Reclaiming Our Imaginations From 'There Is No Alternative'
By Andrea Browner
We live in a time of heavy fog. A time when, though many of us
dissent and resist, humanity seems committed to a course of collective
suicide in the name of preserving an economic system that generates
scarcity no matter how much is actually produced.
To demand that all have enough to eat on a planet that grows enough
food, that absurd numbers of people do not die from preventable disease,
that utter human deprivation amongst plenty is not tolerated, or that
we put the natural laws of the biosphere above socially constructed
economic “laws” — is presented as unrealistic, as the fantasy of
idealists or those who are naive to the “complexity” of the world’s
problems. If we create and recreate the world everyday, then how has it
become so supposedly absurd to believe we might actually create a world
that is honestly making the possibilities of egalitarianism, justice and
democracy?
Capitalism — the logic of subordinating every aspect of life to the
accumulation of profit (i.e. the “rules of the market”) — has become
today’s “common sense.” It has become almost unthinkable to imagine
coherent alternatives to this logic, even when considering the most
basic of human needs — food, water, healthcare, education. Though many
have an understanding of capitalism’s failings, there is a resignation
towards its inevitability. Margaret Thatcher’s famous words, “There Is
No Alternative,” no longer need to be spoken, they are simply accepted
as normal, non-ideological, neutral.
What sustains the tragic myth that There Is No Alternative?
Those committed to building a more just future must begin re-thinking
and revealing the taken-for-granted assumptions that make capitalism
“common sense,” and bring these into the realm of mainstream public
debate in order to widen horizons of possibility. We can’t leave this
task to the pages of peer-reviewed journals and classrooms of social
theory — these conversations must enter also into the family dining
rooms and TV screens. Here are some thoughts on conversation starters:
Alternatives could never work. Does capitalism
“work”? Even by its own indicators, as we’ve become more capitalist
(i.e. neoliberalism), economic growth and productivity has actually
declined.
Today’s globalized world is too complex to organize things any differently. Of
course the world is complex — each of us is a bundle of contradictions
and we need look no further than the dynamics of a single relationship
to make a case for social complexity. But things are also quite simple —
we live in a world where one billion people go hungry while we
literally dump half of all food produced. Can we not come up with a
productive socio-economic system that also meets people’s most basic
needs? The gift of today is that we have the ability to reflect and
draw-upon many forms, past and present, of non-capitalist social
organization, and to creatively experiment with blending the best of
these possibilities. The fact that we are more connected than ever
before and have advanced so far technologically gives us more
possibilities, not less.
Because of our “human nature,” we can only create economic systems based on competition, greed and self-interest. This
is not only utterly pessimistic, but plain wrong. Again, we can start
by remembering all sorts of societies that have existed through history.
Then just look around and ask the question, what motivates you and the
people you know? Fields as diverse as neuroscience and anthropology have
mounted evidence showing humans’ incredible capacity for cooperation
and sensitivity to fairness. We are actually all quite capable of
anything; but it is up to us to decide how to use our capabilities, and
of course that will be dictated by what our social systems encourage and
teach us to value. If there is one thing that can be said about “human
nature,” it is that we construct ourselves from within our societies and
we are incredibly malleable.
Freedom is only realizable through a free-market. Attaching
our values of freedom to the market is not only de-humanizing, but it
also fails to recognize how one person’s “freedom” to economic choice is
another’s imprisonment in a life of exploitation and deprivation. There
is no possibility for freedom and emancipation until we are all free,
and this will only come through a much richer and deeper conception of
human freedom than one that is premised upon going to a grocery store
and “choosing” between 5,000 variations of processed corn.
Capitalism is the only system that encourages innovation and progress. Progress
towards what? And how does enclosing common knowledge through
intellectual property rights, or excluding most of the world from
quality education, or depriving half of humanity from the basic
life-sustaining goods needed to function healthily, lead to greater
innovation? Just begin to imagine the innovative possibilities of a
world where all people had access to everything they needed to live, to
think, and to contribute to the common good.
Things could be worse. Of course they could, but
they could also be better. Does the fact that we’ve lived through bloody
dictatorships mean that we should settle for a representative democracy
where the main thing being represented is money?
