Capitalism is a lie, and when I say this I am speaking in a very specific sense. I do not mean that capitalism is built on exploitation, which of course it is. I do not mean that it falsely tells people they can have things which the system will prevent them from having, which it does and will. When I say that capitalism is a lie, what I mean is that people will tell you it is about making profits, building capital, and this is not the complete truth. This rises above simply incomplete information and up to the level of a lie because the concept would not be nearly as easy to stomach if it was sold honestly.
So what is the truth? Money, profits, capital — these are means. These aren’t the end. So what is the end? If the end was capital, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and the DeVos family and so on would simply retire with their money. There would be an “enough”. The reason that they don’t, and the reason that there isn’t, is because the object of obtaining capital is not simply to have capital, it’s to exercise power. Capitalism is portrayed as a race where everybody simply wants to make more money, but it isn’t.
What capitalism is is a justification for moving power out of the hands of a collectivized government and into the hands of individual players. It tells governments that they should abdicate their ability to manage their societies to whoever has the capital to support the government, that money should be the primary determiner of influence. Whereas at one point, especially in democratic societies, people could expect some level of responsiveness from government purely on the fact of social contract (or whatever your equivalent theory for a country’s cohesion is), their voices have now been replaced by a cabal of self-interested and self-funded magnates.
The point of capitalism is not to hurt the working class, and because of this, a lot of people allow themselves to buy into this system. They see that perhaps they can make it work for them, and after all, since we’re all seeking profits, we should be able to support services etc. with all the profits that we are all making. The point of capitalism is, however, to transfer political power away from a government which is responsible to the people and towards private actors. Every single time without fail, such powerful private actors will work to restrain and oppress the working class. It isn’t that such actions will directly affect profits. Often, good investment and business practice would return at least as much profit as would be gained by enacting criminal restrictions. The point is not about the numbers on the page, however. The point is that those in charge do not want to have to cater to the needs of the working class. They want their power in tact and that means keeping it away from everyone else.