The Birth of Capitalism
Today, most human beings live in unnatural, built-up urban areas, but in Europe, from the 800s to the 1400s, most people lived in rural areas, where they could use land to grow their own food and graze their own animals if, in return, they did work for the person who owned that land[i]. This continued to be the case until the 1500s, which is when, according to Karl Marx, capitalism first started to take over the world[ii], eventually completely changing the planet and most aspects of human life.
At first, this ‘capitalism’ was on a small scale, with merchants and small urban workshops ‘using’ people to make profit[iii], and providing them with wages in return, an idea that was totally new to most human beings at the time.
Later, at the start of the ‘Industrial Revolution’, which began in Great Britain in the late 1700s[iv], this capitalism began to spread rapidly throughout western Europe, and throughout European colonies in the American and Australian continents between 1800 and 1850[v], until it eventually took over the world, and most of its human inhabitants.
The Industrial Revolution was the time in human history, when industry, and the manufacturing of products with machines, started to totally transform our world[vi]. In Britain, this occurred mainly from 1760 to 1840[vii], whereas the United States and Western Europe had a second industrial revolution from the late 1800s onwards, and China’s and India’s Industrial Revolution didn’t occur until the 20th century[viii].
The Industrial Revolution introduced a new way of working, and of treating fellow human beings, which involved each person performing pre-defined tasks, and only those tasks, and becoming specialists, in order to increase efficiency. This way of working was called the ‘factory system’ [ix], and it effectively dehumanised and ‘enslaved’ factory workers, making them into little more than another ‘working part’ of the machines or processes that they were operating.
Technology also advanced significantly during this period, in areas like communication, including radio and telegraph[x] and transportation, including steam ships, steam trains, traction engines, cars and planes[xi], all of which were highly polluting and significantly added to our current global warming crisis.
Capitalism created an industrialised society and, for the first time in history, involved the mass production of manufactured goods[xii], which required the use of huge amounts of the world’s natural resources, usually without any concern for the wide range of negative consequences that this would have for the planet and its natural inhabitants.
Capitalism led to a strong focus on efficiency[xiii], as this was important to increase profits for wealthy business owners. This involved mechanising and automating tasks[xiv], but it also required workers to become efficient ‘working parts’ of the manufacturing process themselves.
These workers had, until this point, lived in natural rural areas, just like all of their ancestors, but capitalism required them to move, on mass, for the first time in human history, to unnatural urban areas[xv], particularly as their right to grow crops for their own use had been removed by Enclosure laws[xvi], which forced them to move to these urban areas, and to work in exploitative and dehumanising capitalist industries for little pay (according to economic anthropologist Jason Hickel)[xvii]
Incidentally, capitalism, and the industrial revolution, led to increased efficiency in agriculture[xviii] as well, which made it possible to provide more food for a larger population, but, very significantly, this also led to increased destruction of wild biodiverse environments.
Exploitation
Workers had to work long hours for very low pay and were often exploited and abused by the factories’ owners[xix], who were themselves often extremely rich. They often had to live in unhealthy tenement buildings and overcrowded slums[xx] and to work their whole lives in completely unnatural factories, in towns and cities which were, themselves, completely devoid of nature.
The Industrial Revolution, and the capitalist society that it created, led to a small minority of increasingly wealthy people owning most of the land and property on the planet, while exploiting every other human being, and controlling their freedoms and natural rights, something which the State happily allowed, enabled and benefitted hugely from, and which most workers and their families could do nothing about, because they were disenfranchised, and so had no legal right to vote in elections, or to have any say in how their country was run at all.
Natural Humanists believe that, even today, capitalist businesses are invariably self-serving organisations, which use and abuse employees to create profit for owners and shareholders and, in doing so, often degrade these human beings, control their appearance and behaviour, deprioritise their family lives and own personal needs, deny their humanity, and fail to recognise their individuality, skills, knowledge and competence.
Capitalist businesses take advantage of the fact that, in a capitalist society, people are valued, by businesses and by the State, only in terms of their monetary ‘value’ to that business or to the State,in terms of their profit-generating or tax-raising potential, and for their ability to do things which businesses and the State find ‘useful’ or ‘marketable’.
These businesses often deliberately prevent employees from using their full range of skills and knowledge, if these are outside of their pre-defined job role, which effectively dehumanises them, just to increase efficiency and profit.
War and Colonisation
Natural Humanists acknowledge that capitalism, and the materialism that it both promotes, and is closely linked to, are a significant reason for many of the world’s wars and conflicts[xxi], in that countries value the ‘acquisition’, through force, of other countries’ land, view other countries as ‘competitors’ in a ‘global market’, and therefore choose not to fully cooperate and collaborate with them, and ‘enslave’ human beings in their armies, to operate the ‘military machine’ which makes these conflicts possible, while ‘devaluing’ human life.
Governments happily ‘write off’ any loss of life during a war in their ‘Profit and Loss Account’, focussing instead on the commercial power and huge profits that war allows them to achieve, if they ‘win’ a disputed territory and gain all of its land and workforce. There is also a long history of countries happily, but hugely immorally, using their own military power purely to increase or defend their existing capitalist interests abroad[xxii].
