By : Sallm Kareem

Through past centuries, societies have practiced a variety of political systems. In some cases the economic structures in the regions were feudalism, while others were still in a process shifting from one type of political stractuer toward a better one.  Harry Magdoff, suggests that is in our nature to be in constant shifting,“Anatomically modern humans emerged some 150,000 to 200,000 years ago. Over the tens of thousands of years since, many different kinds of social organizations and societies have developed. Initially, most were based on hunting and gathering, while for about the last 7,000 years many have been based on agriculture. These societies were organized as clans, villages, tribes, city-states, nations, and/or empires.”[1] Though some societies around the globe still show remains of feudalism, in the recent time capitalism as an ideology to run the society, has become the most common.   In addition, under capitalism new technologies have developed societies in various ways. It is because of those developments that the standard of living has improved in developed nations.  However, the other side of capitalism is that some societies are still facing various problems.  The economic system of capitalism has created a huge gap between the poor and the rich. In the majority of developing societies millions of people are living in extreme poverty and starvation. Homelessness and unemployment has reached its highest rate and somehow instead of serving us we became “modern” slaves to the system.

Instead of providing the necessity of life to all the individuals equally, we are currently facing a system that has unequally divided the world’s wealth in which it has given almost everything to a small elite and almost nothing to the rest. Currently, with credit to capitalism the gap between poor and wealthy has arrived its high level in its history.  On March 21, 2005 the United Nation reported that “more than one billion people are still living below the extreme poverty line of one dollar per day, and 20,000 die from poverty every day.  Overall global wealth has grown, but is less and less evenly distributed within countries, regions and in the world as a whole.”[2]  It is clear that, even though there is enough food for everyone, because of inequality in distribution, which generates starvation, thousands of people lose their lives every day. Furthermore, in the same report by the UN, over one billion people live on less than a dollar a day, which means to survive with fear of hunger and starvation.[3] 

The cruel division between the rich and the poor is increasing everyday.On on side, the wealth of the rich grows everyday, though their wealth is accumilating, their population is decreasing. On the other side, the number of poor people increases and their wealth depletes. As mentioned by Harry magdoff that:

 “The wealthiest 691 people on earth have a net worth of $2.2 trillion, equivalent to the combined annual GDP of 145 countries—more than all of Latin America and Africa combined! The richest 7.7 million people (about 0.1 percent of world’s population), with net financial worth of more than $1 million, control approximately $28.8 trillion—equivalent to 80 percent of the annual gross domestic product of all the countries of the world. This is more than the combined annual GDP of all countries of the world minus the United States. (It actually also encompasses about 40 percent of the U.S. GDP as well.)[4]

This is  economic proof of the capitalist system that the overall growth of people , nations and regions, grow without equal division.  These are the roots of capitalism as a system.  According to Adam Smith, free market and self-interest is the soul of capitalism market to work and grow in a proper way. Through this expression by Smith, we can easily realize why some people live in extreme poverty and other with huge fortune. Since the competition amongst individuals over wealth would result the difference between these numbers and increase the gap within people, it is clear that the root of poverty and inequality is related to capitalism ideologically.

Another reason for increasing the rate of poverty in the world is the way that capitalist economy treats this phenomenon. According to many researches, the most destructive causes for poverty, in third world countries or poor nations, comes from the legislations and the treaties that followed World War II and the agendas by which capitalism attempted to reorganize and solve the economic crisis around the world.  The IMF, WB, and WTO, are those institutions supposed to help and fund poor nations to develop their states. However, they could also be described as roots of the all crisis in many poor countries.  These organizations are didacted to helping; however, the debts of that amount from their “help” has escalated to unprecedented level, which these deeveloping countries may never be able to repay. As explained by Ellen Frank “The IMF bailouts provide a brief respite for international investors, but they are, even from perspective of the wealthy, a short-term solution at best.  Not only are bailouts a public- relations disaster, they leave countries with more debts and fewer options.”[5]   Franks uses Argentina, as an example in which as result of IMF polices, Argentina would never be able “to make payment on $ 128-billion foreign debts, maintain enough dollar reserves to satisfy investors as the stability to its pesos, and promote sufficient internal growth and stability.”[6]   Finally theoretically and practically, poverty as a phenomenon in capitalist system, has been somehow legitimized unfortunately can be counted as a bases of the system, and it is something that has become inevitable.

