Criticism of Capitalism

Criticism of Capitalism

In the 300 years or so of its existence capitalism has transformed the planet over and over again. Rail, electricity, the internal combustion engine, flight, space travel, telephones and electronic computers, the list is endless. 

The world economy is 17 times the size it was a century ago. In 1900 there were only a few thousand cars worldwide. Now there are 501 million. 

Engineers built the first electronic computers in the early 1940s. In 1949, Popular Mechanics magazine predicted that 

"computers in the future may have only 1,000 tubes and weigh only one and a half tonnes". Today the smallest laptop can process more data than the most powerful computers in the world 50 years ago.

Despite this, all the technology developed by capitalism has not provided clean water for 1.2 billion people or food for the 841 million who are seriously malnourished. Nor has it prevented the Aids epidemic rampaging through Africa. 

Upwards of 28 million Africans have the HIV virus and only 30,000 of them can get treatment. Capitalism is capable of spending billions on developing weaponry that is used to bomb the poor of Afghanistan into the rubble, but it cannot solve poverty, hunger or disease.

And capitalism is threatening the very future existence of the planet. Scientists predict that, as a result of global warming, sea levels are likely to rise by up to one metre this century. This would devastate the inhabitants of the flood plains of Bangladesh and Egypt, and worldwide hundreds of millions of the very poor would be displaced. 

Even these figures are probably conservative as they are based on estimates made in the 1980s. The latest surveys indicate that the situation could be more severe as they report that Arctic sea ice has thinned by 40% in the last three decades.

Capitalism has enormously developed the productive forces but it is controlled by the unplanned and blind play of those very productive forces. It is a system where the only driving force is the need to maximise profits.