Capitalism

From The Matrix

Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership and control of capital and the means of production. In capitalism, capitalists own almost all the land, and everything that comes from the land. People are forced to respect this "ownership" of the land by the threat of violence, delivered through the state.

Those who don't own enough land to live from (everybody except the capitalists) must work for capitalists in exchange for a wage, much of which they must give back to other capitalists as rent. The rest of the wage can be given to other capitalists in exchange for things that are required for survival.

Those who don't want to work for a capitalist will find themselves unable to obtain food, shelter, water, medical care, and other basic necessities that are controlled by capitalists. The state does not use violence to make people work. Rather, it allows them to die from starvation, thirst, disease, and exposure to the elements. Since almost everybody chooses to work, rather than die, capitalists claim that working for them is voluntary.

The wage is deliberately low enough that a wage earner can only survive a little while on a single paycheck. This way, wage earners will keep going back to capitalists for more work, rather than living independently of capitalists (the crack-addict effect). By keeping the workers dependent on them, capitalists can make arbitrary requirements of them: Capitalists are able to coerce workers into working specific hours during a day, and a certain number of hours per week. They can make rules that the workers must follow, and they can "discipline" them for breaking those rules. In some cases, capitalists make rules that workers must follow even when they are not at work. Workers have almost no bargaining power, so the capitalists' arbitrary requirements are usually non-negotiable.

The products produced by workers for a wage become the property of the capitalists.

Workers then sell the resulting products on behalf of the capitalists, and are compelled to give the money to the capitalists. The capitalists then pay a portion of this money back to the workers, and keep the rest for themselves. The portion of the money kept by the capitalists is called profit. The net result is that the workers are being robbed because the capitalists enrich themselves with money that ought to belong to the workers who earned it. Workers are also oppressed, because of the massive leverage that capitalists have over them. Thanks to this leverage, the workers lose 45 years or more of their lives taking orders from totalitarian corporations, and the remainder is spent suffering injuries caused by working.