Historically, capitalism also led to rich European countries ‘enslaving’ the inhabitants of all the countries they colonised, requiring them to work to produce products, purely for the financial benefit of European countries and individuals who were already extremely rich, while also providing these ‘enslaving’ countries with important products and natural resources (according to economic anthropologist Jason Hickel)[xxiii].
Self-Serving State
Natural Humanists share Noam Chomsky’s belief that capitalism is inherently corrupt, being based on authoritarianism, oppression and inequality[xxiv].
They also believe that capitalism has infected virtually all ‘democratic’ political parties, with each party deliberately creating its own ‘Unique Selling Points’ (USPs), to ensure that they’re seen as different from all other political parties, before using very expensive marketing campaigns to ‘sell’ these USPs to the public. They rarely make serious attempts to cooperate with other parties, or to have joint policies, as this ‘devalues’ their own ‘brand’.
Political parties treat all potential voters as ‘customers’, to whom they focus on using the ‘hard sell’, and they consider the number of votes they receive as the main measure of their “business’s” success. In fact, they run the whole country as a business (like UK plc) and compete with all other countries, with their main or sole concern being their own success, regardless of, or deliberately at the expense of, all other countries, or their main ‘competitors’. In the process of doing this, they control and often mistreat citizens in the same way that irresponsible capitalist businesses mistreat their employees.
Just like dodgy ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ market stall traders, trading out of a suitcase, they give no guarantees or ‘money back’, and don’t think twice about changing their policies and going back on election promises after the election has ‘completed the sale’.
It’s rare that any political party creates morally right and responsible policies (or ‘products’), when they can choose policies which create huge profits for the country or the State instead, at the expense of the environment, nature and employees. Even ‘ethical’ policies tend to merely pay ‘lip-service’ to people’s strongly held concerns and beliefs, often being more about ‘green-washing’ or ‘ethics-washing’ their own political party’s image, or about preventing or silencing public criticism.
During recessions, capitalist governments deliberately encourage us to consume things that we don’t need, by lowering interest rates, which discourages us from saving, and encourages us to spend our money instead on products and services, which creates employment, in often tedious and meaningless jobs, which promote irresponsible consumerism and materialism, irresponsibly misuse natural resources, enslave human workers and create huge amounts of waste and pollution, all to create wealth, which is unevenly shared in society, usually making the rich even richer, while also increasing the government’s own income from business and employment taxes.
Financially, the State benefits hugely, from all of the different ways that capitalist businesses control and harm their employees and customers, and from all the damage to the planet and its other species that these businesses are responsible for, because the State taxes all of the profits which this abuse and damage allows, and also taxes the wages earned by these businesses’ employees, as a result of this ‘abusive relationship’, as well as taxing the sale price of any goods and services, that these employees and businesses create or provide.
The State also celebrates companies’ growth and financial success, while, at the same time, ‘punishing’ anybody who chooses not to accept work in these capitalist businesses, even if it will degrade and exploit them, by removing some or all of their welfare benefits, if they’re unemployed at the time, negatively affecting their children and families, even if they’re fully and meaningfully occupied as a child-carer to their own young family, or as a carer for a family member, or as a voluntary worker or charity fundraiser.
Enslavement
Natural Humanists believe that, invariably, capitalist businesses fail to be democratic, and choose not to be, and so are effectively dictatorships, which deny employees’ freedom and dignity, coercively control their movements, appearance, freedom of speech and behaviour and, in a large proportion of cases, require employees to waste their lives doing work which is of little or no interest to them, may be of little meaningful use to the world, and which wastes their skills, knowledge and potential, and denies them contact with their families and with nature, as well as preventing them from realising their full potential as human beings, and their ability to do more worthwhile work, and live a truly fulfilling and happy life.
Natural Humanists recognise that capitalism has its origins in slavery, and it legally, and very effectively, continues this ‘enslavement’ of human beings today, by creating ‘wage slavery’ [xxv], where people have to work for capitalist businesses in order to survive, so, although employers don’t legally own workers like slaveowners did, they’re effectively legally ‘renting’ them instead, while still having significant power to control many areas of their life.
Capitalism reinforces and perpetuates the lie that there is a meaningful difference between ‘owning’ a person, and owning their home and giving them their food (as a slave) and ‘renting’ that person (as an employee) and requiring them to buy or rent their own home and source their own food, when, in truth, both enable that person’s life, behaviour, and freedom of speech and movement to be closely controlled,[xxvi] and both deny that person the freedom to live their life the way that they would wish to, and to spend time with their family and loved ones.
Karl Marx believed that all human beings who work for capitalist businesses are effectively ‘selling themselves’ to capitalism, and to the rich and powerful people it’s created, so they’re effectively volunteering to be lifelong slaves of capitalism and to always meet its needs, despite the fact that they’re, invariably, paid low wages, which reinforce their own perceived ‘inferiority’ and their employers’ ‘superiority’.[xxvii]
Businesses control many aspects of workers’ lives, including when they can see their families, where they live, how they dress, how they behave, who they spend their time with and whether they face hazards such as aggressive customers and dangerous substances[xxviii].
