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Capitalism and (De)Growth

Capitalism and (De)Growth

By Christopher Laughton
What is capitalism?
A kind of state?
An institution?
Some values?
A power structure?
Ideology?
A Culture?

What governs capitalism?
Supply and demand
Invisible hand
Enclosure of land
The drive to expand
Market mechanism
Class schism
Racism
The moral virtue of productivism.

Innovation!
Invest!
Impress!
Progress!
Entrepreneurial quest for
Technological success in
Pursuit of profit.

Laissez faire!
Free market
Free trade
Free enterprise
Freedom to buy
Wage slavery
And debt.

Individual self-interest!
Ambition
Addiction
Friction
Cut throat competition
Eat or be eaten
Grow or die.

I think about capitalism as a moment. A blink in time. Organic life has thrived on earth for4 billion years. Modern humans have been walking around for some 200,000 years, looking a lot like you and me. That magical moment of capitalism dawned just 500 hundred years ago with European colonial expansion that enabled the rise of fossil-fueled industrial economies.

Vital to that rise are hierarchical systems of class, gender and race that interact with markets to engineer—and to justify—unequal exchange .Those who engage in markets from superior positions get more for their money. Ecological value flows toward them and wealth accumulates. Those who sell labor and other resources from inferior positions tend to get drained. Degraded. Deforested. Eroded. Impoverished. Exhausted.

Net cultural exchange has flowed in the other direction: capitalist practices, values and myths have been impelled far and wide, with scant return of other traditions. Cultural features of capitalism now seem so omnipresent that it is difficult to imagine and to forge alternatives. The most ingenious maneuver of modernity is to propagate the perception that this moment fills all horizons. As a result, political left and right, pro-growth and degrowth, slug it out in a confined capitalocentric arena.

The biggest challenge faced by degrowth is the shallow historical depth and narrow cultural scope that circumscribe contemporary debates. How to break out?

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Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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