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Exit from the Megamachine

April 22, 2016

Exit from the Megamachine

Why a social-ecological transformation is impossible without changing the deep structures of our economy

Opening a newspaper or listening to the radio news exposes us to a flood of catastrophic messages: devastating droughts, failing states, terrorist attacks, and financial crashes. You can look at all those incidents as unconnected singular phenomena, which is exactly what the common presentation of news suggests. From another angle, however, they appear as symptoms of a systemic crisis, with different branches that have common roots.

But in how far are we part of a larger system? Definitely, a Kenyan peasant and a Wall Street banker; a German Secretary of State and an Iraqi policewoman have totally different living environments – and yet they are connected by a global system that ensures that the Secretary of State can drink coffee from Kenia and that the banker’s penthouse is heated with oil that flows through pipelines guarded by the Iraqi police. This system accommodates flows of goods and financial capital as well as flows of information and ideas on how the world is and how it should be. This complex network has – like all social systems – a history. It has a beginning, an evolution and – eventually – also an end.

The megamachine

The global system that connects us is known under various names: Some call it “the modern world-system”, others “global capitalism”. I use the metaphor of the megamachine, coined by the historian Lewis Mumford. The modern megamachine emerged in Europe around 500 years ago in long-lasting social struggles and has spread around the globe with explosive speed ever since. From the beginning, it provided a fabulous increase in wealth for a small minority. For the majority, by contrast, it has meant impoverishment, radical exploitation, war, genocide and the destruction of natural resources.

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