They invariably prevent workers living as ‘whole humans’, instead requiring them to focus only on specific tasks and never to overlap their activities with another worker, who is better skilled in that area of work, thereby dehumanising and degrading them.
They create an immoral ‘hierarchy’ in their businesses, between management and workers, and between skilled and unskilled workers[xxix] and they also deny all human beings the freedom to see and interact with each other as the equal human beings that they are.
Businesses reward people they consider have ‘value’, because of their attitudes, beliefs, experience, knowledge, skills and efficiency, by ensuring that they succeed and are promoted, increasing their autonomy, status and wealth, whereas anybody who fails to meet their requirements, will often be forced to accept degrading, menial and unfulfilling jobs, to receive low pay, and to have little or no opportunity to progress[xxx].
Businesses often require workers to be a representative of, and a ‘mouthpiece’ of that business or organisation, and to never allow their own individual and unique views, personalities and behaviours to ‘pollute’ this.
Capitalism also controls humans’ childhoods, and early adulthoods, by requiring them to take part in State education, which itself reinforces capitalist beliefs and ‘moulds’ each student into just the right shape of ‘cog’ that will fit into businesses’ ‘capitalist machines’.
Capitalist businesses are invariably mini dictatorships, which deny workers democratic control of both their own lives, and the businesses whose profits they’re directly responsible for creating[xxxi]. They also conspire, with the State, to control when a human being is ‘no longer fit for purpose’, and is therefore no longer of value to capitalism, by enforcing state retirement ages[xxxii].
Capitalism relies on a deliberately abusive and coercive relationship between businesses and their employees, with the sole aim being to maximise profit and, over the centuries, human beings have learned to consider this exploitation of them, as both employees and consumers, to be ‘normal’ [xxxiii]and to consider those who ‘opt out’ of a materialist, consumerist, abusive and environmentally-destructive capitalist lifestyle to be ‘deviants’ and ‘cranks’, while the media, which is an integral part of capitalism, reinforces these beliefs and reinforces a strong love of consumption, materialism and wealth[xxxiv].
Capitalism’s belief in control and exploitation of the weak by the powerful, and in enslavement of people for their labour, was undoubtedly central to the Slave Trade[xxxv], and is also central, in today’s world, to the continuation of lifelong ownership, abuse and murder of animals as sources of food and clothing, as ‘workhorses’, and as pets, and sources of entertainment, and this exploitation of the ‘weak’ has also played a large part in creating unequal pay and conditions, and limiting opportunities for progression, for women and people of minority ethnic groups[xxxvi].
The competitiveness of capitalism also plays a large part in stirring up anti-immigrant feeling, as other countries are seen as ‘competitors’ not allies, so they and their inhabitants are seen as the ‘enemy’ and not to be trusted, as is demonstrated by right wing politicians considering immigrants to Britain to be a threat to the success of ‘UK plc’, even though this is rarely the case.
‘Slave’ Wages and Poverty
The selfishness, competitiveness, one-upmanship and nationalism that are closely linked to capitalism, are significantly responsible for the fact that 8.5% of the world’s population (a massive 700 million people) have to live on less than £1.74 per day (that’s only £635 per year)[xxxvii] and a shocking 3,500 million people (44% of the world’s entire population) have to live on less than £5.53 per day (that’s only £2,018 per year)[xxxviii].
In 2012, just 1,226 of the world’s richest people had the same combined wealth as all of the poorest 60% of the world’s population put together[xxxix] and, in 2021, Oxfam found that just 10 of the world’s richest men had more wealth than all of the world’s poorest 3,100 million people put together, and that their combined wealth doubled during the COVID pandemic[xl],[xli],[xlii] and, in 2021, Credit Suisse, estimated that, between 2020 and 2025, the number of millionaires in the world would increase by 28 million to a huge 84 million[xliii].
According to estimates, in the year 2000, the poorest 50% of adults had just 1% of the world’s wealth, but the richest 1% of adults had 40% of the world’s wealth (according to the World Institute for Development Economics Research at United Nations University[xliv]) and, in 2012, the top 5% of the world’s population had 71.6% of the world’s wealth (according tothe Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development[xlv]) and the top 10% of adults had 85% of the world’s wealth, whereas the bottom 90% of adults had just 15% of the world’s total wealth (according to Credit Suisse[xlvi]).
Natural Humanists believe that these shameful truths only exist at all, because human beings choose for this to be the case, because they allow capitalism to rule the world, and choose to separate our global brothers and sisters, according to the country in which they happen to be born, and because they don’t cooperate fully, as we undoubtedly should, to eliminate totally and permanently this global poverty, and to ensure that all human beings share the world’s wealth fairly, and are valued equally, as we all, morally, are equal citizens, not just of our own countries, but of the whole planet, all of which is our shared home.
The State enables the continuation of unequal distribution of wealth within their own country, through its economic policy and its policy on income tax and inheritance tax. Anybody who’s already rich, can afford to give their children an expensive education, which allows them to get higher paid jobs[xlvii], and often their children also get to inherit wealth from their families, which maintains or increases the wealth and income gap between human beings who have similar levels of ability, and who work just as hard as each other, for just as many hours. In fact, a very large proportion of the richest people on Earth were already the richest people on the day they were born[xlviii].
