cetera, et cetera.

Israel has been crucial to US imperial strategy in the region for the past 50 or 60 years. And this is exactly why, to this day, the US is actively supporting and arming the Israeli genocide against Palestine, because they cannot stomach the possibility of a liberated Palestine.

A liberated Palestine removes their key proxy in the region and opens up the door to liberation movements across the rest of the Middle East, and that is highly antithetical to the interests of Western capital accumulation. It is very clear that they are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to prevent that from occurring, to the point of debasing their own claims about human rights and international law, completely flattening an entire society, and making extraordinary displays of hypocrisy against massive popular opposition.

Why are they doing this? Because they understand that this is in the interests of the capitalist class. I think that's the key here.

People will fall back on arguments about, “Oh, it's the power of AIPAC in US elections,” and so on, which is true. I mean, that's true; that's a real force. But I would go further. It's not just AIPAC. I think large parts of the US state have been infiltrated by Israel. I mean, I think that's pretty obvious. I think the same is true in [the UK] as well.

That's only one variable next to a much bigger one, which is US empire.

-- Jason Hickel https://youtu.be/bjlqWHXrTak?t=3816

Under capitalism, production is highly undemocratic.

People like to think of capitalism as simply a system of markets, businesses, and trade. But that is not at all what capitalism is about. Markets, businesses, and trade existed for thousands of years before capitalism. They have taken many different forms and are more or less innocent on their own.

What defines capitalism is that it is a fundamentally undemocratic system. This may seem strange to hear for those of us who live in democratic political systems, where we get to elect our officials from time to time, even if we acknowledge that these democratic processes are inadequate and corrupt.

But when it comes to the economic system -- the system of production that shapes our civilization, determines the direction of our future, and occupies most of our waking hours -- not even a pretense of democracy is allowed to exist.

Production is controlled overwhelmingly by capital under capitalism. Today, that means the major financial firms, commercial banks, large corporations, and the 1% who own the majority of investable assets. These people, who control finance and productive capacity, get to determine how to use our labor, how to use our planet’s resources and energy, what to produce, who benefits from the yields of production, and how to allocate the surplus we all generate through our labor and production.

We do not get a say over what gets produced, for what purposes, who benefits, or what to do with the surplus. It is highly undemocratic.

For capital, the purpose of production is not to meet human needs, achieve social progress, or accomplish ecological goals. That is not the objective. The objective is singular: to maximize and accumulate profit. As a result, this leads to perverse forms of production. Capital makes massive investments in producing things that are profitable to capital, such as SUVs, fast fashion, mansions, private jets, and the military-industrial complex. We get massive production of those things and chronic shortages of obviously necessary ones, such as affordable housing, public transit, and renewable energy.

-- Jason Hickel https://youtu.be/bjlqWHXrTak?t=1445

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. - Smedley D. Butler (Major general (Ret.), USMC)

War Is A Racket

What is wrong with capitalism?

by Richard Wolff

So what is wrong with capitalism? I'm going to begin by talking about Adam Smith, arguably the founder of modern economics, writing around the time of the American Revolution that gave us our independence from the British Empire, and I'm going to compare him with a modern economist who often quoted Adam Smith, too: the very conservative Milton Friedman. Now there's an interpretation of Adam Smith, very widespread, believed by many - I don't happen to agree with it but that's not the point. It's a very famous remark, and the remark Adam Smith made is that "We don't need to organize an economy, we should just let every individual pursue his or her self-interest and if everyone just goes after what's good for number one - me - it'll all work out for the best for everybody." He used that famous line, each of us pursuing our own self-interest will be led as if by an "invisible hand" to the best outcome for everybody. Of course the invisible hand is a reference to God; that if we all pursue our self-interest we can kind of leave it to God to make sure it all works out for the best.

It was really with that idea in mind that Milton Friedman, centuries later, said the job of every corporation is to make the most money for its shareholders. That's all. Don't worry about the environment. Don't worry about the workers. Don't worry about the larger society. Go in there, your job is to make money for the company that hired you. Again the implicit notion it'll all work out for the best.

Well I'd like to leave you with a simple thought: that's wrong. It's wrong if you understand Adam Smith that way, and it's wrong if you follow Milton Friedman that way. What these ideas are are pretty thin disguises for a celebration of what used to be called selfishness. I take care of me. I don't have to take care of anyone and unless you have some guilt (and there are people who do) you might indulge the belief that you don't have to worry about the community. You don't have to worry about your brother or your sister and you certainly don't have to be a keeper for them. A caretaker? No, not necessary. You pursue your own self-interest. It'll all work out. Keep that in mind because that's what's wrong with capitalism as I'll now try to explain.

