Why I Dislike Anti-Capitalism

During my self-imposed Lenten blog moratorium, I've had a lot of thoughts. This is one of them: I really dislike the whole concept of "anti-capitalism."

It's not because I'm especially a cheerleader for capitalism. But what is capitalism, anyway? I think a lot of the problem is that nobody really agrees what "capitalism" is. 

But it's more than that. I think it's a very bad thing that so many people blame all social ills on something called capitalism. The implication is that those problems can only really be solved when capitalism is abolished. And, until then...

Of course, capitalism is never going to be abolished, and the only developed societies in modern history that seriously tried to abolish capitalism were notoriously awful.

But even aside from that...

I've noticed that, whenever I argue with Irish people from a conservative perspective, they might acknowledge that the conservative has identified real problems, but they tend to put those down to "capitalism".

For instance, the housing crisis in Ireland is caused by capitalism, rather than the more obvious cause that their secular religion, or fear of social censure, won't allow them to blame.

But it can be anything else. If you complain about the loss of innocence in childhood, for instance, this will be put down to advertising and commodification and so on. There is literally nothing that you couldn't blame on capitalism with a bit of imagination.

Similarly, when I point out to progressive Irish people that they are now the establishment-- that they completely agree with the government, media, entertainment industry, and corporate elite on all the hot-button social topics-- they'll almost invariably say: "How can I be pro-establishment? I'm anti-capitalist!"

As though the establishment cares about that, or as though anybody cares about that.

There is nothing at all radical about being anti-capitalist, because everybody at heart knows that it's purely theatrical. Capitalism isn't going to be abolished and nobody really expects it to be.

It was the acknowledgement of this fundamental truth that led the left-wing to concentrate on identity politics from the sixties or seventies onwards.

Is this to say that there can be no economic reforms? Of course not. There can be and there have been.

But the basic model of all prosperous societies is going to remain capitalism in some form or other, and pretending otherwise seems like pure self-indulgence to me. And worse, since it prevents concentrating on real problems and real possibilities.