What capitalism does can be explained by my telling you a little metaphorical story if you
permit me. You're walking down the street, and to take a shortcut, you go through a dark alley. Part
of you knows that probably is not a good idea, but you're in a rush so you go. And true enough,
halfway down the dark alley, an unpleasant person jumps out at you and says to you, "Okay you can
either die at the end of my gun or die at the end of my knife, but it's your choice!" Now you know
and I know that if you sit there agonizing or you stand there trying to figure out which way to go,
you've made a big mistake. Because what you need and want is not to face that choice.
Capitalism says, "Well, you can choose inflation or recession." Literally, as I'm talking to you,
the leaders of our economy in Washington and the corporate headquarters are debating that question:
which is worse? Letting the inflation keep going with all the consequences of that or plunging the
economy into a recession by jacking up interest rates with all the bad things that flow from that?
We are being asked to choose between two options, neither of which we want and neither of which we
have to suffer. Look, the mechanism in capitalism that causes this is not complicated. When things
are going well, companies are growing and hiring workers. They buy stuff from other companies who
feel all good, and my economy is going well. I can sell what I produce so they hire people. Everybody
gets in on it. Every individual capitalist cashes in, but of course if they all do this and they
all hire and they all produce more, it's really only a matter of time until the exploding output
exceeds what is able to be sold. Then suddenly, companies are stuck with unsaleable inventory,
and they cut back. And they lay off workers and of course when they lay off workers, those workers
have no income. And they can't go to the store and buy the way they did. So, somebody else who
expected to sell to them won't be able to. It's a snowball effect down. It was a snowball up. It
was a snowball down. That's how the system works. That's why it's like that, and the way to stop it
is to change the system. Look, I'm modest. All I would ask is that in our national conversation,
we don't just talk about the knife or the gun, we don't just talk about monetary policy,
fiscal policy, a little more of this, a little... Why don't we also talk about
changing the system and what would that mean? Well, let me end with that today by talking about
how we could set up a system that does not behave this way.
First, we need a system that puts a priority not on the profit of the individual enterprise
but on the well-being of the economy as a whole. Capitalism is a system that puts into power a tiny
group of people- the one percent- who run the businesses and who run them (as they tell us)
for the profitability. That's the portion of the revenue of the company that they get.
They don't run the business for the workers. They would laugh at the idea, but the workers are the
majority. The workers of the majority of the country. If you want the economic system to work
for the majority, you can't put it in the hands of a tiny minority. This is not rocket science.
The problem with capitalism is the profit driven behavior of the one percent who own and run the
enterprises is a competitive system. They all rush to produce when the economy is good. They over
produce. They can't sell it. Boom! It goes down. Each of them is desperately trying to survive,
and they cut their employees as fast as they hire them when the wind changes. And we're
all left with an economic system lurching from pillar to post, from inflation to recession,
and trying to make a life in between these things. We need a political movement
that puts capitalism up there as the problem- that sees an economic system that puts people
in charge right at the beginning: worker co-ops. That's why we advocate for them
because that takes the majority in each and every enterprise, every factory, every office,
every store and says you're going to run this. And you're going to run it together with others whose
job it is to give us all a job, to give us all a secure income [and] move us around as needed.
Don't tell us we have to accept inflations, recessions and stagflations.