The oft-prophesied collapse of capitalism is looming over our world's daily supply of goods. The global economic system is on the ropes and must not be allowed to fail. So proclaims government, financial marketeers, tottering czars of industry, media mandarins, and just about everybody else who can pay to be heard. But since their efforts to avert failure have so far inspired little confidence, some attention might be given to Plan B. After all, despite its arcane procedures, capitalism is really just an accounting system, a way of ensuring that the world's work gets done and that those who do it are properly compensated.
Now I'm not stupid enough to forget that capitalism is also a system that has allowed a substantial though relatively small group of human beings to amass titanic wealth and, so to speak, to capitalize on that wealth by exercising transformative power over the whole planet and everyone on it. If they were all wise and benevolent, that might be a satisfactory arrangement; they aren't, and it isn't. So any discussion of how human history (let alone human well-being) might continue after the demise of capitalism must get a good fix on the roots of greed and why it has persisted despite the abundant evidence of its perversity.
Moralists of the Right, when not actually endorsing greed, will insist that it's inherent in human nature, a kind of original sin we're stuck with, like cruelty, violence and the need to snipe at those we disapprove of. The belief that people are essentially flawed is fundamental to the outlook of the Right. It's the root of authoritarianism; if from birth we are, as a species, up to no good, we need to be given rules and obey them. (The possibility that the rulegivers are equally flawed doesn't trouble the Right. Many among them think God made the rules, the U.S. Constitution included.)
To hold this pessimistic view of human nature is a sure sign of a broken heart, so to reach out with healing is the first obligation of anyone whose view is more hopeful. This is why the instruction Love Your Enemies retains its magic. I was lucky enough to come of age at a time when a great mass movement of young people was willing to act on the assumption that Love Is All You Need (try to guess the decade). If nowadays young people are more likely to think that an iPod or an MBA is all you need, it's not their fault. The system of brainwashing that American capitalism perfected through the advertising media, though bruised by the first countercultural rebellion, charged back with the advent of Reaganism and has been riding higher than ever until recently. But we're clearly in for a change.
Walk the streets of any American city or watch drivers immobilized in traffic, and you'll notice a conspicuous shortage of happy adult faces. It's not a coincidence. Our system imparts false values from the moment we're old enough to watch TV or read a billboard. In a single day the typical American is bombarded with more images of stuff to crave than our colonial ancestors saw in a lifetime. Some of it is actually useful. Most of it is junk. Not just because of the impact its production has on the planet. Far worse is how it poisons our mental life. Junk breeds junkies. It promises happiness and delivers clutter. It promises excitement and delivers numbness. It promises beauty and delivers cosmetics. Why shouldn't people feel cheated by a system that hits them a with a real stick but feeds them a plastic carrot?
Consumers everywhere are in revolt. Not so much from choice as necessity. But what if that could be turned around? What if we noticed that paying attention to real people was more rewarding than shopping or TV? What if we encountered an inner voice that could distinguish between the nurturing we require and the counterfeits we pursue? What if we began to ask whether corporate consumerism was really the ultimate flowering of America's promise?
For one thing, capitalism as we know it would fade away. But since it may be doing that anyway, we might be wise to drop our resistance and bid it a fond farewell. We could thank it for its efficient promotion of the Industrial Revolution, while observing that by creating an interconnected world it has rendered its own creed of frenetic competition obsolete. A satellite can't go into orbit till its booster rocket falls away. If the accounting system is in flames, let it drop and disintegrate, mission accomplished.
The question that arises naturally is, what would take capitalism's place? Conventional economists will be quick to point out that socialism also seems to have failed. From a Darwinian perspective, planet Earth was an environmental battlefield where socialism was defeated by its hardier, fitter rival (though it looks more and more like a Pyrrhic victory). The truth is that a system grounded in the cooperative sharing of resources can no more succeed within a competitive context than a CD can play on an LP turntable.
The proper context is one where sharing rules, as any successful parent discovers. To create that context globally will require more than giving the advertising industry a sabbatical (though that would help). We must focus on our natural instinct for empathy. Children who are coerced into sharing via the weapon of guilt turn into hostile and resentful adults who hate welfare.
No, we share effectively only when we do so from love, as children spontaneously teach. They teach it not only in those moments when they suddenly share a prized possession, but especially when they share some unexpected aspect of themselves, the harvest of self-discovery. We could travel steadily through life making such offerings of ourselves, giving and receiving delight, except for being conditioned by fear to suspect the worst of each other.
Of course, living can inflict a thousand wounds on our ability (or willingness) to "love one another." But with the advances since Bible times in our understanding of how the psyche functions, self-realization techniques are widely available to repair the damage done to our inherent nature. Why not make use of them? The world's work would get organized and performed in a collective spirit of mutual assistance and shared benefit.
I can hear the howls of "Utopian" already. Mostly they come from the broken-hearted, who continue to believe, despite millenia of evidence, that force and violence can have any ultimate effect beside generating more force and violence, in endless retaliation. Anyone who doesn't acknowledge the connection between the present socio-economic meltdown and the waste of spiraling billions of money on aggressive weaponry that could fund beneficial public projects (health care?) instead, is in no position to give either economic or moral advice. The cancerous spell of profit-driven militarism packaged as "defense" must be broken if this planet is to witness a human future.
