Marx Was Right: Capitalism Failed

A young activist recently asked: “If the markets can’t even produce hand sanitizer or toilet paper or masks during a plague—what good is this system?” It’s a very good question.

It has become tragically clear that we are not only being ravaged by a pandemic, but by a society that has no problem marshaling bombs and fighter jets, but that will not assemble enough ventilators and masks. A society that has set countries and states bidding against one another for vaccines on the “free market” rather than devise centralized plans for their production and distribution. The current convergence of health, climate, racial, and economic crises is exposing a system that has ultimately failed us.

In this Olio, author and activist Hadas Thier will break down the workings (or failings) of our economic system and discuss its intimate connection to society’s greatest political challenges of war, health, climate change, and oppression. We’ll go through the basic concepts laid out by Karl Marx, an economist, political theorist, philosopher, and revolutionist, and discuss how these ideas provide a radical analysis of capitalism and critical tools for activists who seek to dismantle the world of the 1 percent.

What does it mean to say that capitalism is not just an economic system, but a social relation of production? Where do profits come from? How does oppression bind the system together? Most importantly, how do we use a radical analysis of capitalism to help us get to an alternative? Let’s discuss.