Greed at the heart of capitalism

Greed at the heart of capitalism

ost mainstream media critiques of the US and world financial crisis point to greed as the underlying culprit. The implication is that if the financial CEOs were not so greedy, the meltdown would not have occurred. This kind of analysis however entirely misses the point about the nature of capitalism, especially monopoly capitalism.

Capitalism is built and thrives on, in fact requires and rewards greed– the more excessive the better. By greed we mean the relentless drive for the most profit–wealth appropriated from the labor of others –with the least scruples, in order to reinvest and gain even more profit in a continuing spiral of thievery and rapacity or, plainly put, exploitation and oppression.

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