Some thoughts about Capital

I am currently reading the autobiography of Fidel Castro, pub. 2005. Castro amazingly predicted a worldwide financial collapse based on the way the USA just kept printing up more and more money. Fidel keeps referring to the USA as the "empire." And regarding brutality, the hypocrisy of our nation taking the moral high ground while promoting terrorist attacks against Cuba for 55 years, is appalling. Castro's viewpoint, based on ethical values and honor, has really opened my eyes about who the terrorist really is, and what is Capital.

Castro says that capital is the product of your labor. In other words, capital is the food that farmers grow, and the land that produces food. Capital are the sweaters made in Irish villages, and embroideries made by Hmong grandmothers. Capital is what we produce by our labor, which is equal to wealth.  Does that make every knitter a capitalist? What is a Capitalist, anyway?

cap·i·tal·ist   [kap-i-tl-ist]

noun

1. a person who has capital,  especially extensive capital,  invested in business enterprises.

2. an advocate of capitalism.

3. a very wealthy person.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/capitalist?s=t

So, I’m right.  #1 says anyone with capital.  So it would include a whole cottage industry of women that knit sweaters, right?  Is their stock if knitted sweaters, and their storehouses of yarn, and their sheep and their meadows, the means of production of all those sweaters, are all capital?  If so, then are those Irish village knitters capitalists? 

According to this dictionary meaning, the answer would be YES. 

Let’s see what the dictionary defines as capital. 

cap·i·tal     [kap-i-tl] Show IPA

noun

4. the wealth, whether in money or property, owned or employed in business by an individual, firm, corporation, etc.

5. an accumulated stock of such wealth.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/capital

So number 4 requires that the cottage industry knitters must be in the business of making sweaters.  In other words, they intend to sell the sweaters, or use them as barter. 

The reason I am pondering these facets of meaning, is that we usually think of capital as something had by only rich people living in mansions. 

But the concept of capital being the products of my own labor personalizes it and gives me a sense of control of my own capital. 

Suddenly I see the classical capitalists as climbing on the backs of the workers who they depend upon to produce capital for the benefit of the few. 

I realize that no one can be truly poor if they can produce capital as the fruit of their own labor.  Even if you live in a rammed earth home with a flimsy thatch roof, if you can produce spinning tops or handspun fabric or woven baskets or rubber tire sandals, you have wealth and capital. 

So now, what is Capitalism?

Here’s the same online dictionary again:

cap·i·tal·ism   [kap-i-tl-iz-uhm] Show IPA

noun

an economic system in which investment in and ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange of wealth is made and maintained chiefly by private individuals or corporations, especially as contrasted to cooperatively or state-owned means of wealth.

Origin: 1850–55; capital¹  + -ism

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/capitalism?s=t

Note:  public service and co-ops are excluded from this meaning of Capitalism even though state owned businesses and co-ops may produce capital commodities.  As such, then capitalism is dedicated to the greedy enrichment of the one at the expense of the many. 

The Capitalists hate the Communists, right?  Here is how our information is whitewashed.

As seen in this dictionary passage, the word “capitalism” originated in the mid 1850’s.  Please give credit where credit is due.  It was Karl Marx who coined the word in his book, The Communist Manifesto in 1848. 

Marx defined Capitalism as an economic system in which subjective moral value is separate from objective economic value. Subsequently, economics became divorced from ethics.  I’ve noticed that in many investor friends; it seems like perfectly moral and upstanding citizens of the community can invest in the most toxic and destructive industries and never have a flicker of a qualm about how they made their profits. 

So in Capitalism, the capitalist is the one who buys up all the land where the sheep graze, take ownership of the livestock, and provide wool for the knitters who work for a pittance to provide the capitalist with sweaters to export.  The capitalist figured out that he could get more money if he bought a million Irish sweaters, and sent them in a packing container to Boston, rather than selling them locally where the market was already saturated with home knitted sweaters. 

Before the capitalist arrived, all the village knitters labored together for the benefit of the whole village.  Once the capitalist takes possession of the means of production, knitters work for the capitalist and the capital wealth is transferred out of the village into the coffers of the capitalist.  Oh yeah, Ayn Rand; I bet it makes you HOT just to think about transferring all that wealth from the worthless peons who let it happen.  I think I’m starting to understand what Marx and Castro were talking about. 

Which begs the question of how did the capitalist wrest the means of production away from the villagers in the first place? 