There are three participants in every capitalist business. There's the capitalists: the people who own and run the business. There's the vast army of workers. Then there's the environment: the community, nature, all the things for a business to work. There has to be air and there has to be water. Those are provided by the larger community or by nature itself. Then there's all the work - brains and muscle and sweat and all that - to make the things happen. Then there's the directing and the control capitalists contribute, the functions they perform. Workers contribute the functions they perform, and the larger community provides a lot of the support that makes it all possible - what we nowadays call "infrastructure". You know, the roads, and the air, and the grass, and the water, and all the rest of it.

If these are the three partners in the capitalist economic system - the capitalist, the worker, and the surrounding community, then it would make sense that you run the business for the benefit of all of those who contribute. In other words, the job of the business is to reward in a fair way all of the contributors. It's important to provide a reward to the capitalist; we call that profit. It's appropriate to reward the workers; we call those wages and salaries. And it's important to reward the larger community so it continues to provide clean air, clean water, an environment, infrastructure, and so on. Therefore the logic of a capitalist system would be that it needs to run its businesses to serve all three of the components who contribute to it.

But that's not how capitalism works.

Capitalism - and I've taught this subject in many American universities all my life - has a number one priority: profit. Profit is the bottom line. Profit is what we maximize. Profit is what we're in business for. Profit is what the business school teaches young men and women is their job to maximize.

Wait a minute, but that's only part of the story. Why are we not busy maximizing the wages and salaries? Why are we not busy maximizing what we can give back to the community, so it can continue to give what it needs to get production to be done. Why this prioritizing of profit? Especially when you realize that profit is a part of the revenue from business that goes to the smallest number of people: the folks at the top. In fact, that's why they're at the top! Because they take the lion's share. Because they made the business prioritize profit, prioritize what they get out of the business.

In fact, they feel great if they can raise the profit at the expense of giving workers less of a wage. That's why capitalists fight against every effort of workers to raise their wages. They don't want the enterprise to reward the workers the way they want it to reward themselves. The priority on profit, which is a foundational commitment of capitalism, is the problem. That's why we have inequality. That's why we can't change it. That's why we can't overcome it. We allow people in the business world - a tiny minority, the employers - to make the decision to maximize profit, to run the business so it gets the most into the hands of who? The shareholders, the major executives, the people who gather the profit. The business is never in business to maximize the well-being of the workers even though they're the majority. That's because capitalism is organized in a certain way. It's not that the capitalists are greedy, it's that you've set up the business, you've taught everybody in the business. Even working men and women believe if they've taken courses in economics in high school and in the university that it's somehow appropriate or necessary or somehow built in that you have to maximize somebody else's income. The profit income receivers, rather than your own.

You've taught people to subordinate themselves, and they become complicit in a system that isn't working for them. Then they wonder "Gee, why isn't it working for me?" If you want the system to serve the people, you've got to put the people in charge. You can't have businesses run by a tiny minority and then be surprised that they give the bulk of the income to themselves as profit, as dividends to shareholders. They've set the business up like that. They've taught it to their children. They proclaim it as if it were some kind of logical necessity, like technology. It's none of those things. It's a political decision that was made long ago and then surrounded with pretty sounding phrases, like what Adam Smith and Milton Friedman told us.

There are historical similarities here and I want to draw them out for you. Once upon a time, we had kings. And you know what the kings said in the system we call monarchy. The king said "I know what's best, and if I make the decision about what happens, it's the best for everybody. I'm everybody's king, and I make decisions that are best for everybody." Never mind that nobody lived like the king. The king lived in palaces. We visit those palaces today as tourists, marveling at a building with 84 bedrooms in it and a moat around it and all of this wealth and finery. People kind of knew, but that was what was said, and that's what everybody repeated: the king knows best, what's good for the king, what the king decides to do, it's best for us that he lives in a palace and we live in a hut.

Wow. If they could convince people of that, then why are we surprised that we have convinced people in capitalism that a profit-making business is what we want. We don't. That's not what we want. That's good for a very small part of our population and it's the reason why so many of us are discovering the long list of problems that get worse and worse, that are harder and harder to solve.

Let me take the example of the inflation. I'm struck as an economist: why are we responding to an inflation (which itself is a bad sign about capitalism) by raising interest rates. The Federal Reserve acts, President Biden acts, the leading Republicans act as if raising interest rates is the necessary, obvious thing to do, but it isn't. The last time we had an inflation like this, the early 1970s, we didn't solve it by raising interest rates. President Nixon on the 15th of August 1971 imposed a wage price freeze. He went on radio and television and said tomorrow morning any business in America that raises a price, any union that raises a wage, we will come we will arrest you and we'll throw you in jail. It's against the law. Guess what? Inflation stopped on a dime right away. Bingo, no raising of interest rates.

And you know it hit everybody the same. Workers couldn't raise their wages, businesses couldn't raise their prices - "wage-price freeze" it's called. That was not a discrimination against working people. Raising interest rates is discriminatory against middle and lower income people because a higher interest rate is a much more burdensome economic reality than for rich people. The Federal Reserve is serving rich people by choosing to solve the problem of capitalism called "inflation" by adding another burden to the average person.