CETRI
We always maintained that we had to look for the spark that ignited the great antagonism and symbolically and peacefully organize the coming political battles. that of begin to feel the trepidation of the helmets of history. Fighting for Rosa’s utopia Luxembourg, who dreamed of a world where we are socially equal, humanly different and totally free. The response was sarcasm to display ourselves as idealists ignorant of reality : capitalism is getting stronger, it has been the only system successful in the history of mankind, overcoming slavery, feudalism and socialism.
Well then, the seeds sown for so many decades by the Marxist left begin to bear fruit. And the most intense sounds come from the clarinets of the capitalist orchestra. Already the ultra-conservative British weekly, patriarch of the neoliberal bible, The Economist, editorialized preparing for “the return of socialism because it offers an accurate critique of everything that has gone wrong in Western societies.”
But the great impact occurred at the beginning of this 2023, surprising all of us the influential Der Spiegel weekly, the most important in Germany and the most widely read in Europe with more than one million weekly copies sold, who dedicated the entire cover of his last edition of the year to the figure of the genius of Trier, Karl Marx, dressed as an ecological activist accompanied by a headline that reads “Was Marx Right After All ? : Under Capitalism There Is No Destiny” feasible for humanity. The central theme of this voluminous issue is the end of capitalism ? approached by three columnists under the bylines of Thomas Schulz, Susanne Beyer and Simon Book.
Given its undeniable interest, I decided to review it, with an eye especially on the opinions of the high command of world capitalism, preparing its strategic withdrawal.
German weekly quotes billionaire Ray Dalio, founder of largest hedge fund of the world, holder of 22 billion dollars, affirming that "capitalism no longer works for most people, most incomes have grown little or not at all over the decades, as the incomes of the top 1% have nearly tripled since 1980 when the modern neoliberal era began.
The solution proposed by Dalio contains a single word : REDISTRIBUTION. And the weekly report adds : « wealth and prosperity are only distributed evenly. » One-sided, those who were once poor remain so, there is hardly a trace of equality of opportunities. Dalio demands that this be stopped. Capitalism needs reform urgent and essential. Otherwise, it will perish, and deservedly so.« It describes what is happening within the largest capitalist companies concerned for the future of this system of domination : »Now the State must take over, in the companies, from Bosch to Goldman Sachs, there is talk of finally putting social interests above those of the shareholders.« And he adds : »Can we continue with this economic order, with a climate killer capitalism that cuts itself to get more and more ; more and more consumption, profit, growth and that at the same time produces more and more and more injustice ?". And he tries an explanation : “In the past, industrial capitalism provided prosperity and growth so constant that it was never possible to apply approaches about how we want to manage, work and share.
History shows that as long as the system produces enough winners, even its most blatant excesses are difficult to reverse. Meanwhile, the weaknesses are so evident that it is not necessary to resort to theorists like Marx or Thomas Piketty : globalization has gotten out of hand, almost all the gains of prosperity end up in the hands of the richest 10% of the population. Consumption insane resources are ruining the planet. The financial industry is delivered to new excesses”. Reference is also made to the British economic historian Adam Tooze in his work ’Welcome to the world of polycrisis’ and the young philosophy professor, the Japanese Kohei Saito who provided the evidence in his book ’The ecology of Marx in his Unfinished Critique of capitalism’, which verified that Marx had already recognized 150 years ago the dangers for the planet, derived from capitalism, proposing that "now is the time to take Marx’s proposals seriously, no more growth, we simply have to better distribute the existing wealth. And the Japanese professor from the Humboldt University of Berlin adds : “The collapse of the planet can only be stopped by a post-capitalist system in which there is no more growth, social production slows down and wealth is redistributed selective”.
The three authors of the report insist : « Until recently, a solution to all these problems - the market will solve it. But who seriously believes it nowadays yet ? Especially considering the great multiplier of all distortions, the crisis climate. For years in industrialized countries there has been a palpable anger against capitalism. Not for ideological reasons, but because rents are skyrocketing, because the property has become unaffordable. Why accept a prosperity machine that devours resources if it no longer produces prosperity for all ? The controversial investigation published by Der Spiegel maintains that »in smaller young stars, a change of emotions is emerging : frustration, resignation, anger and a new love for socialist ideas”. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 32, is a star with more than 20 million followers on social networks and demands a tax on the income of 70% for the highest incomes.
Der Spiegel commissioned the Institute for Opinion Studies (CIVEY) to carry out a survey to find out the opinion of the Germans on the cause of the climate crisis. Half of the Germans attributed to the capitalist system.
The report states that Fridays for Future spokesperson in Germany, Carla Reemtsma, from 24 years proposes that « we as a society should get back to taking care of things collectively. In transportation, instead of subsidizing individual cars, the State should promote car sharing, rail expansion and bike lanes from which everyone benefits.” And they add a startling statement from Glen Hubbar, who was the main economic adviser to the then president of the United States, the ultra-conservative George W. Bush : “A permanently successful economic system must raise the standard of living of the largest number of people ; It seems questionable that current capitalism allow ample prosperity gains, while instead bringing much prosperity to a few ».
The prestigious German weekly also attended to disseminate in the mentioned report, the proposals by Mariana Mazzucato, Italian-American, born in Rome and raised in the US, Professor of Economics at University College London, « now converted into the economist most influential in the world today ».
He presents it like this : “Mazzucato has in mind neither a planned socialist economy, nor a Pimp industrial policy in which ministry officials run companies. But yes, he maintains, that the market alone does not stand a chance in the fight against the challenges of the 21st century. Can you imagine an entrepreneurial state that encourages companies to invest your money in higher level objectives, what the finance minister is doing German, Habeck, with initiatives taken directly from the Mazzucato manual. But how do it ? The economist simply says, not only carefully guiding companies and entire industrial sectors in that direction, but forcing them ; incentives like a tax on CO2 are very good but it would be more efficient if industry were required to use only green cement and the State will financially help the change. The culprit says Mazzucato is a major design flaw of modern equity capitalism that allows companies to companies invest their profits not in innovation, but in financial transactions and repurchase of shares, from which only investors benefit.”