To those who doubt that humans en masse are capable of such spontaneous and sustained harmlessness, I reply that the shift has already begun. The great tide may have ebbed that bathed the 60s/70s in the glow that boomers still recall, but the energy behind it is perennial and flows readily without an assist from Birkenstocks or granola. Today, as then, self-appointed "realists" who perpetuate the illusion of separateness may dismiss the political call to unconditional love as naive. Perhaps, but then so is the Sermon on the Mount. And it's true that by the time the meek inherit the earth it may not be that nice a place. We had better start doing our best without delay. By extending love we will find it.
That's why humans live in groups - to collectively defend against rogues who rape, pillage, and plunder. Unfortunately, this usually requires allying with or hiring bullies and thugs who do somewhat less damage than the unallied rogues to be the police and army. Totally non-violent human groups do not exist because they are easily victimized by those who use violence or its threat to control others.
My grandmother had a philosophy of human behavior which boiled down to a single statement:
"People are no damn good."
When I was young, I rejected her philosophy, but over time, I've seen it demonstrated time and time again by humans being human. It is a fundamental truth of human nature. There will be no Utopia, because someone's already figuring out how to be the richest and most powerful Utopian at the expense of all other Utopians. There's no getting around the Utopian Mafia.
Human beings live on a continuum between total selflessness and total selfishness. Any social experiment that tries to ignore either of these polarities fails.
One of the main reasons communism failed is that it failed to recognize the truth about SELFISH motivation: people are more motivated to achieve economic goals when their own reward is directly tied to the goal - rather than the reward being distributed to the large and anonymous collective.
One of the main reasons capitalism is failing right now is that it has failed to realize the truth unchecked selfishess ultimately kills the goose that's laying the golden eggs.
Economic utoptians and economic darwinians are useful because they provide a needed counterweight to their opposites. But history shows that it's sheer folly to allow philosophers from either camp to actuall drive the bus.
Ideological purists are like stopped clocks: right twice a day; useless for telling the time.
The only way our free enterprise will work for us is if we can keep the size of corporations not much larger than the optimal size it requires for it operations. Different businesses need different scale of operations but majority of our behemoths are well beyond their optimal size. One way of dealing with this issue is for government to either break down enterprises to smaller pieces or nationalize them. I bet you very few corporations would be nationalized. They would find a way to keep them small.
These paradigms of Capitalism and Socialism, though, are somewhat fallacious. Even in its darkest most repressive days, China, Russia and all the eastern-block countries had thriving black markets. Why? Because the purely socialist economic model was insufficient to meet the needs of the population. Conversely, what would you call American Social Security, Medicare, Public Education, Infrastructure, Fire and Police services, etc., if not socialist enterprises?
The truth is that this binary of Capitalism vs. Socialism is nonsense. It is, always has been and always will be a mix.
Economic structures, like life, are in flux. Nothing is fixed. Things evolve and rather than hold to absurd notions of "isms", we must look coldly and clearly at the situation at hand and evolve. Those who can't adapt (read those "conservatives" desperately trying to conserve the status quo) will be sloughed off like so much dead skin.
I take your point about love and the re-defining of common values, however in conjunction and not mutually exclusive to your point, there needs to be a clear-eyed analysis of where we stand. I too grew up with the admonition that Love is All You Need, but that ultimately proved to be just a little too simplistic, no?
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The seemingly benevolent Biblical passage of the meek inheriting the earth has always sounded to me more like a threat than the promise of a better life to come.
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I am not sure you meant it as such, but I found that ^^^^ to be extremely funny.. :D
Michale.....
I meant, however, what the author I think implies: that the earth the meek may wind up inheriting might be layed waste by [fill in the blank: nuclear winter, environmental disaster, etc.].
In other words, to meekly go along with the flow rather than be a force for change, you will contribute to and inherit disaster.
It was meant to be clever, but not so funny.
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If you insist on telling the truth, we're going to have to ask you to leave.
Today we've learned that unemployment has reached a 37 year high, with newly announced job cuts totaling 500,000 to be added to the already 1.2 million this year. There are few options available toward improving these circumstances, which if improved would in turn stimulate the economy.
Among these ranks are many, many very qualified people in all areas that could contribute their talents to a newly created enterprise created by one or more of the aformentioned wealthy individuals.
If you support this idea, we need a resounding response to this post in the way of supportive comments. Please post your comment right now while you are here. Remember, unemployed people do not wish to be and solutions are what is needed.
The Newly Created COALITION FOR THE UNEMPLOYED E-mail: employsecure@gmail.com
This is certainly NOT the definition of capitalism; it is perhaps associated with meritocracy, but capitalism refers to the ownership of the means of production and the legitimacy of profiting thereby. It is often associated with a "free market", although that is not intrinsic in the definition.
