Nonviolence versus Capitalism

justify the enormous expense of war.

Even a purely destructive war has benefits for corporations that produce weapons for the military. But these benefits have to be weighed against costs. If the government is funding massive military expenditures, then there is less money for other functions, including corporate subsidies and consumer expenditures.

The elimination of capitalism is unlikely to eliminate war, if states still exist. After all, there have been wars between socialist states, such as between China and Vietnam in 1979.

The key point is that the state is not simply a tool of capitalists, nor solely an “arena for class struggle,” but in addition has interests of its own. Capitalism and the state system have grown up together and are mutually supportive, but neither can be reduced to a puppet of the other. Hence a nonviolence strategy needs to address both systems of power.

Bureaucracy. The word “bureaucracy” conjures up images of government agencies that cause people headaches with their rules and regulations, commonly known as red tape. Sociologically speaking, though, bureaucracy is a way of organising work based on hierarchy, division of labour, rules defining tasks, and promotion by merit. The keys here are hierarchy and division of labour. In a bureaucracy, a worker is simply a replaceable cog.

Government departments are bureaucracies, to be sure, but so are most corporations. There are bosses at the top, layers of middle management, all sorts of rules, with everyone doing specialised jobs. Many other organisations are organised bureaucratically, including trade unions, churches, professional associations and environmental bodies.

Compared to slavery, serfdom or nepotism, bureaucracy is a great step forward. It offers predictability, reliability and accountability within its own rules and so can compare favourably to informal systems where decisions may be based more on personal favours, vindictiveness or whim (though these play a role in bureaucracies too). For all its advantages over previous systems, though, it is still a system that gives power to a few at the top and subordinates most others. It also makes it easy for outside bodies to control an organisation: only the bureaucratic elites need to be dealt with.

There are various non-bureaucratic modes of social organisation, including families (where individuals are certainly not replaceable cogs!), networks and workers’ control (where workers collectively make decisions about how to organise their work and what to produce).

Bureaucracy has become dominant only in the past few centuries, along with the rise of capitalism and the state system.[31] It is an integral part of both, yet has its own dynamics. Bureaucratic elites operate to serve their own interests, even if this is at the expense of the organisation or its mandate. This is illustrated by the enormous salaries and share packages that many chief executive officers receive. This level of remuneration is seldom required to make the corporation more profitable, especially in cases where the company is losing money but the president gets a larger bonus. It is best explained by the power that organisational elites have to reward themselves, irrespective of the advantages to the organisation.

There is a lot of managerial rhetoric about flat hierarchies, team building, the network organisation and so forth, but the reality is that traditional bureaucratic hierarchy is alive and well. Bureaucracies are similar to authoritarian regimes: there is no freedom of speech, no freedom of assembly, no right to organise opposition movements and no ability to choose leaders.[32] It is often said that democratic rights end when you walk in the office door.

Some of the greatest advances for workers have been through organising in order to claim the right to strike and bargain for better wages and conditions. Yet in most workplaces rights are very limited indeed. Aside from legally protected actions, such as strikes — and these are legally protected only in some countries and under specified conditions — nonviolent action by employees is likely to lead to dismissal. Often just speaking out against the boss, or criticising the organisation on television, leads to harassment, demotion or dismissal. The same fate faces those who refuse to cooperate with instructions, who hold vigils or set up alternative decision-making methods. Most nonviolent action is considered illegitimate when carried out by employees.[33]

Other systems of power. As well as patriarchy, the state and bureaucracy, there are quite a few other systems of power worth considering, including the military, racism, industrialism, domination of nature (including domination of nonhuman animals) and heterosexism. In each case, there are strong links to capitalism but the system of power is not easily reduced to purely a symptom of capitalism. These are not issues that can be resolved easily or finally. The main implication, in any case, is that overthrowing capitalism will not necessarily lead to solving other problems. Nor will addressing the other problems necessarily help in the struggle against capitalism.

There is no need to decide which issue is the “most important.” All systems of domination need to be challenged and transformed. Capitalism is certainly one of them, and that is sufficient rationale for developing a nonviolence strategy against it. In order to make this strategy as effective as possible, it is useful to recognise that there are other systems of domination also worth opposing and transforming, and that if possible the struggles against these systems of domination should be designed to be mutually reinforcing.

Other issues

Whether capitalism is about to collapse or actually will collapse cannot be easily predicted. Nor is it obvious that collapse is a good thing. It might open opportunities for grassroots alternatives,[34] but it might create a demand for state repression. The collapse of the Russian economy under capitalism in the 1990s — with a 50% drop in gross national product — did not seem to improve prospects for a better alternative. In any case, the possibility of collapse should be taken into account in developing strategy.

Whether globalism is a new phase in capitalist development or simply an extension and revision of national capitalist systems is important,[35] but it is not clear how much this should affect the way a nonviolent struggle against capitalism is carried out.

Conclusion

There are many ways to analyse capitalism, so in choosing or developing an analysis it is essential to keep in mind what it is to be used for. The analysis of capitalism in this chapter is for the purpose of improving nonviolence strategy against capitalism. Three areas were singled out: the role of state power, founded in violence, in protecting private property and the capitalist system more generally; the shaping of belief systems to support capitalism; and the squashing or cooption of alternatives to capitalism. Later, in chapters 6 to 12, strategies will be examined to see whether they address one or more of these areas. In this sense, the analysis of capitalism presented here is one made from the viewpoint of nonviolence strategy. Another connection between the analysis of capitalism and the assessment of strategy comes through the five principles for assessing economic alternatives, applied in this chapter to capitalism and in chapter 5 to nonviolent economic models.

It is important to remember that capitalism is not the only system of domination, nor necessarily the one with greatest centrality or priority. Therefore anticapitalist strategies need to be developed in conjunction with strategies against other forms of domination. Nonviolence has the great advantage of being applicable, as both method and goal, to a whole range of systems of domination.

4. Conventional anticapitalist strategies