To All Those Cheerleaders of Capitalism..

(Just a thought)

I promised myself that I wouldn’t let this image sit on my blog without some context for too long.  Since our lecture this week was a condensed one, I wanted to take this blog post as an opportunity to reflect on some of the larger concepts we’ve discussed throughout this semester and (hopefully) generate some thoughts to go towards my final paper topic for this class.  Recently, our discussions in class have seemed to concern themselves, to an extent, with the idea of a potential alternative/solution to capitalism.  For a long time, until a few weeks ago, honestly, I had resigned myself to the idea that there was no real alternative to capitalism, despite how much we may want there to be.  I mostly felt this way because of the ubiquity of capitalism, of which this class has only made me all the more aware.  As I thought about all of the areas of our lives that capitalism has extended itself into—technology, social mediation, information control, war, even education—escape seemed futile. 

            I’ve spoken a few times about the radical, brutal efforts that it would take to over throw capitalism, and for the most part I still believe this to be true.  Overthrowing capitalism does not seem like a likely solution to the inequitable, often exploitative circumstances often brought about by capitalism itself.  We are too ingrained in a capitalist system, too set in our ways.  If you think this mentality is part of the problem, then maybe I sound like a fatalist, but I am yet to see any evidence towards and kind of a real global insurrection against capitalism, so I’m erring on the side of pragmatism here.  So, if we can’t overthrow capitalism, how can we make it a more equitable and less exploitative system?  Is this even a possibility?  I am interested in looking at the idea of a democratic capitalism that can act as a counter example to some of the more virulent oppositions to capitalism such as imperialism, inequity, oppression and exploitation.  I would like to explore the notion of democratic capitalism, and other “types” of capitalism as a final paper or possibly as an extended future blog post.