If the Point of Capitalism Is to Escape Capitalism, Then Why Capitalism?

Capitalism is not a system of ideas, nor is it a system that anyone chooses. It is not designed, voted on, decreed, or managed. It has no governing authority, no standards organization. It has no dogma, creed, commandments, or constitution.

Capitalism is the natural order of things within human societies above a certain size and complexity level. It's more like a force of nature than anything else. To establish any system other than capitalism takes great effort.

What we can do is regulate it. It might be impossible to prevent corruption entirely in government. But to criticize capitalism in its contemporary manifestation is to criticize blatant regulatory capture, corruption, and demagoguery. Those phenomena are themselves manifestations of capitalism, and it is telling that they arise in capitalist and non-capitalist societies alike.

We need to develop new and better systems for keeping people honest and for keeping institutions fair. Without this development, human nature, not the distribution of capital ownership, remains the greatest threat to humanity.

Since I've been downvoted, I might as well clarify: this article exemplifies what I'm talking about!

First the author writes:

What is [the slave owner] really after? He’s trying to earn is freedom from labour — not having to do work, hence the slaves. He’s also trying to win freedom from exploitation — he holds the whip, but is above the moral law. And from control, punishment, hierarchy — he has no boss to answer to.

That's perfectly reasonable! Note that capitalism has nothing to do with this. People have always sought this. It might as well be part of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

But then they try to summarize themselves:

"Even the capitalist is really just trying win back his freedom from capitalism"

I guess that's true in this particular case, because for this particular capitalist the cause of their non-freedom is capitalism. But is it true in general? Absolutely not! Freedom from exploitation and the desire for control are universal human desires that extend beyond any particular economic system.

Once the false equivalence is broken, the article kinda stops making sense.

I said escape because at least I personally understand the target to be to free myself from any influence the market has on me.

The point of capitalism is freedom -- not from capitalism, but freedom - period.

In a capitalist society you are, in general, free to do whatever you want. If what you're doing is something that society deems sufficiently valuable then you tend to be able to make a living doing just that, even if it's something nobody would have ever thought to have made a living doing before. Imagine you hate capitalism. If enough people agree with you you're free to make a living writing and talking all about the evils of capitalism, selling your books, articles, Che t-shirts, and so on. Imagine you think communism is the best economic system. In a capitalist society you're free to buy up thousands of acres of land, invite some people onto your land, and then try to start your communist utopia.

By contrast in other economic systems, what you can or can't do tends to be decided by outside forces and the government in particular. No government is ever going to pay you to speak negatively of their system of governance. And the notion of buying thousands of acres of land to start a capitalist utopia would just be nonsensical in e.g. a communistic society. Your freedom is greatly restricted, and society is directed not by the people within that society but by an elite few -- you end up with the same problems as capitalism, but with none of the benefits. And this reality is almost certainly why all social economic systems seem to converge towards authoritarianism and failure to produce. People want to be the masters of their own destiny. Capitalism isn't perfect there, but it's certainly far better than any alternative.

Perhaps, but this might have more to do with the the public's ability to govern themselves soundly.

Marx actually had quite a bit to say about the "reproduction" of capitalism depending on the indoctrination of new generations. We have been witnessing this play out over the last 40 or so years in the USA, starting with the revival of right wing political movements.

Head on over to a hard-right corner of the Internet, and feel your jaw drop in amazement as you realize that they simply do not share the reality that you inhabit. This is the result of a successful decades long brainwashing campaign.