The Death of Capitalism

Uh, one caveat; you’re time line is way too long…

McPherson is running his own self publicising death cult. We won’t become extinct but we will kill many, many other species and experience a very large die-off, of our own making. But we’re too much like cockroaches to die out fully.

@ BW
“Human global society acts much as if it has no more intelligence or consciousness of consequences than a slime mold spreading in the dark in search of sweet.”

It’s not an act; it’s the reality of our collective behavior.
Love your phrasing…

The tragedy is that, even now, we could do so much (aside from the civilization-destroying threat of global warming), but because of our political-economic system (liberal capitalism) we’re compelled to desperately make and purchase junk (often on credit) to justify our existences.

I’m not a Marxist, but I agree with him that capitalist organization led to enormous increases in productivity, but that it had to be followed by something more humane.

Democritizing society is still a worthy goal. If only to navigate the coming cataclysm.

i tend to agree that the collective mind is more at fault than capitalism. in fact, capitalism is just another orchard in the collective land holdings.

the inventers of the cerebral cortex likely wanted to make a breed that lived above the dog-eat-dog of the wolfpack. and maybe they even succeeded for awhile. unfortunately for our biosphere and us, we wait in travail of our souls for the next revision of the humanoid that works to greater effect in checking the forces of the amygdala.

(and it isn’t google. semiconductor solutions ain’t nuthin’ in complex elegance and efficiency next to molecular biochemistry and celluar artistry and their self-assembly capabilities.)

A direct, disconcerting, and, I think, completely accurate, summary of where humanity stands at this point. But Bruce Wilder and Joe make very valid points, which, I think, go the heart of why I prefer Veblen’s analysis of political economy to that of Marx’s. Marx’s agent of change is a nebulous dialectical materialism that becomes less applicable to reality the closer you approach heights of Marxist purism. But Veblen posits human greed and status-seeking as the primary agents of change of the Leisure Class. And Veblen finds those agents at work in all societies, whatever the way they have organized their economic systems, from basic hunter-gatherer economies, to advanced industrial economies organized on supposedly socialist or communist principles. Moreover, Veblen never forecasts an end to the workings of human greed and status-seeking; whereas Marx, Lenin, and others believed that basic human nature would be changed under the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Charles Beard’s book is a favorite among lefties who dismiss the American Revolution as merely one group of white oligarchs displacing another group. Beard himself was dismayed to find that most people ascribed his views to his being a closet marxist. In response, Beard wrote in which he compares Marx and Lenin to Madison and Hamilton, and concludes that it was USA’s founders who provide a better paradigm of human behavior and how best to govern it. Because, contrary to the popular misconceptions cemented in the public mind by decades of conservative, libertarian, and neo-liberal propaganda and proselytizing, USA’s founders were quite clear that unbridled concentrations of economic wealth were as much as danger to republican self-government as a standing army. Just look at the conclusion of Madison’s # 10, in which Madison explains that political factions most often arise from economic interests: the primary role of government is to REGULATE those interests so that their actions conform to the Constitutional mandate to promote the General Welfare.

Last month I published on Kindle an abridged and annotated edition of a 1937 book, by Douglass Adair and Walton H. Hamilton. In my Introduction, I wrote,
“Arguing that the new American republic was merely a continuation of European mercantilism obscures the historical breakthrough represented by the creation of that republic, and its explicit Constitutional mandate to promote the General Welfare. Failing to see how this breakthrough represents a culminating triumph of the political and scientific Enlightenment over irrational and arbitrary power—ecclesiastical as well as oligarchical and monarchical—is a major reason the left today is so confused, disjointed, and ineffective.

“The words “mercantilist” and “mercantilism” are generally used whenever government powers are used to promote a state’s economic powers. By specifying in the Constitution that government powers are used to promote a state’s economic powers in promotion of the general welfare, the American republic made a sharp break from European mercantilism, in which the welfare of a sole monarch or small group of oligarchs was often conflated with the general welfare of a state or nation.”

I believe that if the Constitutional mandate to promote the General Welfare were still fully operative, we would have addressed the problem of climate change in the 1980s–or at least we would have acted more forcefully to end our dependence on fossil fuels when the concept of peak oil was fully articulated in the 1970s. A recent series on insideclimatenews.org revealed that beginning in the late 1970s, scientists at Exxon had identified and begin warning against the impact of burning fossil fuels on the environment, including effects on climate.

The crucial question I think we must ask, therefore, is: What were the agents of change that drove the USA away from its founding principles as a self-governing republic, to become an oligarchy? I think it is brilliant to pinpoint the date at which the USA devolves fully into oligarchy as the adoption of TARP, but at the same time pinpointing such an exact date obscures the fact that there has been a long, identifiable process that brought about the transformation from republic to oligarchy. Ian alludes to this process by mentioning Reagan and Thatcher, but behind them were a number of agents actively promoting and building the conservative / libertarian / neo-liberal movements. Jane Mayer’s new book has been in the news last week because it identifies and dissects those agents, though the journalists last week chose to focus on Mayer’s expose of the Koch brothers.

