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  1. Wealth
June 13, 2013

How can G8 protestors be anti-capitalism? It's all there is

By Spear's

I don’t understand anti-capitalists. It’s like being anti-sun or anti-blood: there is nothing else

It’s not often that anarchists and I agree, but they seem to have done a bang-up job with their ‘Mapping Capitalist London: the hiding places of power in the West End’, designed to show anti-capitalist, anti-G8 protestors where to focus their anger.

By identifying London’s top banks, hedge funds, PR agencies and ‘dens of the rich’ (one very significant omission there, though), they have plotted with reasonable accuracy where key people do the deals that help run the world. Of course, they think this is a bad thing.

The language this group uses is so old-fashioned: the Greek EFG bank has been bailed out ‘on the condition of the pauperisation of the Greek population’. The Ritz ‘has housed capitalists since 1906’. Buckingham Palace is the ‘hideout of the infamous Windsor family’. Fortnum & Mason is ‘the supermarket of the ruling class’. And god help M&C Saatchi, ‘famous for running Margaret Thatcher’s campaigns’.

I don’t understand anti-capitalists. It’s like being anti-sun or anti-blood: there is nothing else. You can modify and refine capitalism, sure, and it’s by no means perfect, but it’s all there is. It’s the only economic system that works. You may as well argue that humans shouldn’t consume oxygen – capitalism is as intrinsic to our society as that gas is necessary for our lungs.

The comrades need to grow up a little and realise that an attempted riot, as on Tuesday, stands as little chance of overthrowing capitalism as chucking bread rolls at the chancellor during his Mansion House speech. This is a map, not a plan.

Read more from Josh Spero

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