Why I'm Anti-Capitalist

I turned 41 just over a month ago, and I've been stuck in a mental funk. After journaling, meditating, and processing my thoughts, I've realized that I'm distraught by the fact that profit-driven motivation primarily drives everything we do. The reason our primary motivation is to earn profit is that we live in a capitalist society that has permeated every crevice of Western civilization.

What increasingly angers me is how capitalism necessitates that the majority of people have to be exploited and dehumanized for capitalism to thrive. When I say capitalism, I'm describing the economic system of;

Private ownership and wage labor systematically exploit workers by concentrating wealth and power in the hands of a capitalist class, creating hierarchical structures that alienate laborers from the means of production and the value they create. This system fundamentally relies on state-backed property rights and market mechanisms that prioritize capital accumulation over human needs, perpetuating structural inequality and constraining individual and collective freedom.

You see, America's history of patriarchy, white supremacy, and exploitation is rooted in promoting the capitalist ideals of gaining wealth and power. Both of these ideals can only come at the cost of prioritizing profit over people, allowing one minority class to exploit the labor and resources of the majority, and dividing society into hierarchies.

Profit before People

Something as human as meeting a new person is, to some degree, driven by the potential to profit. One example is our society's obsession with placing people in mental hierarchies (more on this below) based on one's profession. We all do it even if it's subconsciously. Don't believe me that we're all guilty of this? Have you ever considered why, whenever meeting someone for the first time, it's normative to ask?

"What do you do for a living?"

We don't ask this to make small talk or get to know the person better; it's a way to size them up. To make a mental note of how they compare to you, the potential value you can gain from the relationship, and the worth of the conversation in terms of personal investment.

You see, the end goal within a capitalist society is to earn a profit. This goal isn't exclusive to the economy. Inevitably, every relationship and activity becomes about gaining leverage to earn another dollar.

For instance, for my generation and beyond (Gen Z and Gen A), we don't have hobbies anymore. Hobbies have been hijacked and, by and large, killed off by the 'side hustle.' I remember an Uncle who collected records when I was a kid, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Why did my Uncle collect records? He enjoyed music and loved connecting with like-minded people in the record-collecting community.

Today, if someone has what would historically be viewed as a hobby, there's the incessant pressure to monetize it. Are you into gaming? Start a Twitch channel and work to gain 50 followers so you can monetize. Enjoy photography? Start an Instagram account to grow your followers, and post on sites like Unsplash to earn money from your photos. Like writing? Start a Substack and create a subscription model to get paid for your work.

In capitalism, profit, the all-mighty dollar, is the only thing that matters. The cold reality is that profit comes before everything, including people. As a result, we are all stuck on the hamster wheel of proving our worth, every minute, of...every...day.

A System of Theft

This brings me to my next point. For the entirety of our adult lives, we are funneled into the grind of a 9-5. We are fed the belief that if we work hard for the next 5-6 decades, we will move up the corporate ladder, and as a result, we'll also move up in economic class.

I've been working in some capacity for the last 25 years, approximately half of my working life, and the reality is I'm barely keeping my head above water. Here's the thing: I have all the shit I was told I'm supposed to have, and none of it leads to a greater sense of satisfaction or purpose. I have a home, two cars, multiple college degrees, and a white collar career. All of these things are just hooks to keep me running harder on the hamster wheel.

This part of capitalism sucks, and I'm definitely not a fan, but it's not the worst part of the worker contract we all agree to when entering the workforce. Capitalism is built on the premise that there are owners and workers, who comprise two distinct classes of people. The goal within the market is for the owners, the minority group who possess the means of production, to earn as much profit as possible off the labor of the majority working class.

Most people don't realize how effed up of a social contract this actually is. Inherent to the owners' ability to maximize their profits is the need to exploit the working class. The logical question is, "How does the owner class steal from the working class?"

Wage theft: The biggest cost for a business outside of owning the resources for production (equipment, buildings, land, etc.) is paying employees. This means that to maximize their profits, owners will always strive to pay the workers less than their actual value. If owners paid workers what they are actually worth in terms of output, the owners wouldn't make a profit. And in capitalism, a company that doesn't show quarter-over-quarter profit increases is viewed as a bad business.

Not only are workers never paid their actual worth, but when a business earns a surplus of profit, it goes to the owner or shareholders, not the workers. Take this reality into account the next time you hear about whole generations of people 'quiet quitting' and being unwilling to go above and beyond to produce for their employer.

Society Built on Hierarchies

Finally, I am anti-capitalist because the system requires the economy and political structures of a society to be built on hierarchy. As discussed above, there has to be a group of owners who are always the minority group and a group of workers. The reason the owners need to be in the minority is that the more owners there are, the smaller the pool of workers becomes.

Understand the idea that hard work and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is propaganda to keep the working class laboring harder and harder, like Boxer in George Orwell's Animal Farm. When a society's culture and politics are built on hierarchy, the downstream effect is that the society divides itself into a hierarchy.

So human beings cease to be equals. Instead, you have upper, middle, and lower class groups, including white-collar and blue-collar workers. Within America, we also create divisions based on factors such as sex, ethnicity, gender, and religion. For example, say two people work in the same industry and in the same position. A heterosexual white Christian man sits at the top of the social pyramid and will earn more income than his homosexual Latina Catholic woman co-worker.

The reasons the male worker is paid more than his female counterpart actually have nothing to do with their job skills or abilities. The distinction is all the result of imposed artificial power structures that elevate white Christian men to a higher place in society.

At the end of the day, hierarchies fundamentally limit human potential by creating artificial barriers between people.

This severely limits our natural human capacity for creativity, cooperation, and self-determination. Think of hierarchies like a rigid pyramid: information and decisions flow from top to bottom, but this inflexibility prevents the organic, peer-to-peer collaboration that humans naturally yearn for.

Whether government bureaucracies, corporate structures, or other institutional hierarchies, they equally organize society through control and authority rather than mutual understanding and voluntary cooperation. The result is a system that blocks genuine human connection and our innate ability to self-organize.

I hope to live in a way that embodies anti-capitalist ideals like democracy, equality, non-exploitation, and the removal of hierarchies. It's overwhelming because I recognize that, at best, I am only a drop of water needed to develop the hurricane of change necessary to create a more equitable society. I hope to empower and partner with other people who are striving to be drops of water.