Things are getting better. Can we really say that
things are getting better as we head towards the annihilation of our own
species? Sure, we may have our first black president and be making
small gains in LGBT rights or in women’s representation in the
workforce; but let’s not neglect the fact that capital is more
concentrated and centralized than it has ever been and that its logic
now penetrates into the most basic building blocks of life. I think we
should give ourselves more credit than to settle for this “better.”
Change is slow. Slow is not in the vocabulary of the
corporations who are stealing our common genetic heritage, or their
buddies who are getting rich playing virtual money games that legally
rob us all. The enclosure of our commons and the concentration of
capital is not happening slowly. Whether we acknowledge it or not,
change is happening — what is up for grabs is the direction of that
change.
The best we can hope for is “green” and “ethical” capitalism. The
logic of this belief is fundamentally flawed because it assumes that
within capitalism, businesses can prioritize anything above the
bottom-line. In actuality, businesses that commit themselves first and
foremost to being truly and fully ethical and green will find it very
difficult to stay in business. Of course there are great models of
ethical business — worker-owned organic farms, for instance — but these
cannot thrive and become the dominant norm when they are functioning
within an economic structure that concentrates wealth and power in the
hands of Monsanto. And while we should support these alternatives that
exist within capitalism, we need to recognize that it’s way too little,
way too late — structural change must (and will) happen, one way or
another.
Getting rid of capitalism means abandoning markets as a tool of social organization.This
is not necessarily true, although perhaps we would do best without
markets anyway. Societies have existed that have used markets but
restrained oligopoly capitalism, and many brilliant thinkers have
envisioned a transition to a society structured by norms of equality and
sharing where markets do play a role. I’m not advocating for or against
any specific proposals here, but the point is that this assumption is
historically inaccurate and we have barely begun to give serious thought
to other possibilities.
People don’t care. People may be distracted by
consumerism, may only have enough energy to struggle to pay their bills,
may be fearful, may lack access to good information... but none of
these things mean that they don’t care. Show anybody an image of a
starving child who works in the cacao fields but can’t afford to eat
(much less taste chocolate), and they will feel disgust. The charity
industry is thriving precisely because so many people do feel implicated
in the revolting manifestations of capitalism. But people’s sense of
outrage has been channeled away from collective political action and
towards ethical buying and holiday-time charitable donations. Without an
honest and sophisticated society-wide conversation about the structural
issues we are facing, people’s care is reduced to individual guilt and
disempowerment.
People won’t stop consuming, plus all the poor people want what the rich people have. Of
course they do! Doing away with capitalism doesn’t mean resorting to
primitivism, or abandoning all of our washing machines, or leaving the
poor destitute. While of course there are limits to the earth’s
resources (fossil-fuels in particular), this doesn’t mean that we can’t
organize a productive, equitable and sustainable social order that
includes many of the comforts of modern life and excitements of
technology. We need not abandon desire with capitalism. In fact, getting
rid of capitalism gives us the best chance of having time to organize a
sustainable system of consumption before it is too late — staying
hooked into capitalism may actually be the quickest route to
primitivism.
Capital’s enclosure of our commons — our common resources, genes and
even intellect — has been accompanied by an enclosure of our
imaginations. We need to re-claim and re-orient what it is to be
“realistic” from the falsehoods of There Is No Alternative.
This is not a call for pure imaginations of some future utopia. It is
not a fantastic plea for a sudden and complete dissolving of all the
social structures that currently pattern our lives. Instead, it is a
call to take what is already going on all around us, all the time —
cooperation, sharing, empathy — and let these aspects of our humanity
that we most cherish guide our future. To begin to re-direct and
re-structure our social systems towards the things we most desire and
value — caring for and cooperating with one another, true participation
and democracy, human freedom and free time, peace and co-existence — and
in doing so, to watch these things begin to flourish.
If it is naive to believe that we can structure society to reward
goodness instead of greed and prioritize people instead of profit, then
I’m fighting until the bitter end to maintain my naiveté! Things become
possible when we believe they are possible; so let’s start believing.
Cross-posted from Common Dreams
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