Coercive Control of Children
An example of the exploitative and coercive collaboration between the State and capitalist businesses, is the change in the law in England, in 2015, which, for the first time ever in history, gave the State the power to prevent a child from leaving school at 16, unless they were employed in full-time work, enrolled in a further education institution, or involved in an apprenticeship, which allowed the State to effectively mould them into a commercially-beneficial ‘unit’ of capitalist or state wealth creation, whether they wanted to be or not.
In England and Wales, education has been compulsory for 5- to 10-year-olds since 1880[xlix], but governments have deliberately increased the minimum school leaving age on numerous occasions since then, to increase children’s skills and qualifications, in order to provide a steady supply of skilled labour[l], purely for the benefit of capitalism and the State. To reinforce this abusive control of children, the State has, both historically, and still today, fined, or even criminalised children, or their parents[li], for failing to comply with this immoral control and exploitation of children.
In the UK, the minimum legal school leaving age increased to 11 in 1893, 12 in 1899, 14 in 1918, 15 in 1947 and 16 in 1972, but, in England in 2015, it increased to 18, unless a child was in full-time or part-time work, or was enrolled in further education[lii]. This was, unapologetically, due to a desire to make children suitable for the needs of modern industry, which required more skilled workers,[liii] and so, effectively, it made children into slaves of the State and of capitalism,for the whole of their childhoods and passed ‘ownership’ of children from their parents to capitalist businesses, in the same immoral way that legal ownership of girls (and their property) used to pass from their father to their husband when they married.
In many countries, the age at which children are legally allowed to leave school is the same as the age at which they’re allowed to start full-time paid employment, allowing this smooth transfer of ‘prisoners’, from the childhood control and ‘imprisonment’ of school, to the adult ‘enslavement’ of capitalist and state enterprises.
Unquestionably, since compulsory education first began, the State and capitalist businesses have conspired to ensure that children’s education is shaped to meet the needs of capitalism and the State as precisely as possible, as is demonstrated by the BBC documentary series ‘Back in Time for School’. This has ensured that children are effectively dehumanised, allowing them to become the perfectly shaped and sized ‘cog’ to fit into the profit-generating machine of state and capitalist industry.
Historically, in the UK, the State even separated children at the age of 11 into ‘technical cogs’ or ‘management cogs’ from the age of 11, sending one to ‘technical colleges’ and the other to ‘grammar’ schools, with each having received different specialised grooming and moulding until they ‘fitted’ their future lifelong job-roles as precisely as possible.
The State often tries to justify laws that make school attendance compulsory for under 18s, by claiming that children aren’t capable of making sufficiently reasoned choices, but this is directly at odds with the fact that they’re held fully legally responsible for any crimes they commit from the age of 10, and are considered fully capable of legally consenting to sex and relationships with as many people as they wish from 16 years old.[liv]
In addition to controlling children’s lives, the State directly enables capitalism to extend the ‘enslavement’ and ‘imprisonment’ of human beings in workplaces (or ‘capitalist prisons’) by increasing retirement ages, directly against the will of the people, as occurred in the UK in recent decades, including adding a huge 5 years to the ‘sentence’ of all women when their retirement age suddenly increased from 60 to 65 and is gradually now increasing to 66, 67 and beyond.
Undoubtedly, in so many areas of life, the State and capitalist businesses do whatever suits them, regardless of whether it’s successful and regardless of which human beings, or other species suffer, as this is seen as acceptable ‘collateral damage’.
Significantly, the outcome of the Industrial Revolution and Capitalism, has been the lifelong ‘imprisonment’ of natural human beings in human-made artificial built environments, in towns and cities, almost always separated from both nature and any type of truly natural life, for all or most of their day and week, and often, for the whole of their lifetime.
Enforced Inequality
Natural Humanists believe strongly in equality of opportunity, status and wealth and in absolute democracy, including in all businesses and all workplaces, but, in the 20th century, followers of right-wing fascism, which is the combination of corporate, governmental and military power[lv], believed that inequality and social hierarchy were beneficial to society[lvi]. They therefore believed it was beneficial forsome people to be considered more important, to be more wealthy, and to have a higher status than others, a belief that still exists in many Conservative thinkers. In today’s world, large corporations are only interested in serving the needs of shareholders, so they have no interest in the environment, in animal or human rights, in social justice, or in anything else that’s important to the comparativelypoor, weak and powerless bottom 99% of the world’s human population[lvii].
Capitalism couldn’t exist if wealth was shared equally amongst the population of a country, or the world. It requires that a certain proportion of human beings will always receive demeaning low wages, to allow the maximisation of profits and the success of businesses.
It requires a large proportion of the population to always be relatively poor, so that they have little option but to spend their lives in unrewarding, unenjoyable and often demeaning jobs, to create profit for capitalist businesses. The State enables this exploitation of these ‘deliberately impoverished’ workers, by denying them social security benefits if they choose not to accept these low paid jobs.
Significantly, capitalism values each human being differently, which goes directly against Natural Humanists’ belief in equality. It considers some people to be highly valuable to businesses, and to the capitalist state, and therefore ensures that they receive huge annual salaries and can accrue massive wealth, whereas it considers others to be of very little value, so these people receive only just enough money to survive, even though they’ve worked the same number of hours and put in the same amount of effort.
