If you were born in or grew up anywhere near the United States (or almost anywhere else, for that matter), you have been taught (consciously and subconsciously) that capitalism is the only viable economic system for people who believe in truth, justice, the American way, freedom, equality and “white” Jesus.
We’re constantly bombarded with subtle and over-the-top messaging that capitalism is the way, the truth and the light, and that all other economic vehicles will consign you to that wide road to hell.
Well, at the risk of blaspheming before Anglo Christ, I’m here to tell you that just like reality TV, the myth of white supremacy, gluten-free products and the Dallas Cowboys, God does not ordain capitalism.
Wait, capitalism is not biblical?
And this isn’t some new school revelation. Black scholars and activists (i.e. WEB DuBois, Kathleen Cleaver, Ella Baker and many more) have a long history of calling capitalism to the carpet for its purposeful mistreatment of Black people, and really all people who aren’t hyper-wealthy. Yet, you’d never know it by the way those critics of capitalism have been presented to us through history books and lectures.
Their call-out of capitalism and its foundational anti-Blackness has been deleted as if it never existed. You know, just like the way the African foundations of civilization, science, religion and life are nowhere to be found in so many K-college classrooms.
At the same time, we’re told that not only is capitalism the only way forward, but that if we’re not making Elon Musk money, in the words of Luda, “You’re just not doin’ it right.”
Economic Avenger
However, Malaika Jabali, a modern-day superhero who by day serves as an Ivy League grad, lawyer, journalist, filmmaker, activist and Essence Magazine senior news & politics editor (for real; she literally does all those things), argues that we’ve been in a toxic, nowhere relationship with capitalism for far too long, catfished and abused to no end.
Jabali hopes to wake us from our cultish stupor and find another way, which is the point of her best-selling book, “It’s Not You, It’s Capitalism: Why it’s Time to Break Up and How to Move On.” Forgot to mention she’s an author too.
Malaika Jabali.
“Maybe you have a job with super intense hours, or you work multiple jobs. It took years to pay off thousands of dollars (or hundreds of thousands of dollars) of debt to get that job. You’re tired and get more excited about dryer balls than clocking in. But instead of being told that this relative lifelessness is how capitalism works, we’ve been convinced that we’re just not trying hard enough in the relationship,” writes Jabali. “We need to hustle more, sacrifice more hours and more time, find more streams of income, and we’ll finally see how good our lives can be. You’re doing everything you can to make this relationship work. But I can assure you, it’s not you. It’s capitalism.”
Jabali points out that the 2008 fall of Wall Street and the collapse of big banks was a seminal moment and core memory for many in that Gen-X/Millennial bubble to which she belongs, making many of them more critical of capitalism than older Gen-X folk, Baby Boomers, and any other elders who had been taught since they were in their mothers’ wombs that capitalism was God’s gift to the world; that capitalism was the economic messiah come to deliver all true free market disciples, and to grant us everlasting life, and an after-lifetime supply of milk and honey and stock options and rims and whatever else our monetary hearts desired.
Jabali says of our relationship with capitalism… “For most of us, we have a one-sided, friends-with (occasional)-benefits situation; not a life partner.”
Old school words of warning
But if you’re leery of taking advice from young’uns, Jabali offers critical words from some old-school playas and playettes.
Kathleen Cleaver: “[Captialism] needs a middle class to function smoothly. It doesn’t need equality. What it needs is inequality. It needs a certain number of people at the elite level, a certain number of people in the middle level, and the rest of the people scrambling and hoping they could get there, all following the same zealous commitment to making money.”
Or if a Black Panther legend’s wisdom doesn’t do it for you, how about words from the one and only, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther “the” King: “I am convinced that capitalism has seen its best days in America, and not only in America, but in the entire world. It is a well-known fact that no social institution can survive when it has outlived its usefulness. This, capitalism has done. It has failed to meet the needs of the masses.”
“Capitalism cannot reform itself; it is doomed to self-destruction. No universal selfishness can bring social good to all.”
web dubois
Or maybe MLK is too “preachy” for you, and you’d rather hear from a legendary intellectual. Here’s just one snippet from the illustrious WEB DuBois: “Capitalism cannot reform itself; it is doomed to self-destruction. No universal selfishness can bring social good to all.”
Case in point: between 1978 and 2002, worker pay grew by 15% while top executive pay jumped by 1,209%. Major US CEOs are now paid 344 times more than their typical employees.
And why didn’t we ever read this in our textbooks when learning about the founding of America:
“Direct slavery is as much the pivot of our industrialism today as machinery, credit, etc. Without slavery no cotton; without cotton no modern industry. Slavery has given value to the colonies; the colonies have created world trade; world trade is the necessary condition of large-scale machine industry… Slavery is, therefore an economic category of the highest importance.”
Oh, I know why, because it was said by some dude the priests of capitalism have labeled the anti-Christ (Karl Marx).
But MLK, DuBois, Kwame Nkrumah, Bayard Rustin, Assata Shakur, Charles Barron, and many others made/make the same points Jabali makes – that capitalism was built on anti-Blackness.
Compassionate capitalism?
And sure, many contend either that capitalism has become more compassionate over the centuries or that a more compassionate form of capitalism is on the way and will solve all of our social, economic and political problems.
[Capitalism] mid-wifed the birth of one of capitalism’s all-time “achievements,” the prison industrial complex – making billionaires of those capitalists who specialize in incarcerating Black bodies for profit.
But waiting for “compassionate capitalism” is like waiting for “compassionate conservativism.”
You may recall President Ronald Reagan 1) declared greed was good and increased U.S. homelessness exponentially, 2) created the modern-day college student debt system specifically to make it harder for Blacks to pursue college degrees, 3) began the rollback of civil rights, which had, up until his administration, been steadily improving, 4) and declared an all-out war on Black people under the guise of America’s “war on drug.”
FYI – that was the “compassionate conservatism.”
Since then, it’s been all Contracts on Black America, Tea Parties, Jan. 6 insurrections and “Make America white Again” wet dreams.
And yes, “compassionate capitalism” “allowed” for the end of official, government-sanctioned slavery, but immediately imposed sharecropping and the convict leasing system which not only created the capitalist economic windfall of “slavery by another name,” it mid-wifed the birth of one of capitalism’s all-time “achievements,” the prison industrial complex – making billionaires of those capitalists who specialize in incarcerating Black bodies for profit.
Another member of the capitalist accomplishment’s Mount Rushmore is the military industrial complex, which makes its gazillions off fomenting global wars and making money off of both sides of the conflicts.
You’re not a capitalist if…
And if you think you’re a capitalist by default because you work a job and enjoy buying nice things, think again. You don’t own all the means of production, the resources needed to make stuff, the banks who make loans and the elected officials who make pro-gazillionaire policies. You’re just somebody who gets paid a tenth (or less) of the money you generate for your J-O-B in order to enrich the “forreal” owners and shareholders, who give you just enough pennies to convince you not to revolt, but not enough scratch to scratch out the kind of living and life you and yours truly deserve.
So, the next time someone comes to you preaching that old-time-capitalist-religion, school them on the fact that it was never good enough for dad and mother, it was never good enough for the Hebrew children, and it’s certainly not good enough for you and yours.
