I’ve been starting arguments about when capitalism went bad. I haven’t won any.

One reply is “When was it ever good?” Using common sense, which is the accumulation of our personal experiences, the conclusion is obvious: “capitalism is no danged good and never was.” But common sense, while nearly always correct, isn’t always adequate for analysis.

Another interesting reply was “It depends on your point of view.” I think that person was saying that things have always been bad for people of color and that the particular stages of economic circumstances haven’t made any difference. There’s a lot of truth there, but it’s a subjective and ahistorical view. Also, it’s easily disproved because “people of color” ruled vast empires in some periods.

I suppose I realized that capitalism used to be a good thing while reading Frederick Engels’ Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State. He relied on the work of another anthropologist to show that capitalism ended serfdom. The so-called “free” workers under capitalism had better lives than they did when they were serfs.

Some of the people I talked to were confused about chattel slavery in the American South. One guy said that it was the “heyday of slavery.” I had to interrupt this one, because the heyday of slavery was clearly in olden times when slaves were captives instead of chattel property. The Romans had so many slaves that they lived in terror of a slave takeover, and Spartacus nearly gave them one.

It’s true that the Southern slaveholders were capitalists, but it’s also true that the productive power of Northern capitalists was the main factor in winning that war. One could make a good argument that Southern slaves freed themselves, but it would still be true that they were better off afterward as so-called “free” workers.

I never argued that capitalists were good people. As far as I’m concerned they have about the same morality as the Tsar, Hitler, or any autocrat. That’s not the point. The point is that quality of life improved for those who had been serfs and became laborers under capitalism. They could quit their jobs and serfs couldn’t.

The reason that capitalists conquered everybody else was their productive power. They could produce more commodities and make them cheaper. Maybe they didn’t have any intention of improving anybody’s quality of life, but they did all the same.

When Did Capitalism Change?

So far, I’ve found only one person who agreed that capitalism improved standards of living at one time, but doesn’t do it now. He thought the change came at the beginning of the 19th century. I asked if he was basing his guess on the slave uprising in Haiti, but he said that wasn’t it. I think his guess was somehow based on military changes, not the economic changes I was looking for.

I believe that capitalism generally improved its subjects’ standards of living until the 20th century. At that time, they had pretty well completed their takeover of all the world’s territories. There were still plenty of kings and emperors, but the power had gone to the capitalists. Their problem was that they had nowhere else to expand, and they have to expand.

So they started their first world war. I think that having millions die or get crippled in war, and having even more die from the so-called “Spanish” flu, put a big dent in the overall standard of living. Afterward, the winners had big improvements in their standards of living, but the losers certainly didn’t.

Also, World War I didn’t offer any long term economic solution. Even the winners were in crisis soon enough, and another world war, this one originated by capitalists desperate enough to turn to fascism, resulted. These awful wars and the resultant inequality were a real drag on standards of living.

Americans were winners in both wars. Winning distorted our understanding of the historical process. Also, Americans don’t know much honest international history. If we did, we would know that war has been almost perpetual for the United States in the 20th and 21st centuries. We would also know that a general worldwide economic crisis has been evident.

If we understood our history and its underlying economic causes a little better, maybe we could avoid the coming fascist dictatorship and perpetual war that is trending now, in 2026.

–Gene Lantz

I’m on KNON.org 89.3FM in Dallas every Saturday at 9AM. I speak every where I’m allowed. I put my personal stuff on http://lilleskole.us.

I was inspired by an article about China’s views on the United Nations and restoring multilateralism in all international relations. They encourage the United Nations to stand up for it.

The opposite of multilateralism is intense competition, including wars between states. I think most of us would agree with what the Chinese say in the article, but is multilateralism even possible? Maybe we need some clarification.

What’s a State? What’s a Nation?

Let’s do the easy one first. A nation is a group of people sharing some things such as history, language, religion, and culture. A good example that we often use is the Cherokee nation. Lots of them live in Oklahoma because they were forced to move there when their state was subjugated.

A state is an administrative body through which a ruling class carries out its affairs, including the subjugation of any other economic class that might get in their way. Our modern state is not run by the Cherokees, even in Oklahoma. It is run by rich capitalists who command police, armies, prisons, and border agents to control or kill anybody penetrating their turf.

Borders Are Central to Capitalism

When capitalism began, around the middle of the 16th century in England, they tightly defined their borders. They defend those borders with every kind of armament. They don’t let anybody in or out without their permission. This fixation with borders was fairly new in history and doesn’t always make sense to working people.

Mexican Americans, for example, often say that they didn’t cross any borders but “the border crossed us.” Most of the Western United States was taken from Mexico, so it’s understandable that Mexican Americans believe they should be able to cross back and forth over the imaginary lines that capitalism established.

The way to understand capitalism’s borders is to think of gangster movies where the various criminals get together and define their “turf.” If a gangster is selling drugs on the wrong street corner, he/she is punished by the gang bosses. Similarly, capitalists established their borders by force of arms.

Borders Change, Or Get Changed

Long ago, what people called “China” was considerably bigger than what is pictured above.

“China,” or the “Mongol Empire” extended well into Europe, as you can see on this old map. The Mongols conquered a lot of territory, but subsequent dynasties lost it to other aggressors.

Plenty of modern borders weren’t drawn by the capitalists who lived there. They were drawn by the great imperialist powers. In World War I, for example, the Austrian Empire and the Ottoman Empire were on the losing side. Here’s a map from before the Great War:

Their former territories, along with a lot of Africa, were carved up by the victorious imperialists. Here’s a map of the Middle East from after WWI:

The joke goes that one of the squiggly lines on the border of Iraq was caused when somebody jostled Winston Churchill’s pencil.

Keep in mind that “nation” and “state” are entirely two different things, but nothing in this world is absolute and ideal. The Cherokee nation may not have its own state, but they have some administrative powers. There are nations that were able to win their own state. Pakistan is a good example.

Are We Going to Get the Multilateralism We Deserve?

No, we’re not. The modern state, with its defined borders and defending armies, is a capitalist creation. Capitalists have to expand. That’s why they had World War I, to settle who gets to expand where.

Remember the gangsters and their turf? Do you think the gangsters actually respect each other’s “territory” for any length of time?

We may long for socialism and the eventual “withering away” of states, but right now what we have is a world full of capitalist states and a few places where socialism is trying to defend itself from them.

After World War II, when the United States was firmly in control of most of the world’s economy, they were happy to allow the United Nations to exist. They talked about “multilateralism” all the time, just as long as they were the ones in charge.

But their hold on the world economy is slipping, and that’s exactly why they have started attacking other people’s borders. No border is safe.