Anybody who, through no choice of their own, is born in a country considered to be ‘developing’ or to be in the ‘Third World’, is valued even less, so is used by rich countries to do work which their own citizens would prefer not to do, and is invariably paid even less still, not even enough to meet their families’ basic needs. Even ‘charitable’ financial aid ‘donated’ to developing countries, is more about benefitting powerful businesses, and the rich donor country itself, rather than meeting the developing country’s needs.
Natural Humanists share the belief of Karl Marx, that a core requirement of a capitalist society is that a large portion of the population mustn’t be wealthy enough to be able to support themselves and be financially independent, so that they can be forced by capitalist businesses to sell their labour for a wage[lviii], i.e., that society and the State should ensure that a certain proportion of human beings can’t survive without agreeing to do work that others wouldn’t choose to do.
They acknowledge that rules regarding eligibility for state benefits very effectively achieve this in today’s world, making the State a very powerful and legal slave-driver, and an apologist for, and ally of, capitalism, and an enabler and creator of relative-poverty and of unequal societies.
Natural Humanists recognise that every job vacancy in every capitalist business must be filled all of the time, and, as some of these are low-paid roles and some are highly paid, capitalism insists, and always requires, that some people will be the ‘highly paid and ‘valuable’ ones and some people will be the less worthy and ‘less valuable’ ones. This will always be the case, even if every human being on Earth has university degrees and years of experience, as these ‘lowly’ roles must always be filled.
Capitalists believe that we should all try to ‘better ourselves’, through study, training and hard work, and if we do, we’ll have a ‘good’ life, with wealth and status. They look down on those who choose not to do so and consider them to be fully responsible for their ‘lowly’ position in society. What they neglect to admit though, is that there will always be a need for every job that exists in society, and the only thing that will be achieved by ‘bettering’ themselves in this way, is making certain that they, themselves, won’t have to do the least popular of society’s jobs, and that somebody else will be forced to do them instead.
So, what this study and hard work, to serve the needs of mighty capitalist industries and the State actually achieves, is to force other people to do these ‘inferior’ jobs instead, thereby reinforcing the class system, which categorises human beings as ‘good, better, and best’, and in doing so, goes directly against Natural Humanists’ belief in equality. This training and ‘improvement’ just changes who is poorly paid, it doesn’t, in any way, help to end the blight of low wages, or decrease the overall number of human beings who are considered inferior, and deserving of low pay.
The owners and shareholders of businesses are the only ones who gain significantly, financially, from the hard work of employees, and this uneven distribution of wealth means that a proportion of the population will always have far more money than they need[lix], which itself creates a demand for totally unnecessary, or ‘luxury’, or premium products and services, which require human beings to waste their lives in pointless occupations creating and providing them, even though they add nothing significant to the world, while creating waste, pollution and increasing the difference between the lifestyles of the poor and the rich.
This then encourages the less well-off to aspire to be consumers of these unnecessary products and services, which then ‘requires’ them to continue to work for capitalist businesses and to develop higher-paid skills, which are ‘valuable’ to those businesses, but are of no value to the employee, to the planet, or to society.
Unemployment
Natural Humanists acknowledge that capitalism values unemployment, because it creates a more flexible labour market, ensuring that there is always labour available for new enterprises, and that staff can be fired and then re-hired, whenever this is beneficial to maximise both profits and efficiency, and they acknowledge that the State and society view these ‘necessarily’ unemployed people as ‘inferior’, providing them with only a meagre income and a low status in society, and requiring them to endure often degrading conditions, to allow them to continue to receive essential state financial support.
They also acknowledge that the unemployment that’s ‘built into’, and is an important part of, capitalism allows employers to offer lower wages, as people who are on unemployment benefits are already on a very low income, so are more likely to consent to this low pay[lx], something that people already in well paid jobs would almost certainly not be willing to do.
Natural Humanists believe that, if an individual citizen can’t find suitable work themselves, the State should have an absolute duty to find them this work, or, if no work is available, then these citizens should be paid the same decent income to do voluntary work that’s of use to society, wildlife or the environment, until this paid work becomes available.
They believe that voluntary work should be valued as highly as paid employment by society, and by the State, and that people should be considered to be ‘fully and meaningfully occupied’, when it comes to state benefit entitlements, whenever they’re engaged in such work, and that nobody should be pressured into working in capitalist enterprises, when they’re able to, and wish to, do such meaningful work instead.
They believe that, if there are always, or are frequently, too few jobs available to meet the demand from those seeking jobs, then the maximum hours that each citizen can work should be reduced nationally or locally, until enough hours are available to provide these jobless people with meaningful work. Every citizen should share the consequences of their country’s inability to meet the work needs of its citizens.
They acknowledge that, at various times, capitalist societies need a proportion of the population to be unemployed, so no citizen should ever be penalised or demonised for being one of capitalism’s ‘fall-guys’.
‘Mates Rates’
Natural Humanists are against capitalism’s ‘variable pricing’ of products services and resources[lxi], which charges significantly lower prices to those who are wealthy or powerful, but significantly higher prices to those least able to afford them.
