25 How to unmount Capitalism?
Proper analysis of the Climate Crises (and other crises too!) drills down to identify the Capitalistic System as such as the main culprit.
This leads to slogans like ‘Kill Capitalism to save the World!’.
Correct - but not very helpfull for the practical task at hand.
Anti-capitalists of various shades applies a bit more specific labels, such as f.ex. ‘Degrowth’. Not very specific either - although the ‘drive for perputual growth’ is a major capitalistic feature.
To be operational we should rather look into the forces, rules and regulations that supports this ‘drive’ - and attack those.
Remember that Capitalism is a human construct - rules for how the economy should operate made by rulers - today mostly capitalists themselves.
My list of capitalist rules to be unmounted goes as follows:
End Limited liability
End Fractional Banking
End Wage Labour
End AdvertisingMore on these below:
25.1 Limited liability
The right to not be fully responsible for one’s actions should be ended.
A joint-stock company is a business entity in which shares of the company’s stock can be bought and sold by shareholders. Each shareholder owns company stock in proportion, evidenced by their shares (certificates of ownership).[1] Shareholders are able to transfer their shares to others without any effects to the continued existence of the company.[2]
In modern-day corporate law, the existence of a joint-stock company is often synonymous with incorporation (possession of legal personality separate from shareholders) and limited liability (shareholders are liable for the company’s debts only to the value of the money they have invested in the company). Therefore, joint-stock companies are commonly known as corporations or limited companies.
Some jurisdictions still provide the possibility of registering joint-stock companies without limited liability. In the United Kingdom and in other countries that have adopted its model of company law, they are known as unlimited companies. In the United States, they are known simply as joint-stock companies.
Wikipedia: Joint Stock Company
Marx and Engels believe that capitalism is pregnant with a post-capitalist, or socialist, system of production in which profit income, that is income received in virtue of the ownership of the firm, rather in virtue of labour supplied, has been abolished. For example, Marx points to joint-stock companies, which indicate how ownership can be socialised, and worker co-operatives, which indicate how a firm can be owned by its working members, and points out these are transitional institutions that prefigure fully social and democratic forms of property.
An unlimited company or private unlimited company is a hybrid company (corporation) incorporated with or without a share capital (and similar to its limited company counterpart) but where the legal liability of the members or shareholders is not limited: that is, its members or shareholders have a joint and several non-limited obligation to meet any insufficiency in the assets of the company to enable settlement of any outstanding financial liability in the event of the company’s formal liquidation.
25.2 Fractional Banking
The right to lend money you do not posess should be ended.
One hundred percent reserves would put our money supply back under the control of the government rather than the private banking sector. Money would be a true public utility, rather than the by-product of commercial lending and borrowing in pursuit of growth. Under the existing fractional reserve system the money supply expands during a boom, and contracts during a slump, reinforcing the cyclical tendency of the economy. The profit (seigniorage) from creating (at negligible cost) and being the first to spend new money and receive its full exchange value, would accrue to the public rather than the private sector. The reserve requirement, something the Central Bank manipulates anyway, could be raised from current very low levels gradually to 100%.
100% reserves would both stabilize the economy and slow down the Ponzi-like credit leveraging.
Herman Daly (2008) Steady State Economy (Sustainable Development Commision) (pdf)
25.3 Wage Labour
The right to own another human - even if only parttime (during working hours) should be ended.
Slavery was ended by decree in during the 1800s. Time ripe for ending the modern form of Wage-Slavery.
In almost every country the rights and obligations of the worker and the capitalist employer are mediated through a contract of employment between the two. Many contract terms and conditions are covered by legislation or common law.
25.4 Advertising
The right to manipulate consumers should be ended.
The right to objective product information should be granted.
25.6 CasP Unmounting
Casp? How can Capitalism de overthrown?
I love #CasP as a framework for understanding capitalism. But I’m left wondering. How then does one reduce, and eventually get rid of the power of Dominant Capital?
It can’t be done through the state because the state of capital is part of the problem.
It can’t be done through syndicalism, because production isn’t power… And union busting and stagnant wages and rising inflation and reluctance to strike, are a thing.
It can’t be done through collective action by consumers, because false dichotomy divisions fostered by dominant capital render unity impossible, and diversity of tactics essentially powerless.
It can’t be done by violent means, because Dominant Capital uses the state to violently enforce compliance, with no hesitation to incarcerate or kill non-compliance.
It can’t be done by propaganda, because the voice of the anti-establishment propaganda mill is drowned out by the propaganda mill of Dominant Capital
It can’t be done through clandestine subversion, because the surveillance mechanisms know our every move.
It cannot be done through attrition, because Dominant Capital controls more surplus resources than the rest of the world combined.
As far as I can tell, the only possible end to the dominance, is cataclysm. And Dominant Capital is more likely to survive that than we are.
There might be one other option. But it is far-fetched, and virtually impossible to pull off. Playing them against each other. They already do it to each other to gain more power. But it is conceivable that they might be duped into fighting each other for non-existent power.
Reply: Municipalism. Gradually sucking the state of capital dry (politically and economically) by devolving its functions to localities.
- I’m a huge fan of Bookchin. But there are serious obstacles to the implementation of municipalism in the current context. Most areas actually don’t have cohesive municipalities that have the community working where they live.
25.7 DeCapitalize Our Mindset
Remblance
Our minds have been shaped by capitalism and it is stopping us from seeing both the role capitalism plays in the cause of climate change and the full scope of solutions available to address the crisis.
Unconscious of how our minds are shaped by capitalism, we: - champion solutions that are well-intentioned but inadequate because they assume mythical ‘green-growth’; - implement targets that aren’t supported by policies to achieve them, instead relying on technology that doesn’t currently exist to cover the gap.
Unsurprisingly, the mindset we need to address the climate crisis is the exact opposite of the mindset described above.