Critics of capitalism are not in short supply—they can be found in various environments, in different forms, and with varying intensity. However, a significant portion of them practice anti-capitalism in a superficial and incomplete manner, not addressing the fundamental flaws of the system or treating them merely as a side note. The focus is predominantly on the inequalities that naturally arise in this system, its unjust character, and structural exploitation. Moderate leftists hardly ever go beyond this line of criticism—but, more worryingly, the same can be said for many radical leftist circles.
The Main Problem with Capitalism
Meanwhile, the fundamental ailment of capitalism is structural: it is the anarchy of production and the primacy of private profit over social interest, which hinder economic growth, scientific and technological progress, and the development of productive forces. Therefore, the primary goal of any consistent anti-capitalist should be the ultimate dismantling of the market economy and its replacement with central planning—to accelerate the pace of civilizational progress. I certainly do not intend to downplay the importance of social justice and inequality—it is a very serious issue that should be strongly emphasized in public debate. Nevertheless, the issue of the structural conflict between market production relations and the development of productive forces is incomparably more serious: these two pathologies are to each other as the flu is to cancer.
Why Productive Forces Are the Foundation
As we know, it is the level of development of productive forces that primarily determines human existence. Our species achieved dominance over the planet and entered a qualitatively higher level of existence than the rest of the animals mainly due to our mental superiority. Higher levels of intelligence, creativity, the ability to accumulate knowledge, and speech—these traits allowed humans to win the biological lottery and become masters of the world. These traits did not manifest in a vacuum but in society, and they existed on a specific medium—elements of the surrounding natural world that were subjected to deliberate transformation to serve humans. Greater amounts of knowledge, intelligence, and more skilled labor, and their accumulation over time, increasingly allowed people to escape the terrifying, cruel reality of nature. In the animal world, suffering is ubiquitous and very difficult to escape or alleviate. There is no remedy for diseases, and every day millions of creatures are eaten alive with full awareness, die in terrible agony as a result of broadly defined accidents, or starve to death. The vast majority of species in the history of the planet have already gone extinct. And the only purpose of life for these creatures is essentially the reproduction of the species.
Even primitive humans qualitatively set themselves above the described world, and subsequent pages in the epic of their history were filled with increasing detachment from this reality. Over the centuries, we gained the ability to fight not only predators but also microbes and natural elements. Then, unfavorable biological processes within the organism and problems arising from limited natural resources began to join this group. The fight for comfort in life, rather than just survival, became the next campaign in which the human species began to achieve victories, making the lives of subsequent generations more pleasant and happier than those of previous generations. Finally, the non-material aspect also plays a significant role—that is, activity related to giving life meaning in a broader, metaphysical dimension, the scope and depth of which have significantly increased with the development of the species.
There is no doubt that the main driver of this progress was the expansion of knowledge and intellectual abilities of humanity and their translation into the ability to increasingly abundant and versatile exploitation and modification of material and energy resources from the surrounding world. Therefore, scientific and technological progress, economic growth, i.e., the development of productive forces. Thanks to this, instead of going hunting from which we might not return, we go to the supermarket, and death from hunger is a distant abstraction for us. We can enjoy the privilege of worrying about losing a match in CS rather than the plague decimating the city. Travel to another continent is measured not in months but in hours. Luxury for us is not access to electricity but access to a Lamborghini. And when a storm occurs, we know it refers to electrical discharges in the atmosphere, not the activities of Zeus or Thor.
But as mentioned, humans realize these traits in society, so the condition for their successful course is the positive adaptation of the structure of society to the development of productive forces. If a system does not favor this, it is obviously—the fundamental nature of the level of development of productive forces for the human species—the greatest flaw it can have.
By the way, the entire above discourse can, of course, be summarized in principle in two words: historical materialism.
Two Reasons for Superficial Criticism
Capitalist production relations decisively hinder the development of productive forces due to the conflict between the social character of the functioning and development of productive forces and the individual character of the direction of the regulator (the primacy of profit over public interest) and its fragmented structure (anarchy of production). It is obvious that if we seriously want to criticize capitalism, the main axis of criticism will be precisely this. It is shocking, therefore, that in many cases, this is not so. We can identify at least two main reasons for this state of affairs.
The first is the internalization of market dogmas by the left. After the collapse of the USSR and the fall of the people's democracies, the ruling class declared the end of history, gave the market economy the title of the only effective one in innovations, rational allocation of resources, and high economic growth, and elevated the writings of Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek on central planning to the rank of scientific laws—like the theories of Newton or Einstein in physics or Darwin in biology. The omnipresence, power, and monopoly of this narrative in all aspects of social life led to its internalization by a very large part of the left. The left, deprived of its strongest argument, was left only with lower-ranking arguments. So, if it was not possible to criticize capitalism for hindering the development of productive forces, at least the issue of such evident inequalities generated by this system and its generally unjust character was raised—an issue that even bourgeois narrative could not deny. After some time, this unfortunately went deeper because even such a poor left could not count on the tolerance of capital. This was undermined by narratives about heroic entrepreneurs and associating every critic of capitalism with the propaganda image of socialism. As a result, we got not the left but leftism—groups that present themselves as the left but in fact focus mainly not on economic issues but on identity and customs, fighting gender and orientation instead of class struggle, and criticizing capitalism only occasionally and not directly.
