Why I am not a Capitalist…Wait! What!?

I have repeatedly voiced my view in print, that I am as opposed to Capitalism as I am to Communism, because both reflect a material, consumption-centric view of not only the world, but society and culture as well. One of the things I’ve had problems with, as a result, is explaining to students in classes,when they have asked, how I can label myself a “capitalist,” when I am opposed to “Capitalism” as a social philosophy.

Perhaps the simplest explanation I have used is that the difference lies in the capitalization of the first letter. Just like there is a vast difference between a republican and a Republican, there is a difference between a capitalist and a Capitalist. In both examples, in the first—lower case—situation, you have someone who believes in a philosophy (one political, one economic). In the second case, you have someone who adheres to a Party Doctrine, regardless of where and how that doctrine transgresses the underlying philosophy it purports to be based on.

That still fulfilled only a small portion of the explanation, I found however, and as anyone who has ever been in a class with me will gleefully—or sorrowfully, depending on their outlook—I firmly believe that old adage “God is in the details,” and I am sincere in my attempt to make sure people get access to the details. Fortunately, in our efforts to increase the resilient productivity of our small family farm, I managed to delve into what I will, for ease of explanation, call “a school of agricultural philosophy” called Permaculture.

As I dug deeper into the rich soil of Permaculture (and those readers familiar with Permaculture just start cackling at the double meaning in that phrase), I kept coming across references to the “eight forms of capital.” Initially, as I read the original articles on the concept, I assumed it was typical Leftist, pro-Marxist nonsense, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to me. Then I discovered that even among business economics literature, there are references to at least “six forms of capital.”

While I was initially introduced to the concept of multiple forms of capital two or three years ago, as a codified concept, and it made intuitive sense to me, based on my own world view anyway, I really started putting concerted thought into the subject a few months ago. This article then, has been percolating in my brain since at least the beginning of the year.

The Eight Forms of Capital

The Oxford Dictionary has a couple of relevant definitions of “capital.” These include: “Wealth in the form of money or other assets owned by a person or organization or available for a purpose such as starting a company or investing,”(emphasis added) and “A valuable resource of a particular kind.” Too often, when we consider “capitalism,” we think only of the financial aspect, defining all assets in financial terms.

The Eight Forms of Capital however, include: Intellectual Capital, Spiritual Capital, Social Capital, Material Capital, Experiential Capital, Cultural Capital, Living Capital, and—of course—Financial Capital.

Intellectual Capital is simply knowledge that has value, to ourselves or to others. When students come to a Mountain Guerrilla class, or they purchase one of the Reluctant Partisan books, or Forging the Hero, they are expressing their interest in the intellectual capital that I possess, and they want. When I go buy a book on Permaculture, or I take a class, I am engaging in a transaction that involves Intellectual Capital.

Spiritual Capital is a little harder to define. Karma, Faith, Grace, these are all examples of spiritual capital. In my belief system, the frith that binds our clans together is a significant aspect of spiritual capital, as are the gifts—genetic and cultural—of my ancestors, that provide my physical and mental fitness, and the work ethic to maintain them.

Social Capital is also represented by frith, in the form of the social obligations that exist within the community of the clan. When I drop what I am doing at the farm, to drive forty miles to help one of the clan move a refrigerator, I am losing financial capital that I could be making through working, but I am building social capital that I know—experientially, since it happens regularly—will be repaid when I need a hand with something myself.

Social capital can further be defined as anything that helps us—provides profit—in social interactions with people. A solid grounding in common courtesy and etiquette is a form of social capital. Good grooming and personal hygiene is a form of social capital. All three of these provide great benefit when meeting new people, as well as strengthening existing relationships within your clan and community.

Material Capital is something that most Americans—and an even larger percentage of “preppers”—are intrinsically familiar with. Simply put, material capital is all the “stuff” you possess.

Experiential Capital are those experiences that we have had that provide benefit to us still. From bad relationships in the past (the ones we learned from, anyway), to different jobs and hobbies we have had, anything we have experienced, where the experience goes deeper than the intellectual lessons learned, is experiential capital. We all “know” that physical fitness is important. Anyone who has had to crawl several thousand feet up a mountain, and then move through enemy gunfire, however, has experiential understanding of the value of physical fitness of a far deeper level than the intellectual understanding. This is the difference, discussed in my last article, between intellectual knowledge gained in school, and experiential knowledge gained from life experience.

