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Will Malson Capitalism Bad; Generic Page 1 of 5

Capitalism Bad; Generic

We’ve come here today to provide an answer to the great question: to compete, or to cooperate? As
such, my philosophy is that cooperation is superior to competition as a means of achieving excellence.

What is the heart of the clash between competition and cooperation? In its truest and purest form, it is
the conflict between capitalism and socialism, the ultimate competition, and the ultimate cooperation.
When it comes down to it, do we want to be competing, or do we want to be cooperating? I’ll give you
the answer in 3 steps. But first, let’s start with some definitions.

Socialism: “a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of
production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.”
(Oxford American Dictionaries, 2010)
True Socialism: Communalism.
Communalism: “the principle or practice of living together and sharing possessions and
responsibilities” (Oxford American Dictionaries, 2010)

Now let’s get into my contentions.

“I think that the only way to be honest and expose yourself to criticism is to state clearly and
dogmatically where you are. You must take the risk and have a position.” Zizek 04
Will Malson Capitalism Bad; Generic Page 2 of 5

STEP 1: COMPETITION IS A EUPHAMISM FOR CAPITALISM. Ellen Wood 99


Ellen Meiksins Wood [for many years Professor of Political Science at York University, Toronto, is the
author of a number of books, including Democracy Against Capitalism and, with Verso, "The Retreat
from Class (which won the Deutscher Prize), The Origin of Capitalism, Peasant-Citizen and Slave and
The Pristine Culture of Capitalism], "The Politics of Capitalism", The Monthly Review, Volume 51,
Number 4, September 1999 (HEG)
This is why it's not enough to say, as some of Brenner's critics have done (including John Foster in the
June issue), that the primacy he gives to competition is contrary to Marx, who insists that competition
doesn't cause capitalism's laws of motion but is simply their external manifestation in the movements of
individual capitals. The point is that no other social form has laws of motion that work through the
mechanisms of competition. No other social form is subject to the imperatives of accumulation and
innovation, which are driven by competition. And competition is the mechanism of capitalism's basic
laws of motion because in capitalism, as in no other system, the irreducible condition of access to the
means of self-reproduction is market-dependence and subjection to market imperatives. We can't even
understand capital's perennial efforts to circumvent competition without taking account of that
irreducible condition of market-dependence and the competitive imperatives that go with it.

“I think that the only way to be honest and expose yourself to criticism is to state clearly and
dogmatically where you are. You must take the risk and have a position.” Zizek 04
Will Malson Capitalism Bad; Generic Page 3 of 5

STEP 2: CAPITALISM INEVITABLY LEADS TO EXTINCTION – IT’S SOCIALISM OR


DEATH. Internationalist Perspective 2k
Internationalist Perspective #36 spring 2000 (HEG)
Mass death, and genocide, the deliberate and systematic extermination of whole groups of human
beings, have become an integral part of the social landscape of capitalism in its phase of decadence.
Auschwitz, Kolyma, and Hiroshima are not merely the names of discrete sites where human beings have
been subjected to forms of industrialized mass death, but synecdoches for the death-world that is a
component of the capitalist mode of production in this epoch. In that sense, I want to argue that the
Holocaust, for example, was not a Jewish catastrophe, nor an atavistic reversion to the barbarism of a
past epoch, but rather an event produced by the unfolding of the logic of capitalism itself. Moreover,
Auschwitz, Kolyma, and Hiroshima are not "past", but rather futural events, objective-real possibilities
on the Front of history, to use concepts first articulated by the Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch. The
ethnic cleansing which has been unleashed in Bosnia and Kosovo, the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda,
the mass death to which Chechnya has been subjected, the prospect for a nuclear war on the Indian sub-
continent, are so many examples of the future which awaits the human species as the capitalist mode of
production enters a new millenium. Indeed, it is just such a death-world that constitutes the meaning of
one pole of the historic alternative which Rosa Luxemburg first posed in the midst of the slaughter
inflicted on masses of conscripts during World War I: socialism or barbarism!

“I think that the only way to be honest and expose yourself to criticism is to state clearly and
dogmatically where you are. You must take the risk and have a position.” Zizek 04
Will Malson Capitalism Bad; Generic Page 4 of 5

STEP 3: COOPERATION’S ULTIMATE MANIFESTATION IS SOCIALISM.AmbroseBierce92


Ambrose Bierce, "The collected works of Ambrose Bierce", Volume XI, Chapter 1: "The shadow on the
dial", Page 17, Copyright 1912 by The Neal Publishing Company (HEG)
Socialism and Anarchism are parts of the same thing, in the sense that the terminal points of a road are
parts of the same road. Between them, about midway, lies the sys- tem that we have the happiness to
endure. It is a " blend " of Socialism and Anarchism in about equal parts: all that is not one is the other.
Cooperation is Socialism; competi- tion is Anarchism. Competition carried to its logical conclusion
(which only coopera- tion prevents or can prevent) would leave no law in force, no property possible, no
life secure. Of course the wordls " cooperation " and " competition " are not here used in a merely
industrial and commercial sense; they are in- tended to cover the whole field of human act- ivity. Two
voices singing a duet — that is cooperation — Socialism. Two voices singing each a different tune and
trying to drown each other — that is competition — Anarchism;

In conclusion, the choice before you today is thus: to embrace capitalism with competition or socialism
with cooperation. With capitalism comes the retrenchment of a poverty state with no hope of recovery.
With socialism comes the very heart of recovery and opportunity to the poor that capitalism inherently
lacks. Thank you.

“I think that the only way to be honest and expose yourself to criticism is to state clearly and
dogmatically where you are. You must take the risk and have a position.” Zizek 04

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