Capitalism requires a lack of human solidarity that renders humanity’s greatest problems unsolvable.
Humanity will never arrive at the beloved community through property rights alone. When ethics are crafted from rights of possession, the working poor become like sawdust in a carpenter’s shop. They are seen as the tragic but inevitable victims of economic necessity, instead of as members of our one human family.
For many bewitched by capitalism, the word “freedom” no longer refers to personal human rights. For many, the word “freedom” now means “freedom to hoard, pollute and mistreat workers.
Many Americans now evaluate our national economy by how many billionaires it can produce, instead of how well it improves the lives of the masses.
Think of the cost of incarcerating immigrants and criminalizing homelessness. There is need to protect society from violent predators, but the land of the free now imprisons more of its people than almost any other country.
The answers to environmental challenges and to homelessness in America will never be found within capitalism’s cold blooded analysis. For example, the problem of homelessness in the richest nation on earth would not seem so intractable if we put people ahead of profits.
The answer to homelessness in America might be to take the same amounts we now waste on prisons and detention camps. We would actually save money by not employing walls, weapons and prison guards, and we would save our own hearts by refusing to build cages for the indigent members of our human family.