Some thoughts about Fidel Castro

I have been listening to the audiobook autobiography of Fidel Castro.  It was in the form of an interview in 2005 between foreign journalist Ignacio Ramonet, and Fidel himself.  The transcript had to be approved by Castro first before publication, and was translated into English, and performed by 2 actors for my enjoyment.  I borrowed it from the Public Library. 

One major theme throughout the tale was ethics.  Fidel explained that there is subjective and objective ethics.  Subjective ethics are about honor, protecting the innocent, being able to sleep at night.  Subjective ethics are about seeing international corporations coming into a nation and exploiting the human and natural resources to depletion for their own profit, and seeing the indigenous people being robbed of their capital legacy. 

Another shocking realization that has lifted the wool from my eyes is that the USA, the land I was raised to think had the moral high ground, has been sponsoring terrorism on the sovereign nation of Cuba for 55 years starting with our beloved JFK.  The fact that the microscopic nation of Cuba has persisted this long in spite of the acts of aggression from its giant nearby neighbor only attests to the validity of Castro’s assertions. 

And why should giant USA be threatened by the tiny little Caribbean nation of Cuba?  Why not be friends and trading partners like we are with Communist China?  The obvious reason is that the validity of Castro’s philosophy of ethics is so infectious, that it threatens the corporate oligarchy, which has been in control of our government for longer than we think. 

Castro actually admired JFK for withdrawing from the 1961 Bay of Pigs and admitting defeat.  He understood that Kennedy had inherited the plot from Eisenhower.  Castro’s forces had taken 1200 prisoners of war, which they ethically exchanged in 1962 with lawyer James Donovan for $53 of private medical supplies.  On the other hand, the non-violent Cuban 5 in the USA unethically all got life sentences, and Luis Posada Carriles, a convicted terrorist, lives free in luxury in Miami. 

Once again, our media portray Fidel Castro and Che Guevara as dangerous maniac armed revolutionaries.  But when you read their writing, they were totally rational and ethical.  They both saw the corporate machine robbing every resource possible if not stopped by persons with ethics.  They heroically stood up to the plate, but corporate censorship and spin have rewritten history to make the corporate oligarchy the good and moral side, and Castro and Guevara were on the bad and destructive militant revolutionary side. 

What Fidel & Che began to fight is upon us all with spades now, worldwide.  We are drowning in the toxic wastes of the for profit corporate depletion of our natural and human resources.  We are fed up with governments that serve corporate interests over the interests of the electorate, and enable our nation to descend into a banana republic.  Let We the People unite to non-violently create a “wall of separation between corporation and state” by amending the Constitution to define a person under the law as a human being, and money is not speech.   And with another amendment to mandate public funding of political campaigns with an eight-week campaign limit. 

Che Guevara and Manifest Destiny

I have been listening to the biography of Che Guevara on tape as I drive an hour to and from work each day. Che’s life, even so many decades ago, sounded very modern and little different than the lifestyle we enjoy in this United States. The author portrays Che, and his buddy Fidel, as products of their environment. Both were descendants of the wealthy, privileged class, and were bothered by the social injustices brought about by the invasion of Europeans to the Americas. The European settlers confiscated the land from the indigenous people and treated them worse than dirt. In addition, the United States came in and exploited the natural resources for their own exclusive profit at the expense of the citizens of each country.

The United Fruit Company, and companies that owned the coffee plantations, the mines, and the forest products made huge profits and collaborated with oppressive militias to enrich themselves and keep the locals in servitude. Beginning with Guatemala in 1953, every time a populist leader was elected, the CIA would assassinate him and install a dictator who protected the North American industrialists. A few Caucasian locals who collaborated with the North American companies got filthy rich while the rest of the population lived in squalor. Both Che and Fidel descended from such wealthy landed families.

I mentioned this to T.A., an acquaintance of mine at the post office the other day. He replied that if the indigenous people weren’t organized enough to manage their own natural resources, it is only right that the North Americans would come in and take the natural resources, just like they did with the Native Americans. I am aware that T.A. is a Christian and I supposed he was referring to the Christian belief of “manifest destiny” which justified the robbery and exploitation of Native Americans in the USA.

I didn't reply to this at the time because I am slow on the uptake and try to think about things before I speak. The more I think about what T.A. said, the more I realize how immoral it is to take what someone else has just because I am bigger, stronger, more organized, or believe it is my manifest destiny. T.A. was partly referring to historical patterns; when rich natural resources exist, historically someone comes in to exploit it. But, just because the historical record illustrates the pattern, that doesn’t make it right.