This includes ‘wholesale prices’ compared to ‘retail prices’ and ‘bulk-buy prices’, which often mean that an individual consumer can’t produce a food or clothing product themselves, which they’re probably more than capable of doing, or learning to do, for a price as low as a manufacturer can sell them that finished product.
This immoral ‘variable pricing’ also includes things like charging wealthy people and those on high incomes much lower mortgage interest rates than poor people, people on low incomes and people who have had to take credit in the past, which they’ve been unable to repay, often due to relative poverty, leading to a low ‘credit rating’.
Employment and Human Rights
Natural Humanists believe that every citizen should have the absolute right to a clean, simple home for themselves and their family, for the whole of their life.
They believe that all homes should be high quality, communally owned and maintained ‘social housing’, or that the State should act as guarantor on every citizen’s mortgage, so that every citizen automatically qualifies for a mortgage, as a right, to buy their own home, and so that every homeowner gets the same low mortgage interest rate as a wealthy person with a high ‘credit rating’.
Natural Humanists also believe that an important role of the State, should be to ensure that there is enough work to do in the country, to provide every single citizen with a meaningful job, and to allow them to support themselves and their family to a simple but decent standard.
‘Right’ to Consume
Natural Humanists acknowledge that capitalism has made human beings selfish and encouraged them to believe that they have an unlimited right to consume[lxii], whatever the cost to others or the planet.
It’s now the norm for people to heat their homes, cars, shops and offices to a level where they can comfortably wear t-shirts, even on the coldest of winter days, and for them to heat rooms, such as bathrooms and bedrooms for most of every day, even if they only use those rooms for a few hours, or a few minutes, of each waking day.
It’s been the norm, for many decades, for people to own and use private cars, when most, if not all, of the journeys they make could reasonably be made by bus, train, bike or on foot, causing hugely less environmental damage and damage to human being’s health from air pollution, and hugely less death to humans, insects, birds and other animals from collisions with cars.
It’s also the norm to own far more clothing than people need and to dispose of it, usually in the bin, whenever it goes out of fashion, or the wearer fancies a change.
Harmful Materialism
Businesses value things that have no true value, such as wealth, power, vanity, popularity and materialism, usually at the expense of what has true value, which damages nature and the environment, misuses natural resources, creates waste and pollution and enslaves and degrades employees, and sometimes other animals too.
Businesses also very successfully groom society to be materialistic and to value possessions, and in many cases, exist solely to encourage people to spend money on products and services, which they have no real need for, and which won’t add any meaningful value to their lives.
Natural Humanists recognise that capitalist businesses continuously try to think up new products and services, which none of us need, and then use marketing as a powerful way of ‘brainwashing’ or tempting us to buy as many of them as possible. This then requires people to part with money that they, themselves, will have to work additional hours to earn, often for a capitalist employer, in jobs they don’t enjoy, which take them away from potentially hugely more pleasurable or meaningful activities, and separate them from their family, their community and from nature, often for the majority of their adult life. These products also widen the gap within each country, and between countries, between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’.
Natural Humanists recognise that, in the creation of its vast wealth, capitalism creates billions of tonnes of unnecessary and polluting waste each year. This waste harms many of the planet’s natural species and further reduces species diversity, as well as damaging the planet, which is not ours to damage, as it belongs equally to every one of the Earth’s species.
They acknowledge that capitalism’s focus on providing ‘customer choice’ leads to massive waste, promotes materialism, encourages ‘one-upmanship’ and deliberately prevents cooperation between producers, the sharing of ideas and designs and the compatibility of different manufacturer’s products.
Even when products are necessary, capitalism involves numerous businesses deliberately not cooperating or sharing ideas, to come up with the best and most long-lasting design for a product, but, instead, deliberately coming up with unique and totally separate designs, to ensure that they have ‘USPs’ (unique selling points) which persuade potential purchasers to choose their product and not their competitors’, and which ‘justify’ them charging unnecessarily high prices for their version of that product.
To maximise profit, capitalist businesses often ensure that their products have ‘planned obsolescence’,[lxiii] so that they need to be quickly replaced with yet more planet-damaging and costly replacements, giving capitalist businesses another opportunity to make money.
Planned obsolescence is where products are deliberately designed so that they wear out faster than necessary, or quickly ‘go out of date’, or can’t be upgraded or modified to accommodate future technological improvements, or where a manufacture discontinues replacement parts, like shaver heads, or charges nearly as much for these parts as the price of a totally new product, or ensures that parts that are likely to need frequent replacement are made to be integral parts of a larger component, so that the whole component needs to be replaced, not just the small part that’s worn out, at unnecessary expense, which increases profits and increases the chances that a customer will, instead, buy a totally new product and scrap the older model, at the environment’s expense.
Some companies design products so that they’ll soon go out of fashion, for example some designs of clothing, furniture and kitchen units are pretty ‘classic’ and are popular from decade to decade, whereas others are particularly modern and will look out-of-date in a short amount of time.
