Date: 2024-10-19 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00018091
The Socio-Enviro-Economic System
Dangerous Dysfunction
What Happens When Capitalism Devours a Society? America Does. ... How You End Up With a Rich Nation of the Poor, a Powerful Nation of the Powerless, and a Wealthy Nation of Paupers
Peter Burgess
There are three great lessons from the 20th century which we are only just beginning to learn, in the difficult and tumultuous adolescence of the 21st. The first is that stagnation brings with it authoritarianism, the second that social democracy is the greatest lever of prosperity yet discovered by humankind. In this essay, I want to discuss the third, which is America’s lesson: capitalism will devour a society so completely, so savagely, so relentlessly, so insatiably — that weird, gruesome, seemingly impossible paradoxes result. How do you end up with an affluent nation of the broke, a rich nation of crowdfunding paupers, a powerful nation of the powerless?
Americans are struggling these days, I think, to connect the dots of a strange, bizarre, unfamiliar kind of social collapse. How could the world’s most powerful country end up with an aspiring cartoon dictator for President? Why, in one of the world’s richest countries, did people end up having to choose between medicine or food a roof over their heads? Why do Americans endure mass shootings, at schools and hospitals and bars, day after day? How did all these weird, gruesome, terrible things come to be, which make no sense to anyone else, really, in the wide world — maybe not even to Americans?
Here’s the big, unmentionable dirty secret that no one, really, wants to discuss. America’s great social problems are all forms of capitalist exploitation. At least in its mainstream. Not its intellectuals, not its columnists, not its pundits, not its journalists dare to utter it. It is as if a house is on fire, and a whole village has gathered around to debate, by firelight, if someone knows what that strange, burning, orange substance ripping through the ramparts is.
Now, this makes absolutely no sense, again, to people in the rest of the world — because in the rest of the world, capitalism has never been seen the way it is in America: the same way communism, perhaps, was in the Soviet Union, or maybe even with greater ideological attachment and idealized devotion than that. In America, you will struggle to really gain much insight into capitalism’s shortcomings — while in the rest of the world, they are the stuff of everyday conversation. Hence, many Americans — certainly enough of them — don’t seem to be aware of the simplest and truest fact of American collapse: its ruinous social problems are in fact just different forms of one ill — exploitation, the capitalist kind.
Let’s go through some of America’s problems, to understand how they are all forms of capitalist exploitation. Let’s start with the most obvious — American wages haven’t risen since well before my adult lifetime. That’s several generations and counting — half a century. Why is that? Because, of course, capitalism rules America, but capitalists will never pay workers a penny more unless they have to. And they don’t. Why would they? Unions were decimated, protections shattered, basic rights erased, and markets concentrated to the point that competition is absent — capitalism, in pure form. So the first form of exploitation Americans have endured is economic — and though it has gone on half a century, even this most basic variety isn’t generally understood as exploitation, much less by capitalism, yet.
Let’s go through a few more examples. Old people who’ll never retire? Young people who can’t afford to move out and start families of their own? Students burdened with back-breaking debt? Capitalism, capitalism, capitalism. Mass killings as a daily phenomenon? Capitalism — it’s a gun lobby that’s preventing change. Opioid epidemic? Capitalism.
Do you see the lesson yet? Every single great social problem you can think of in America is a direct result of capitalism. Call it mega-capitalism, qualify it however you like, the point remains. So why don’t we ever talk about it? I’ll come to that. I could go on at the social level — but let’s talk about the psychological consequences of these social problems — which is yet another form of exploitation, too.
How do Americans feel? It’s a nation gripped by depression, suicide, isolation, loneliness, and rage. Why? Did somebody put drop an emotional atomic bomb on America? Sure — capitalism did. People stuck in lives which are assigned no inherent worth, which only hold any value if they attain status, power, respect, possession, begin to feel a profound sense of loss — especially when those very glittering dreams are beyond them anymore. That much explains America’s epidemic of suicide and depression — it’s another form of exploitation, if seen clearly: capitalism discarding away the lives it no longer finds profitable, or never did to begin with, like so many unusable — or used up — commodities.
