{"id":21848,"date":"2016-09-25T18:30:14","date_gmt":"2016-09-25T23:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21848"},"modified":"2016-09-25T18:30:14","modified_gmt":"2016-09-25T23:30:14","slug":"capitalism-and-degrowth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21848","title":{"rendered":"Capitalism and (De)Growth"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Capitalism and (De)Growth<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/a>By\u00a0Christopher Laughton<\/cite><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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<\/i>What is capitalism?
\nA kind of state?
\nAn institution?
\nSome values?
\nA power structure?<\/span>
\nIdeology?
\nA Culture?<\/p>\n

What governs capitalism?
\nSupply and demand
\nInvisible hand
\nEnclosure of land
\nThe drive to expand
\nMarket mechanism
\nClass schism
\nRacism
\nThe moral virtue of productivism.<\/p>\n

Innovation!
\nInvest!
\nImpress!
\nProgress!
\nEntrepreneurial quest for
\nTechnological success in
\nPursuit of profit.<\/p>\n

Laissez faire!
\nFree market
\nFree trade
\nFree enterprise
\nFreedom to buy
\nWage slavery
\nAnd debt.<\/p>\n

Individual self-interest!
\nAmbition
\nAddiction
\nFriction
\nCut throat competition
\nEat or be eaten
\nGrow or die.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Vital to that rise are hierarchical systems of class, gender and race that interact with markets to engineer\u2014and to justify\u2014unequal 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The biggest challenge faced by degrowth is the shallow historical depth and narrow cultural scope that circumscribe contemporary debates. How to break out?<\/strong><\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Capitalism and (De)Growth By\u00a0Christopher 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[111,203,14388,14387],"class_list":["post-21848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-capitalism","tag-degrowth","tag-regrowth-blog","tag-susan-paulson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21848"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21849,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21848\/revisions\/21849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}