In a capitalist society, the historical economic basis of this regime is private property over the means of production and the exploitation of salaried work, generating in this dynamic, two main classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, classes that have undergone strong changes. in its composition over the last three centuries (19th, 20th and 21st).
The bourgeoisie owns the main means of production in industry, the economy, the financial sphere, transport, advertising (media), etc., as well as the land (landlords, bourgeois or oligarchs) and the subsoil. It is a class that accumulates its wealth and, consequently, the power to exploit the wage labor of workers and employees.
The upper layer of the bourgeoisie, that of millionaires and billionaires, that of Big Capital, is small in number, but it has an enormous industrial-financial potential and the powers of the State (Armed Forces included) are frequently subordinated to its interests when directing its policy politically and externally, imposing its will on society as a whole. On an international scale, the big bourgeoisie, from different countries, forms corporations and international banks that divide the world into zones of influence.
The big bourgeoisie, nowadays, acts as a brake on the path of humanization of social life, distorting the paths of individual and collective freedom by preaching ideas of violence, exclusivism and discrimination. In addition, the big bourgeoisie of the western world, in its unbridled logic of accumulating wealth and power, makes use of the strategy, developed centuries ago, of exercising violence in all its forms, including physical violence that translates into looting of wealth , invasions and / or promote civil wars in territories far from their own borders.
For about five decades, capitalism has entered a phase in which the predominant economic power factor is finance capital. The private banking system is the current main accumulator of resources and the nucleus of real power behind formal power.
Real capital, that of the means of production that generate goods and services, remained in the hands of finance capital.
The private banking system is the vanguard of an operation that configures a kind of private financial imperialism. The intertwined network of figures, fiduciary and fictitious mechanisms that organize the economic system has private banks as its main visible actor, complementing and articulating with investment funds, risk rating agencies, tax dens or “havens”, offices “specialized” law firms in economics and finance, large international audit firms, large accounting firms, real estate agents, financial consultants, wealth management systems, stock exchanges and their agents, insurers and reinsurers, trusts and numerous legal figures which aim to obtain an ever-increasing share of the revenues of the real economy. The fractional creation of money, the generation of bonds, commodities, derivatives, financial securitizations, constitute the main technical instruments, which make up what they call “financial assets” and “financial products”; euphemisms with which they refer to the means they invented as instruments of appropriation, theft and fraud, of what the real economy produces: that of labor and capital.
The so-called capitalist, neoliberal and patriarchal globalization was centrally promoted from the USA, and found its main allies in the leadership of England, Central Europe and Japan.
Neoliberal capitalist cultural pragmatism can then be summarized as:
- Placing money as a core value
- Appropriating real wealth
- Short-term view in decision-making
- Lack of compassion for the “losers” of the system
- Cynicism when looting is done in the name of human rights and democracy or when peoples and societies are violated through invasions, wars and
- Widespread neocolonialism, in addition to the permanent promotion of different forms of social escape.
Capitalism is ultimately the exercise of commodification, alienation and oppression by a small minority over large majorities in all aspects of life.