Editorial writers wonder if a post-capitalism without growth is possible. And they explain that in March 1972 ’The limits of growth’ was published, the first exhaustive study on the consequences of the incessant human expansion. It was commissioned by the Club of Rome, non-profit organization working for a sustainable future since 1968. At that time, the report says, scientists used new computer models and arrived at a clear conclusion : the planet’s resources would not allow a constant growth of the economy and population beyond the year 2100. The study was heavily criticized and its conclusions categorically rejected by many opponents, even in the decades following, although the calculations were confirmed time and time again.
The opinion of Robert Solow, awarded with the evil named ’Nobel Prize in Economics’ for his brilliant research. Solow says : “Basically nothing depends on the absolute size of an economy. So if most of a population decides to reduce its ecological footprint by consuming fewer material goods and contributing more for leisure and services, from an economic point of view there is no absolutely nothing to stop it.« However, Solow warns, one must live with the consequences during a transition period, beginning with rising unemployment and ending with the decrease in income. For this reason, -he adds- very few economists want to dispense with growth altogether and instead are thinking of more smooth withdrawal, which means above all, separating the correct growth from the wrong one ; for example, growing massively in renewable energy but cutting back on the industry oil company, or replacing steel factories with digital start-ups ».
For its part, the research adds that in fact, more and more companies try to find their own way to post-capitalism, post-growth. 3 years ago, the 200 largest US companies declared in a statement group that in the future they would no longer be committed only to their shareholders, but to all the stakeholders, customers, employees and business partners, it is more with society in its set. This was a big step for the ’Business Roundtable’, the most powerful in the world with numerous large companies from Apple to Goldman Sachs. Until now they had only engaged with their shareholders. There it was applied Milton Friedman’s famous neoliberal slogan : « Corporate social responsibility increases your profits ». Closing this issue, the 3 writers warn that "it remains to be seen what is public relations gibberish and what is serious. Not all companies will behave as sustainably as the US sporting goods giant, Patagonia, which allocates all its profits to the protection of the environment. But the small steps help. Its competitor Adidas, for example, has decided to stop using polyester again production for all its sports shoes and textiles from 2024 and use only recycled plastic”.
The report that Der Spiegel publishes as the central theme of its edition is quite encouraging for humanity, especially since it explores the cultural changes that are taking place in the leading circles of world capitalism, not because of their generosity, that they have always kept short, but out of the spirit of survival. The fear fuels the intoxicated, would say Mujica.
This is how it concludes : “It is probable that the era of neoliberalism that has lasted for decades, has finally come to an end. Since the early 1980s, the belief that markets they are wiser that the State had united all political factions. decades of markets uncontrolled led directly to the financial crisis of 2008, which also heralded the end of neoliberalism. The massive state interventions that saved the economy from collapse at that time should be understood as the herald of a new order that replaced to neoliberalism as affirmed by the economic historian Tooze. Perhaps the last nail in the coffin was the pandemic. Once again, governments had to intervene to prevent the worst. There is a feeling that we have reached a tipping point.”
The excellent report that Der Spiegel brings us with data extracted from the kidney of the defenders of capitalism, take us to the primitive capitalism of Adam Smith when he affirmed without imagine the future of his system, that « there can be no flourishing and happy society when most of its members are poor and wretched. » Plato already proclaimed it to the Athenians 2,500 years ago : "among the citizens there should be neither extreme poverty nor nor excessive wealth, since both engender great evil.” What would Plato and Adam Smith, the father of capitalism, say ?
The figures of opprobrium are chilling. In the capitalist world of abundance, a person dies hungry person every 3 seconds and there are 800 million hungry. 10 die every year Millions of children under the age of 5, and half of those children die of malnutrition. 12 Millions of children die each year from curable diseases. billion beings Humans live on a dollar a day and another billion do not reach 2 dollars a day. The 45% of the world population does not have access to drinking water and 2.6 billion do not have sanitation, while 115 million do not have access to primary education. Let’s see the other side of this coin. 80 people hold the wealth of 2.3 billion men and women.
In 2008 there were 1,200 super rich, ten years later they were reduced to 80 and now 5 years later 26 people own the same as 3.8 billion human beings, according to Oxfam international. Since 2010, 75% of the wealth produced in the world was captured by the 1% of its inhabitants, while 99% of humanity only receives 25% of the remaining wealth.
In the United States, a country that considers itself the pontiff of democracies and equality of opportunities for all Americans, 1% of his privileged caste appropriated the 34.9% of the enormous wealth of that country. Its president Ronald Reagan had already defended that possibility in the 1980s when he bluntly declared that “the rich produce wealth, the poor use it”. Perhaps he was following the advice of the American financier Bernard Baruch who years He previously argued that the manager of a company must earn 50 times the salary of a worker.
The reality of capitalism overcame him. Today they earn 500 times more in the US.
The stampede that is taking place in the leadership of world capitalism is a good news, but nothing will be achieved without the awakening of the peoples, when they still persist sectors of poverty that believe in the goodness of the system that offers them the possibility of irrational consumerism. How right was Albert Camus when he deciphered « they rule because you obey. » Now I remember that thought of Eva Perón : « sad the poor that by smelling dung he thinks he is the owner of the cows”. Let’s complete the idea with the thought of Voltaire : »if the poor begin to reason, all is lost."
We are more and our ideas are better. We must not waste the very special situation that history offers us today. Post-capitalism is already on the agenda.
