'It's all about us'

SELFISHNESS, or the milder version called self-interest, has always been the end-all and be-all of capital. Even before Marx did his historic work on the deep contradictions — and unresolvable conflicts — between capital and labor, the sole agenda of capital has been exclusively on maximizing profits, the gains to be made.

The soullessness of the British East India Company, for example, the horrors of the slave trade (which was driven by both commercial and labor reasons) and the forces that pushed the fictional Colonel Kurtz into derangement, have been elevated, hyped-up examples on capital's mindless pursuit of profit and trade. Made-for-literature chapters in the long history of brutal capitalism, the epic descent into inhumanity a common feature. (Even Joseph Conrad's Colonel Kurtz was not a figment of his imagination. Kurtz was a composite of the bizarre characters that Conrad encountered during his years sailing commercial routes as a merchant.)