How many times have you heard it said? If you work hard, keep your wits about you, and practice self-discipline, you can be successful. If you save your money, you too can be a millionaire (or whatever it takes to be wealthy and materially secure). Sounds like a wonderful, “(self) made in America” dream doesn’t it?
That’s because it is a dream, or rather a fantasy. In the belly of the capitalist beast, even now with its rapid spiral down into the Wal-Mart hell and outsourced nightmare, there are still many American workers who believe this nonsense.
Take one of my fellow workers, for instance. He and I are both ferryboat deckhands, both members of the Inland Boatmen’s Union of the Pacific (which is affiliated with the ILWU). He is a long time, staunch union member. He is also a true believer in capitalism (no doubt partially due to the fact that he is one of the lucky few who have somehow managed to play this pyramid scheme of a game and come out reasonably well off--the fact that he had the advantage of New Deal social democracy notwithstanding). Of course, I belong to a generation that has matured with the dismantling of New Deal Keynesian social democracy, and I am a staunch dues paying Wobbly, so we have some heated debates (all good natured of course).
Today he hits me with this whopper (or perhaps it would be more appropriate to call it a Big Mac?). We’re debating the recent split in the AFL-CIO, when he tells me that strong unions depend on workers being “good capitalists”. Huh?!?
According to his logic, if every worker could be “just like him”, work hard, save their money, buy property, etc., they wouldn’t have to worry about striking for a bigger share of the pie. The fact workers are organizing precisely because the employing class won’t willingly give us the share of the pie we create in the first place just doesn’t seem to register with him. When challenged on that point, he tried to tell me that “a lot of millionaires who own shares in the McDonalds corporation started out as ordinary rank & file workers”(!)
Anyone who has read Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich can easily see what a crock of shit that statement is, and I cannot believe that my fellow worker is trying to insult my intelligence with such baloney. Mr. Block couldn’t have said it better. The oddest thing about this whole exchange is that my Blockish colleague is actually pretty militant about union issues. I have to admit this guy’s eccentric. (For those of you who think he’s pulling my leg, I can assure you that he does this enough for me to know when he is and isn’t; in this case, he was deadly serious).
In a way, I am glad he said this, because it provides me with a perfect example of why capitalism is a pyramid scheme that doesn’t work for the vast majority who play the game. I don’t even need any statistical evidence to support my conclusion either. Simple logic will suffice.
To begin with, McDonalds is a corporation. In any corporation, there is a hierarchy of power and income. Those at the top of the pyramid have the power and the highest income. Those at the bottom have next to no power and next to no income (in fact, it’s even worse than that, because there is such high turnover among those at the bottom of the hierarchy).
Presumably, “success” within the context of capitalism equals reaching the top of the hierarchy. According to my fellow worker’s way of thinking, all one has to do to reach the top of the pyramid (or at least reach a status that is equivalent to being at the top of that pyramid) is to work hard, keep your wits about you, practice self-discipline, and save your money. What happens, then, if everybody does exactly that? The higher you climb up the pyramid, the fewer places are available. There’s only one place at the top. We can’t all climb up to the top, or else there is no pyramid. Somebody has to stand behind a cash register and sell the Big Macs, or else there is no McDonalds (or at least one we can recognize).
True believers in capitalism, particularly those that belong to the Ayn Rand cult believe that this is natural law, i.e. those that succeed are the “gifted” supermen that “deserve” to rule according to their vile and vulgar “philosophy”. The fact that we’re not all born with equal access to the tools needed to even play this pyramid scheme of a game is not a concern of theirs.
More sophisticated apologists for capitalism argue that those at the bottom of the pyramid are merely the younger, less experienced workers and those at the top are the older, more experienced capitalists. This is also nonsense, because it suggests that only a few make it to old age (or deserve to for that matter).
