Nonviolence versus capitalism

Many people, especially in the United States, believe that government and corporations are antagonistic, with opposite goals. When governments set up regulations to control product quality or pollution, some corporate leaders complain loudly about government interference. But beyond the superficial frictions, at a deeper level the state operates to provide the conditions for capitalism. The state has its own interests, to be sure, especially in maintaining state authority and a monopoly on what it considers legitimate violence, but it depends on capitalist enterprises for its own survival, notably through taxation. In capitalist societies, states and market economies depend on and mutually reinforce each other.[12]

In recent decades there has been an enormous expansion of private policing. In the US, for example, there are now more security guards, private detectives and others privately paid to carry out policing duties than there are government-funded police. In the military arena, there are now private mercenary companies ready to intervene if the price is right. However, these developments do not change the basic point that capitalism is built on relationships between people, production and distribution ultimately protected by armed force.

As capitalism is increasingly globalised, international policing and military intervention become more important to protect and expand markets and market relationships. For example, economic blockades, backed by armed force, can be imposed on countries such as Cuba. Usually, though, the lure of the market for elites in weaker countries is more effective than military coercion.[13] Investment has done more to promote capitalism in Vietnam than decades of anticommunist warfare.

Belief systems

Although capitalism is backed up by violence, in day-to-day operation no coercion is required. Most people believe that the world works according to capitalist dynamics, and behave accordingly. Quite a few of them believe, in addition, that this is the way things should work, and exert pressure to bring nonconformists into line.

Here are a few common beliefs in capitalist societies, with comments in brackets.

Capitalism is superior to alternatives. (Many people assume that success, in other words dominance, means superiority or virtue. Logically, this doesn’t follow.)

Capitalism is inevitable. (In the face of everyday reality, many people cannot easily conceive of an alternative that is fundamentally different.)

It is fair that people receive what they earn. (The system of jobs operates as a method of allocating the economic product to individuals and groups. This system is arbitrary and built on the exercise of power. There is nothing inherently fair about it.)

The market is the most efficient method of matching supply and demand. (In practice, many “markets” are artificial constructions, as in the case of copyrighted software. The market is not used for things people hold dearest, such as allocating affection in a family.)

Selfishness is innate and justified; it makes the profit system operate. (Humans have the potential for both selfishness and altruism.[14] Social systems can foster either.)

People who are poor have only themselves to blame. (Blaming the poor ignores the exercise of power in creating poverty and denies the social obligation to help those in need.)

Greater production and consumption lead to greater happiness. (Actually, happiness is not closely correlated with objective measures such as income.[15] Happiness is more related to how people subjectively compare themselves with others, which suggests that inequality fostered by markets reduces happiness.[16]

)

Politics is something that politicians do; ordinary citizens are not involved except through voting and lobbying. (If politics is taken to be the exercise of power, then capitalist economic arrangements are intensely political. That workers do not vote to choose their bosses does not mean there is no politics at the workplace, but rather that workplace politics is authoritarian.)

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Beliefs do not arise out of nothing: they are an adaptation to the situations in which people find themselves, sometimes challenging these situations. There are three main ways in which beliefs supportive of capitalism develop and are maintained: daily life, schooling and mass media.

First, most people adjust their beliefs to be compatible with their daily life. This is a process of reducing “cognitive dissonance,” namely the difference between reality and thought. If daily life is filled with buying and selling, this makes market exchange seem more natural. If daily life involves working as an employee along with many others, this makes selling one’s labour power seem more natural. If daily life involves noticing that some people are very rich and some very poor, this makes great economic inequality seem more natural.