To be seriously radical on the Left is, among other things, to be against capitalism – the system that, as Karl Marx noted in 1848, “has left no other nexus between [people other] than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment’” and “resolve[s] personal worth into exchange value” (hello Donald Trump?). Under the rule of capital and its holy so-called free market, the human spirit is “drowned in the icy water of egotistical calculation…all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned” (Marx). Stable communities, decent and meaningful work, economic security, nurturing and intact families, nurturing relationships, political democracy, social justice, healthy lives, nurturing childhoods, vibrant societies, public space, livable ecology, intellectual culture, communications and media, the common good – all these and more are brought to heel and ultimately trashed by the profits regime’s perpetually venal market reckonings. This is no less true today – when capital has created a “planet of slums” (Mike Davis) and cooked the globe to the point where Earth scientists warn quite seriously of the near-term possibility of anthropogenic self-extinction – than it was in Marx’s time.
Still, for many of us on the anti-capitalist Left, it is simply not enough to be anti-capitalist. This is, I think, for three basic reasons. The first is that there are numerous relevant and powerful forms, structures, institutions, values, and ideologies of oppression and environmental destruction that are technically distinct from capitalism and cannot be simply reduced to, or explained by, capitalism. Among those other oppression systems and values (hereafter designated “OSVs”) we must include patriarchy, masculinism, racism, ageism, nationalism, imperialism, militarism, bureaucratism, police-statism, narcissism, coordinator-ism (the privileged position and power of those who manage and supervise the labor of the relatively subordinated working class populace among other things), destructive anthropocentrism, the alienating corporate division of labor that subjects most working people and others to the rule of coordinators (the professional and managerial elite), and – of special relevance in the current era of incipient ecocide – extractivism. This last term refers to the reliance of modern societies on the relentless extraction of natural resources, above all fossil fuels, for economic and social development.
It is true that capitalism merges with, exacerbates, and fuels these OSVs to a very significant degree. It also true, however that each of these OSVs possess significantly autonomous lives and logics of their own and have been found in societies that are not capitalist in the full Marxist sense. The ancient Greek, ancient Roman, ancient Ottoman, feudal and absolutist European, ancient Chinese, Inca, and Aztec (and other past and pre-capitalist) empires and dynasties exhibited many of the above evils before the emergence of the first classically capitalist society in 17th century England and prior to the rise of modern capitalism in 19th century Europe, the United States, and Japan. The bureaucratic-collectivist and in fact socialist (if authoritarian) Soviet Union and its satellite regimes did the same in the last century. Twenty-first century populism and socialism in Latin America relies on an extractivist model (the term extractivism originated from ecological critique of that populism and socialism) to pay for its anti-poverty programs. It naturally and quite inevitably struggles with numerous of the OSVs mentioned above – all, of course, very much, in the context of 21st century global capitalism and US imperialism. In a similar vein, 20th century state-bureaucratic socialism (it is silly to call the Soviet Union “state capitalist”) showed itself fully capable of generating significant alienating class inequalities and of wrecking the natural environment through reckless extraction and pollution – all without capitalists, though not of course in a world without capitalists and capitalist empire.
Second, capitalism has always relied for its terrible reproduction and perpetuation on its merging with many if not all the OSVs mentioned above. Where would the de facto class dictatorship called capitalism be without the remarkable power of nationalism, racism, militarism, sexism, ethno-centrism, and imperialism to divide the workers of the world both within and across national boundaries? Without the critical role of coordinators in supervising, disciplining, dividing, and otherwise oppressing the broad working class populace and in handling numerous other technical and managerial tasks? Without the extraction of vast natural resources through a relentless assault on nature and other sentient beings to fuel its production processes, generate its surpluses, and power its seemingly endless, cancerous expansion? Without militarism to expand its access to raw material and markets and to destroy and then/yet absorb its surplus capital and to fund its research and development? Without the savage top-down sorting and segmenting of workers into hyper-alienating divisions and hierarchies of work and labor (a problem that capitalism took to new heights but did not invent and over which it possesses no systemic monopoly)? Being seriously anti-capitalist means opposing all the OSVs.
Third, radical anti-capitalists need to oppose the OSVs in order for their anti-capitalism to be remotely desirable to the broad mass of workers and citizens. Breaking with, struggling against, and overthrowing capitalism is no small matter! It carries considerable risks and costs for those who commit. Jobs, careers, homes, marriages, families, health, and more, even life itself, are at stake. Serious anti-capitalism is not for the meek of heart! Who is going to hazard all that only to create a word still ruled, say, by soulless eco-cidal coordinators and bureaucrats and/or by blood-soaked militarists and/or racists and/or sexists and/or power-worshipping despots, manipulators, misleaders, and narcissists ….in order, perhaps to more equally share out the fruits of an environmentally poisoned pie and/or to be mired in endless resource wars between internally semi-egalitarian but externally violent nation states? Being a serious anti-capitalist also means going beyond anti-capitalism when it comes also to developing a desirable mental and moral picture of a good life and society after capitalism – a vision of a world worth fighting for beyond the profits regime.