Another unfortunate circumstance inherited by capitalism system is the people who are living without homes or any shelters. Approaching big cities, we can easily realize very extravagant well-dicorated buildings. However, just below those towers many people are spending their nights in the corner of those buildings and under the ceiling of their stores.  This tragedy is becoming more visible day after day and it becoming more evident to all the big cities around the globe.  According to the UN definition, there are four degrees of homelessness:

1. Rooflessness (i.e. sleeping rough, or without shelter)
2. Houselessness (i.e. living in institutions or short-term “guest” accommodations)
3. Insecure and unsafe accommodation
4. Inferior or substandard housing [7]

Through these four degrees the United Nation’s report illustrates the numbers of the people who can be counted as homeless around the world. It estimated that “if we go from number one to number four, our worldwide estimates of homeless people move up from 100 million to over one billion people.”[8] According to the report, in the countries that make up the EU, there are 2 to 5 million homeless people.[9] In addition, the UN report about the homelessness will go further to include most of the countries around the globe.  Counting the numbers of these people is not  the real issue, the important question is why and how did these people end up on the street? The answers lie in the initial unfair distribution of the world’s wealth governed by a capitalist system.  As reported by the deputy of prime minister in one of the South Asian country, “the most common cause of homelessness amongst South Asian couples with children was forced to leave privet rented accommodation.  Ethnic minority households felt that they were being asked to leave because property owners want to capitalize on escalating house prices by selling their property or renting them at a higher price after carrying out renovation.”[10] Moreover, in an article by  Maura Pardini Bicudo Veras under the name “ Brazilian inequality,” she illustrates that “Because itaquaquecetuba holds the high index about 21% of its population indigent…The case of Sao Paulo city ( 10-13%) is elucidative: there are 1,053,936 indigent people beside 2 million living in slum houses.[11] Again, through these rates and the numbers of few people who own houses, we can witness how private ownership gave advantages to small minority, but mainly it affected the majority within society. 

Under the system of capitalism the economic base leans toward a market depending on cheap labor and low wages.  In addition, having a very advanced and  progressed technology, it contributes and increases profit. Capitalism will remove workers and replace machines in workers positions.  However, this will accelerate the rate of joblessness and will force workers to compete with machinery. As Nick Dyer- Witheford notes “The fear of joblessness promoted by accelerating high-technology automation is a sward held the throat of labor.  It undermines trade union strike desperate strike breakers, and drive down wages and working conditions.”[12]  It is clear that as workers struggle to remain in their positions, they accept longer hours of working and will work in bad environment simply to remain employed.  However, humans cannot keep up with the ability of machinery and are quickly being replaced. This further reduces the chance of putting these jobless people back into jobs.

                   Instead of creating, a flexible system to serve each individual and make life easier, from the social order of capitalism has emerged a situation in which we all became slaves to serve it.   Regardless of the place and the race of individuals, ( except a small minority), almost everyone has the same complain about working long hours and not being provided the necessities of life.  To realize the unhappiness of people one should consider not only the individual cases, but also the the manner of the system and how it has structuered human relations.  In the “Poverty of Philosophy” Karl Marx criticizes M.  Proudhon’s perspective about ideas on exchanging and using values, he puts in word that:

This is the time when the very things which until then had been communicated, but never exchanged; given, but never sold; acquired, but never bought — virtue, love, conviction, knowledge, conscience, etc. — when everything, in short, passed into commerce. It is the time of general corruption, of universal venality, or, to speak in terms of political economy, the time when everything, moral or physical, having become a marketable value, is brought to the market to be assessed at its truest value.[13]   

            According to this opinion by Karl Marx, it is no doubt about it that capitalism has changed even the nature of human and their relations as well.  Therefore, when every thing, even emotion and love transferred or linked to the capitalism market and they became exchange values, it is inevitable that this process would lead individual as whole to be a sort of product in the capitalism societies. Therefore, through this criteria individual gradually convert to some robot or machine to follow capitalist orders.  In addition, instead of work for living, in our current time and especially in developed and progressed societies majority live for working.

            Finally, despite of all the modifications by capitalism in human’s condition, poverty, unemployment, and somehow being a modern slave are the three major elements that brutally face individuals in capitalist societies.  In addition, Capitalism as a system has accumulated a huge capital in a few hands, and left the majority in a harsh and brutal condition.  In fact, since the system is dependent on unequality, and has not been able to provide a comfortable living standard, it has to be changed, and replaced with a better world.  Therefore, achieving a “better society” is still possible and necassary for human kind.