Some capitalist apologists like to point out that using a pyramid as a metaphor oversimplifies the situation, because there are workers who also own (a largely insignificant amount of) stocks and bonds, and therefore they may be at the bottom of one pyramid while also being at or near the top of other pyramids. While that may be occasionally true, it still cannot be true for the vast majority of the working class. Why would anyone in their right mind who had the means to avoid working at a capitalist hell like McDonalds (other than the occasional senior citizen with a pension or wealth wishing to “contribute” and “prove their worth to society”) voluntarily rent their labor to such a place? It defies logic.
The naked truth is that capitalism cannot work. It is inherently unequal and inherently repressive for the vast majority who make up the foundations of the pyramid. And the nothing that “hard work” equals advancement is not only nonsense, which should be immediately obvious to anyone who understands the nature of a pyramid structure. In fact, this plain truth is so immediately obvious, capitalists spend enormous amounts of time, energy, and resources obfuscating the fact that capitalism is a pyramid scheme at all. Capitalists either deny that the pyramid exists, or they spin so many tales that attempt to tell us that the pyramid isn’t a pyramid, but something else entirely, and that is how they continue to pull the wool over everybody else’s eyes.
Even if a pyramid scheme were desirable, advancement wouldn’t necessarily depend on hard work. Treachery, deceit, lies, favoritism, inheritance, ruthlessness, and often dumb luck can just as easily facilitate the advancement of someone from the lower ranks of that pyramid into the higher, more elite echelons. Very often such unethical and nefarious behavior is the rule rather than the exception in most workplaces. To an extent, it is even tolerated by those at the top, because the unethical behavior of those lower down is often unsophisticated and the competing predatory behavior between workers often cancels itself out. All of this results in waste, destruction, misery, warfare, death, and destruction.
Furthermore, a pyramid cannot stand without a foundation. If everyone tries to advance to the top of the pyramid, the structure changes. Without foundation, however, no structure will long stand, and the structure collapses.
Capitalists are these days fond of saying TINA (“there is no alternative”); they’re fond of holding up examples of “non-pyramidal” structures that failed, such as various “socialist” or “communist” states, such as the Soviet Union, or “similar” structures that are just as repressive (such as China, Cuba, or North Korea). Were one to take a close look at these “communist” states, one would discover that they are just as much built like pyramids, with an elite few at the top and a vast exploited mass supporting them from below. Whether you call they pyramid “capitalist”, “socialist” or “communist”, a pyramid it remains.
Capitalists will often cite examples of societies that are worse than capitalist pyramid schemes, such as feudalism, monarchism, or fascism. Indeed, this is true, but these are simply more rigid pyramids.
We know from real world examples, however, that pyramids are but one form of relatively stable buildings. It is equally likely that a pyramid-like structure is but one of many possible stable societies. Pyramids are to an extent, stable, but that stability is a stability of equilibrium, rather than a static stability (meaning that the structure is maintained regardless of what happens to its component parts, even if it means that a vast majority of the parts are used, abused, and then replaced unceremoniously). Stability does not equal prosperity.
How one cannot see this, even in spite of all of the miasma of lies spewed forth from the tops of these various pyramid schemes baffles me. A truer, more desirable society functions not like a pyramid, but rather like a wheel, or a nested infinite progression of wheels within wheels within wheels interconnected with similar nested infinite progressions. I envision the industrial union structure of the IWW as one possible model of this structure (or perhaps a piece of it). The libertarian-communist ideal of the “commune of communes” is another. In this type of structure, there is no elite. Everybody has an equal opportunity to contribute to the web of life. Individuals may occasionally voluntarily (or by request) be at the hub of one or more wheel, but the wheel exists as an egalitarian whole.
Pyramids offer no such freedom for the vast majority at or near the foundation, nor is there really much peace of mind in backstabbing one’s way to the top (and most never succeed in that course anyway). Most of those at the top are either born at or near that point, or they ruthlessly fight their way to that point. It might be possible for a handful to make it to the top and even more possible for a larger minority to stake out a place somewhere above the foundation yet still below the upper echelons and fight to maintain it, but for all but a few, there is little freedom even in that. The democratizing tendencies of all peoples, and the urge to form unions are an indication that most people agree.