The expectations of Capital and the ism's of Capital
Capitalism is the dominant economy in the western world, with all countries in the world exhibiting some form of it or another including China, Cuba, Vietnam and even North Korea. Capitalism is defined as a Economic and even Political system with 3 main characteristics; 1) Private ownership over the means of production, 2) A market in which goods and services can be bought and sold on for capital exchange, 3) Wage labour. Capitalism is expressed through many ism's throughout the world, this list includes Corporatism, Social Democracy, Conservatism, Fascism, Liberalism and even Democratic Socialism to name a few. They all rely on variations of the Capitalist Economic model and there are expectations of the Public under these variations of the system, i want to outline the expectations of how to handle certain situations that occur under the mode of production.
In Capitalism, the public are expected to work hard to gain capital (financial, cultural and social capital) in order to expand their realm of influence and increase their own standard of living, a kind of work hard and you shall be rewarded kind of model. But there are many schemes that have arisen out of Capitalism that aim to try and pick people out and reward them with financial capital with the expectation that they will use such Capital to further themselves and gain more capital, usually through wise investment and such. But statistically from what we know most people who gain capital from these schemes don't usually succeed in gaining more capital, they usually end up spending it all on luxuries and results in them not having the capital to use in investment. The reason isn't down to stupidity it's down to the failure of Capitalism to ensure that the population know how to look after large sums of money, if you give the poor a large sum of money they've never seen before and stick them in a situation where they've seen all the luxuries they can buy with such money, all they are going to do is panic and buy all of the Social Capital that will further their social status such as cars, yacht's and other expensive goods/services. Poor people make bad decisions when given sums of money that is out of their normality not because they are stupid but because they have a image of what people expect to do with that kind of money.
If Marx were alive today he would likely say that schemes like the Lottery are simply a long term entertainment and confirmation to the bourgeois that they should remain in charge because if everyone had their money the economy would fail due to everyone outside of the privileged classes spending it all and not using it wisely, this confirms what they thought already and continues the status quo. The added issue is, it is not just the lottery but things such as the Universal Basic Income, UBI on paper is a great idea as it does in theory get rid of economic inequality but all it does in Marx's eyes is do the bare minimum to make life easier under capitalism. The capital given out during UBI is not enough to further oneself in Capitalism, as investing in the markets requires some degree of education in how they work and that is not taught in public schooling, the reason its not taught in public schooling is because the upper classes want to keep the in-flowing capital to themselves, they hark on about loving competition but in practice they don't, by keeping the working classes outta the socio-economic ladder all they do is keep the poor poorer and themselves richer. Handing out large sums of money to working class people is no skin off of the ruling classes back as they know the working classes are just going to spend it on expensive stuff, stuff that the ruling classes own the production of so the money the poor spend goes back to them, so on top of actually fuelling the upper classes it keeps the system in a perpetual cycle.
The Ism's in which Capitalism are manipulated and twisted to make life easier either on the working classes such as Social Democracy and Democratic Socialism, or the upper classes such as Fascism and Conservatism simply manipulate the tools of the upper classes rather than punish or restrict the rule of them. Social Democracy is the most popular amongst the working classes as it brings in things such as Progressive tax codes, Free healthcare and free education into the realm of the working classes. But this is not enough in order to balance out the gap in wealth between the working classes and the upper classes, since in regards to free education what ends up occurring is that when tuition's go down, the standard of education also goes down. Now, Conservatives reading this, i am not calling for tuition fee's, quite the contrary. I am calling for the abolition of money all together, because if money was abolished then the educational facilities would be free to outline their curriculum according to the jobs available at the time in their communities as well as teach the skills needed by the students to go into whatever job market they wanted to go into.
We've all heard that Communists wish to make everyone equally poor, but this is a ridiculous statement that almost makes itself redundant. Communists like me aren't trying to make everyone poor, Communists believe that material possessions don't make a man rich or happy, they simply give him the means to communicate to his fellow man. This idea of material possessions is wrong and the idea that you need wealth to be taken seriously in society is also wrong, humans are naturally social creatures, by driving a wedge between people in the way of wealth accumulation you are creating a war amongst normal people. If you get rid of the means that people accumulate wealth from eg money, then you get rid of the wedge that creates things such as classism, sexism, racism and so on. By getting rid of money and allowing the working man to run his business with his comrades and have his basic needs met simply by helping his community then you get rid of the stress created by Capital. If you define your life by the material possessions you own then you are going to be a very lonely and sad person for the rest of your life. Like Bob Marley said:
"The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively"