capitalism=poverty

[abbielives!]

How would you say capitalism causes poverty?

if capitalism is the system that governs how good are distibuted, how does it do so unevenly?

what about social democratic countries?

[Rawthentic]

How would you say capitalism causes poverty?
Because the vast amount of wealth and power is in the hands of a few, not the working class, who owns it. So, if a worker is increasingly creating products that are then stolen by the capitalist who pays him a shitty wage compared to what he created, he loses. I'm sorry if that didnt sound right. But capital centralizes into fewer and fewer hands as a result of competition.

In the 'third-world', its called imperialism, where oppression and poverty are most acute.


what about social democratic countries?
They have greater political freedoms and allow the working class a bit more 'crumbs', but capitalism and its class relations are preserved. I believe Marx called it bourgeois socialism, where they give the working class enough to keep it subservient as a means to maintain its class power.
From the Manifesto:

A second, and more practical, but less systematic, form of this Socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the working class by showing that no mere political reform, but only a change in the material conditions of existence, in economical relations, could be of any advantage to them. By changes in the material conditions of existence, this form of Socialism, however, by no means understands abolition of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can be affected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence of these relations; reforms, therefore, that in no respect affect the relations between capital and labour, but, at the best, lessen the cost, and simplify the administrative work, of bourgeois government.

LINK (http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch03.htm#b)

[listener]

my thoughts:
to have high profits you need cheap labor = low production costs
Production in so-called 'Third-world-countries' also influences the domestic markets there, crops are grown there for rich countries, crops for the domestic market can't be produced.
No protection, workers rights, child labor = no education = circle of poverty continues
Environmental destruction/pollution, unhealthy/dangerous working conditions

[Janus]

How would you say capitalism causes poverty?
Capitalism is inherently exploitative and causes the concentration of capital and wealth in the hands of a few.

[Anarchovampire]

Capitalism causes poverty through simple mathematics.

There is only so much money (sure it is constantly being printed, but it is also constantly being destroyed).

Capitalism allows few to gain more and more money. With no obligation to do anything other than spend it on themselves, more and more of the wealth begins to pile up on one side. Thus as one man makes a billion dollars a year, that is one billion that the workers cannot have. Eventually this begins to accumulate... it is not just one man making a billion, it is one man, his buddy and there accountants.

They are able to do this because they claim that they are gaurenteed the right to be exorbently rich. In American they usualy point to the freedom to pursue happiness.

And unless they are like Carnegy, they usually horde the money in vaults and like dragons sit atop their wealth and look down upon their 'pions.' In escence, capitalism means the freedom to be opressive through the control of money. Murphy's golden rule: "He with the gold makes the rules." So once the rich are on top, they can use their clout to guarentee their wealth... set taxes on people they consider 'low' from making too much money (capital gains tax).

So it is not capitalism itself that keeps the workers low, it is the fact that the rich are corrupt, and use their money to set laws and regulations in a way that they don't have to share their money, they don't have to spend their money, they just have to collect interest and sit upon their stash.

So the root of the problem is money... for the most part... greed and imperialism play their roles too...