Apocalypse Now

Capitalism is going to last for 500 years. Okay, I said that to be provocative. I don't have a clue how long capitalism will be the dominant economic system on the planet. What I do know is that history does not indicate there is much prospect for an alternative system arising any time soon. After all, if you look out at the landscape of 21st century social life on the planet Earth, you find that pro-capitalist cultural, economic, and political processes dominate just about everywhere. Even the very definition of capitalism (a product of Marxian theory) has been hijacked by pro-capitalist ways of thinking and making sense of the world. Capitalism is no longer understood as a social system based on the exploitation of wage laborers. Now if you do a web search (or go the old fashioned look in a book route) you are likely to find definitions of capitalism that not only have no grounding in the original understanding but are completely at odds with that understanding. Rather than another system of restricting freedom (albeit to a lesser extent than slavery or feudalism), capitalism becomes a system defined by individual freedom. It's a rather clever intellectual turn-about.

The fact that those who are being exploited, those who work for wages creating all the wonderful stuff that gets hyper-marketed to us over every conceivable medium, are increasingly confused about the sources of their various maladies (blaming poor health, a polluted natural, work, and home environment, disintegrating family structures (and values), their bleak future prospects (social insecurity), etc. on everything but capitalism) is testimony to the success at reproducing the conditions for capitalism to prosper. It's Invasion of the Body Snatchers and most of the bodies have been snatched. As the U.S. demonstrates, you can give these folks the right to vote for any government they want and not have to worry. In the end, they will vote for the choices given to them and often choose the greater of the two evils, at that: selecting the candidate who promises to screw them over royally and who has given lots of prior indications of complete contempt for working people and their hopes and dreams.

But then didn't the pharoahs rule for over 3,000 years, their great architectural accomplishments based on a social system of state feudal and slave exploitation? I'm sure most of the workers were "conservative" and would not have tolerated hearing much dissent from their co-horts. Can't you see the "Reify the Pharaoh" and "Support our troops" bumper stickers on the camel's asses? Fundamental change in human social organization is never an easy matter (or hardly ever). And then again there's no guarantee that we'll even get a chance for another major change. Capitalism could even be the last form of social organization, providing an important condition for the end time. This would make Francis Fukuyama right, we would be living in the end of history. Apocalypse Now.

Sorry to sound so depressing.