Paul Street’s latest book is They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy (Paradigm, 2014)
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9 Comments
More than a vision of the structures and institutions of another possible world, what the anti-capitalist radical Left needs is a positive unifying theory to tie economics and OSV’s together. To explain how all these things are ecologically connected. Marxism provided such a unifying theory, i.e. capitalism, anarchism has as yet not done so. Although, the recent work of writers like Pierre Clastres, Brian Morris, David Graeber et al. to develop an anarchist anthropology is moving compellingly in that direction. I contend that such a unifying theory is already taking shape based on how society is organized, either horizontally or hierarchically. Renewed attention on the Left in the writing of Murray Bookchin, particularly “The Ecology of Freedom” and the recent publication of his later life essays, “The Next Revolution” is further advancing work on a unifying theory. As is the work combining world systems analysis and anarchist anthropology.
Clearly, the largely theoretical political-economic ideologies of the 19th and 20th Centuries, i.e. Marxism and Anarchism, have for the most part failed to provide a practical guide to countering end-stage global capitalism in the 21st Century. While Capitalism has evolved and adapted to a rapidly changing world, radical left ideologies have not. They remain mostly mired in theoretical critiques of 20th Century capitalism based on macro-economic analysis and the evils of hierarchical social organization, i.e. the State. The social movements, i.e. Zapatista, Venezuela communes, Bolivia, solidarity networks in Greece and Spain, that are today effectively building counter-power to the capitalist State are doing so in a largely non-ideological ways. They are creating a new politics and practical way forward, largely without political ideology and economic critique.
That is not to say that critiques of hierarchical political economy and analysis of horizontal social organization cannot be a valuable and perhaps essential part of transforming capitalist society in the 21st Century. Both Marxism and Anarchism have a rich ideological heritage, that still has great relevance and usefulness to revolutionary transformational change. The combination of world systems analysis and anarchist anthropology offers a way to look at these old ideologies in fresh and exciting ways.
Re-thinking the Marxist idea of value as primarily economic or the Anarchist idea of the State as a strictly coercive social structure provides a way to see our world today in important new ways. Looking at human society from the perspective of social relationships and values, i.e. hierarchical and horizontal — rather than structures and institutions — provides a possible unifying theory. Likewise, redefining key concepts such as class in terms of world system analysis and anthropology are crucial to developing an effective practice of counter-power – especially in the socially backward global North. The combination of world systems analysis and anarchist anthropology is exactly the kind of holistic approach that is needed to change the world without taking power.
P.S. The Marxist notion of taking State power as the key to revolutionary change is one of the old concepts most in need of revision.
Ed
I’m not sure about unifying theories or world system theories and such, but if they offer coherent and easy to understand ideas fine. If the ideas and directions, and institutional structures, that are being developed by the Zapatistas, in Bolivia, Venezuelan communes and solidarity networks in Greece and Spain can be explicated, simply, to wider audiences so they can see and understand them, then great, do it. If such movements can bring to those outside the left choir confidence that alternatives are possible without confusing the hell out of them great. And if social relations and values are a good place to start, then, then maybe parecon could be a place to start. That’s is exactly how it starts by offering valuable insight into how to build structures and institutions, necessary things, around values and in a way that will foster said values.
Let’s hear the conversations and debates now, not later, regularly so they can rapidly waft outwards into the ether so ALL can get a whiff. These things are already here.
James you are right. This was a very modest essay. At the end of my latest book They Rule, I argue that there’s no real absence or shortage of Left alternative reform proposals and revolutionary (alternative societal) vision. The left’s bigger deficit, I claimed is organizational and institutional. (This may be a repeat comment…something went haywire with the commenting function)
Paul, I agree and one of the reasons there is an organisational and institutional deficit is because the left seems to pussy foot around vision and alternatives.
Those with jobs, families, careers, marriages, homes , dogs and cats and what have you won’t risk anything if all they are being offered is hope or some guarantee that someone will come up with something, like a world system theory.
They need to be shown, regularly, that social revolution is not only necessary but possible. Then maybe a strategic road, through reform and onward will be possible.
Oh, and I will endeavour to get hold of and read your book, as I have your other ones! Although the second one got put down very earlier due to distraction and other books. Like so many things in my life do fir reasons of time.
