Viral capitalism

"... I was working in an orchard/ that grew the strangest fruit;
It wasn't Mother Nature that made those trees/ take root.
Your children cannot hear you/they only want your loot ...
They never believed you were in distress.
Now you've gone and left them with Tristesse..."
~ The Church, "Tristesse" (from "Heyday" 1985)

The way we're going, that could be the theme song for the year 2030, maybe even earlier. What's sad is that they saw it 26 years ago ... and others did so even before that.

What does that say about our culture's ability to change?

Obviously, something as big as a civilization has a lot of inertia, and it doesn't make the process of change any easier when a relative handful of people are making unbelievable quantities of money because of the path we're on. Even though the vast majority of us aren't in that group, those who are depend on the rest of us for their position and wealth. Without us, they'd be nobody.

Our system does everything possible to deny that basic fact, driven as it is by the dogma of the uber-individual. But since the very first day some courageous proto-human walked out of the trees and realized there's an enormous savannah out there with some large, salivating carnivores just waiting to eat him (or her), it's been our communal abilities that have kept us alive. Granted, some people ARE stronger, more creative, more organized, smarter -- whatever superlative you can think of -- than the average human, but that person usually needs to be very lucky to be in the right place and time where their talent or new idea can take root and, most crucially, to have people around them who believe in that idea and their talents. Let's call it the Great Widget, but remember it applies as much to the paper clip as to Microsoft.

Capitalism -- especially the current, globalized Wall Street/corporatist version of it -- neglects those "little people," rewarding the idea person far out of proportion for the actual amount of work they put into making the Widget possible. At the same time, it largely under-rewards the various labors of the many that made it possible to bring the Widget into existence, sell it, transport it, etc. During the process, it gives smart but unethical people who have talents that can be profitably commoditized in this kind of culture (which is not the only one humanly possible) an excuse to be greedy and grossly antisocial, allowing them to use their luck to abuse other people and, even worse, convince those other people to abuse Earth herself for short-term gain.

Inevitably, any such gain will be short-term -- maybe not in the sense of an individual lifespan, but, as we're beginning to see all around us, certainly in the sense of human longevity as a species. A lot of the talk in environmental circles is still, after decades, about "saving the planet," but by taking strong action to heal Earth's distress, we're saving OURSELVES. Doing that means making major changes to the capitalist system, quite likely by killing it off as we now know it, but definitely by greatly reducing the quantity of wasteful and polluting Widgets we make.

First and foremost, we need to separate capitalism from the concept of democracy -- the two did "grow up" together to some degree, but that was more historical chance than because they're kin. They're not. Capitalism has actually served to mutate democracy's development by corrupting or outright preventing the electoral process (depending on the country) and laying minefields in the way of real reforms that would allow more human beings to be involved in government (as opposed to the inhuman non-people called corporations). That's because capitalism's primary aim has always been two-fold: concentrate wealth and political power in the hands of the few while using virus-like rhetoric of individualism, opportunity and competition to divide the common people. Even Adam Smith saw that back in 1776, although he didn't phrase it that way.* In some periods, those common folks have been able to take a few steps up the capitalist ladder, but only when a strong, honest and responsive government has been able to counter the system's monopolistic tendencies.

Unfortunately, now is not one of those periods; both major U.S. parties are corrupt (especially at the federal level), and the capitalist doctrine has infected most other governments, including nominally communist ones. The big corporations often don't even pretend to be loyal to any nation anymore, because they're wealthier than many nations.** They're only loyal to the dollar (or yen or yuan or euro, whatever the dominant currency of the day is).

Apologists will say corporations have a legal duty to maximize profit for their shareholders but that's not really true. Nothing prevents a company from using profits for socially- and ecologically-beneficial purposes (far more, I mean, than the token percentages most global players currently spend, amounts that are vastly dwarfed by what they spend to TELL us how "beneficial" they are.) It could be reasonably argued that doing so would, in fact, BE paying the shareholders their dividends, since cleaning up the huge mess the profit system has made of Earth in the last several decades will have a much more positive impact on shareholders' future than any money. Likewise, such apologists will claim a majority of Americans hold stock in some firm or other, and while numerically that's (barely) true, in practice more than 80% of all stock and other investments are in the hands of 10% of the population. Because corporate votes are one stock-one vote rather than one person-one vote, that gives a handful of uber-rich folks total control of and almost all of the profit from those companies.

Such a system is decidedly NOT democratic, but it is what capitalism inherently slides toward when allowed to do what it wishes. It's called plutocracy and, typical of a virus, it is rapidly hijacking our government and our media to make copies of itself, making Earth extremely sick in the process. We need to be Earth's immune system and fight off this infection before it kills us and leaves Earth's ecosystem severely debilitated.

****************

*What he actually wrote was "Merchants ... have an interest to deceive and even to oppress the people." In his time, there were no consumer, child or labor protection laws and no environmental laws, and the Big Business of the period did exactly what it tries to do today -- make as much money as possible with absolutely no qualms about the consequences for workers, land or people. Back then, they were a quite blatant about it, with mercantilist enterprises like the East India Company fielding their own armies to conquer and pillage India, Africa and elsewhere, ostensibly in the name of the Crown.

** A list of the top 100 nations and corporations in 2000 is on page 6 of the linked PDF. Several of those corps have since grown immensely, typically by merger (that date was before the union of Exxon and Mobil, for example) or due to the recently climbing prices for food, oil, etc.