This article outlines the contradictions of authoritarian or capitalism, or the ways in which capitalists contradict their own values. As such, this article takes private property rights, markets and corporations for granted. Even if we as libertarian socialists have our own critiques of these ideas.
General Contradictions
Property Rights
- Capitalists often assert their belief in private property rights, that it's morally unacceptable to violate these and steal from people or coerce them into things. Despite this, history is filled with examples of capitalists contradicting their own principles.
- Capitalist countries like Australia, Brazil, Canada, Finland, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden and the United States regularly see corporations and the state working to violate the property rights of indigenous communities to make way for development and natural resource extraction. (Specific details are available on each countries page)
- Wage theft is an epidemic in capitalist countries despite it being illegal in all of them.
- A 2017 report by Middlesex University and Trust for London revealed that at least 2 million workers in Britain are losing an estimated £3 billion in unpaid holiday pay and wages per year. It suggested that withholding holiday pay, not paying wages and workers losing a couple of hours money per week are some of the deliberate strategies used by employers to improve their profits.[1]
- A 2012 study by the Iowa Policy Project calculated that dishonest employers defraud Iowa workers out of about $600 million annually in wages.[2]
Australia
- The entire country is built on theft from over 250 indigenous nations that was violently destroyed by the British Empire with a systemic campaign of massacres and segregation. Even today, the special land rights given to indigenous people are frequently violated for the benefit of large corporations.
- A 2019 report put the annual figure for wage theft in Australia at more than $1.35 billion and estimated as much as 13% of the total workforce has been affected – more than a million people.[3]
New Zealand
From 1984 to 1989, New Zealand rapidly shifted to a more capitalist society and away from social democracy, with measures such as: