Okay, I am a capitalist, probably you too if you are reading this. I have benefitted, sort of like I’m a fish swimming in the ocean of an economy into which I was born (in Jersey City in the propitious month of August 1945). Fish don’t notice water the way that we don’t notice the capitalism that flows all around us. This is changing, however.
The post World War II years were good for me, representing a benign respite from the Great Depression and World War II that intervened in my parents’ biographies (see Mills). “Mutatis mutandis,” say economists: “All things change.”
But I am concerned that capitalisms will collide with climate catastrophe, and maybe I will be around in 2030 — at 85 — so that I can herein speculate as to the outcomes.
I have had the privilege to offer courses around the broad theme of global sustainability, such as Economy, Ecology, and Ethics. I no longer restrict myself to a broad and innovative curriculum, but can transcend into speculation. This is the purpose of this site. So let’s dive into this ocean.
BTW, I am emphatically not a Marxist, so let’s get that out of the way as well. I find Marxism and Marxists stubbornly and rigidly dogmatic. However, I also recognize that capitalism drives for profit, thus requires economic growth, and will not give up its business model or its privilege. Period.
Further, capitalism in the hegemonic US will utilize its citizenship privileges granted by the Roberts Court in its Citizens United holding but will not embrace its civic obligations. The large corporation will likely seek to corrupt the public realm to capture the overall political economy with its prodigious financial resources, while it shamelessly greenwashes with its supportive ideology and propaganda (Korten). My daring to even write these words will inflame many of capitalism’s adherents, who will continue to troll me.
Plural Capitalisms?
So why the plural? For these reasons:
- Approach capitalisms as cases exist in practice (Gray) in its manifold forms: Scandanavia, US, Brexit, China, Venezuela, Germany, Hong Kong, etc. These targets will not stand still, so pay close attention, now. Tomorrow. Do not give in to determinisms of any kind: You surrender your freedom to see beyond the dilemma.
- This invites comparative analysis and learning its flexibility and adaptability: Capitalisms’ adaptability must be discovered to find its limits and to . . .
- Accommodate capitalisms to bend to sustainability (a useful shorthand, explained later). A disclaimer: Although I offered classes in public policy, I do not advocate grand plans such as the Green New Deal: Such futile schemes will be staunchly and effectively repulsed, will be unwieldy in practice, and will ultimately generate a sharp pushback. The private sector can nimbly adapt. Maybe: Got a better idea? Let me know.
- Spot advantages, innovations, and strategic opportunities when they appear, or anticipate these. Leonard Cohen said it well in his Anthem: “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” Notice my ambivalence to capitalisms, which forces me to resolve my cognitive dissonance. I work this through as I write.
- Aristotle stated in his magisterial Metaphysics, Volume 7, that the only problem worthy of philosophy was an Aporia (Owen): No known path through the conundrum. This obsessed Martin Heidegger, a situation which do not go well as he descended into Nazism. The coming catastrophe of capitalism and climate is my Aporia, thus I am compelled to discover my journey in this blog. Pity my beloved wife, Kathleen, as she puts up with my obsessive folly.
- As you set out on this journey, adhere to the more humble road toward decentralization, devolution, community, autonomy, federalism. Below, I will argue from Braudel, Keynes, and Adam Smith that localism trumps globalization. Build on the household, the community, the civic engagement rather than rely on Neoliberalism and unfettered corporate capitalism. Turn toward the tactile, accessible, caring and away from the dominance of the distant, the remote control, the glitz, the unattainable and anti-life of globalization, the ultimate impersonal and dehumanizing. As Hesse said in his Siddhartha, “Do not seek, find.” Go Zen. Think globally, act locally — but strategically, as my old friend and colleague Murray Bookchin said to me a long time ago.
- Better, nurture Life and reject, defy, struggle against all that defiles, disrupts, diminishes, or degrades Life, Creation, the dignity and potential of the human Soul, and more broadly Nature. Do not tolerate abusive anything, anywhere, anytime (see Jensen). Start now: never stop.
- But can capitalisms support, rather than plunder, exploit, objectify, commodify all life, matter, and humanity? This reverts back to the Aporia itself.
- Finally, due to the looming catastrophe of climate collapse on the horizon, I suggest that the answers had prudently be discovered and actually implemented in the coming decade, 2020-2030. I remain quite pessimistic but move forward: Onward! Join me, on your unique path. We will meet along the journey.
How to Approach Capitalisms?
Three books might help:
- The Making of the by Dudley Dillard. I took a graduate course with the marvelous Professor Dillard at the University of Maryland in the fall of 1963. His magnus opus had just been published. Dillard navigated each turn and development, but also introduced me to . . .
- Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, sharply distinguished formal economics, masquerading as science, an substantive economies, the actual practices, institutions, cultures that comprise the concrete, specific economies that hopefully sustain us.
- Fernand Braudel opened a potential path as he organized his trilogy.
- Marx, especially in his three volumes of Capital, to his great credit, identified the tensions and contradictions within capitalism — Marx never used the term capitalism. Thus, capitalisms of all sort must resolve their internal dialectic. Therein might lie a piece of the map, lighting a clearing on the journey.
