How to Be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century by Blinkist
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Sep 19, 2022 11:54 AM
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Blinkist
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How to Be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century by Blinkist
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Last updated December 26, 2023
Summary
How to Be an Anticapitalist in the 21st Century by Blinkist is a groundbreaking book on capitalism and the methods to challenge it. By diving into its history, ideology, and consequences, the book provides a comprehensive overview of capitalism's domination of public and private life, and how people can fight against it.
Key Learnings:
- An in-depth exploration of the long-term effects of capitalism- its history, ideology, and consequences.
- Practical strategies for how people can engage in activism, utilizing education, choice and political engagement.
- A look at the contemporary culture’s relationship with the economy and how it affects our lives.
UX Designers should consider reading this book to gain a better understanding of the financial and political conditions of the modern world and to gain insights into how a similar system of capitalism affects our day-to-day lives in the digital age.
Related Readings:
- UX For Lean Startups: Faster, Smarter User Experience Research and Design by Laura Klein
- The Art of Invisibility: The World's Most Famous Hacker Teaches You How to Be Safe in the Age of Big Brother and Big Data by Kevin Mitnick
- The Value Of Simple: A Practical Guide to Taking the Complexity Out of Investing by John Wasik
🎀 Highlights
from Occupy Wall Street in New York to Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece. Members of these movements believe that capitalism is not only deeply flawed, but can be replaced by an alternative system.
To produce all that prosperity that flows upward, most working adults are stuck in boring, unfulfilling jobs. To
The key message here is: Classical Marxism argues that opposition to capitalism should be based on workers’ class interests, not moral values.
According to classical Marxism, the class structure of capitalism is extremely simple: a binary division between workers and capitalists.
nowadays, the class structure of capitalism is more fragmentary. There are all sorts of differences in skill levels, wages, autonomy, and so on between, say, an office manager, a creative professional, and a grocery store clerk.
for most people to feel “on the fence” about capitalism, because their class interests pull them in both directions.
Friedrich Engels – Karl Marx’s closest comrade and coauthor of The Communist Manifesto. If ever there was an anticapitalist, Engels was one.
Friedrich Engels – Karl Marx’s closest comrade and coauthor of The Communist Manifesto.
Consider Friedrich Engels – Karl Marx’s closest comrade and coauthor of The Communist Manifesto. If ever there was an anticapitalist, Engels was one.
Consider Friedrich Engels – Karl Marx’s closest comrade and coauthor of The Communist Manifesto. If ever there was an anticapitalist, Engels was one. And yet he was also the son of a wealthy capitalist who owned a manufacturing company.
According to classical Marxism, Engels’s class interests would have been completely in favor of capitalism. So why did he oppose it? Because he found it morally offensive.
Anticapitalists need to recognize the importance of people’s moral values and identities.
the vast majority of us are, in fact, workers. In fact, putting aside the complications of modern-day capitalism’s fragmentary class structure, most of us still qualify as members of the working class in the classical Marxist sense of the term. We don’t own the means of production; we have to sell our labor power and work for a wage.
We also have genders, ethnicities, religions, nationalities, sexual orientations, professions – the list goes on and on. In reality, all of us have multifaceted identities made up of a complicated mixture of elements like these. Now,
We also have genders, ethnicities, religions, nationalities, sexual orientations, professions – the list goes on and on. In reality, all of us have multifaceted identities made up of a complicated mixture of elements like these.
we should cooperate with each other not just for the sake of advancing our individual self-interests, but out of a sense of togetherness and concern for each other’s mutual well-being.
in countries with democratic governments, most adults have the right to vote. This gives them the freedom of choosing between various politicians. But wealthy people and private institutions like banks, investment firms, and corporations exert much more influence over those politicians than ordinary people.
Under capitalism, these decisions are largely made by the capitalists who own those workplaces, which are essentially run like mini-dictatorships.
For instance, to get the policies they want, they can make campaign donations, engage in lobbying efforts, or simply threaten to move their capital or their business operations to a different city or country. In a fully democratic society, none of this would happen. Not only that, but democracy would mean so much more than just voting once a year. Remember, it would mean everyone being able to participate in decisions that impact their lives – including decisions about how work is organized and carried out at their workplaces. Under capitalism, these decisions are largely made by the capitalists who own those workplaces, which are essentially run like mini-dictatorships.
For instance, to get the policies they want, they can make campaign donations, engage in lobbying efforts, or simply threaten to move their capital or their business operations to a different city or country. In
including decisions about how work is organized and carried out at their workplaces. Under capitalism, these decisions are largely
While societies like the USSR claimed to be champions of socialism, they were really examples of an economic system that could more accurately be called statism – a system where the economy is controlled by the state. We don’t want that. But there’s another option: democratic socialism.
Democratic socialism provides an alternative to both statism and capitalism.
members of a worker cooperative might debate and vote on how to expand their operations, rather than having a decision imposed on them by the state or a capitalist.
Participatory budgeting committees could allow residents
Participatory budgeting committees could allow residents of cities to decide for themselves how public funds are spent in their own neighborhoods. Peer-to-peer collaborative production networks could allow innovators to link up and build things together on a similar model as Wikipedia.
