Theresa May understands nothing if she doesn’t understand that lattes and laptops are not the issue, but rather how they are produced, and who controls the production process. This is the target for the anti-capitalist protesters’ anger.
On last week’s Question Time, Theresa May scoffed that the ‘anti-capitalist protesters’ at St. Paul’s somehow lack authenticity because they had the occasional cup of Starbucks and write up their communiqués on Apple Macs. Amy Jones, going undercover for The Sun, italicised this phrase in Saturday’s edition, so that even children may understand she’s making An Important Point: “Earnest looking youngsters discuss the evils of capitalism while sipping lattes and tapping away on their Macbooks.”
But products are not the point: how they are produced is what matters. It’s the pro-capitalist who obsesses over products – the object – which they point at with awe and admiration: “Look, look: isn’t capitalism clever? It’s made a Macbook”. But capitalism isn’t clever: human ingenuity and creativity are. The things we need and want can potentially be created by different economic and political systems.
No, capitalism didn’t create your Macbook: someone in a Far-East ‘free trade zone’ did – possibly a child, and almost certainly someone who’s overworked and underpaid. Capitalism, however, made the capitalist who exploited that person’s labour very rich indeed. It is obviously absurd to focus on lattes or laptops. The system that generates rampant inequality is at fault – and that system is the target for protesters’ anger.
Of course, the opposite of an anti-capitalist is not a capitalist. There are only two classes of people: those who control enough capital to employ workers – the capitalists – and those who do not – the workers.
Another criticism the pro-capitalists lay at the door of St. Paul’s is that the protesters are only anti, and have nothing to argue for. But how many pro-capitalists can properly articulate exactly what they are for? Just the mom and pop, freedom and democracy variety? Or also the kind that creates war for resource control? It’s presumably a tiny percentage of pro-capitalists that would be willing to stand on St. Paul’s steps and give an impassioned defence of the arms industry.
Do the pro-capitalists, like Nietzsche’s flies, sting in all innocence? Are they simply ignorant or are they knowingly protecting their positions of power and privilege? Perhaps it’s some mixture of the two, firing out defensive salvos to assuage the guilt of being part of a system that watches half the world go to sleep hungry every night. Whatever it is, in the words of Robert Tressell: “we must conclude that they do not understand socialism…”
