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“Capitalism�� 101: Shocking, to Western liberalism��

Preamble:
--It’s difficult to find a label more propagandized than “c���辱�ٲ����������� (the other being its opposition, “socialism��). What’s really shocking is how we often skip careful definitions and immediately jump to find “facts�� that confirm the conclusions we have already made.
--In an effort to combat this, I recommend the , which builds foundational definitions.

…Let me add to the definitions:
1) “l�������������:
--From a global historical perspective (always be wary when context is omitted), liberalism and capitalism/imperialism are two sides of the same coin.

Liberalism’s fatal hypocrisy [...] was to rejoice in the virtuous Jills and Jacks, the neighbourhood butchers, bakers and brewers [i], so as to defend the vile East India Companies, the Facebooks and the Amazons, which know no neighbours, have no partners, respect no moral sentiments [ii] and stop at nothing to destroy their competitors. By replacing partnerships with anonymous shareholders [iii], we created Leviathans that end up undermining and defying all the values that liberals [...] claim to cherish.
[Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present, emphases added]

[i] “butchers, bakers and brewers��: referencing Classical liberal economics godfather Adam Smith’s famous quote praising self-interested producers unintentionally providing social needs, thus not needing state regulation. Vulgar pro-capitalists have cherry-picked the beneficial self-interest part, as if these petty producers are comparable to corporations owned by anonymous shareholders (who by definition are not producers, i.e. workers).
[ii] “moral sentiments��: referencing Adam Smith’s 1759 The Theory of Moral Sentiments; as a moral philosopher, perhaps Smith had a bit more to say than just economic self-interest (despite being an ivory-tower intellectual).
[iii] “anonymous shareholders��: the stock market is a key capitalist market. Markets for goods (“real commodities�� with real producers and real costs of production, i.e. Smith's “butchers, bakers and brewers��) have long existed before capitalism; we can call these “societies with markets��. That’s not capitalism. Capitalism is a “market society�� because of 3 peculiar markets: labour/land/money, which feature "fictitious commodities" (humans/nature/purchasing power, which are not "produced" like real commodities just for buying/selling on markets): Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: or, How Capitalism Works—and How It Fails
…If we cut through liberalism’s idealist rhetoric and examine its materialist structures, then I find the label “cosmopolitan capitalism�� most revealing:

Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned ��…]
[The Communist Manifesto]

…This provides clues to how adaptive capitalism can be at co-opting grassroots demands. The racism used by colonization’s divide-and-conquer can continue under token liberal “multiculturalism��, which smuggly rests on top of the global division of labour adopted from colonialism (cheap labour and “brain drain��): The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions
…for more on the “historical materialist�� lens, see the aforementioned “What is Politics?�� video series, as well as this checklist: A People's History of the World: From the Stone Age to the New Millennium

1a) ��default liberals��:
--This is what I call the apolitical public who by default adopt the “ruling ideas�� as if it is a balanced centrism between “left�� vs. “right��, not realizing such ideas have been carefully framed by the ruling capitalist minority.

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.
-Marx

1b) ��devoted liberals��:
--This is what I call the much smaller group of avid spectators and the intelligentsia for cosmopolitan capitalism (see: Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies).

2) “l��ڳپ����ٲ���/“r���徱����������:
--Radicals seek to diagnose the structural roots of social ills and provide systemic alternatives rather than band-aids. A good start is to carefully unpack real-world capitalism. “Progressives�� range from liberals to leftists, often due to context (ex. trying to be pragmatic).

3) “r�������-�ɾ��Բ���/“c�DzԲ���������پ�������/“r�𲹳��پ��DzԲ�������:
--I unpack all this in reviewing Klein’s 2023 Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World.
…also see:
-The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Donald Trump
-Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism
-why Jordan Peterson is actually crying about capitalism (“all that is holy is profaned��): 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos

The Good:
--Klein’s 2007 book is a resounding success in achieving its primary goal of offering an engaging critique of “c���辱�ٲ����������� for the general Western audience (i.e. default liberals).
--Here’s a sample comparing the readership of popular books on “economics�� (these are ŷ������ numbers, which of course bias English-speaking esp. American readers using the website since 2007):
-838,472 ratings: Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (2005): "probably the best-known economics book of our time" which somehow omits "capitalism".
-593,970 ratings: Rich Dad, Poor Dad (1997): self-help for liberals.
-190,622 ratings: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (2001): critical history/social science, along with 239,208 ratings for A People's History of the United States (1980).
-158,942 ratings: The Communist Manifesto (1848): in reality, this is one of the most widely read books globally.
-158,173 ratings: The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (2010): written like a script for a Hollywood blockbuster. Oh, wait��
-146,926 ratings: The Psychology of Money (2020): self-help for liberals, with “behavioral psychology��?
-93,460 ratings: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016).
-46,867 ratings: Klein’s 2007 book: Note how rare it is for a book with “c���辱�ٲ����������� in the title to be popular.
-31,560 ratings: Capital in the Twenty First Century (2013): yet how many actually bothered to read it to completion? See .

The Missing:
--With the book’s primary goal being a resounding success (where countless works have utterly failed, including all the academic tomes that never even try), we can now push readers to dig deeper.
--How sound are Klein’s foundations and how far can we take them? Missing clear definitions (i.e. how is Klein defining “c���辱�ٲ�����������?), which I stress in my preamble, we have to do extra work to sort this all out, as it’s all mixed up in the book:

1) Colonization: origins or foundations?:
--Reading Klein’s evolution as a writer/theorist, there seems to be a foundational clash between:
a) Western “progressive�� lens: growing up in Global North post-WWII “middle class�� mass consumerist privileges, thus struggling more with alienation, vs.
b) Solidarity with those outside the privileged bubble, i.e. working poor in the Global North and globally, who are more burdened by direct exploitation.
--Had Klein focused on the latter lens in conceptualizing “c���辱�ٲ�����������, Klein would have centered this buried passage:

In the first stage of capitalist expansion, that kind of ravenous growth was provided by colonialism—by “discovering�� new territories and grabbing land without paying for it, then extracting riches from the earth without compensating local populations. [Milton] Friedman’s war on the “welfare state�� and “big government�� held out the promise of a new font of rapid riches—only this time, rather than conquering new territory, the state itself would be the new frontier, its public services and assets auctioned off for far less than they were worth.

--The question we have to ask Klein is this: has colonization ever not been the foundations of capitalism (i.e. “market society�� run on endless private accumulation)? Did the “welfare state�� period transcend colonization?

…For the rest of the review, see the comments below (starting at comment #12):
2) “Welfare State�� Capitalism: a compromise to derail Keynes/Socialism/Third World decolonization
3)“Corporatism��/“Disaster Capitalism��?