The Demise of Global Capitalism

Global Capitalism is a more precise term than Globalization for defining what is encircling and strangling-to-death the planet by reducing the quality of human life to the point where boredom, meaninglessness, and misery are undermining the Will to live, not only for the few or even the many, but for everyone. Beneath the growing inequality of wealth, the competitive struggle for individual and family survival, and the mounting class warfare, there is the deeper and more sinister emergence of an Exterministic culture or civilization whose laws, institutions, values, mores, and attitudes lead to social suicide (via ecocide, nuclear war, or in some other way). The deadly alliance/agreement between these objective and subjective factors of the social complex defines Exterminism, a downward social cycling into nothingness.

America exemplifies this death spiral because highly developed finance capitalism commercializes everything, reducing social life to a means for the accumulation of money, squeezing evermore the joy out of human existence. The rising level of frustration, depression and anger that results then promotes and perfects this economy to even higher degrees of manipulation, exploitation and ruination. Dissatisfied and mistreated people make the best owners, operators, and workers in an economy that requires (for profit) that we do a better and better job of using, tricking, and taking advantage of one another (not to mention nonhuman lives). In other words, human disappointment and hardship are driving an economy that makes money by producing more dissatisfaction and hardship for the sake of more money, and so on. We are spiraling downward in an economy that is growing stronger, bigger, and meaner by creating evermore unhappy and bitter/vengeful people. As a result, the feeling-idea is growing in the back of the American mind that this society is not worth saving, that the social whole doesn’t deserve to exist. More and more people long to escape–even if we don’t admit it or acknowledge it–and are consoled by the notion of being released from the accumulating suffering of everyday life through social suicide via ecocide, nuclear war, or in some other way.

It’s not so much that individuals contemplate and plan their own suicide, but rather that they participate in a way of life that is becoming increasingly empty/worthless and destructive, and they don’t know what can be done about it, or they don’t think anything can do done about it, so they go along, stay the course, perpetuate it, and it becomes easier/preferable to ride the boat over the waterfall, so to speak, than to embark on the difficult path of cooperating with others in executing a plan that avoids total disaster. In other words, this economy beats people down so much, creates so much unhappiness, depression, and bitterness that we are becoming people who are inclined to ride the death-current (as long and as far as we can) over the waterfall, rather than change course. Not a lonely solitary death, but one in which we all go down together, comfortably and effortlessly, is the uninformed, lazy, and cowardly solution to the common, compounding problems of Global Capitalism. The demise of global capitalism means not only that this economic system is unsustainable, but also that it takes everything down with it. It destroys not only the established lifestyle, but alternative ways of living because it undermines the human will-to-live on which every society ultimately depends.

It’s not just the Republican Party leadership and Base who are Exterministic, but the entire population is moving in the same direction, although in a slower and less vocal way. Americans are caught in a downward social dynamic in which even the simple pleasures of life (thus far available to all hitherto existing societies), not to mention the higher ones, have disappeared or are fast disappearing due to an economy that values nothing for its own sake. This bottom line economy is putting all human experiences on a “ticking meter,“ assigning everything a monetary value, converting everything into cash, credit, or business opportunities, and this process (globalization) undermines human sincerity, authenticity, integrity, generosity, and the rest of the defining qualities of a good life beyond security and survival. When the quality of life falls below a certain threshold, then people no longer want to go on living, and we resign ourselves to dependency, defeat, despair, and death. Quiet desperation builds toward Exterminism.

American society has its origin in a culture of asceticism in which the postponement of pleasure is taken as the path to the good life. Asceticism offers the pleasures of self-denial, self-punishment, self-contradiction, and self-delusion, but these are false/perverted pleasures in that they can only be gained at the cost of increasing overall unhappiness for the individual and society. Only if individuals get enough real immediate pleasure from others, and from the world around them, in spite of all efforts to postpone it, is it possible to sustain a meaningful and joyful existence. Storing up time and treasure for future happiness is false happiness because life cannot be saved, but only lived in the present, and there is no way to compensate, or make up for the loss of life and happiness that asceticism entails, not even through a long retirement. This lifestyle digs a deeper hole everyday for the individual and society; it feeds off the real, immediate joys of life until it kills the substance of life that sustains it, and then it self-destructs. Calling the ascetic lifestyle real happiness, or behaving “as if” it is real happiness, or making the best of it, does not refute the deeper truth that Exterminism is the last stage, the final outcome, of asceticism.

