Anti-Capitalist Vs. Pro-Capitalist

In a world of perfection there would be no hunger, no poverty, and no crime, but no such world can truly exist. There will always be suffering, hurt, anguish, and despair. Yet, shouldn't we strive to provide a good future for all? This concept of the most amount of good for the most amount of people is called Utilitarianism. Contrary to popular belief, the United States doesn't believe in such a state of being. Instead, through capitalism and economic globalization the United States has proven to believe in the exact opposite of utilitarianism. Globalization has changed the traditional trends of international relations. Now states are struggling to gain more and more economic power. This economic power is related to their social, political as well as technological development. However, the means to develop economically with a faster speed is the capitalist ideology. Capitalism is commonly understood to mean an economic system in which the means of production are predominantly privately owned and operated for profit, often through the employment of labour. Money mediates the distribution and exchange of goods, services, and labour in largely free markets. Decisions regarding investment are made privately, and production and distribution is primarily controlled by companies each acting in its own interest. So what are the pro-capitalist views verses the anti-capitalist views?

We will first take a look at the capitalist theory presented by Adam Smith in his work, “The Wealth Of Nations” published in 1776, elaborated these notions of moral philosophy into a theory of economic behavior (Peet, 25). The contemporary economic trends are formulated on the roots of capitalism as every state is heading towards regional economic integration and following the policies of free trade, market liberalization, and privatization. All these approaches are an adaptation from Smith’s work of “Wealth of Nation”. However, smith has presented a systematic analysis regarding the behavior of individuals. These individuals if taken with in the domestic sphere are the various business merchants and business organizations, while in the international market are the countries. Therefore, every individual and country perusing its self-interest and national interest are facing the various challenges in the competition of economic development (Peet). Therefore, now the foreign policy of states and the political dominance of any state have nothing to do with the business policies of any business company. To help better understand capitalism let’s take a look on the economics of capitalism and its development. Briefly stated, the economics of capitalism grew of the interactions of the following five items: commodities, money, labor power, means of production, and production (Robbins, 41). These are the five things that are necessary in order to have capitalism. So let look at the Nike Corporation for example, they invest money to buy commodies, consisting of things such as leather and rubber, machines to make textiles, and factories, which they combine with labor, the people who design , produce, and assemble the commodity with they sell for a profit (Robbins, 42). To keep the cycle going this means that they must have labor and machinery working for a low price. However, this development of Industrial Capitalism gained serious opposition.

Anti-capitalism believe capitalism, by its' unnatural constraint on the free flow of wealth, decreases the quality of life for most, while only increasing it for the few. Consider all the aspects of life which can be regarded as contributing to the quality of life; housing, food, education, health, the arts, and social activities. Anti-capitalist believes that capitalism does not actually improve any of these things. They feel capitalism is a system that allows an oligarchy or a plutocracy to accumulate capital and thereby restrict the natural circulation