Other companies deliberately upgrade product designs, and add new features, to increase the likelihood that customers will scrap their old product, even though its fairly similar, just to benefit from these new features, or to ‘keep up with the Joneses’, all of which increases the manufacturer’s profits, while wasting the world’s natural resources, massively increasing waste and pollution, requiring people to work longer to afford these products, and ‘enslaving’ human beings to create, transport and retail them.
Although not specifically a part of Natural Humanism, a minority of Natural Humanists may choose to live a ‘freegan’ lifestyle and many more will choose to incorporate some aspects of freeganism into their life, because freeganism, like Natural Humanism, focuses on anti-consumerism and anti-capitalism.
Freegans try to minimise their participation in capitalism and their consumption of resources, by using wasted items like food, that already have been, or would be, thrown away, which they sometimes obtain from bins or skips, without creating any profit for producers and retailers[lxiv].
Freegans also sometimes forage for wild food, or grow their own food, and may also avoid paying for non-food products and services as well, including by making their own clothes and furnishings, buying most of their essential items from charity shops[lxv], and obtaining furniture from skips, or from ‘Free to a Good Home’ adverts in newspapers or online.
Natural Humanists may choose to use charity shops for some or most of the items they need, both to reduce waste, by re-using second-hand items, and to save money, so that they can spend less of their lives working to afford things that they need, and can make better use of their lives, while also raising valuable funds for very worthwhile charities, including those protecting animals, the environment, human or animal rights, or humans in poverty.
Natural Humanists believe, wherever possible, in producing everything they need, as opposed to want, themselves, individually or as a community, or sourcing these items from charitable, not-for-profit or ‘ethical’ suppliers, or from Natural Humanist Communities, where Natural Humanists work, and possibly live, together and produce essential products, like food and clothing, in the most environmentally responsible way possible, and at minimal cost, which only covers essential expenses and does not create profit at the expense of human beings who need to consume these essential items.
Environment
The huge rise in the human population over recent centuries and decades has caused, and will increasingly cause, huge environmental damage, but this massive population growth has benefitted capitalism greatly, both providing a huge source of cheap labour, and providing a huge potential market for its products and services.
Even if population growth stopped, capitalism relies on continued growth of profits, and so it would always ensure a continuous growth in the consumption of products and services, using high-pressure marketing, ultra-efficient targeted internet marketing and the deliberate creation of even more unnecessary ‘must have’ products and variants of products to ensure that capitalism always ‘wins’,[lxvi] and that society, wildlife and the planet suffer, or do not meaningfully benefit at all. To quote Greta Thunberg, “Our civilization is being sacrificed for the opportunity of a very small number of people to continue making enormous amounts of money”.[lxvii]
Capitalism’s ‘profit motive’ also encourages selfishness and greed[lxviii], rather than prioritising what is right for society. To capitalism, profit matters, but people and the planet simply do not.
Waste and Environmental Damage
Natural Humanists acknowledge that climate change, mainly created by capitalism’s industry and irresponsible consumption, is likely to increase the problems of poverty and inequality,and is expected to result in nearly 1 in 5 of all human beings in the world, experiencing a ‘severe weather shock’, which they’ll struggle to recover from, particularly if they live in one of the world’s poorer countries[lxix].
Natural Humanists acknowledge that capitalism creates whole industries, such as the highly efficient and effective marketing industry, whose practices are wasteful, and which only exist to create or increase demand for products, or to increase products’ market value, or to increase a particular manufacturer’s market share, which creates a demand for products and services, but doesn’t, in any way, satisfy that demand[lxx].
They also recognise that many industries, businesses and jobs exist only to create profit and wealth, contributing little, if anything, to the satisfaction of human beings’ actual needs[lxxi], and, in some cases, directly harming our health or well-being, like unhealthy junk food or gambling apps on mobile phones.
They also acknowledge that manufacturers and retailers deliberately produce or stock too many products, to maximise potential profit, as demand can’t be predicted precisely[lxxii], and that this leads to a huge amount of waste and pollution, and to a waste of the time and lives of those human beings who produced and transported these unwanted products, as well as to the unnecessary death or abuse of animals used to create some of these products.
Natural Humanists believe that, ideally, no product should ever be made which causes harm to another human being or living thing, or damages the environment, that every product should be required to have the longest possible useful life, and that all manufacturers, whenever possible, should have a responsibility to always use recycled materials to produce their products, and to ensure that as many as possible of their products, and their component parts and packaging, can be, and are, recycled.
They believe that it’s also hugely immoral that, during the creation of many products, materials and component parts are unnecessarily and immorally transported from one region, country or continent to another, sometimes numerous times, often just to take advantage of cheaper labour in less developed countries[lxxiii] and to save money and maximise profits, without any thought to the environmental cost, or the unnecessary waste of drivers’ time and lives.
Duplication and Inefficiency
Natural Humanists recognise that capitalism is a hugely inefficient way to provide services, with a prime example being public transport in the UK, where numerous different companies run buses on the same route, most of which are nowhere near full, or even empty, while less profitable routes have very few buses, or none at all, geographically and socially isolating people in many rural areas.
The Environment and Non-Consumerism
Capitalism requires continual economic growth and will eventually deplete the Earth’s natural resources[lxxiv], cause the extinction of animals and other species, and will permanently damage the planet and its environment, including through microplastic pollution.
