Editor:
In response to Mr. Dillon’s recent reaction (Mailbox, April 29) to Cooperation Humboldt’s recent Post Capitalism Conference, I submit the following thoughts.
First, economics are for everybody. The word “economy” literally means “management of the household,” and that’s something we’re all engaged with to one degree or another.
Economic systems are created by humans. And they can be changed by humans. There is no single default economic system, nor is there any economic system that can achieve perfection or utopia. There are, however, economic systems that can surely do a better job meeting fundamental needs and honoring every person’s humanity than capitalism.
Capitalism prioritizes growth and profit maximization above all else — above wellness, above happiness, above relationships and above planetary health. The ideology of capitalism is, in fact, the same as the ideology of cancer — maximum consumption and maximum growth. Left unchecked — like cancer — capitalism will kill its host — in this case, that means the planet that we all depend on for survival. Anyone who’s paying attention realizes at a visceral level that this is already underway.
Like it or not, capitalism will come to an end. It’s already dying. We can fight it, we can make jokes or we can welcome the coming transition and help to birth something better — a system based on compassion and equity that meets each person’s needs and helps us thrive in right relationship with the rest of the natural world.
Cooperation Humboldt’s Post Capitalism Conference — in fact, everything we do — is an invitation for those who choose to work for a peaceful transition beyond capitalism to come together to learn, to grow and to heal. If that is a vision that resonates for you, we invite you to check out some of the recordings of conference sessions at www.cooperationhumboldt.org/pcc-2021.
Tamara McFarland, Eureka
This article appears in Remembering the local lives cut short by COVID-19 in a year of loss.
Unlike a few social/labor revolutions of the past, notably the Bolshevik and French revolutions, it seems to me that contemporary Western world’s virtual corporate rule and superfluously wealthy essentially have the police and military ready to foremost protect big power and money interests, even over the food and shelter needs of the protesting masses. I can imagine that there are/were lessons learned from them (How to Hinder Progressive Revolutions 101?) with the clarity of hindsight by big power and money interests. They, the police/military/big-money, can claim they must bust heads to maintain law and order as a priority; thus the absurdly unjust inequities and inequalities can persist.
Still, there must be a point at which the status quo — already large corporate profits are maintained or increased while many people are denied a universal basic income — can/will end up hurting big business interests. I can imagine that a healthy, strong and large consumer base — and not just very wealthy consumers — are needed. Or could it be that, generally speaking, the unlimited profit objective/nature is somehow irresistible, including the willingness to simultaneously have an already squeezed consumer base continue so or even worsened? (It brings to mind the allegorical fox stung by the instinct-abiding scorpion while ferrying it across the river, leaving both to drown.)
When it comes to capitalist society, I can see the corporate CEO (figuratively) shrugging their shoulders and defensively saying that their job is to protect shareholders’ bottom-line interests. Meanwhile, the shareholder also shrugs their shoulders while defensively stating that they just collect the dividends and that the CEOs are the ones to make the moral and/or ethical decisions.
“Now you’re not naive enough to think we’re living in a democracy, are you, Buddy? It’s the free market, and you’re part of it.”
— the morbidly greedy Gordon Gekko to his protégé Bud Fox (Wall Street, 1987)