Can You Be Anti-Capitalist and Still Build Wealth?

I’ve been thinking about this conversation I had a few weeks back when I was having a video chat with an anti-capitalist business coach. As a bookkeeper who works with entrepreneurs and small business owners, conversations about money and business often lead to bigger questions like this one.

It was a challenging conversation, but in a good way. The person I was chatting with wanted to vet me, to make sure that I wasn’t being performative. And I appreciate that. Because I’ve done that with collaborators before.

(Sidenote: I had a client who consulted with police departments. You might not know this, but I lean more towards abolition. And so it was a bit of a difficult decision to work with her. But ultimately, we had the same goal, which was to stop cops from killing people.)

Back to my meeting: I was starting to get really nervous and rethink everything as I was talking through my viewpoints. I was slapped in the face with a huge case of imposter syndrome. And like a classic overthinker, I went from “here’s what I think about these big topics” to “What even is Capitalism and anti-capitalism?” And “Can you build wealth and still be anti-capitalist?”

Again, I overthought this. Because if I was asking these questions about entrepreneurship, wealth building, and money, I figured I probably wasn't the only one.

Which meant that it had to become an article for the blog. This might become a few of them, actually. Stay tuned.

Starting With the Basics: What Is Capitalism?

A key starting point: Capitalism is an economic system that is characterized by profit as the primary motivator, or some might say the only motivating factor. It is defined by self-interest, whether it’s the self-interest of the individual or the corporation. There are additional classifications or categories, depending on scale and government oversight, but it’s all Capitalism.

I was tempted to get super nerdy and do a very brief description of various economic models. I even went so far as to treat it as a biological classification system, as if the different modes of Economy were living organisms. Reining it in a bit, we’ll skip over that and go to the biggest thing I learned.

Anti-capitalism is a political ideology, not an economic system. (This pulled me out of the spiral when I learned this.) This is a big revelation to me. It means that from an economic standpoint, there isn’t a right way to be anti-capitalist. So what is Anti-Capitalism, and can you be an entrepreneur and still be Anti-Capitalist? Can you build wealth and still be anti-capitalist?

Why I Believe Entrepreneurs Can Be Anti-Capitalist

I think the fundamental component of AntiCapitalism is recognizing that Capitalism is inherently broken. The ruling class owns the means of production and exploits the working class by restricting their access to said means. They profit from the labor of the workers and use those profits to obtain further power over the working class. Additionally, they hoard access to housing, affordable food, and health care all in the name of generating more profits. And it’s all to keep the workers generating profit for the ruling class, to feed the machine and invest in widening the inequality gap.

My argument is that it is incredibly easy for entrepreneurs to be anti-capitalist. I know this isn’t universal, but for many entrepreneurs, their very existence is an opposition to this system.

From the beginning, entrepreneurs resist the system by removing their labor from the means of production. Similarly to my article about tax resistance, if we all remove our labor from the system, then the ruling class can’t profit off our labor.

Realistically, we can’t all remove our labor from the system. But if a growing number of us do, and then the working class redirects their spending power to these small businesses, we’re redirecting the means under which the ruling class maintains their power.

"Because under this system, money is power."

Rethinking My Relationship With Money

It’s easy to adopt an anti-capitalist ideology and reject money. I’ve looked at generating income with aversion, as if there was something noble about remaining poor. (That’s a completely different article.) But there’s another way to approach it. A way that I was in the process of learning as I entered into that conversation I mentioned at the beginning of this article.

I’m going to say it again. Money is power. I needed help coming to this conclusion. I highly recommend reading We Should All Be Millionaires by Rachel Rodgers for some great insights into this.

This was the remaining dot I needed to connect. I could see how founding my business was an act of resistance, but I struggled to see how money contributed to building power. You would think that this would be obvious to a bookkeeper, but we all have limiting beliefs about money, and this is one I’m working through.

Building Wealth to Build Community

Entrepreneurship provides small business owners with access to generating income in ways that employment with big businesses doesn’t. So many folks are drawn to entrepreneurship because they struggle to find success in more traditional forms of employment. Folks who are marginalized, who are discriminated against and/or struggle to maintain employment due to various disabilities. Entrepreneurship gives them opportunities to generate wealth.

Once we start receiving that income generated outside of the system, we can invest it in ways that build power. We can hire folks who are marginalized and pay them well for their labor, well above livable wages. We can invest profits into really good benefit packages for our employees and/or create profit-sharing models. This empowers the people we employ to build wealth along with us. We can invest that income into expanding the business, generating more wealth, and then reinvesting that income into doing more good.

As a bookkeeper, I usually consult with small business owners on how to invest their income into expanding their businesses while improving their financial clarity and reducing tax liability. But the other side of the coin that I’ve failed to really contemplate: those same strategies can be used to generate more wealth to be further invested in doing more good.

When we look at it from that perspective, it seems so obvious that entrepreneurship and wealth building should be used as anti-capitalist strategies. At first glance, it looks like we’re participating in it ourselves. But with a little more nuance and strategic planning, it can give us the power we need to enact change.