When the ascetic ideal becomes the inner core and driving force of an entire economic system, as happens with the emergence of Capitalism, then (structural) Exterminism begins because the hunt for profit increasingly penetrates, occupies, and kills the free enjoyment of life everywhere. American style Finance Capitalism has taken this ascetic economy to unbearable heights by tightening its grip over the people in ways unimaginable in all hitherto existing societies. It eliminates the margins, spaces, and times for the spontaneous and intrinsic enjoyment of life by subjecting everyone to continuous and inescapable rules, regulations, tasks, responsibilities, and concerns about money, with every minute aspect of social life measured, calculated, priced, tagged, monitored toward the goal of abstract happiness (money) that only promises, but never actually provides, human fulfillment.

This economic system is so dense, interconnected, computerized that there is no room for error, rest, or questioning. The daily option is to keep ahead of the stress and strain that is swelling up and threatening to overtake us. Any little problem escalates, driving people to the breaking point again and again because the whole tormenting, punitive system is geared to come down with a vengeance. We are entangled in a network of instrumentalities that is dragging us down. With no freedom from the relentless, aggressive, and accelerating economic demands of everyday reality, and trapped in a standardized, uninteresting, traffic-infested, isolated, ugly, unhealthy, unfriendly… living environment, the qualitative differences between life and death diminish, and the underground feeling-thought of social suicide grows.

It is simply untenable to believe that the American people can tolerate indefinitely an economy that keeps turning up the dial on human dissatisfaction for the sake of money. Given the growing scientific and technological management and manipulation of human nature and behavior, it is not surprising that people (with exceptions) do not understand or envision genuine social transformation. If people cannot find an escape from accumulating fear, depression, guilt, frustration, anger, resentment–in short, from escalating human suffering, then they will take the path of least resistance, which is Exterminism via ecocide, nuclear annihilation, or in some way.

Global Demise is not inevitable (if we evolve an alternative economic order), but it is the established trajectory of human affairs under the dictates of International Finance Capitalism because this Way of Life provides everything but happiness. Look at Americans: the more we acquire the more unhappy we become, and along with the rising GNP the misery index is also going up, generating an underground death movement/momentum comprised of many who secretly/silently agree–Left and Right, Liberals and Conservatives–that the whole thing is not worth the effort. It should not surprise anyone that an economy of misery breeds widespread and deep contempt for life.

The worst kind of depression and anger that is rising today, among the old and young, is not specific, but rather, a general malaise or discontentment with the whole, and this feeling-idea that life is uneventful, pointless, or futile is the deepest obstacle to social change. Americans don’t act, or even believe in social transformation, because we are in the grip of an intensifying economy that overwhelms us, immobilizing us, with feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and the creeping doubt that we might all be better off dead. There is a limit to how much dissatisfaction people can tolerate before frustration and hatred win out, and society slides into catastrophe.

As an American, I’m posting a WARNING! of a social undertow that is getting stronger and stronger –namely, we are becoming cynics, fatalists, people who surrender to death, not because of an inherent flaw in human nature, or not because we are bad or evil creatures, but because this hyper-capitalist economy is making us so selfish, greedy, and miserable that we have become complicit in our own social annihilation. Of course we could avoid–if we really wanted to–the worsening world-wide ecological crisis, the proliferation of nuclear weapons and wars around the planet, and other potentially world-destroying activities of the global capitalist economy, but this economic system is weakening our Will to live–by making us so depressed and hateful–to the degree that we are succumbing to these unfolding world disasters instead of resisting, fighting, and changing them.

It is certainly possible for humans to rationally regulate their relations with one another, and with Nature, and there is definitely a lot of ignorance that needs to be dispelled by the light of Reason, but the answer is not simply cognitive. There is the additional problem (of Exterminism) in which the psychological state, Subjectivity, or the mental attitude and disposition of people deteriorates (due to intensifying Capitalism) to the point where the human Will to find solutions to grave social problems weakens and ultimately gives up. In other words, there’s a point at which people stop listening to, or tune out, facts, evidence, and rational arguments because they already know that there is great danger up ahead, but they are too defeated, depressed, angry and bitter about present reality to do anything about it, or to try to do anything about it, or even to want to do anything about it.

Nevertheless, Reason is all we have for stepping back from the abyss, and although I’m worried that America may be in irreversible decline–and that the kind of change this planet needs will have to begin in some other part of world, and spread from there–I‘m not sure that we have passed the point of no return, so I offer this essay as another attempt to enlighten people about the self-destructive path we are all traveling, not simply because “outer” reality overwhelms and crushes everything, but also because “inner” reality, the American psyche, supports and endorses this collective dying process. It’s the agreement and reinforcement between laws, institutions, and technology on the one hand, and the mindset, emotions, and inclinations of people on the other hand that makes Exterminism a social death spiral that is very difficult to reverse.

Glenn Parton