Capitalism as Parasitism

Growing up in Pakistan and living in America for over a decade now, I have seen the place where capitalism benefits the few elites and the place where the labor force of many is used to extract and produce. I saw young kids in the global south busy with menial labor. Young girls sitting in one place for hours making hand-tied knots to produce the most exquisite carpets... When I asked, why are the laborers so young, the answer given to me, still echoes in my mind... And it was that their slim fingers produce the most intricate knots.

Sadly, whenever I see such beautiful handmade carpets now, I am reminded of those young girls, working tirelessly to fulfill the ever-increasing consumer demand in the Global North. The carpets are sold for hundred times more than what was given to them. As I contemplated more on this connection, I started seeing similarities between capitalism and parasitism, especially when our learning community took a field trip (to remove the invasive non-native species), which happened at the same time when we were discussing the political philosophy of capitalism. This pairing of an ecological restoration experience that highlighted parasitism in a biological context made the connection to the political philosophy of liberalism and the economic system of capitalism even more difficult to ignore.

Parasitism is a phenomenon in which the parasite latches on to the host and gets all of its sustenance from the host in a slow and prolonged extraction. An abstract understanding of parasitism is a selfish relationship between the host and the uninvited guest. This uninvited guest extracts resources endlessly from the host which leads to depletion, starvation and exhaustion, leaving the host in the most vulnerable condition, exposed to further harm and exploitation. When I picture a relationship like this, I see a physical living or once-living structure - perhaps a tree trunk or a branch that has become hollow by termites. It doesn’t matter whether the tree is in the forest, in its most natural state or had been transformed into an intricate dining table, the damage would be equally disastrous. The structure might appear to be fine from outside but it’s only a matter of time before it would collapse.

A scene from the mesic woodlands on Oakton's Des Plaines campus

I see capitalism as one such structure and relationship. Let’s imagine the Global North as taking the form of a parasite and the Global South as a host in this relationship. As the parasite only sees the host as means of endless extraction of resources so does the system of capitalism, this endless extraction will eventually turn the parasite into a serpent which will start eating its own tail to fulfill its infinite ambitious goals of endless profit from a vulnerable finite world, a strange parasitic relationship in which the extraction is both its dependency and demise, entailing a form of cannibalism. Its tyranny does not differentiate between age and gender. As we saw above and also in the case of chocolate production, when cocoa beans are harvested in places like West Africa through child labor and slavery and companies in the Global North enjoy the immense profit coming from an estimated million children working in slavery in places like Ghana and Ivory Coast. If only the consumer sitting far away could also taste the blood and the sweat of the child along with the sweetness of the chocolate.

Karl Marx, in his critique of capitalism, makes the claim that this the first economic system that prioritizes an abstract exchange value over any form of use-value of a product, commodity, or service. The distance between the labor and profit generated for those who control the means of production is so vastly increased that it becomes difficult for the consumer to see the level of exploitation it takes in the Global South for someone in the Global North to enjoy a new smart phone with every upgrade.

Parasitism barely keeps the host alive while maintaining a healthy façade, and so does capitalism. This system’s dirty work is usually done somewhere else and the profit is reaped elsewhere, the consumer benefiting from the product is deliberately left unaware of the harmful impacts and different stages of exploitation it went through in the process of extraction and production before it landed in someone’s hand or home. Thus, creating an "out of sight, out of mind" illusion. Capitalism is a system that passes its negative externalities off to the developing countries that bear the burdens of the harmful effects of extraction and production while the Global North maintains a clean façade. This is related to something that Kohei Saito in The Degrowth Manifesto calls the "Netherlands Fallacy" as well as the imperial mode of living, where he draws a connection between Global North and Global South as well as many people living in a state of deprivation in the Global South as a necessary requirement of capitalism.

Capitalism also creates this scenario for some people in the Global North, with the spoils of capitalist production favoring mostly the elite. However here the distinction is not that stark but rather exists more in the shadows. We see this in the examples of "home owners" and basically owners of anything substantial are actually loaners rather than owners, who are forced to pay many times more than the actual worth of something to obtain it to pay off the interest on the money loaned to obtain basic necessities like a place to live or a car to get to work and back every day. This brutal capture through interest by the banks only serves the interests of the elite.

I also saw this parasitic relationship when we went to the mesic woodland on Oakton's Des Plaines campus to remove the invasive Asian bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus) vines. The vines completely grew over the other trees and plants by strangling them, while taking up most of the sunlight and using the other trees as supports to grow fast and high without putting down substantial roots of its own. This dynamic is a similar relationship to what I see in the capitalistic system of unfair distribution, exploitation, and depletion of resources. A relationship between the Global North and the Global South. What made the comparison even more suitable was the fact that the invasive vine over time has developed even more self-seeking traits, where it has increased its growth by not investing as much in the structural molecule lignin that gives wood its strength while still exerting pressure onto the host. That reminded me of an endless profit-making formula. Perhaps the vine is interested in nothing but making more of itself (like capital in the M(oney)-C(ommodity)-M(oney)+ cycle).

The irony is that whether knowingly or unknowingly, the diner or technology consumer in the Global North is not just consuming the end product but is also consuming the Global South, from coffee to soybeans to lithium to cobalt. As long as the M-C-M+ relationship goes on, the parasitic relationship lives on. Hence, what is needed is a complete severance of the parasite from the host in order to liberate the Global South so its resources and productive capacities can be utilized for the benefit of those people living there.