Individualism and Violence| Capital does not trickle down

“I am the question and the answer, I am the key to the secret and the solution to the riddle,” declares Bishr Amer Abd El-Zaher (played by Yehia El-Fakharany) at the opening of the TV series “Zezenia.” 

In much the same spirit, many capitalists who acknowledge the crises of modern capitalist societies, which include their gradual fragmentation into isolated islands, offer a solution that remains firmly within the logic of the same system. This solution is a kind of positive “spillover effect.”

According to this concept, economic growth at the top of the pyramid, whether through the accumulation of wealth or booming investments, will naturally trickle down to the rest of society. As corporate profits soar and elite incomes rise, it is assumed that these gains will gradually benefit lower classes in the form of new job opportunities, better services, and higher living standards.

But has this actually happened? Is it even conceivable? Could solutions emerge, in the fashion of Bishr Amer Abd El-Zaher, from within the very system that sustains the vicious cycle explored in the first three articles of this series, where individualism and alienation reinforce isolation in a never-ending loop?

We can now observe how alienation in modern capitalist societies, amplified by widening class gaps, has shifted from a theoretical concept in Marxist literature to a tangible reality that produces a pathological form of social isolation. The more wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small elite, the deeper the alienation experienced by the working and exhausted middle classes.

This alienation isn’t limited to workers’ loss of control over their production. It extends to weaken human bonds, as seen in the “isolation of the marginalized” in poor neighborhoods, where families are trapped in debt, and individuals shut themselves off, unable to participate meaningfully in social or cultural life. This is mirrored by “elite withdrawal” into gated communities.

From New York to New Cairo, their interactions with the rest of society have been reduced to a bare minimum.

Widening gaps

Since the late 1970s, global class disparities have steadily grown. As Thomas Piketty explains in “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” (2013), capital accumulation has not led to wealth “trickling down” to poorer classes as neoliberal ideology promised—quite the opposite, in fact.

According to the 2022 Global Inequality Report, the wealth share of the richest 1% rose from 22% in 1980 to around 38% in 2020. In this context, poverty has become more than just a lack of income. It now marks a permanent position of structural marginalization that produces isolation, alienation, and a withdrawal from public life.

In the Arab region, the crisis has been exacerbated by privatization policies and so-called “economic reforms” that have widened the gap between social classes. In Egypt, as Dr. Mahmoud Abdel Fadil analyzes in “Rasmaliyat al-Mahaseeb” (Crony Capitalism), capitalist policies took a distinct shape through the alliance between political power and business elites, where public assets were allocated to narrow networks of interest.

As illustrated in “Al-Iqtisad al-Misri fi al-Qarn al-Hadi wal-Ishreen” (The Egyptian Economy in the 21st Century), edited by Wael Gamal, the economy has, over the past 20 years, become a free-for-all for plundering benefits. A minority profited from the privatization of public utilities, while the majority bore the brunt of price hikes and worsening services.

These policies eroded the middle class by nearly 48% between 2000 and 2015, with the number of adults in the middle class dropping from 5.7 million in 2000 to 2.9 million in 2015. This occurred under the government of businessmen headed by Ahmed Nazif, which adopted neoliberal policies that boosted the wealth of the rich while raising unemployment and poverty rates. These policies ushered in an oligarchic class tied to power, clearly demonstrating how privatization strengthened cronyism and rentier networks.

Worse still, the dominant narrative—driven by media and market forces—redefined success and failure as personal traits, unrelated to the economic system’s structure. The poor are recast as “losers” and stripped of their status as victims of systemic injustice. The rich, even if beneficiaries of rent-seeking or monopolies, are hailed as “successful entrepreneurs.”

This thinking finds expression in ideological signals like Osama El-Ghazaly Harb’s call in April for the return of civilian honorific titles—a stark example of mechanisms reinforcing social stratification. Historically, such titles served as tools for entrenching social hierarchies. Today, the dominant narrative revives these practices to distinguish a new elite class tied to capital and power, associating these titles with lavish consumption and elite club memberships.

Meanwhile, the proposed alternative comes in the form of social protection programs within the very same neoliberal policies. But these programs are often selective and temporary, designed not as comprehensive rights-based protections for all citizens, but rather as targeted, conditional interventions for the “poorest segments,” based on narrow criteria and often reliant on external funding.

Such programs do not address the structural roots of poverty or redistribute wealth. They merely aim to soften the economic shock temporarily, without disrupting elite interests or market trajectories. This is fundamentally different from the concept of social justice, which demands permanent, inclusive guarantees for all citizens to be able to live with dignity and participate fully in the economy and society. As noted in the “Social Protection Manual” by the Arab Forum for Alternatives, these policies offer solace to the poor without addressing poverty itself.

Neoliberal capitalism, contrary to popular myth, does not produce a trickle-down of wealth but rather entrenches inequality. There is no automatic mechanism for redistribution. On the contrary, the state cedes the levers it has and becomes a guarantor of capital interests. In such a world, the promised surplus never materializes. The poor do not benefit from the growth of the rich; they become poorer. The result? Fragmented societies marked by isolation and alienation, and made up of individuals seeking personal salvation amid the ruins of the collective.

Islands of isolated violence

The economic system thus produces isolated “human islands”: the poor excluded on the peripheries and the rich fortified in opulent suburbs—both unable to see the other as members of the same society.

This dynamic not only dissolves social solidarity but turns isolation into a mechanism for resisting change. The secluded in their high-rises and the alienated in their shanty towns can no longer imagine alternatives to the status quo.

This takes us back to the assault incident at the international school that opened the first article in this series. There is no clearer illustration of layered alienation than a teenage student assaulting a younger child in front of classmates, who film the scene without intervening. 

We are witnessing not just a case of individual misconduct but a social manifestation of broken solidarities and mutual alienation. The perpetrating student enacts violence justified by imagined superiority, while the bystanders are mere spectators, not participants.

This is exactly what Marx foresaw: that capitalism would produce isolated individuals, strangers in a shared reality, connected only through consumerist or competitive relationships. The attacker feels no sense of belonging, and the onlookers feel no responsibility. Everyone lives in a state of absolute individualism.

When this individualism intersects with widening class gaps, violence emerges. Just as happened in Latin America in the 1970s, when acute class divides sparked surging violence.

In Argentina, between 1973 and 1976, as 42% of wealth was concentrated in the hands of 10% of the population, the Gini coefficient (a measure of income inequality) reached 46%. Elite isolation in Buenos Aires, where they monopolized most urban investments, fueled the rise of violent groups like the Montoneros, which carried out 1,200 acts of political violence.

In Brazil, between 1968 and 1974, the Gini coefficient rose from 53% to 63% during the so-called “economic miracle,” sparking 450 violent protests by landless farmers and a dramatic surge in the drug trade within poor neighborhoods.

This disparity was also evident during the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, both across nations and within societies. In many countries, the wealthy were vaccinated before the poor. While pharmaceutical companies prioritized profits over life, poorer populations suffered delays in access.

And while all this unfolded, business leaders raced to get workers back to factories, openly embracing the principle of profit before people. As Fouad Haddad wrote in “The Story of May Day”:

The capitalist owns the machine

The capitalist imprisons people

The capitalist owns the machine

Chains of exploitation and unemployment

He turns your life, poor man, into a burden

He kills you and sells you your shroud.

This is evident in the core concepts that shape human consciousness—and by extension, people’s stances on life’s big questions. This will be the focus of the next article.