Another group consists of people who miss the mark with materialism in their view of the world. Instead of being guided by the state of tangible, material reality in a scientific way, they are guided by abstract ideals. However noble the ideas of equality and justice are, and of course, we share them, unfortunately, they are not the main factor shaping human existence—the state of development of productive forces is. Justice and equality are desirable and should be fought for, but they will not feed a family, cure diseases, provide lasting satisfaction in life, or save from disasters. However, it is around these factors that these groups create their anti-capitalist narrative, completely losing sight of the key, material ground, thinking that this is what Marxism is about.
This matter is absolutely not something that a Marxist should be indifferent to. It is not just another perspective on criticizing the system. It is a process leading to the merging of the image of a critic of capitalism with someone who is not a materialist and does not fundamentally question the foundations of the market economy. We get the image of an anti-capitalist as someone who does not think in a scientific, materialistic, civilizational, and technocratic way but—guided by lofty ideals—thinks mainly emotionally and ideologically. And as the main flaws of capitalism, such a narrative cements those of its features that are not even its greatest flaws, thanks to which the structural hindrance of the development of productive forces becomes negligible in public debate, and the dogma of the market as the most effective regulator becomes even stronger and unquestionable, since even critics of the market economy do not dare to deny it.
Hence, rarely on the left does something appear that goes beyond market regulation and redistribution of income within its framework—so the left does not even bring postulates negating capitalism as such. And if it does, it often takes the form of a modified market economy, which still constitutes a form of capitalism, as I wrote about in the article on cooperatives. The extremes of the distortion of the image of the left are taken by these processes in the case of leftism, which creates the image of the left as being primarily concerned with identity and customs issues rather than economic ones. This, in turn, gives liberals a monopoly on emphasizing economic issues.
As a result, the left is effectively disarmed by capital, and the existing groups that claim to be the left can be a safe, licensed opposition that does not negate the foundations of the system or pose any rational threat. Standing on the same market platform, it is very easy to refute the "leftist" narrative about criticizing capitalism for inequalities by arguing that even if the cake is not divided equally, it only grows so quickly in a market economy—so there is no better alternative. And such a defender of capitalism will, of course, be right from the point of view of historical materialism. And regarding the very foundation of the system—the market as the main regulator—there is not even a dispute between such a leftist and an apologist for capital. From this materialistic perspective, it is even easier to discredit a leftist idealist throwing out high-sounding phrases as detached from a scientific-materialistic attitude. In this way, the main essence of Marxist thinking is stolen from the radical left by capital!
What Is Real Anti-Capitalism
Therefore, it must be firmly stated once and for all what real and serious anti-capitalism is. It is, above all, drawing attention to the contradiction between market production relations and the development of productive forces. It is pointing out to the capitalist system its anarchy of production and the overriding primacy of profit. It is indicating the suppression of innovation and the slowing down of scientific and technological progress. It is showing the waste of resources and their immanent misallocation. It is drawing attention to cyclical crises of overproduction. It is demonstrating that under this system, economic growth is structurally and dramatically hindered.
Socialism as an Alternative
The alternative to the capitalist market economy is the socialist centrally planned economy, whose main advantage lies in accelerating the development of productive forces. It is socialism that will enable achieving economic growth rates at levels that are completely unrealistic in capitalism and finally end the structural waste of resources and their misallocation. Let us also note that it is capitalists and their political and ideological support that treat low growth rates as something normal. For them, for example, 6-7% annually is already terribly high, for us, it is laughably low. Socialism will first show what innovation and scientific and technological flourishing are. The planned economy will show us how much potential lies in human intellect and how meager the "breakthroughs" in the contemporary market world have been. It is precisely the design of the world scientifically and technocratically—to tune it for the fastest and most efficient civilizational progress—that is the greatest advantage that socialism offers and at the same time constitutes the greatest good that human society can receive. A better world undoubtedly requires justice and equality—and one of the great advantages of socialism is precisely that it can provide them. However, socialism first and foremost provides something that is far more necessary to create a better reality—the free development of productive forces: more electricity, steel, plastics and synthetic substances, and cement; a higher level of development of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology; better medicine and healthcare; a higher level of computing power and electronics; a greater range of engineering advancement; faster, more efficient, and more productive transport and communication.
As a species, we have already achieved an incredible amount. But we are only at the beginning of the road. We have not yet completely won against disasters, diseases, imperfections of our human construction, limited environmental resources. We are still only fighting for survival instead of free and comprehensive development and expression as human beings. We still suffer from numerous unpleasantness and inconveniences. Finally—we still mean little as a small, clumsy, microscopic speck in the Universe. On the Kardashev scale, we have not even reached level I. There is still a lot to do in civilizational development ahead of us, and a very long road awaits us—but for this road to be good, successful, and effective, it must be the road of socialism.