Forbes online magazine today contains yet another startling admission that Capitalism is in serious trouble, "The U.K. Riots And The Coming Global Class War:"
The riots that hit London and other English cities last week have the potential to spread beyond the British Isles. Class rage isn’t unique to England; in fact, it represents part of a growing global class chasm that threatens to undermine capitalism itself.
That's shocking enough coming from Forbes, especially after business school professor Nouriel Roubini admitted last week that Marx was right about Capitalism destroying itself, but what really amazed me about the Forbes article was the confession that Capitalism has always relied on religion to protect it from angry, exploited workers:
The growing chasm between the classes has its roots in globalization, which has taken jobs from blue-collar and now even white-collar employees; technology, which has allowed the fleetest and richest companies and individuals to shift operations at rapid speed to any locale; and the secularization of society, which has undermined the traditional values about work and family that have underpinned grassroots capitalism from its very origins.
Now many people are familiar with Marx's contempt for religion's role in keeping the working class down:
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
Less well known, however, but more directly pertinent to the Forbes article is Emma Goldman's analysis of the three oppressive pillars of Capitalist society: Religion, Private Property and Government.
Religion, the dominion of the human mind; Property, the dominion of human needs; and Government, the dominion of human conduct, represent the stronghold of man's enslavement and all the horrors it entails.
Emma treats each in turn:
Religion! How it dominates man's mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion. But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began...
Property, the dominion of man's needs, the denial of the right to satisfy his needs. Time was when property claimed a divine right, when it came to man with the same refrain, even as religion, "Sacrifice! Abnegate! Submit!"
Just as religion has fettered the human mind, and as property, or the monopoly of things, has subdued and stifled man's needs, so has the State enslaved his spirit, dictating every phase of conduct. "All government in essence," says Emerson, "is tyranny." It matters not whether it is government by divine right or majority rule. In every instance its aim is the absolute subordination of the individual.
Referring to the American government, the greatest American Anarchist, David Thoreau, said: "Government, what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instance losing its integrity; it has not the vitality and force of a single living man. Law never made man a whit more just; and by means of their respect for it, even the well disposed are daily made agents of injustice."
So now Forbes acknowledges the truth of what both Marx and Emma Goldman have claimed--religion with its "Pie in the Sky when you die" and its "respect for authority" has been an essential tool of Capitalism since that system was born. Now that religion's sway over the people has declined, the threat of revolution increases.
Emma Goldman did have a solution for getting rid of the three-headed monster that dominates our lives:
Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations.
So how did Forbes magazine end up agreeing with Emma Goldman? Maybe somebody's been hanging out too much at Red Emma's in Baltimore.