A millennial, someone who is currently unemployed, trying to build up a business without any financial support, who is working class, and trans who isn't anti-capitalist??!!! Is that even possible?!
On social media? Probably not.
In real life... I suspect there are more of us than would ever let on.
Currently, it's very much not cool to even suggest that you might think of capitalists as anything more than the absolute scum of the earth. If you don't literally want to shoot capitalists dead in the street, then what are you even doing thinking that you have any right to be in with the cool, right-side-of-history crowd?
I'm not anti-capitalist. I've never been anti-capitalist.
I am, however, vehemently anti-crapitaloser.
What the heck is a crapitaloser?!
Someone who merely identifies as a capitalist, but is incapable of genuinely living as one. Often, the crapitaloser knows they're not really a capitalist - it's just a cool, trendy crowd in their world, and they want to be part of something.
Crapitalosers blindly pursue money.
They keep wealth, opportunity, and connections for themselves.
Wait...so, what do you think a capitalist is?
A true capitalist is someone who makes capital - financial, social, and opportunital - widely available. And by 'widely' I mean "beyond people like them."
Genuine capitalists acquire capital in order to share it.
Genuine capitalists want to see everyone succeed - they may not always have the best understanding of forms of success that aren't financial, but that's less of an issue than the crapitalosers, who don't want anyone to get even close to having what they've got their hands on.
The British Victorian era undoubtedly had its problems, and certainly caused problems for a lot of other places - but it also gave the UK grand stately homes, country parks, and boutique coastal resort towns which, combined, generate almost £100billion in revenue to the UK, both through direct tourism and through spending in the economies they support.
It gave the UK the railway network, opening up working opportunities for the British working class.
Yes, mistakes were made. Some of them causing damage that is still being felt today - but that's the nature of action; it has unintended consequences. If we believe we can't possibly act until we know, for certain, no one will ever be harmed by what we do, then we become paralysed by the overwhelming responsibility. We enter inertia. We achieve nothing.
Let's move it away from world-altering impacts, to the more mundane for a moment.
You apply for a job.
You get invited to interview.
You're offered the job.
You accept.
You took action. You secured something for yourself.
But you're living with your parents, or with a spouse who makes a decent income. You have a small income from a couple of monetized social media accounts. You sometimes attend craft fairs, where the things you make sell well.
The person who was next highest in the interviewer's consideration for the job you've been given? They've been unemployed for over a year. They're in debt. This refusal from an employer has resulted in them being sanctioned by the JobCentre, which is putting their housing at risk.
By accepting a job you went to interview for following your decision to apply for, you have - completely unintentionally - caused significant harm to someone else.
You don't feel you did anything wrong. You'll point to any number of other reasons why that long-term unemployed person's life has entered a death spiral.
And of course, your intention wasn't to cause harm. You weren't even aware of other peoples' situation - you were just doing what was right for you.
And that's how it goes. That's how it's always gone. It's how it always will go.
You can't create anything with literally nothing. I know; I've been trying for the past 20yrs.
Genuine capitalists, functional, balanced capitalism - is what makes "more than nothing" available to the widest range of people.
Unless a number of people in your society have an immense amount of wealth available to them, no one in your society can have much of anything.
The government can't "just give people money to live on" if they're not getting income from successful businesses, and through trade with the capitalists and successful businesses of other countries.
The reason the UK welfare state is currently being discussed as "unaffordable" is because the UK's business sector is in crisis, and its manufacturing sector, decimated in the 1980s, hasn't recovered sufficiently to be generating considerable, reliable income for the UK.
The income from businesses and external trade is what enabled the welfare state to exist.
While workhouses are heavily associated with the Victorian era, they were actually "legacy infrastructure" in the Victorian era, initially being brought in following the dissolution of the monasteries; previously, the duty of care for the poor had fallen on houses of religious - convents, monasteries, and cathedral communities. When the monasteries were broken up, the State assumed responsibility for its poor... including the furthering of workhouses, which had been present in less regimented forms since the 13th century, recognising that religious communities couldn't meet the needs of all the poor, and that not every area had an established, resident religious community to begin with.
And, as with many things they did, the Victorians genuinely believed the workhouses were "doing good"; they were providing shelter for people who would otherwise be unhoused, they were feeding people who would otherwise have gone hungry, they were providing education for children, and training adults who would otherwise have remained destitute, because they had not been able to retrain in emerging skills needed by the new businesses of increasing industrialisation.