Savage emotional exploitation, which results in trauma and abuse — not just “emotional labour” — is an obvious result of capitalism, because capitalism doesn’t think you are inherently worth anything, don’t deserve anything whatsoever, that you are nothing and no one. The problem is that America made this nihilistic belief that foundation of society, culture, and morality and, and therefore, the arch-capitalist idea that if you are not maximally profitable, then you are worthless, useless, a burden, a liability, came true psychologically across the land, too. Bang! Powerlessness, hopelessness, futility, despair — as the result of grim, stonehearted cruelty as a way of life, cherished value, something to admire and to instill and cultivate.
It’s difficult to escape this strange combination of despair and cruelty, futility and hostility, in America. What choice do you have? You can go become a part of the machine — or you can end up falling into it. But is there much of a difference? In that question way lies another great malady of capitalism — alienation. Marx would have said people are “alienated” from the “labour”, but later thinkers expanded the term to mean something more like: a person grows cold, loses a sense of conscience, only values money, power, status, and possession. Begins to aspire to become just the kind of ruthless, conniving, predator who has exploited him. The exploited is becoming the exploiter now — the abused becoming the abuser.
We see the process of alienation refined to something like a science in many American institutions — who seem not to train America’s young to be much more than aspiring predators anymore, only eager to run off to Wall St or K St or Silicon Valley — Mom! I’m gonna be a Product Manager at Facebook!! — but shudder at the thought of doing a thing of lasting value or worth for society, the world, the planet, or the future. That, after all, would take courage, empathy, wisdom, defiance — all the things the aspiring capitalist has been alienated of. Bang! There goes democracy.
What happens to a person if they complete that journey of alienation — if they stop caring about anything, really, beyond money, status, power, control, domination, possession? They develop what Marx would have called a “false consciousness” — the idea, to simplify, that capitalism isn’t what it is: it cares about you. Wait — isn’t that precisely the strange kabuki theatre we see played out in America every day? Pundits mourn the victims of the latest shooting — and then pretend it has nothing to do with capitalism. Intellectuals lament the death of truth — and then pretend it has nothing at all to do with the fact that a handful of mega-corporations only interested in profit own the media lock, stock, and barrel. Journalists bitterly condemn the politicians who deny a nation healthcare — but nobody seems to say: look, capitalism will never give a society things like decent healthcare, because it wants as many people as possible to be powerless, hopeless, desperate, broke, living right at the edge of ruin. Whoosh! Did you hear that? That was truth itself imploding.
Let’s stop and tally the forms of exploitation we have discussed by now. Economic stagnation in a caste society. Democratic decline. Mistrust, isolation, a sense of pointlessness. Cultural cruelty, hopelessness, and despair. The death of truth, the irrelevance of meaning or higher purpose. Powerlessness over it all. All of which, quite naturally, lead to psychological despair, trauma, grief, suicide. All these are simply different forms of one ill: capitalist exploitation.
The wrinkle in the story is this. Americans are also the ones doing the exploiting, too, at the behest of capitalism, whether or not they’re true believers in it. After all, in a capitalist society, it’s either that, or let your kids starve. So one can hardly blame them. Still, that doesn’t change the question.
But what ends up happening to a nation of such people — who have exploited one another to such a degree that their society is becoming unlivable? America does. The terrible, bizarre position that capitalism has reduced Americans to is this: exploiting each other by day, begging each other by night. Do you see how weird and strange that is? Let me illustrate it.
Americans have become paupers in a wealthy land, beggars in a rich nation, powerless people in the world’s most powerful country. They are reduced to literally begging one another for the basics of life now — crowdfunding healthcare, appealing desperately for fewer shootings, asking for a raise to a boss who’s probably never gotten one himself, seeking debt relief when they’re not avoiding this or that that collector. But begging is begging — and Americans have been reduced to begging for things that the rest of the rich world, and by now even some of the poor world, regards as basic human rights for all. Perhaps you think that’s unfair thing to say. I think that’s an unfair think to be.