Capitalism can be gradually eroded by, and replaced with, democratic socialism.
a government-issued universal basic income could allow workers to be financially secure enough to leave their jobs and form worker cooperatives.
the Meidner Plan – a policy that left-wing politicians in Sweden tried to carry out in the 1970s. If it had gone forward, it would have led to the ownership of Swedish corporations being gradually transferred from capitalists to labor unions.
Each of these strategies represents an approach to combating capitalism from a different direction. Together, they form a strategic configuration – a combination of strategies that work together. We can call it eroding capitalism – a way of gradually whittling away at our current economic system while building up a better one in its place.
from Occupy Wall Street in New York to Podemos in Spain and Syriza in Greece. Members of these movements believe that capitalism is not only deeply flawed, but can be replaced by an alternative system.
To produce all that prosperity that flows upward, most working adults are stuck in boring, unfulfilling jobs. To
The key message here is: Classical Marxism argues that opposition to capitalism should be based on workers’ class interests, not moral values.
According to classical Marxism, the class structure of capitalism is extremely simple: a binary division between workers and capitalists.
nowadays, the class structure of capitalism is more fragmentary. There are all sorts of differences in skill levels, wages, autonomy, and so on between, say, an office manager, a creative professional, and a grocery store clerk.
for most people to feel “on the fence” about capitalism, because their class interests pull them in both directions.
Friedrich Engels – Karl Marx’s closest comrade and coauthor of The Communist Manifesto. If ever there was an anticapitalist, Engels was one.
Friedrich Engels – Karl Marx’s closest comrade and coauthor of The Communist Manifesto.
Consider Friedrich Engels – Karl Marx’s closest comrade and coauthor of The Communist Manifesto. If ever there was an anticapitalist, Engels was one.
Consider Friedrich Engels – Karl Marx’s closest comrade and coauthor of The Communist Manifesto. If ever there was an anticapitalist, Engels was one. And yet he was also the son of a wealthy capitalist who owned a manufacturing company.
According to classical Marxism, Engels’s class interests would have been completely in favor of capitalism. So why did he oppose it? Because he found it morally offensive.
Anticapitalists need to recognize the importance of people’s moral values and identities.
the vast majority of us are, in fact, workers. In fact, putting aside the complications of modern-day capitalism’s fragmentary class structure, most of us still qualify as members of the working class in the classical Marxist sense of the term. We don’t own the means of production; we have to sell our labor power and work for a wage.
We also have genders, ethnicities, religions, nationalities, sexual orientations, professions – the list goes on and on. In reality, all of us have multifaceted identities made up of a complicated mixture of elements like these. Now,
We also have genders, ethnicities, religions, nationalities, sexual orientations, professions – the list goes on and on. In reality, all of us have multifaceted identities made up of a complicated mixture of elements like these.
we should cooperate with each other not just for the sake of advancing our individual self-interests, but out of a sense of togetherness and concern for each other’s mutual well-being.
in countries with democratic governments, most adults have the right to vote. This gives them the freedom of choosing between various politicians. But wealthy people and private institutions like banks, investment firms, and corporations exert much more influence over those politicians than ordinary people.
Under capitalism, these decisions are largely made by the capitalists who own those workplaces, which are essentially run like mini-dictatorships.
For instance, to get the policies they want, they can make campaign donations, engage in lobbying efforts, or simply threaten to move their capital or their business operations to a different city or country. In a fully democratic society, none of this would happen. Not only that, but democracy would mean so much more than just voting once a year. Remember, it would mean everyone being able to participate in decisions that impact their lives – including decisions about how work is organized and carried out at their workplaces. Under capitalism, these decisions are largely made by the capitalists who own those workplaces, which are essentially run like mini-dictatorships.
For instance, to get the policies they want, they can make campaign donations, engage in lobbying efforts, or simply threaten to move their capital or their business operations to a different city or country. In
including decisions about how work is organized and carried out at their workplaces. Under capitalism, these decisions are largely
While societies like the USSR claimed to be champions of socialism, they were really examples of an economic system that could more accurately be called statism – a system where the economy is controlled by the state. We don’t want that. But there’s another option: democratic socialism.
Democratic socialism provides an alternative to both statism and capitalism.
members of a worker cooperative might debate and vote on how to expand their operations, rather than having a decision imposed on them by the state or a capitalist.
Participatory budgeting committees could allow residents
Participatory budgeting committees could allow residents of cities to decide for themselves how public funds are spent in their own neighborhoods. Peer-to-peer collaborative production networks could allow innovators to link up and build things together on a similar model as Wikipedia.
Capitalism can be gradually eroded by, and replaced with, democratic socialism.
a government-issued universal basic income could allow workers to be financially secure enough to leave their jobs and form worker cooperatives.
the Meidner Plan – a policy that left-wing politicians in Sweden tried to carry out in the 1970s. If it had gone forward, it would have led to the ownership of Swedish corporations being gradually transferred from capitalists to labor unions.
Each of these strategies represents an approach to combating capitalism from a different direction. Together, they form a strategic configuration – a combination of strategies that work together. We can call it eroding capitalism – a way of gradually whittling away at our current economic system while building up a better one in its place.