Free enterprise system does not like rules and regulations and would rather forget about any such larger bargain but in order for it to work for us we need to place the free enterprise back where it belongs - working for our overall benefit. It has been straying away from this function for decades. If we cannot do this then it is time to think of alternatives. As a matter of fact I don't believe the system is reformable until it is threatened by annihilation. As a conservative I advocate for a strong and vibrant socialist left in this country in order to rebalance our political system.
Communalism is voluntary, Communism is not. Socialism is, from it's very creation in the mind of Marx, a bloody movement. For those of us wo have worked hard and accumulated a modicum of wealth, we will defend our property (and rights to property) with our lives.
The reason why Marxists don't like the option of Communalism, is besause their utopian ideal won't work without other peoples money. The essence of Socialism is not "sharing", it is murderous envy.
And as to the tone of this piece, well, it's the polar opposite of rightwing ideology--which is fine in your sunday school class [as in instilling the moral concept], but has little value in this environment of hard-edged realities and global economic shifts.
A system that brings us closer to economic equality is certainly possible, to sell the effort as being tied to a spiritual concept is simply fraudulent, and in the end counterproductive.
If nowadays young people are more likely to think that an iPod or an MBA is all you need, it's not their fault.
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This line really jumped out at me.
It is THIS attitude that I think is at the foundation of the problems we face..
If a person likes their ipod more than their neighbor, it IS their fault.. If said person takes action to protect their ipod over their neighbor, it IS their fault. If said person brutalizes their neighbor because they think that said neighbor stole said ipod, it IS that persons fault..
This attutide of "It's ok, your actions are not your fault, we understand" is disintegrating the concept of personal responsibility. If young people are brainwashed into thinking that they can evade responsibility, no matter how outrageous the conduct, then that simply pushes the weak-minded ones to get away with more and more outrageous conduct..
Time for a little tough love....
Michale.....
If that is true, then I accept that label with pride...
Michale.....
You don't have a moral leg to stand on.
The big question now is can capitalism evolve into a new form in line with the worlds decreasing resources. I just don't think so. It may try to evolve, but if it does, the only way I see that happening is by advances in science and technology. I'm sorry, but for the long term health of the nation we don't need more people sitting around in front of computer screens gorging on ice cream. There are already a dangerous number of overweight people in America.We need to reward a persons physical labor again, and I just don't see that happening without some kind of total collapse
As far as "decreasing resources" go, that's a boondoggle. This planet offers plenty of resources and almost all of them are sufficient to supply us for virtually forever with everything we will ever need. There are a few nuclei that we are going to run rather short off within a few generations, helium being the by far hardest to replace element. It is followed by uranium, although we have resources for thousands of years at our current level of use of it. All other "shortages" like oil, natural gas and coal are merely flukes of nature that we were given to exploit for a century or two. It was nice that we had them, but we can easily live without them... if we have to. Of course, since we personally never had to, our natural reaction is one of panic, but that's more a proof of our immaturity than an actual indicator for the severity of the situation.
Capitalism does not per se carry a moral judgment in it or the seeds of its own destruction. Neither does it manifest itself in the same way throughout history. Instead it is so fundamentally human that it can not disappear and never has, not even in the most extremely socialist or communist countries.
And if none of this interests you, take a pilgrimage to the next mall and see if you can find your piece in what you see there. I just did and I honestly can't.
True - but the piece I think you missed is that the whole process runs on the exchange of money for products or labour or services.
In some situations (like the one we're in) the system fails when the money available gets consolidated in too few hands and is subsequently used more as a self-sustaining poker game rather than getting put back into the market in ways that end up putting money in the hands of those who sell their labour for a living. The plan is that they then subsequently spend that money and the Capitalists get to do their best to get them to spend that mpney on their Products or Services. This makes the successful Capitalists more money, makes their businesses more successful and that means more jobs and more money in the system for the Capitalists to chase after. It's a perfect system. But it has gotten perverted and it is time for governments (who are responsible for the overall well-being of their citizens, have to get the flow going again.
Dick
Never in history has more money been available to the widest range of people than today. If you think that today's workers are worse off than those a hundred years ago or that being a peasant three centuries ago was an idyllic life, you have not read your history books.
"The plan is..."
There is no such "plan" and never was. And the system was never "perfect" (by what measure anyway?). How much labor vs. investments are worth is the outcome of a dynamic game. In an unchecked scenario, as history shows, the usual outcome of the game is that one man/woman manage to get it all. We usually call that the Kin, Queen, Emperor, Pharao etc.. The overall return of such a scenario is typically very low. Over time in history we have learned that different levels of sharing lead to much larger total returns. In all likelihood all societies in existence are still too far on the unchecked side of the optimal game (in the sense of total, not individual return) and there is a lot of self interest by the current winners to keep it that way. But that interest was always there, just imagine telling Pharao that there are better ways to invest Egypt's GDP than large stone structures....
No, not at all. You can find examples of capitalism at work in pre-historic burial sites. People are being laid to rest with artifacts documenting their social status which is represented by the number of animals they owned, the tools they used in their lives or pieces of finely crafted jewelery. And as it happens some people are buried with more than others, even in times before money.
Money is simply a technical tool to facilitate the exchange of value in a way susceptible to accounting. The rich and the poor, the haves and the have nots, the owners and the owned appear much earlier in history than money does.