The Myth of Accountability
Capitalism, Democracy, and the Illusion of Justice
Morning Comrades.
I spent a large part of my weekend thinking about accountability and how the severe lack of it all played and continues to play a massive part in the ever self-destructive downwards spiral of capitalism, politics and the us bearing the brunt of their fascism. Sure, we could and should definitely speak about how Trump and his team never faced any real consequences of ( pathetically ) trying to overthrow their own government but it goes a lot deeper than that. The entire pipeline of captialist to politics bears no accountability of their actions, no matter how harmful they are. From the Germans to celebrated and worked towards the Holocaust that were welcomed into the arms of baby NATO to every single politician since then, who, after massively fucking up either in terms of “wasting” our money - aka funnelling it into their mate’s pockets - or starting wars - especially looking at the majority of US presidents since 1945 - nothing. Zilch. Did I mention the Wall Street Bankers responsible for the 2008/9 crisis?
Right.
Yet, accountability is a cornerstone to any healthy society. So is Justice, however that may look and there are smarter people than myself deeply involved in that work. Accountability is held aloft as a moral pillar of capitalist democracy, a mechanism through which individuals and institutions are held responsible for their actions. Yet, this ideal is continuously exposed as a farce in practice. Across history and into the present, systemic impunity for the powerful, exploitation of the working class, and institutionalised violence have revealed capitalism’s fundamental resistance to genuine justice. As Karl Marx declared, “The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie” (Marx & Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1848). Far from an impartial guarantor of accountability, the state serves as an enforcer of capitalist dominance. Accountability is not only mythologized but structurally impossible and true justice demands not reform, but the violent overthrow of capitalist society.
Historical Injustice and the Capitalist Order
Capitalism, from its inception, has relied on the commodification of human life and the evasion of accountability by its ruling classes. Colonialism, slavery, and imperial conquest, bedrocks of capitalist development, were crimes committed with full legal sanction. The transatlantic slave trade, responsible for the brutal exploitation of millions, was not only permitted but subsidised by capitalist states.
Cedric J. Robinson’s theory of racial capitalism underscores how “the development, organization, and expansion of capitalist society pursued essentially racial directions” (Robinson, Black Marxism, 1983). Robinson argues that the structures of capitalism were never race-neutral, and that the genocides of indigenous peoples, enslavement of Africans, and later apartheid regimes were extensions of a racialised capitalist logic. None of the perpetrators of these systems—whether British colonisers in India or Belgian administrators in the Congo—faced meaningful justice. Instead, they were celebrated as civilisers and benefactors.
This absence of historical accountability is not an aberration; it is foundational to the capitalist world system. Legal and political institutions were built not to punish capitalist crimes, but to protect their perpetrators.
Modern Capitalism and the Theatre of Accountability
In modern capitalist democracies, accountability is staged as a spectacle. Elected officials are nominally answerable to the people, corporations face fines for malfeasance, and the courts maintain a façade of impartiality. But as Chris Hedges writes, “The façade of democracy masks the authoritarian rule of the corporate state” (Empire of Illusion, 2009). The mechanisms of accountability are tightly constrained by moneyed interests, and justice is commodified—available to the highest bidder.
Consider the 2008 financial crisis. Not a single high-ranking banking executive was jailed for the fraud that collapsed the global economy and displaced millions. Meanwhile, as Angela Davis notes, the United States “has constructed a prison-industrial complex that punishes poverty, not crime” (Are Prisons Obsolete?, 2003). The racialised incarceration of the working class contrasts sharply with the impunity of elites, revealing that accountability under capitalism is deeply classed and racialised.
David Harvey explains that neoliberalism restructured the state “to serve the interests of capital and render it immune from democratic pressures” (A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 2005). Accountability thus becomes a tool of repression rather than redress, used to punish dissent (e.g., protestors, whistleblowers) rather than the structural violence of capital accumulation.
Capitalist Democracy: A Lie in Form and Function
Bourgeois democracy is often touted as the highest form of political freedom. Yet, as Lenin stated, it is “democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich” (The State and Revolution, 1917). Elections are captured by capital; parties are beholden to donors; policies reflect the will of corporations rather than constituents.
Recent work by Thomas Ferguson in Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition (1995) demonstrates how capitalist elites fund political candidates not out of ideology but to secure favourable economic outcomes. The state thus becomes a hostage to private capital. Even liberal theorists like Nancy Fraser have conceded that “progressive neoliberalism” has eviscerated genuine democratic participation, creating a “crisis of representation” (The Old Is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born, 2019).
The illusion of accountability is maintained through the pageantry of elections, public inquiries, and investigations—none of which alter the structural imbalance of power. As Ruth Wilson Gilmore observes, “capitalism requires inequality and racism enshrines it” (Gilmore, Golden Gulag, 2007). Any notion of justice that exists within capitalism must therefore be suspect.
The Revolutionary Path: Destroying the Capitalist World
If accountability, justice, and equality are structurally incompatible with capitalism, then reform is not merely insufficient—it is counterproductive. Reforms provide the illusion of progress while leaving the underlying power structures intact. History teaches that the gains of labour and civil rights movements are eroded the moment they threaten capital accumulation.
Revolutionary violence, though maligned in liberal discourse, has historically been the only effective means to dismantle entrenched capitalist power. From the Paris Commune to the Cuban Revolution, popular uprisings have demonstrated that new forms of governance—rooted in worker control and socialised production—can only emerge through rupture.
Frantz Fanon, in The Wretched of the Earth (1961), wrote: “The violence which has ruled over the colonial order, that violence alone, will decide the future.” Fanon recognised that the colonial-capitalist order would not relinquish power voluntarily. Today, the same applies to capitalist democracies. The climate crisis, mass displacement, and imperial war have proven that capital will risk planetary annihilation before submitting to justice.
To build a truly accountable society, we must abolish private property, dismantle the bourgeois state, and construct new institutions of collective power. This cannot be achieved through the ballot box or courtroom; it requires insurrection, organisation, and the seizure of the means of production.
The myth of accountability in capitalist society is not a flaw—it is a feature. Capitalism requires the obfuscation of justice, the immunization of elites, and the containment of resistance. The spectacle of democratic accountability exists to pacify and distract, not to empower. Only through the revolutionary destruction of the capitalist world—its economic relations, its legal systems, its ideological apparatus—can humanity hope to achieve real justice and equality. Until then, accountability remains a dream deferred, and democracy a weapon of the ruling class.
Let’s get that bread.
Yours, warmly,
V.
Citations
Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1848). Manifesto of the Communist Party.
Robinson, C. J. (1983). Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition.
Davis, A. (2003). Are Prisons Obsolete? Seven Stories Press.
Harvey, D. (2005). A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press.
Hedges, C. (2009). Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. Nation Books.
Ferguson, T. (1995). Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems.
Fraser, N. (2019). The Old is Dying and the New Cannot Be Born. Verso.
Gilmore, R. W. (2007). Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. University of California Press.
Fanon, F. (1961). The Wretched of the Earth. Grove Press.
Lenin, V. I. (1917). The State and Revolution.