In 9.2 we looked at some of the key planks of capitalism and the benefits they have brought, at least to part of, humanity. Now we turn to the problems they pose, particularly environmental problems, and because of their scale and ubiquity, this is perhaps best done via a table.
The table reveals what a strange, paradoxical world-religion capitalism is: on the one hand it is vast and expansionary, in its endless quest and restlessness for ‘growth’; on the other hand, it is small and mean, forever reducing the world and human condition to the material, the here and now, the individual. It is an aggressive, proselytising religion also, extinguishing other understandings of the world, other entities, via its hold on power structures and relentless promotion, denying even as it consumes ‘the other’. It is breathtakingly self-absorbed and narcissistic: there is nothing but the human self and its wants and everything else – the future, other places, Nature, other people must be subjugated to this.
Why human beings at the start of the 21st century are so much in its thrall is hard to understand, particularly as it so explicitly limits the human condition. Perhaps it is its enormous, shiny, self-referential power? Or is it its ‘hind-brain’ appeal and simplicity of ‘more’, more material goods, more comfort, and less fear? Is it its appeal to rampant egotism about the primacy, indeed, the exquisite cleverness, of the human? Whatever it is, its near-global adoption and unrestrained voraciousness is disastrous for Nature and, ultimately, for all of us on earth.
Richard Heinberg summarises this predicament in his article ‘Capitalism, The Doomsday Machine’, presented in Section 1.1.8. It is a clear and sober description of capitalism at work and its inevitable trajectory. I reproduce the webpage here and urge you to read the article.
From webpage 1.1.8 Capitalism, the Doomsday Machine1
Richard Heinberg 2021
In a typically thoughtful and incisive piece, Richard Heinberg tackles the global belief system – capitalism – and finds that “the machine is still on its path to world annihilation”. He then neatly summarises four major responses to the looming crash and finishes by suggesting that the way forward is a combination of all four, wrapped within a resilience framework: “redesign, preserve, build alternatives, subvert, and brace for impact”.
1Heinberg, R. 2021. Capitalism, the Doomsday Machine. Resilience.org. February 25th.
Heinberg describes capitalism as a giant growth machine, a ‘Doomsday Machine’, that will consume “nearly all of Earth’s resources and natural habitats”:
“Industrial capitalism resembles this latter kind of doomsday machine. If left to continue its ‘countdown’ to the bitter end, it will consume nearly all of Earth’s resources and natural habitat, while filling waste sinks to overflowing. That is an outcome no one would wish for. But we have all become dependent on the machine for our livelihoods, and stopping it in its tracks will result in economic collapse, throwing billions of people into a state of misery and famine. So, everybody wants the economy to grow—and thus for the machine to continue toward its inevitable destruction. But the longer growth continues, the bigger the eventual collapse. Our entire society is the machine, and we are cogs in its gears.”
He goes on to conclude:
“The networked economy has become a kind of a superorganism with a collective metabolism and an inherent imperative toward expansion at all cost. That means collapse will also be global—indeed a kind of doomsday after which the continuation of the human experiment may be very difficult. There will likely be survivors—human and non-human—but they may be few and miserable, and unable to mount a meaningful ecological or social recovery, perhaps for many centuries, if ever.”