Cultural Capital are those benefits gained by membership in a culture, whether by birth or adoption. This is related to the concept of cultural inheritance. This is also very, VERY culturally specific. Someone raised in modern, western culture, even on a remote, off-grid homestead in the mountains of Idaho, has a significantly different view of the universe than someone raised in a small tribal village in the wild jungles of Amazonia. Drop them both off in Manhattan, and that hillbilly kid from Idaho is going to have a very, VERY significant advantage over the Amazonian, despite not being part of mainstream American culture. He still has cultural capital, as a result of growing up within the larger culture, and the culture inheritance of western classical liberalism. This can be seen, even in language. We see comedic movies made about the poor farm kid moving to the big city, but most of us who grew up poor farm kids, and then moved to the big city realize, it really wasn’t THAT big of a struggle to fit in, at least marginally well, if for no other reason than we had cultural capital as a result of shared language and understanding the definitions of words and sentences.

Drop that kid off in the Amazon though, without specific cultural training, and he’s going to be hosed. A great cinematic example of this is the 2015 Eli Roth movie The Green Inferno. (Important editorial note: 1) I don’t particularly like modern movies. 2) I particularly LOATHE “horror” movies as sheer stupidity. It is a regular point of contention with HH6. I use this example because she convinced me to watch it with her, and it popped into my mind while I was thinking of this…). A bunch of do-gooder Leftists run off the Amazonia to “Save the Rainforests!” and most of them get eaten by the local cannibal tribe they thought they were there to help. Life is tough. It’s tougher when you’re stupid.

Greg “Gorillafritz” Ellifritz, of Active Response Training, posted an article about the recent stabbing on the Portland, Oregon mass transit train, wherein he pointed out that most “middle-class” folks tend to forget—or not even know—that the Emotionally Damaged Person (EDP) that is ranting and raving like a lunatic, in public, has a moral code…but it ain’t yours, so expecting him to act like you would act is folly. Your moral code is cultural capital. His is cultural capital, but it is an entirely different culture.

Because of the globalization of the “one world, one (consumer) culture” of modern mercantilism, we are encouraged to ignore cultural differences, to the point that most people never even realize that our cultural capital is only capital within our culture or related cultures.

Living Capital are things like the plants in your garden, the chickens in your henhouse, etc. They are things that are alive, and only provide you benefit through the fact of life. Someone once offered to sell me a pig. I was dating a girl at the time whose sister and brother-in-law had a small hobby farm that was largely a petting zoo for their kids. In the interest of building rapport with the girl, I agreed to buy the pig, thinking I would just give it to the sister and brother-in-law. What the dude neglected to mention was…the pig had died the night before, of unknown causes. That pig had no capital value to me. Until it died, it had capital for him, because it had the possibility of being slaughtered and turned into bacon and sausage. (For the record, I didn’t buy the pig. I would have, since I had already agreed, and I was the dumbass that didn’t think to ask, “Why are you selling the pig?” fortunately, the guy took pity on me and refused to sell it.)

Finally, we arrive at the form of capital most familiar to us: Financial Capital. This is money and any other form of money replacement, such as stocks and bonds, treasury notes, BitCoin, etc. It also includes gold and silver. Here is the thing though: despite protestations to the contrary, Financial Capital is ALWAYS fiat currency. Gold has XXX value, only because someone is willing to agree that it has XXX value. You cannot eat it. You cannot doctor an injury or an illness with it. You cannot sow it on your garden to increase yield.

FINANCIAL CAPITAL IS ONLY CAPITAL IN REGARD TO EXCHANGE FOR OTHER FORMS OF CAPITAL.

If I can use some of my financial capital to purchase material capital, then financial capital is beneficial. If I need a building to shelter my family from the elements, but no one has one they are willing to sell me at a price within my financial reach, then financial capital is useless to me. I might as well not have ANY money, for all the good it will do me. On the other hand, if I need a building to shelter my family from the elements, and no one has one they are willing to sell me at a price within my financial reach, but I have the experiential and intellectual capital to build one from scratch, out in the woods, I can at least house my family. If I have the social capital, I may be able to convince someone within my clan to allow my family to stay with them for awhile. In both cases, financial capital was not the grease, but that is still capitalism.

