There is Nothing Natural about Capitalism

Capitalism: a system designed to make people, sick, anxious, stressed, depressed, alienated - and so also dependent on addictive medications which make trillion $ profits for the pharmaceutical corporations.

Question
Has capitalism really been designed to be like that? Wasn't capitalism firstly natural process of giving out and receiving that got misused and abused by big corporations by only receiving and not giving back? I would not blame capitalism as itself but the corrupted and greedy individuals.

Answer
 I suggest you watch the video BELOW on capitalism and markets and many others by Richard Wolff and others on YouTube. These give a basic and elementary understanding of what 'capitalism' is, how it works - and how it is different from earlier, pre-capitalist societies (feudal societies, slave societies etc.). Like most people, you clearly have been told nothing about the history capitalism as a social and economic system. This was explained by Karl Marx.

Capitalism began in England by violently forcing peasants off the land, and taking away their ownership of the land and means of production. Artisans and craftsmen who, in the past, made and sold their own products with their own tools could not compete with industrial methods of production. This meant that most people could no longer not produce stuff for themselves or to 'naturally give out' and 'receive' on the market. Instead they had NOTHING to sell or give out but their own 'labour power' or ability to work. So they were forced to work in big unhealthy factories - in which, to begin with, even young children worked 18 hours or more a day in terrible factory conditions (They still do in many countries).

Capitalism was the FIRST and ONLY economic system in the whole of human history in which people had to sell their working ability and time to employers just to live - because they had nothing else to sell - and because they couldn't produce anything by themselves (because they didn't own the machinery of production). Capitalism can only survive and make profits by keeping the cost of paying workers as low as possible. No one will give anyone a job in capitalism (including you!) unless - in principle - the work that you do produces more money for your employer - the capitalist, than you, or any worker - 'receives' in wages. This is nothing 'natural'!!! It also has nothing at all to do with the 'greed' of individual capitalists or corporations. It is just the way the system works! This is because all capitalists are in competition with each others and are forced to keep the cost of labour down to the socially and globally average minimum.

Capitalism is also not the same things as today's 'big corporations' - which developed out of capitalism as a system to increase productivity and reduce labour costs. Capitalism as a system is a set of 'relationships of production' in which a minority of people (capitalists) own the technology of production and everyone else is forced to sell their time and labour to the capitalist - but without receiving back EITHER the full value of their working time OR finding any fulfilment of their individual human potentials through their work.

A society based on what you call "natural process of giving out and receiving" only ever existed in primitive tribal communities. It is the aim of socialism and communism to restore such a system on a higher level. Note: Most i-phone and computers are produced in China, where the companies have to put nets up on the factory roof to prevent workers committing suicide. Apple and similar companies get most of the profit. The workers are forced to do many hours overtime on mindlessly repetitive jobs which destroy their souls. They live in sub-standard housing, five or more workers in one room. That is because, as in 19th century England, they were forced off the land (in China after the Mao era) and had to go to the cities to work in factories or on constructions sites and leave their families and children behind. Even students are often forced into what Marx called 'wage slavery' of this kind. But in reality anyone who works for an employer in any country is a 'wage slave' - because they do not 'naturally receive' or get back the full value of their work - which goes only to their employer as profit, and then to shareholders and to Wall St. The employer might be a nice guy or a bad and greedy guy - but this makes absolutely no difference to the capitalist system.

PS there is also no democracy in capitalism: you have to do what your boss tells you to do - or the boss will find someone else to replace you. Companies and corporations are all economic dictatorships. So political democracy is fake democracy. And even if you do not work in a factory but are an IT worker you are a wage-slave - an 'i-slave'. In fact i-slaves are increasingly replacing factory wage-slaves.

In a few words: capitalism is a system in which people work all the time for a minority of people who don't need to work at all - the '1%' who own 50% of the world's wealth and get billions of dollars just from owning shares in corporations. For all these reasons also, 'meditation' or 'enlightenment' without Marxism is just a scam to protect the capitalist system - to keep people un-enlightened!!! And no matter how much you meditate you cannot become a truly whole human being, because you still have to spend most of your lifetime at work - as a wage-slave. The only alternative is to become a capitalist yourself (but that needs money - 'capital') or to start a cooperative, non-capitalist enterprise.