Capitalism is the Enemy of Individual Effort

Capitalists have long claimed that capitalism is about rewarding individual effort with goods and power. But, does capitalism reward individual effort? Is carrying out individual effort the real ambition of capitalists? Clearly it is not. The ambition of capitalists is to destroy the ability to carry out individual effort of as many other people as possible, by turning them into wage-slaves. Does Sean Quinn make cement? Of course not. He, in fact destroys the possibility of others to make cement by enforcing a de facto monopoly. If you want to make cement, you have to do so as part of Quinn's private collective, for Quinn's private profit.

So we see that no capitalist wants to make money by his own individual effort, but by robbing the ability of others to carry out individual effort.

We can certainly see that a minority of people in the capitalist world do manage to carry out individual effort. But, if capitalism claims to be the champion of individual effort, it must allow more people to carry out individual effort than it stops. We see that the very opposite is the case.

Capitalism is in no way about individuals. It is a cancerous collective. Hundreds of millions of people have their working lives bought off them by a small capitalist elite. Their ability to change their world is put at naught. There is no alternative but to accept the society that the capitalist ruling class has decided is the most profitable for themselves.

And nor is the cancerous collective only about production. Not at all. Capitalism destroys the individual in his working life and in his fantasy. We see a massive technological apparatus for the control of sexual and other forms of fantasy, so that fantasy becomes commodified and profitable - nothing is more commodified and profitable today than sexual fantasy.

So, we see that capitalism destroys the ability to carry out individual effort, and it destroys the ability to have individual thoughts. Individuality is the very last thing that capitalism wants or allows. Human beings must be reduced to "human resources" in their work, and must be reduced to brainwashed consumers in their private hours (though, as we see, privacy is never allowed in capitalism. All actions must relate, in one way or another, to capitalist profit.) We live in the most intensive Control Society that the world have ever known.

But, we all know that capitalism is a failed ideology, and thankfully, it is falling apart by itself anyway. The real question is what can we do now to build a world where real individual effort becomes possible. To my mind, the Soviet is the ideal centre for individual effort. In a Soviet, comrades come together and express themselves freely, bringing all their own ideas to the work. Nobody dictates to them and nobody tries to hire or employ them. What they do is on their own time, and on their own materials of production. Nobody tries to shape or mould their fantasies into profitable avenues. Real men and real women set about the work they themselves have decided to do, shaping their world to the forms that they have consciously and democratically decided on. Some here may object that in a Soviet, if a person wants to work all the hours of the day so that he can have more commodities, he will find it difficult to do that - if only because the others may find his actions to be rather perverse, i.e. giving up all your life for junk. Well, it seems to me that human beings would never do this anyway if they didnt have the lash of capitalist mind control on them at all times. But, I would recommend to any Soviet to not prevent such individuals doing this. Soon they will see the futility of such actions for themselves. That is not to say that Soviet members would not wish to work hard, and often for long hours - but they would work for higher achievement, not for commodified rubbish that robs them of their individuality and turns them into sad brainwashed clones.