Has anyone even thought to ask the question as to whether 7.3 billion people are governable? Is free market capitalism what we’re discussing here or is our global system really being overseen by a global criminal syndicate not unlike the Mafia on steroids? Is the question of governance simply naive? Under what circumstances could humanity ever chose wisdom over self-interest?
We so desperately need wisdom, but instead we have the Four Horsemen at a gallop and fools for leaders who spur the agents of death on.
Gene Roddenbery (Star Trek) envisioned a simple, egalitarian society that was visited by the Enterprise and a Klingon vessel. The two visitors threaten war against one another at which point the simple society rendered the weapons of both unusable. These simple people had evolved through stages of self-destruction and survived to live in harmony with their planet and one another.
Could the answer be in simplicity? As our world becomes so complex and dependent on technology that hardly resonates on the happiness scale? is there even the slightest chance that wisdom could percolate through the unhappiness we’ve created? In one of his novels, science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson deems the Earth a “planet of sadness.” Read Kurt Vonnegut’s “Requiem.”
“Being a serious anti-capitalist also means going beyond anti-capitalism when it comes also to developing a desirable mental and moral picture of a good life and society after capitalism – a vision of a world worth fighting for beyond the profits regime.”
And my first thought upon reading such a last phrase was, is this the first in series of essays that may point towards “visions” already conjured up or does it stop there?
Participatory Economics? Inclusive Democracy? Peercommony? A Gift Economy? The Simpler Way? A Pluralist Commonwealth? Market Socialism? Social Ecology?
Or do we just ignore all those above and start from scratch? Perhaps there is no need to ignore them as they get short shrift among most anti-capitalist writers anyway. Barely a mention. Oh yes, here and there, but not often.
Which of the above is the most coherent? The clearest? Offers insights of worth? What are the short comings of some? Which one’s are seriously worth pursuing? Which ones overreach? Which don’t go far enough?
I have my own ideas. But what of the numerous serious anti-capitalist writers out there? Where do they sit? How often, as they deliver yet another anti-capitalist diatribe, will they present along side it an alternative? A possible destination?
And when will these writers decide to give greater space to these visions? When will the word count regarding possible alternatives overtake that of the anti-capitalist harangue? When will readers be pointed to books, debates, essays, pamphlets regarding post capitalist vision so they can decide for themselves? Their websites, critiques and discussions?
When will serious anti-capitalist writers stop suggesting that vision is needed when vision is already here and, if time is running out, as some so strongly suggest, admit that now is the time to discuss them, not just intermittently, but consistently and regularly?
If an anti-capitalist piece lasts about ten paragraphs, spend twenty discussing seriously participatory economics. For every anti-capitalist piece write two or three about vision. Advocate for it if you like, or if even if you are uncertain of it, write it up anyway so others can make up their mind.
If some don’t like certain visions, fine, start a debate, a serious ongoing debate and present a better way.
If there are Marxists who don’t like parecon, invite ’em in to explain themselves. If there are anarchists who aren’t interested in vision, or think them merely thought experiments, drag them in as well to explain themselves. If there are P2P folk who feel left out, or Inclusive Democracy advocates who want in on the action, fine. And bring in all those community economics people and eco-whatevers to have their say.
Shit, I don’t know all their names but here’s a few: Hahnel, Albert, Fotopoulos, Schweickart, Alperovitz, Trainer, Olin Wright, Seifkes, Bauwens…
I know there are others but perhaps the differences between all visions ain’t so great. Perhaps they can be gathered up under a few banners. Made easier to understand by good writers and thinkers. Their institutional structures critiqued and explicated for all to see.
But if you have a preference, then have the courage to put it out there, even if you aren’t 100% sure, because it’s not just about you. Others, readers need to be made aware so THEY can decide.
So come on you serious anti-capitalists, stop talking about the need for vision as if we haven’t thought of some and start pointing to ones already here. And not just in the odd anti-capitalist rant, in all of ’em.
Yeah, that’s right, piss people off and then invite them in.
Oh yes, I forgot to say, that if serious anti-capitalist writers, revolutionaries and radicals continually and regularly and consistently without intellectual embarrassment wrote about visions already here, and their preferred options, clearly and succinctly, with good reasons why they preferred certain options, then when our good old friend and laugh meister, the revolutionary Russell Brand was asked by his interviewer what he would replace the present abomination with, maybe, just maybe, he could of answered the bloody question with some confidence.
Coulda helped!
Totally agree James, but as we know Brand is not alone – unfortunately! It is incredible that people on the left think that it is okay to have no serious answer to this question.
That aside, I think that this is a good little piece.