Philip Mirowski and Dieter Plehwe fully exposed the workings of the Mont Pelerin Society in their book of a few years ago, . Mirowski and Plehwe miss two crucial facts, however. First, they mention but do not explore the fact that the general secretary of MPS was Max Thurn. Who is he? The scion of one the richest, most powerful, and most ruthless of Europe’s oligarchical families, Thurn und Taxis. Secondly, they fail to note one of the peculiar characteristics of the economic doctrines of conservative / libertarian / neo-liberal thinking: they explicitly attacked what makes the American republic so remarkably different than any government before it: the Constitutional mandate to promote the General Welfare. As von Hayek puts it starkly in the title of his best known screed: that mandate is , the “statist slippery slope” to dependence on government largesse and tyranny.

Now, Veblen provides a comprehensive paradigm for analyzing and understanding old world oligarchs. Marx does not: he dismisses them as feudalists being swept off the stage of world history by the inexorable yet nebulous historical forces of dialectical materialism. But in point of fact, the example of Max Thurn and the Mont Pelerin Society shows us that that old world oligarchs are anything but “swept away.” Or, look at who occupies the interlocking directorships of the largest European companies. Who controls, for example, the largest block of stock in Royal Dutch Shell? By golly, it’s the Orange-Nassaus of the Netherlands.

Lest you think inquiring into the old European oligarch is conspiracy-mongering, consider what the logical end-state of conservative / libertarian / neo-liberal philosophy: Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s open call for a return to monarchism in . Admittedly, Hoppe is an extreme outlier: he opposed MPS on the grounds that MPS was “socialist”!

Another important, overlooked fact concerns the role of organized crime. Historically, the oligarchical families of Europe have used criminal gangs intensively in “regulating” the political game. Particularly interesting is the role of the fortunes made in the Opium War and trade in transplanting organized crime to USA. Besides the loyalists from the American Revolution, this is the root of the “special partnership.” Take the time to look at the board of HSBC, which used to be Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. It really is a wake up call when you assemble these facts alongside Veblen’s analysis of how the Leisure Class uses deceit, fraud, and force to secure its economic, political, and social domination. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Marx provides anything nearly as precise and specific as Veblen’s discussion of deceit, fraud, and force.

This consideration of the role of European oligarchs allows us to go beyond a focus on just USA capitalism. I assume that Ian is condemning capitalism not just in the USA, but all around the world.

The role of organized crime is the great untold story of what happened to the USA economy beginning with the 1960s and 1970s mergers and acquisitions “booms” and especially the 1980s leveraged buy-out boom. A large part of my animus toward marxism comes from this period, when I found to my dismay and disgust that marxists and socialists had no interest in breaking through their ideological purity to consider, let alone actively oppose and organize against, the role of dirty money in buying control of, then looting, USA industry. Returning to Exxon and the story that Exxon scientists identified the negative effects of fossil fuels s early as the 1970s, I think a large part of the reason why Exxon dropped its efforts to address these problems was exactly because corporate raiders such as T. Boone Pickens, Jr. and Karl Icahn–be it noted, using large amounts of dirty money–had begun raiding the oil industry in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Phillips Petroleum and Texaco were two companies that were destroyed in this process. Before that, it’s worth noting, Bartlesville, Oklahoma, where Phillips was headquartered, was a center of progressive politics in that state, thanks to the very high concentration of very highly educated scientists, engineers, geologists, and others residing in the town.

Interestingly, it has been reported that Icahn had funding connections to the Japanese yakuza, so that Japanese capitalism is now brought into the picture along side USA and European capitalism. And, of course, the history of the Opium and slave wars and trade brings much of the rest of Asia into the picture as well.

Maybe someday, when these basic facts are more widely accepted, some scholar will investigate what links, if any, there were between oligarchical families, organized crime, and the academic scribblers who promoted the “shareholder value” thesis. I think a long, sordid story will emerge. But is just part of the larger story of how the USA was destroyed from within by suffocating the impulse to promote the General Welfare.

I agree with many of the individual points Ian makes, but disagree that it’s all capitalism’s fault. The communist countries also had terrible environmental track records.

That said, one thing that is uniquely bad about capitalism is that it needs growth to work, and growth is not sustainable.

As for climate change being understood and accepted in the 70’s; no, only a few scientists were confident about global warming in the 70’s. Myself I don’t recall even hearing about the global warming theory until the late 80’s, and like many I was skeptical at first. It takes more than a few scientists to build a movement to make the radical changes required to address global warming.

