Exposing the Myth of Capitalism: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

The idea that you can create a perfect society through communism is a modern secular mythology. But the same applies to capitalism as well. Capitalism too is a modern secular mythology. The so-called twin pillars of capitalism—individual freedom and free enterprise—are mythologies; these ideas are as unreal as the preachings and mythologies of ancient cults and religions.

When someone says that he wants people to live in a free society, he means that he wants everyone to live according to the tenets of his own culture. History is full of instances of freedom being used as a weapon to subvert and capture other cultures. When someone says that he wants free trade, he means that he wants the companies of his nation to be allowed to take control of natural resources, labor and even political power in other parts of the world. 

Can a capitalist country thrive without plundering the resources of weaker minorities in their own country and in other countries? So far we don’t have any evidence to show that capitalism can create happiness and prosperity without exploitation of humanity’s voiceless underclass.  

The United States wants us to believe that it is a capitalist society and the land of the free. But violence that the European settlers (between 16th and 19th centuries) unleashed upon the Native Indians of North America, and those who were brought from Africa to toil as slaves, was no less brutal than the violence that the Lenin’s Bolsheviks unleashed on the Russian bourgeoisie. 

By the end of the 19th century when the Native Indians of North America were subjugated, expelled or exterminated, the Americans turned their eyes on other parts of the world. 

America has been continuously at war, simultaneously with several countries, since the dawn of the 20th century. This country played a central role in two of the biggest wars of the 20th century, the 1st and the 2nd World Wars. In the last 100 years, the American government has been involved in several coups to overthrow democratically elected governments and transfer power to tyrants who would serve American interests.

If all the world's major nations decide to follow the American capitalist model, then there is no chance of peace in the world, and a Third World War will become inevitable.

Today I finished reading John Perkins’s semi-autobiographical book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. Perkins’s claims in his book that he was hired by engineering consulting firm Chas T Main that was affiliated to American intelligence and that his job was to coerce the leaders of underdeveloped countries into accepting substantial loans for large-scale infrastructure projects and trap them in a system of American control. 

I am not convinced that the account given by Perkins is fully accurate—this is because in several of the book's passages, he sounds like a nutty conspiracy theorist and a deranged political activist. However, despite this major weakness in his narrative, his trenchant critique of capitalism and corporatism makes sense.