Off two Americans go to work, their office jobs, at these titanic corporations, where their jobs, essentially, are to exploit each other. I don’t blame them — they have no choice, really. Maybe one is a manager at an HMO, who decides the other else must pay their life savings for some drug, in order to maximize profits, which he will ever get a share of. The second one, perhaps, designs some algorithm or program to recommend the first one’s kids videos or books which miseducate and misinform them, maybe even radicalize them — in order to maximize profits, which he will never get a share of. Both head home at night. Now, because they have spent all day exploiting each other, neither one is really any richer at all — they are playing a game of musical chairs on a sinking ship. How so?
What choice are they left with after they are done exploiting each other? Now they must beg each other for the very things they things they have taken from one another. So there they are at home — and now, because they have spent all day exploiting each other, doing nothing of benefit for each other whatsoever, they must, at night, being to beg one another desperately. The sick one, maybe, crowdfunds healthcare. The other one, perhaps, tries to raise money for his kids’ education, searching the internet for stock market tips, asking relatives and friends for money, or ponders how to ask his boss for a raise he will probably never get — at least not enough of one to keep pace with the dizzying, skyrocketing price of education. Exploitation has reduced them both to beggars. What a strange, bizarre, staggering irony.
Do you see the paradox at work here? The illogic, the folly, the tragedy — and yet the dilemma? Most, maybe many, Americans have no way out of this trap, because capitalism is mostly all there is. They cannot choose anything other than to exploit each other — the only choices on offer in capitalism are exploit the next person harder than they exploit you, or be exploited by everyone, be the scapegoat, period.
And so what the trap of capitalist exploitation — in all the many forms we have explored, from economic and financial stagnation, to moral and ethical alienation, to social mistrust and isolation, to cultural cruelty and selfishness, to psychological depression and loneliness and suicide — means for Americans as a people is the impossibly weird paradox of being beggars in a wealthy nation, powerless in the world’s powerful country, poor people in a rich land.
Capitalism has made Americans beg each other by night for the very things it makes them take away from each other by day. Because Americans are hard at work exploiting one another a little more relentlessly every day, quite naturally, America living standards haven’t risen in my adult lifetime — they have fallen — but that also means that Americans are paradoxically poor, powerless, and desperate to a degree that drops the jaws of people across the world.
How terrible, my friends. How terrible. And yet, most funnily and ironically of all — the elephant in the room — no one points out to Americas the thing that unifies all their urgent, pressing, and terrible problems, which is the cause of the paradox of being beggars in a wealthy nation, powerless in the world’s most powerful country, poor people in one of the world’s richest countries. All these paradoxes — and the problems which are their manifestations — are really all forms of capitalist exploitation. Every single one, from mass shootings, to medical bankrupcty, to depression and suicide. What else could they be? Capitalism is all that is allowed in America, after all. But there are America’s wise men and its oracles, its barons and its chieftains — every one of them strokes their chins, but not one seems capable of pointing out the obvious.
But if nobody can point out that America’s problems are all forms of capitalist exploitation— then how can anyone point out the paradoxical, weird, gruesome consequence of exploitation? That when people who are barely getting by exploit each other by day, they will only have to beg each other by night for the very things they have taken from each other to begin with? What a strange and sad place to be.
America’s decline and collapse is the third great lesson of the 20th century, which the 21st is only slowly learning. What happens when a society chooses exploitation over liberation? Exploitation as what is prized and cherished and valued socially, the cultural norm, the institutional fabric, the alpha and omega? America does. Not just a society whose problems are all forms of capitalist exploitation — but a society which cannot quite seem even to understand it. How do you end up with a rich nation of beggars, a powerful nation of the powerless, a wealthy nation of the broke? You choose exploitation over liberation.
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