I blame climate change on human population growth. Capitalism facilitated and encouraged that growth, but is not totally to blame.

I’d like to add that the mechanism for much of this was taking place in the 70’s long before Reagan.

Ignoring, for a moment the Democratic leadership’s shift to a younger, upper-class frat boy mentality, who encapsulated an ethos that prominently featured a disgust with sharing a bed with the working class. I mean, why would an upperclassman respect a man who wouldn’t “do the honorable thing” and get a college or medical deferment to avoid the war? That aside though, I’d like people to focus on the main culprit, unrestricted trade that allowed for massive political and labor arbitrage.

By the mid-70’s it was clear US industry would have to spend a considerable sum to modernize industrial facilities in order to optimize productivity, reduce rising energy costs and meet newly established EPA standards, standards that were written by generation that was about to put down the reigns of power. And who would benefit from all this hard work*…well, in large part, the working class. With the passing of the old Democratic leaders, there was no longer a lobby for working-class people, the generation who had to put food on the table for their family during the Great Depression was almost gone and their days of taking to the streets long past.

Into this brief vacuum stepped the neoliberals, whose institutional desire for the gilded age remained strong. Those working people who knew of the gilded age calamitous crashes of great frequency were fading, or already in the grave. The old failed idea of unfettered capitalism was dusted off, renamed “new” and “liberal”, then the card trick of the century was slipped in…”free” trade. Trade without meaningful tariffs.

Tariffs had played a role in the gilded age demise. Tariffs were despised by the upper class, because they wound up paying them when they brought in luxuries from across the globe…few items purchased by working people came other countries, most were domestically produced. Rich people paying their fair share, the horror, clearly, something had to be done!!!

Tah Dah!

“…The United States Revenue Act of 1913 also known as the Tariff Act, re-imposed the federal income tax following the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment and lowered basic tariff rates from 40% to 25%…well below the previous cut in tariffs accomplished by the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act of 1909.”

At the time the exemption to income tax was close to $6,000/yr, about what it is today and it insured that only extremely well-off paid this tax….which seemed fair. But as most reading this know, the exception was lowered through the magic of inflation with more and more ordinary people paying a tax intended ONLY for the wealthy.

But that was changed in 1932, when the wealthy found tax rates being raised so that they once again had to pay reasonable portions of their income…with EXTREMELY STRICT ENFORCEMENT came grudging compliance. What was meant to reduce the tax on the wealthy was being used as a weapon against them. At the same time, immigration was reduced to increase labor demand and tariffs were also reimposed and enforced. Economist love to lie their asses off on the subject of the Smoot–Hawley Tariff, but the reality is, 94% of the decline in international trade occurred before it’s enactment, so AT MOST, it is responsible for only 6% of the decline in trade. Those who know the facts, understand that he decline in world trade was sole they function of a worldwide depression, those who say otherwise are liars, fools or frauds.

Back to the 70’s, the “new” gilded age would include “free” trade as it’s cornerstone and the history of tariffs would be the “big Lie” told over and over to justify it. “Free” trade would also allow the uppermost class from having to heavily invest in a “public good” of meeting newly established EPA standards and energy efficiency. The atlas was shrugged at just in the nick of time. And so it went. And so it goes. Had the tariff regime** remained in place, US industry would have had to clean up it’s act, labor would have remained a force and the downward spiral would have been drowned in the bathtub.

*Work that was once considered managements reason for being

**China uses tariffs very aggressively, it got the US to move it’s auto plants there by informing them of their implementation timetable…Detroit obliged to the letter, only the “useful tools” of the world believe them to be counter productive.

Many children, to some degree, are trained by authoritarian parents to ignore and deny their own feelings and therefore they never develop empathy for others’ feelings. They do, however, develop deep feelings of anger, resentment, fear, and self-loathing that have nowhere to go and must be sublimated or taken out on someone else for that person’s mental survival.

It’s not the system’s fault. Those systems are created and maintained by people. People make the choice to hurt others or make the choice to not care if others are potentially hurt.

I guess a question does remain:

“Do we want to tell the kids?”

Has anyone come across any thoughtful projections of the human costs of climate change by the end of the century? I have been looking for serious attempts to estimate climate-related mass migration, loss of crop yields, effects on public health and mortality, etc. but have not been able to find anything that attempts a comprehensive model.

“Has anyone come across any thoughtful projections of the human costs of climate change by the end of the century?”

Guy McPherson is I think a little bit crazy for links and cites, being an academic, but if you look around VA’s link at #1, given time and effort I am sure you can find what you want. From my reading today, I do remember McPherson has raised the current annual cost in lives from 500k t0 5 million a year.

There ain’t gonna be no end of the century. Time stops before that.

Let me introduce to you to Doctor Kubler-Ross.