Perhaps the poor of the time accepted the workhouses as the best of a bad lot. Perhaps some of them - likely single men - were actually relieved to be in the workhouse, even if they weren't especially thrilled by their day to day circumstances and experiences; following rules and regulations, however brutal, is still easier than trying to survive with literally nothing.
From today's perspective, of course the workhouses were cruel - the separation of families, the disregard for any personal ambitions that those sent there may have had, the attitude that those who had tried and failed, those who were unable to achieve within Victorian society owing to ill health or disability, were "as bad" as those who were objectively and inexcusably "idle". (Then, as now, there were people whose focus in life was doing as little as possible; if they came from generational wealth, they were called dilettantes, and got invited to gala balls; if they did not, they were called a scourge on society, and got sent to the workhouse.)
Capitalist vs. Crapitaloser
Most, if not all, of the prominent, talked-about-daily billionaires are crapitalosers. They hoard wealth, opportunity, and connections. They have no intention of sharing it, or of using it to energise and enrich society. They are helping no one, and harming huge numbers of people.
James Caan is an example of a genuine capitalist; he has funded building projects in his native Pakistan, and is also actively providing capital for UK start ups through his investment house, Hamilton Bradshaw.
Andrew Carnegie, while certainly afflicted by flawed thinking - that, by maximising his profits through low wages, aggressive anti-union policies, and poor working conditions - he could achieve "the most possible good", ignoring the fact that providing poverty relief through social infrastructure for people you yourself have directly impoverished is...not as altruistic as you think it is - was also a genuine capitalist; the social impact of his sharing of capital, through institutions funded by his wealth, continues in America to this day. (Whether it will continue for many days to come...remains to be seen.)
On social media? Probably not.
In real life... I suspect there are more of us than would ever let on.
Currently, it's very much not cool to even suggest that you might think of capitalists as anything more than the absolute scum of the earth. If you don't literally want to shoot capitalists dead in the street, then what are you even doing thinking that you have any right to be in with the cool, right-side-of-history crowd?
I'm not anti-capitalist. I've never been anti-capitalist.
I am, however, vehemently anti-crapitaloser.
What the heck is a crapitaloser?!
Someone who merely identifies as a capitalist, but is incapable of genuinely living as one. Often, the crapitaloser knows they're not really a capitalist - it's just a cool, trendy crowd in their world, and they want to be part of something.
Crapitalosers blindly pursue money.
They keep wealth, opportunity, and connections for themselves.
Wait...so, what do you think a capitalist is?
A true capitalist is someone who makes capital - financial, social, and opportunital - widely available. And by 'widely' I mean "beyond people like them."
Genuine capitalists acquire capital in order to share it.
Genuine capitalists want to see everyone succeed - they may not always have the best understanding of forms of success that aren't financial, but that's less of an issue than the crapitalosers, who don't want anyone to get even close to having what they've got their hands on.
The British Victorian era undoubtedly had its problems, and certainly caused problems for a lot of other places - but it also gave the UK grand stately homes, country parks, and boutique coastal resort towns which, combined, generate almost £100billion in revenue to the UK, both through direct tourism and through spending in the economies they support.
It gave the UK the railway network, opening up working opportunities for the British working class.
Yes, mistakes were made. Some of them causing damage that is still being felt today - but that's the nature of action; it has unintended consequences. If we believe we can't possibly act until we know, for certain, no one will ever be harmed by what we do, then we become paralysed by the overwhelming responsibility. We enter inertia. We achieve nothing.
Let's move it away from world-altering impacts, to the more mundane for a moment.
You apply for a job.
You get invited to interview.
You're offered the job.
You accept.
You took action. You secured something for yourself.
But you're living with your parents, or with a spouse who makes a decent income. You have a small income from a couple of monetized social media accounts. You sometimes attend craft fairs, where the things you make sell well.
The person who was next highest in the interviewer's consideration for the job you've been given? They've been unemployed for over a year. They're in debt. This refusal from an employer has resulted in them being sanctioned by the JobCentre, which is putting their housing at risk.
By accepting a job you went to interview for following your decision to apply for, you have - completely unintentionally - caused significant harm to someone else.
You don't feel you did anything wrong. You'll point to any number of other reasons why that long-term unemployed person's life has entered a death spiral.
And of course, your intention wasn't to cause harm. You weren't even aware of other peoples' situation - you were just doing what was right for you.
And that's how it goes. That's how it's always gone. It's how it always will go.
You can't create anything with literally nothing. I know; I've been trying for the past 20yrs.
