The Spectrum Newspaper
Opinions
April 28, 2011
“Hey America, want to have pizza and go to war?” Tom Maude-Griffin‘13 explains the atrocities of capitalism Tom Maude-Griffin Contributing Writer
W
hen we think of capitalism, we tend to think of things like: the great American dream, how hard you work being directly related to the amount of money you earn, freedom of the individual, and a generalized sense of prosperity. However, we never bother to question the fundamental premises of our society. Why are we rich while other countries are poor? Does our greater wealth come at the expense of others? What kinds of “free-
“Tommie the Commie” has been a communist for 2.5 years.
doms” does capitalism really grant people? Our country is not, and never has been, the realization of an ideal society. I do not mean to take the liberal position, that: “Well things aren’t perfect here—we still have a bit of poverty and issues such as homophobia, racism, and sexism persist, of course we could progress—but our country is still great”. Rather, American society’s fundamental structure is inherently unjust. We are not a society of social mobility and freedom, but a polarized society of class hierarchy and privilege. Contrary to the belief that hard work is rewarded in capitalist society and individuals can always make a good life for themselves if they simply try hard enough, it is a necessary condition of capitalist society to produce a large, poor, lower class—what Marx calls an “industrial reserve army”— in order to function. This reserve army ensures a ready supply of flexible and disciplined workers that have to work for the owners of capital to live. This allows the capitalist class to appropriate what Marx calls “surplus value” from workers in the form of profits, enriching itself at the ex-
pense of the working class. In addition to the creation of a class society, a result of this antagonism between the rich and the poor, capitalism presents the basis for economic crises as it waxes and wanes between the conflicting interests of workers (who need higher wages, better working conditions, etc.) and management (whose only want is to increase profits). According to David Harvey’s book The Enigma of Capital: And The Crises of Capitalism, “moves made to alleviate a crisis of labor supply and to curb the political power of organized labor in the 1970s diminished the effective demand for product, which created difficulties for the realization of surplus in the market during the 1990s. Moves to alleviate this... problem by extensions of the credit system among the working classes ultimately led to working-class over-indebtedness relative to income that ... led to a crisis in confidence in the quality of debt instruments. The crisis tendencies are not resolved but merely moved around.” In our increasingly globalized economy, similar to domestic capitalist society, wealth distribution has become polarized, as the global south becomes the “worker” of the world.
This global economic hierarchy is maintained through the malicious use of debt to encourage poorer countries to open their markets, as was recently illustrated in the passage of two Latin American free trade agreements with help the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Western political leaders and owners of international corporations are excited about the passage of said legislation, as it has the potential to generate immense profits. This movement towards imperialism makes the economies of the third world “literally controlled by the efforts of a small group of private financial institutional decision makers,” according to Harvey’s book The Limits to Capitalism. The threat of IMF sanctions leveraged debt against these countries to force the adoption of so called “Structural Adjustment” programs that radically decrease the role of the government in the market and cause mass privatization. Additionally, virtual control of global development allows the guiding hand of western business to bring in substantial amounts of money at the expense of the local cultures, people and environments. In essence, “corporate colonialism” has eliminated the economic sovereignty
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of the third world. Corporate colonialism in conjunction with the IMF and the World Bank have forced the standard of living in poor countries to be lower than their wealthy counterparts. The arrangement that exists today in our globalized world is effectively a coercive and violent protection of the wealth of a small minority, at the cost of millions of lives, whole cultures, and democracy. Too often, because there is no “face” to capitalism—no Hitler, no Mussolini—we underestimate the scale of global violence that the system entails because of this arrangement. It has been estimated that every decade as many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed in a nuclear war that caused 150 million deaths. Furthermore, “every single year, two to three times as many people die from poverty throughout the world as were killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period,” according to Abu-Jamal Mamia’s article, “A Quiet and Deadly Violence. “This is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating, thermonuclear war, or genocide on the weak and poor every year of every decade, throughout the world.”
Staff Editorial: Prom has transformed into an exclusive affair
I
n Disney’s soon-to-be-released movie Prom, Nova Prescott is just another teenage girl waiting for the perfect guy to ask her to prom. Except, waiting isn’t the right word to describe it; Nova is stressing, and she is a perfect example of how the meaning of prom has evolved. No longer is prom about a fun night out with friends, or the last dance of high school for seniors; in the eyes of society, prom has turned into a quest to find the perfect dress for girls, or figuring out the best way to ask a date, for guys. This is a problem because, when the focus of prom is shifted to the roles of specific genders, people are excluded. At the popular prom and pageant store Glitz!, someone buying a dress is required to register their school. This precaution is taken to avoid two girls from the same school buying the same dress, something
Current seniors lock arms at prom last year. From left: Pat Swearingen, Maria Brunette, Austin Gromatzky, Ellie Aldredge, Jack Mortell, Hannah Tieszen, Sutton Higgins, Brett Szalapski, Courtney Alpeter, Jack Schnettler.
that it seen as a quite the faux pas. So much emphasis has been put on finding a unique prom
dress that many dresses have become quite pricey. Additionally, the appearance aspect of
prom is so important that it effectively excludes students from lower income families from go-
ing to prom because dresses are too expensive. Finally, the idea that boys must find the perfect way to ask a girl to prom in order for her to say yes is out of control. Though it’s fun to watch the creative ways in which guys ask their dates, the idea that it must always be the guy that asks the girl is not. Prom does not need to be a dance where the guy asks the girl. If popular culture portrays more instances where girls ask guys or girls, or guys ask guys, more students would feel comfortable asking whomever they wish. Prom is not a bad thing, however it is important to reflect on what the meaning of prom truly is. Does prom need to be all about looks and flourish? Instead, prom should be a night of fun that everyone can enjoy no matter who they are or who they choose to ask.
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