Monuments of Capitalism

Monuments of Capitalism

By David Glenn Cox
The Leftist Review
February 06, 2014

Capitalism is a system where you sell your soul for a heaven —
promised by the devil.

A promise which never reaches fulfillment, claiming responsibilities
for all and glories for some, if you are competitive.

If you are competitive enough, because that is what life is supposed
to be all about, isn’t it?

Or to paraphrase Eugene Debs, you have a wheelbarrow and
Rockefeller has a railroad, so perhaps if you just work harder,
you too, can be competitive.

Capitalism claims it creates wealth, jobs and prosperity; yes,
cry that message from the rubble heaps in Detroit, Youngstown
or Toledo.

These are the monuments of capitalism, glittering office towers
with million dollar apartments.

Doormen and security systems to protect them from the real fruits
of capitalism: crime, ghettos and poverty.

This is capitalism, a belief that any child can be president, if they
don’t move the plant to Beijing or Shanghai first.

During the last Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt rescued
capitalism, believing you could bell the cat and tame the bull.

History has since taught that you cannot maintain a cancer.

You cannot wall off greed; greed is eternal and capitalism is
the system of eternal greed.

Capitalism claims all the glories, while eschewing all the blame.

It poisons our air, our water and soil and when the bull in the
china shop is finally corralled, it claims regulation as the evil.

Pick any problem in this country, scratch through the veneer
and you will find the bare metal of capitalism.

Take for example the drug dealer on any American street corner;
because of poverty there is crime, because of the crime there is
violence.

Because there is violence, there are street gangs for protection.

There are no jobs available, so the drug dealer becomes the
Capitalist, the entrepreneur, willing to risk life and limb for
enough money to raise his self-esteem.

We live in a media environment which repeatedly insists you
must have $200 shoes manufactured by slaves far, far away.

You must have a smart phone and clothes emblazoned with
corporate logos, just like the media celebrities and athletes.

Celebrities and athletes culled from one one-millionth of the
culture, held up as carrots on the stick to convince adolescents
the system really works.

The drug dealer and the street gang member in the ghetto are
no different from the CEO or the Wall Street stock trader.

One might kill you for your wallet; the other might kill an entire
city.

One is lauded the other defamed; both getting their pictures in
the media.

One receiving citizenship awards the other to be executed.

In 2006, Jeffery Skilling, the former CEO of Enron, was convicted
on multiple federal felony charges of making false statements to
auditors, insider trading, conspiracy and securities fraud.

Skilling spent 40 million dollars on his legal defense before being
convicted and sentenced to 24 years in a minimum security prison.

His legal team still hard at work, managed his appeal on to
the docket of the Supreme Court in three years.

The Court seeing the injustice nullified his fraud conviction.

Skilling’s attorneys later swung a deal to knock ten years off
his sentence and Skilling will pay a fine of $ 45 million, just a
kosh more than his legal defense budget.

Kalief Browder was a 16-year-old Bronx high school sophomore
arrested while walking home from a party, on a tip that he’d
robbed someone three weeks earlier.

Unable to post the $10,000 bond, Browder was incarcerated at
the notorious Riker’s Island jail.

A single witness, repeated court hearings, but never brought to
trial.

The teenager spent 33 months in prison and 400 days in solitary
confinement, beaten by guards and inmates alike.

He was finally released, having spent more time in hell without a
trial than it took for a convicted millionaire’s case to reach the
Supreme Court.

This is the true face of capitalism.

Fascism is merely capitalism on steroids, turbocharged;
neoliberalism is fascism with a smiling face and reassuring
smile, exchanging jack boots and goose stepping for a three-
piece suit and a Rolex.

Fascism is capitalism under the legal protection of crime, where
corporations are people and the people are assumed guilty without
charge.

“Any institution which does not suppose the people good, and the
magistrate corruptible, is evil.” ~ Maximilien Robespierre

“A lot of people are saying ‘Hey, it’s about time. Why do we keep
giving money to people who are going to go use it on drugs instead
of their families?’” — Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah)

“Right now, a bipartisan group in Congress is working on a three-
month extension of unemployment insurance — and if they pass
it, I will sign it. For decades, Republicans and Democrats put
partisanship and ideology aside to offer some security for job-
seekers, even when the unemployment rate was lower than it is
today.” ~ Barack Obama

America: a capitalist two-party septic system, one side willing to
let the people starve, the other saying, let them starve in ninety
days.

Can society’s problems ever be fixed by such a system, by applying
a coat of red or blue spray paint to self-inflicted wounds?

Capitalism is primitive, a winner take all belief system.

How can such a system believe that after taking all, it should give
back out of benevolence?

It can’t and it won’t, not now, not ever.

"With what moral authority can they speak of human rights, the
rulers of a nation in which the millionaire and beggar coexist; the
Indian is exterminated; the black man is discriminated against; the
woman is prostituted; and the great masses of Chicanos, Puerto
Ricans, and Latin Americans are scorned, exploited, and humiliated?"

"How can they do this, the bosses of an empire where the mafia,
gambling, and child prostitution are imposed; where the CIA
organizes plans of global subversion and espionage, and the
Pentagon creates neutron bombs capable of preserving material
assets and wiping out human beings; an empire that supports
reaction and counter-revolution all over the world; that protects
and promotes the exploitation by monopolies of the wealth and
the human resources of whole continents, unequal exchange, a
protectionist policy, an incredible waste of natural resources,
and a system of hunger for the world?" ~ Fidel Castro

https://www.leftistreview.com/2014/01/14/monuments-of-capitalism/davidcox