“…but we could have kept the gains of industrialization and avoided the worst of what is to come.”

As a Marxian, I have a lot of difficulties with counterfactuals. There is no escape from history.

Everything has a beginning and an end. For sure, capitalism has now outlived its utility. Even MLK acknowledged that capitalism may have had a democratic purpose at the beginning. But by the 50ies, MLK already knew capitalism was past its expiry date (see the links about that on NC around MLK day). Today we’re way past the diminishing returns phase and well into the negative returns phase.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean the ideology will disappear. It can still be maintained artificially. An example of that is religion. There was a time when the main religions were a vital progressive force. The cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, Bach’s music, El Greco’s paintings (to cite a few achievements) are the proof that religions were once a living force capable of producing greatness. At the beginning, Islam was also a progressive force. In Persia (now Iran), Islam ended the caste system (similar to India) that existed there. In the Middle Age, the Islamic empire had advanced science compared to Europe. Today nothing good comes out of religion anymore but billions are still believers.

I’m not sure global warming was strongly established in the 70ies. Climate science relies heavily on computer simulations. Computing power was ridiculous at that time. Today’s iphone has more computing power than the best computers of the 70ies. Global warming was probably just an hypothesis at that time, one with good grounds, but still just an hypothesis. Around that time some scientists were worried about a new ice age. Telling people they had to reduce their standards of living because of an hypothesis was a non-starter.

Maybe we could have developed the science, the computing power earlier, had we not sunk so much resources into the arms race during the cold war. Here capitalism has to take the blame. It was well known that the communist block was purely defensive. The arms race was not necessary. But as Eisenhower said, the industrial military complex had to be fed.

It can even be that nothing could have been done. Some diseases develop silently without any obvious signs. When the signs become obvious, it is already too late. In that case, we can only say like Charles Bovary: “C’est la faute a la fatalite.”

Suburbs are evil. Suburbs are America’s biggest mistake. Suburbs were invented to save capitalism. Give every man his little castle to defend and he’ll become a conservative, he’ll be a good consumer spending money to beautify his little nest, he’ll develop a healthy sense of individualism. I now live in the city, in DC. For a little while I lived in the suburbs (Bethesda). The sight of the carefully manicured gardens, the residents eyeing outsiders suspiciously always made me want to puke.

EmilianoZ
January 25, 2016

I’m not sure global warming was strongly established in the 70ies. Climate science relies heavily on computer simulations. Computing power was ridiculous at that time. Today’s iphone has more computing power than the best computers of the 70ies. Global warming was probably just an hypothesis at that time, one with good grounds, but still just an hypothesis. Around that time some scientists were worried about a new ice age. Telling people they had to reduce their standards of living because of an hypothesis was a non-starter.

Unfortunately, your post is a perfect example of the failure of critical thinking extant in most humans.
As far back as the late 1800’s some people were already aware of human’s negative impact on the planet. Anybody living in London during the heyday of coal burning could see the future.
To use the lack of technology as an excuse for ignorance is just ludicrous. And again, another form of denial so strong in, especially, U.S.’s culture of learned helplessness.
You would be well advised to study the history of U.S. education and its teaching of infantilization as a means of docility of the masses.
You could start with John Taylor Gatto’s Underground History of American Education or Ivan Illich’s Deschooling Society.

‘The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so. For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into evervday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which today determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt.”

In Baxter’s view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the “saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment.” But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage.”

Weber, from ‘Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism’

Personally, I side with those who think the problems with humanity run much deeper. Observing the behaviour of toddlers, I often find myself noting, ‘this is why all the other species on the planet are going extinct.’ It’s a joke, but it’s not.

Awesome, Ian.

Only thing is: peeps in the aggregate are mostly as smart as you, Ian. I mean: look at the responses on here!

And we have trained the next gen to roll over and take it and keep on truckin’…

And there are a FEW, v FEW hopeful signs amidst all the boomer angst that you express so well, Ian.

You know what’s coming next: you should read my latest book.

Well, turns out, in this case, it’s true. hahahaha

Best to all,

L.

PS we REALLY should get together in person Ian.

Happy New Year!

L.

This does not mean that capitalism is entirely to blame, not directly. In 1980, the US was not yet an oligarchy. At that point, it took a mass movement, a constituency, to decide: “Fuck all that environmentalism and conservation crap.”

That movement was headlined by Reagan and presaged by Thatcher in Britain.

Jeremy Corbyn’s brother Piers in an article in last Sunday’s Observer claims that Margret Thatcher was to blame for raising the spectre of anthropogenic climate change in the UK. He claims it was used to promote the use of nuclear power over the use of coal to generate electricity and thus defeat the miners.
Piers Corbyn does not accept that climate change is caused by human agency. What his brother thinks is not clear.