CapitalismIsNotVoluntary

Quora Answer : Is capitalism oppressive?

Sep 28, 2017

"Capitalism" means different things to different people.

When I say "capitalism" I mean the modern economic system we have today. Not some system with markets hundreds or thousands of years ago.

So, one of the features of the system we have today, that I call "capitalism", is that pretty much ALL of the wilderness and "common" ground, particularly in Europe and North America, has been bundled up into someone's private property.

That means that you as an individual can't go out and forage there for food, or "homestead" it. Nor can you drill for oil or exploit other minerals.

Other people's existing property rights have fenced you out, and you have no access to go there to try thriving by your own effort.

You are obliged to live within, play by the rules of, and respect the already existing property rights of, the modern capitalist market. And if you don't have property, all you can do to get food is to sell your time and energy in the labour market. There is no opt-out.

In this sense, capitalism is, indeed, "oppressive". It's a system which has restricted your freedom.

On the left we have a term for it. "The pauperisation of the working class". It's a historical process that we still remember in Europe. That time when "inclosure acts" by government bundled up most of previously common land and handed it over to rich aristocrats and farmers. The peasants and rural poor were forcibly displaced, unable to build their own homesteads or exploit land to graze their animals. Without alternative options, they were obliged to move into cities and sell their labour to factories.

In Europe it's particularly obvious that this was a forced move that few of the rural poor could avoid. In the US, the picture is slightly more complicated. The land was force-ably taken from the Native Americans, but all classes of European descendants (not just aristocrats) had an option to try enclosing common land and homesteading the frontier. That's why Americans tend to be more sympathetic to capitalism and feel less oppressed by it. There's still a folk-memory of the time when there really was an alternative. (Unless you are black, in which case your ancestors were too busy being slaves at the time that there were still homesteading opportunities)