Natural Humanists recognise that many businesses ‘green wash’ their products, and public image, purely to promote brand loyalty and maximise profits, and that this artificial concern for the environment hides all of the ways that their business, and most businesses, deliberately or thoughtlessly harm the environment, because they value it hugely less than profit and their own success.
As both non-materialists and anti-capitalists, Natural Humanists usually prefer not to give money or any non-essential product as a gift. If they choose to accept gifts at all, they often prefer to only receive gifts bought at a charity shop, and which are ideally necessary, for example, clothes, rather than unnecessary luxuries, and they usually prefer environmentally responsible products.
Many prefer very simple, low-cost, homemade gifts made by the person giving the gift, for example, a homemade vegan cake or homemade biscuits or sweets, or to receive gifts which directly support Natural Humanism, for example, ethically-sourced ‘green’ clothing, like a long-lasting t-shirt printed with a slogan supporting some aspect of Natural Humanist beliefs, sold on the naturalhumanism.co.uk website, or a personal gift of sentimental value previously owned by the person giving the gift, so it’s not been bought as a gift, and does not increase the total number of possessions in the world.
Another acceptable option would be to give a donation to Natural Humanist charities or to any charity that’s supported by the person receiving the gift, for example, an animal or human rights or environmental charity, or to gift a ‘Plant a Tree’ or ‘Create Wilderness’ gift voucher, such as those available via the naturalhumanism.co.uk website, or from other organisations.
Similarly, Natural Humanists often prefer a phone call, letter, email, text, video-call or a (planned) visit to say, for example, ‘Happy Birthday’ or ‘Happy Anniversary’, rather than receiving a greetings card, which Natural Humanists may consider a waste of natural resources, and an unnecessary disposable possession. However, a polluting and otherwise unnecessary visit by car, just to say ‘Happy Birthday’ to somebody, would be considered even more inappropriate and environmentally irresponsible.
Producing Only What We Need
Natural Humanists believe that, ideally, products and services should only be owned or used when they’re necessary, not when they’re unnecessary, wasteful, or are luxuries, or when that product or service can easily be created or provided by the consumer themselves, or by their own family or community, not for financial gain, but as an act of kindness or cooperation, without the need to enslave others to produce them and without the need for products’ packaging, storage, transport and retailing.
Natural Humanists believe that businesses themselves, should ideally only produce products and services that people actually need, which most products and services most certainly are not. They also believe that as many as possible of these products and services should be provided by machines, computers and robots, not by humans, and that all products essential to a simple life, including nutritionally balanced vegan foods, simple but long-lasting clothing, simple but comfortable homes, simple furniture and other essential items, should be produced, strictly on a not-for-profit basis, by highly efficient enterprises, possibly run by the State, as a servant of, not a controller and degrader of, the people, or by ethical voluntary organisations, and that all of these products and services should be produced in environmentally responsible ways, and from environmentally responsible materials, with as much as possible of the process carried out by machines, robots and Artificial Intelligence, from obtaining the raw materials and manufacturing the products, to distributing, retailing, delivering, maintaining and eventually disposing of and recycling them.
They also believe that as many as possible of the products that human beings use, should be communally owned, whenever this is reasonable, practicable and environmentally responsible and that, ideally, the only new products that should be created in the future should be those that human beings ask for or demand, not products deliberately created or upgraded by manufacturers to drive consumerism, promote materialism and increase profits.
Communal Ownership
Natural Humanists believe that all private land and property has effectively been ‘stolen’ from all other human beings and from all other living species who have an equal birth-right to freely share and use it. They therefore believe that every one of the natural resources exploited to create every product ever produced is, morally, ‘owned’ equally and jointly by every living thing on Earth, as is every bit of land ever privately-owned or built upon by human beings.
Natural Humanists believe that society, globally, should ensure that every bit of land on Earth is, gradually, returned to the shared ownership of every human being and every other species, and should then be managed, eternally, for their common benefit.
They’re against the private ownership of any land or any home (or other property) and believe that, wherever possible, all products should be communally owned.
They consider that private ownership of any ‘property’ or possession gives the owner the right to prevent others from using it, regardless of whether or not the owner needs to use it themselves, which they consider to be immoral and wasteful and they believe increases inequality between human beings.
They’re equally against private ownership of ‘intellectual property’, such as patents and copyrights, which prevent the free sharing of ideas, and allow the owners of this intellectual property to receive an income, for many years, without doing any work at all that’s of use to society, whereas others have to work long hours to receive the same, or a much lower, income.
Natural Humanists believe that capitalism values traditionally masculine human traits, like competitiveness, control, selfishness and greed, but considers feminine traits to have little, if any value, and even to be an obstacle to maximising profit.
They believe that, because of this, capitalism, and the society it’s created, has been responsible for the continuation of unhealthy masculine traits in boys and men worldwide, long after they ceased to be appropriate or beneficial to the modern world, and, at the same time, it’s contributed significantly to the harmful masculinisation of girls and women as well.
Natural Humanists seek to permanently lay to rest capitalism, and all of the forms of toxic humanity, consumerism and materialism that it nurtures, which they’re certain will result in the world becoming a much better, kinder and happier place for every human being, and every other species to live.
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