Wednesday, November 2, 2022

Capitalism Has Failed As Badly As Anything Can Fail — Caitlin Johnstone

 Cutting to the chase on "capitalism" in its present iteration. It's literally killing us.

Pointing out the various flaws in historical attempts at communism does not address the problem that if we don’t move from competition-based models to collaboration-based ones we’re going to destroy all life on this planet in short order. We’ve still got to find a way to change.

Have issues with Stalin and Mao? Okay. Cool. Our competition-based models are still destroying our biosphere and shoving us toward nuclear war. Our survival still depends on moving toward collaboration with each other and with our ecosystem toward the thriving of all beings. Babbling about Stalin and Mao doesn’t magically change the fact that we can’t keep doing this thing where human behavior is driven by profit and competition.

Leaving aside that many problems with communism have been wildly exaggerated and others are the direct result of sabotage and economic warfare by the capitalist empire, those criticisms never address the problem that capitalism has no solutions for our current existential crises. So we need systems which can address those existential crises. I see no models with any hope of sustainability that don’t involve a radical transition from competition to collaboration at every level. We will either accomplish that transition or we will go extinct. It really is that simple.…
CaitlinJohnstone.com

See also
A flawed conviction that time remains in America’s favor permeates the Biden administration’s strategic thought….
Andrei Martyanov has written several books about this and explicated it at his blog and YouTube channel. The danger is that a war breaks out between the US/NATO and Russia and the unprepared former finds itself backed into a corner with the "best" option being nuclear, which triggers MAD.

Asia Times
Integrated idiocy: US not ready for a major war
Seth Cropsey  

5 comments:

Peter Pan said...

Babbling about collaboration doesn't negate ecological overshoot or the insanity of geopolitics.

Tom Hickey said...

More cooperation and less competition is needed, but that is not a solution.

A viable solution must be developed on this basis of analysis of the operation of the world system as a whole, with the global economy as a subsystem. It's not only complicated, it is complex, but the opportunity is that it is a complex adaptive system that can learn from feedback.

One thing we know pretty surely is that the present configuration is not working sustainably and if we don't successfully address this overarching issue, we could be toast, literally, and in more ways than one. Both climate change and nuclear war present such threats.

This looks like an existential crisis in the making. But it will be difficult to address unless and until the perception that this is indeed grows widely enough to provide a foundation for action under conditions that make change is difficult. This is going to require massive cooperation and the jury is still out on whether it can happen in time to make a crucial difference.

Tom Hickey said...

Case in point, M. K. Bhadrakumar, Who’s afraid of US troops in Ukraine?

Tom Hickey said...

Another from The Saker (Andrei Raevsky)

NATO escalates (again) and achieves nothing (again)

Peter Pan said...

We have overshot the carrying capacity of the Earth. It is too late for solutions to that predicament. The best outcome would be for Mother Nature to reduce the number of humans on the planet, and for survivors to be cognizant of that fact. There's a slight chance that lessons would be learned.

A nuclear war would derail that narrative. So would a democide in the wake of some 'Great Reset'. If only for X,Y,Z, we would have secured a brighter future.

What is to be done about geopolitics when the antiwar movement is ineffectual and almost invisible?

Where can we see antiwar sentiment as a cultural thing?

As I write this, it is poppy wearing time in Canada. Remembrance Day is on November 11th. There doesn't appear to be any great obstacle to convincing legions of stupid young men to throw their lives away on a battlefield. It has always been so.