Genuine capitalists, functional, balanced capitalism - is what makes "more than nothing" available to the widest range of people.
Unless a number of people in your society have an immense amount of wealth available to them, no one in your society can have much of anything.
The government can't "just give people money to live on" if they're not getting income from successful businesses, and through trade with the capitalists and successful businesses of other countries.
The reason the UK welfare state is currently being discussed as "unaffordable" is because the UK's business sector is in crisis, and its manufacturing sector, decimated in the 1980s, hasn't recovered sufficiently to be generating considerable, reliable income for the UK.
The income from businesses and external trade is what enabled the welfare state to exist.
While workhouses are heavily associated with the Victorian era, they were actually "legacy infrastructure" in the Victorian era, initially being brought in following the dissolution of the monasteries; previously, the duty of care for the poor had fallen on houses of religious - convents, monasteries, and cathedral communities. When the monasteries were broken up, the State assumed responsibility for its poor... including the furthering of workhouses, which had been present in less regimented forms since the 13th century, recognising that religious communities couldn't meet the needs of all the poor, and that not every area had an established, resident religious community to begin with.
And, as with many things they did, the Victorians genuinely believed the workhouses were "doing good"; they were providing shelter for people who would otherwise be unhoused, they were feeding people who would otherwise have gone hungry, they were providing education for children, and training adults who would otherwise have remained destitute, because they had not been able to retrain in emerging skills needed by the new businesses of increasing industrialisation.
Perhaps the poor of the time accepted the workhouses as the best of a bad lot. Perhaps some of them - likely single men - were actually relieved to be in the workhouse, even if they weren't especially thrilled by their day to day circumstances and experiences; following rules and regulations, however brutal, is still easier than trying to survive with literally nothing.
From today's perspective, of course the workhouses were cruel - the separation of families, the disregard for any personal ambitions that those sent there may have had, the attitude that those who had tried and failed, those who were unable to achieve within Victorian society owing to ill health or disability, were "as bad" as those who were objectively and inexcusably "idle". (Then, as now, there were people whose focus in life was doing as little as possible; if they came from generational wealth, they were called dilettantes, and got invited to gala balls; if they did not, they were called a scourge on society, and got sent to the workhouse.)
Capitalist vs. Crapitaloser
Most, if not all, of the prominent, talked-about-daily billionaires are crapitalosers. They hoard wealth, opportunity, and connections. They have no intention of sharing it, or of using it to energise and enrich society. They are helping no one, and harming huge numbers of people.
James Caan is an example of a genuine capitalist; he has funded building projects in his native Pakistan, and is also actively providing capital for UK start ups through his investment house, Hamilton Bradshaw.
Andrew Carnegie, while certainly afflicted by flawed thinking - that, by maximising his profits through low wages, aggressive anti-union policies, and poor working conditions - he could achieve "the most possible good", ignoring the fact that providing poverty relief through social infrastructure for people you yourself have directly impoverished is...not as altruistic as you think it is - was also a genuine capitalist; the social impact of his sharing of capital, through institutions funded by his wealth, continues in America to this day. (Whether it will continue for many days to come...remains to be seen.)
Maxine Benson MBE is a quieter, less obvious capitalist than the two men mentioned above. We don't know her net worth, and it's not relevant - her career position and background suggests she is not averse to earning well. As one of the co-founders of everywoman, her return of capital to society is more nuanced, but no less impactful.
The Victorian capitalists shaped a society which has given back so much, it is perceived as the society of Britain, and its benefits are still being felt on a massive scale.
Today's capitalists are working towards a similar, but less landscape-dominating, shaping of society; we might not be able to see it today, but the perspective of people 200years from now might be very different, as they (hopefully) live in the world that capitalists today are creating.
Crapitalosers, however, will be forgotten 20 years after their deaths - because nothing they have is being used to create any wider benefit.
Teslas have been proven to be junk.
Amazon's reputation is trash - rightly so.
The tech-bro billionaires have overwhelmingly shown themselves to be arrogant, selfish, narcissistic, dysfunctional, and reckless. They aren't even interested in building everything, because they know they don't have the ability to build anything - that's why they want to destroy everything that other, better people - genuine capitalists - built before them.
It's okay to be a capitalist.
It's okay to build community, rather than financial wealth.
It's okay to only want to make enough money to meet your needs, and enjoy plenty of downtime.
It's never okay to simply take, without limits, with no respect for what is "enough", and to never give anything back.
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