There are struggling “capitalists” that own their own little manufacturing company, restaurant, hair salon or other small business. And then there are rich as hell “workers” like Taylor Swift who have become billionaires through their own labour. She can fill football stadiums full of people willing to pay top dollar to see her perform, I simply can’t. And I think most people don’t have a problem with Taylor being a billionaire.

These are kind of exceptions that prove the rule. Small business owners may often be workers themselves, but they also still profit from minimizing costs and maximizing revenue. They have the same incentives as any other capitalist, even if they have less ability to act on them due to lack of resources and competition keeping them in check. Even to the extent that these are more acceptable forms of capitalists, the trend in the economy for a long time has been towards consolidation and large companies putting smaller ones out of business.

Similarly, while some artists make it big, far more of them end up exploited by record labels, studios, etc. In fact even some of the successful artists have stories about their awful contracts.

There’s also the aspect of this which is that once you have enough money to invest it in significant amounts, you indirectly enter into the role of a capitalist, since the profit you derive from those stocks is the same as the profit made from the companies exploiting workers.

But the problem arises when middle class people pay half of what they have in tax, while rich people have effective tax rates of <10%. Jeff Bezos had a five figure tax bill as he became the richest man in the world.

More to the point though, I ask you why/how they end up paying so little in taxes? Tax law didn’t fall from the sky. It isn’t just that the politicians were stupid or that most people wanted it this way. This is the result of the structure of political power in a capitalist nation.

So how do you address the problem: “Rich people don’t pay enough taxes and poorer people pay too much.” I can come up with any number of clever policies to solve our problems, but what good does that do if you can’t make the government adopt these policies?

This is why you need a theory for understanding how power is distributed, used, and perpetuated in a society. Otherwise you’re doomed to keep asking the question “Why don’t they just do this?” It’s not a new idea, but it’s still relevant.

If you disagree, I challenge you to be able to explain how we got here or how we move forward without any kind of structural critique.