Profit over people: Inhumanity of capitalism

Capitalism and its prioritizing of wealth accumulation has a profound psychological effect on people.  

In "The Power of Money," Karl Marx says, "Money is the procurer between man's need and the object, between his life and his means of life.  But that which mediates my life for me, also mediates the existence of other people for me.  For me it is the other person." Marx is arguing that when money is the medium of exchange, everything is looked at in terms of how much money it is worth, even if that "object" is a person.  

How much does a minimum wage worker deserve to make?  Their worth is dependent on how valuable their job is, not the virtue of the person.  Just because a job may be objectively easy to do, that doesn't mean the labor itself is any less intensive.  I know this from five consistent years of minimum wage work.  When anyone is asked why minimum wage workers don't make more, however, the answer is always dependent on the amount of wealth somebody is accumulating off of that labor, on the logical nature of business within a capitalist structure.

Then, it begs the question, what is the goal of a society?  To create an environment where human needs are met, people can live with freedom, sufficient opportunity to become a well-rounded individual, to provide an environment where there is an established quality of life and to pursue their interests.  I argue that capitalism does not create this kind of society, neither in the United States nor around the world.  

Without a laboring class (who does all the work, with the lowest wages), wealth could not be accumulated at such an astonishing rate by the bourgeoisie; capitalism is a system predicated on worker exploitation.  The great ethicist and philosopher Immanuel Kant claimed that it is fundamentally immoral to use people as a means to an end, and that is exactly what capitalism does.  It uses people as a means of labor to meet an end of accumulated profit.

More humane systems of government are out there; capitalism is not an inherent trait of human life or society.  Capitalism has not always existed and will not always exist.  We should actively try to create a global society that places human values and needs over the pursuit of profit.  After all, we are human beings.  

It is time to realize that each person's needs are as profound as our own, and to ignore the suffering that capitalism creates; ‘because we like really cool gadgets' is a fundamentally immoral position.  As the anthropologist David Graeber has said:

"The things we care most about — our loves, passions, rivalries, obsessions — are always other people; and in most societies that are not capitalist, it's taken for granted that the manufacture of material goods is a subordinate moment in a larger process of fashioning people. In fact, I would argue that one of the most alienating aspects of capitalism is the fact that it forces us to pretend that it is the other way around, and that societies exist primarily to increase their output of things."

Sean Tipton is a junior in philosophy. The opinions expressed in his columns do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Barometer staff. Tipton can be reached at forum@dailybarometer.com.