If I can use some of my financial capital to purchase living capital—as I did when I bought our farm—then it is useful. If no one will sell me chickens, or vegetables, for any price that I can afford financially, but I have the knowledge to raise the chickens myself, or to plant seed and harvest vegetables from a garden, I have experiential and intellectual capital to leverage to my gain.

If I can use financial capital to pay for the services of a hooker for the night, I can get my ashes hauled. If however, I cannot afford the services of a call girl, or I believe prostitution is inherently evil, and thus would never consider paying for her services, then financial capital does me no good. Perhaps I can flash some cash and convince some local trollop to put out, in the hope that I will date or marry her, and she will get access to my supposed financial wealth that way. Easier—and in the long-term, far more rewarding, in my experience—is to utilize social and cultural capital to woo a young lady. After all, just like your mother (hopefully) taught you as a youngster, the ones that are after your money, are not the kind of girls you want to marry…

The point of this is not that “money is evil.” Money is in inanimate object and an idea. The point of this is that, rather than looking at all things through the lens of finance and money, look around you—especially within your own clan and community—and see what other forms of capital you have access to, and how you can exchange them with others in your community for your mutual benefit.

One of the things I’ve pointed out previously is that relying on finance for commerce is the antithesis of freedom, independence, and autarky. By definition, you are allowing someone else to determine value for you. “Oh, the dollar is worth XXX amount.” Well, if Item A is priced at XXX dollars, then someone else—by fucking definition—just determined what the value of that object was. Not the seller, and not the buyer, but rather, an outside agent, neither of whom the seller or buyer probably knows.

Engaging in non-financial capitalism is also a way to legally reduce your tax burden. Sure, if I WORK for someone, in exchange for something, that is taxable as wages. But, if I simply ask for something, and someone gives it to me, because of social capital, and later, they ask me to help them move a refrigerator into their house, and I do it, because of social capital, there was no barter there, so there was no taxable transaction. If you bitch about “taxation is theft,” but you insist that every transaction must be measured in dollar value, you are kidding yourself.

I don’t particularly enjoy taxation myself, but I am also astute enough to know that the society never existed that didn’t pay taxes, in one form or another, and whining about it through social media memes like #TaxationIsTheft isn’t going to change that.

I don’t particularly like the Federal Reserve, or the stranglehold the Central Bank has on the economy, internationally, nationally, or even in my local community, but I also know that every time I measure the value of something in financial capital, I am strengthening the Central Bank. If, on the other hand, I have something, and one of the people in my clan wants it or needs it, and I give it to them, because they are part of my clan, that is a giant “Fuck off and die” to the Federal Reserve, the central bankers, and the tax man, all at once.

The Gift Exchange Economy has taken a disturbing turn in recent years, because of the prevalence of people writing about it from a Leftist angle in modern society. From people who believe, “If I believe in the goodwill of all people, and I ask nice, people will just give me things,” and then find that belief reinforced (see “The Moneyless Manifesto” by Mark Boyle, and do a Google search on “Freeconomic Living” for examples of this tragicomic, farcical doppleganger of the gift exchange economy), to people who simply cannot imagine an economy not based on some sort of extrinsic medium of exchange, whether federal reserve notes, gold, or silver, the fact that the vast, vast majority of mankind never put their hands on a single, solitary piece of “money” or “coinage” throughout the human experience is hard to fathom. Yet, people—for the most part—managed to survive, and lead, by their measures (which really, is the only measure that matters) happy, fulfilled lives, without ever possessing a single piece of financial capital.

You want independence? You want freedom? You want community resilience? Then start building it. I am not suggesting abandoning money. Doing so, as I charge financial capital for classes and book, would be somewhat hypocritical (although not entirely). There are a lot of material, intellectual, and experiential capital items that are simply outside of our reach, without financial capital. Whether those things are critical to survival and happiness is open to debate, depending on cultural values, but that is another discussion.

At the end of the day though, the song was right, “money can’t buy you love.” All jokes about “reasonable facsimiles thereof,” aside, money is only useful for its ability to be leveraged into exchange for other forms of capital. If you can procure those other forms of capital, in the amounts needed, without financial capital, you lessen your dependence on outside sources, increasing resilience. If you can focus more effort on increasing your social, intellectual, and experiential capital, and less on increasing your financial capital, you might just find that you have a happier, more fulfilling life, surrounded by kith-and-kin, rather than surrounded by jackass co-workers you wouldn’t piss on if they spontaneously combusted.