{"id":1304019,"date":"2023-10-27T05:56:04","date_gmt":"2023-10-27T05:56:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=301822"},"modified":"2023-10-27T05:56:04","modified_gmt":"2023-10-27T05:56:04","slug":"lets-stop-being-surprised-at-what-capitalism-has-wrought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/10\/27\/lets-stop-being-surprised-at-what-capitalism-has-wrought\/","title":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s Stop Being Surprised at what Capitalism Has Wrought"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n
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Image by Mike Erskine.<\/p><\/div>\n

This would be a good time \u00a0to stop being surprised by shit going crazy and coming apart.\u00a0 What did we expect?\u00a0This is capitalism-imperialism, folks, a virulent and exterminist oppression system that crushes humanity and livable ecology. We get rid of that system and replace it with revolutionary socialism or the madness and calamity we are experiencing will only deepen and expand.<\/em><\/p>\n

An ocean disturbance goes\u00a0from tropical storm to Category 5 Hurricane off the western coast of Mexico in one day?<\/a>\u00a0Of course it does<\/em>. The tempest hit a patch of insanely warm Pacific water heated by the climate change produced by capitalism\u2019s addiction to the reckless eco-exterminist mass extraction and burning of fossil fuels.\u00a0 One extreme weather event after another \u2013 including shockingly powerful and rapidly formed hurricanes and cyclones \u2013 now results from the capitalist climate catastrophe.<\/p>\n

Nobody should be surprised when weather disasters become bigger and develop faster than the experts expected. \u00a0We are in uncharted territory. The profits system is running an experiment that\u2019s never been undertaken before. It is turning the planet into a giant Greenhouse Gas Chamber.<\/p>\n

This is the amoral anarchy of capitalism, which requires constant expansion and is heavily and irretrievably addicted to fossil fuels. This is the madness generated by capitalism.\u00a0 There\u2019s no plan for the common good under the bourgeois system, there\u2019s just the constant and relentless pursuit of private profit, livable ecology and the common good be damned. If allowed to continue as the dominant mode of production beneath a political and ideological superstructure dedicated to its protection, it will cancel all prospects for a decent human future. There\u2019s no social justice, decency, and democracy on a dead planet. Capitalism needs to be radically replaced by revolutionary (eco-)socialism \u2013 and soon.<\/p>\n

The US southern border is teeming with turmoil as millions try to escape misery in different parts of Latin America?\u00a0\u00a0Of course it is<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0What did we expect?\u00a0<\/em>US-American capitalism-imperialism has been imposing savage poverty, inequality, debt servitude, authoritarianism, and violence on its southern hemispheric neighbors for well more than a century.\u00a0 The US does this out of a systemically driven determination to exploit Latin America\u2019s natural and human resources and to keep it out of the influence of rival capitalist-imperialist powers. The methods of US control and oppression have included the funding, training, equipping and political protection of \u00a0Third World Fascist dictatorships and death squads, backing and engineering coups, imperial trade and investment deals, embargos and other economic sanctions, the imposition of crippling debt, and climate policies that have ruined vast swaths of Latin American agriculture.<\/p>\n

The mass murder of Black people by US police in US metropolitan areas\u00a0continues unabated\u00a0<\/a>despite the massive George Floyd Rebellion three-plus years ago?\u00a0Of course it does<\/em>.\u00a0What did we expect?\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0Capitalism-imperialism brought millions of Black people up and out from US slave plantations and the Jim Crow South and dumping them in hyper-segregated ghettoes in towns and cities from which capitalism was removing decent paying industrial jobs.\u00a0 Urban police have the job under \u201clate\u201d capitalism of keeping these deindustrialized people of color penned up in ghettoes and prisons, stuck in abject poverty, kept out of profitable residential and commercial spaces. \u00a0The notion of \u201cdefunding the police\u201d under capitalism is infantile nonsense.<\/p>\n

A lethal pandemic swept across the world for three years,\u00a0killing 7 million?<\/a>\u00a0Epidemiological experts expect new ones to do the same thing very possibly on a bigger scale in coming years?\u00a0\u00a0Of course. What do we expect?<\/em>\u00a0Capitalism\u2019s relentless expansion, without which the profits system cannot survive, destroys vast swaths of natural habitat, bringing humans into ever close contact with species that bear and spread deadly zoonotic viruses from which humanity was previously insulated.\u00a0 The capitalogenic climate catastrophe is causing species migrations that further break down previous epidemiological barriers. And capitalism flies millions around the world every day, guaranteeing the rapid and wide spread of new viruses.<\/p>\n

The world teeters closer to terminal nuclear war, helping (along with global warming) push the\u00a0Bulletin of Atomic Scientists\u2019<\/em>\u00a0Doomsday Clock\u00a0closer to Midnight\u00a0<\/a>than it has ever been?\u00a0\u00a0Of course it does. What did we expect?<\/em>\u00a0Capitalism is a system of competition, rivalry, and conflict not only between individual capitals but also between capitalist-imperialist states, for control of and access to markets, raw materials, labor supplies, technologies, and more.\u00a0 There\u2019s no way under capitalism for one nation state to remain forever the one and only major power, the role to which the US aspired and attained to some degree after \u00a0World War II. The leading capitalist-imperialist states butting heads with each other in the increasingly \u201cmultipolar\u201d world system today \u2013 the United States, Russia, and China \u2013 are armed to the teeth with (ever more lethal) nuclear weapons, first developed during the second of the last century\u2019s two massive inter-imperialist global wars (and used twice by the USA in 1945, largely as a warning to the first state that tried to break out of and challenge the world capitalist system \u2013 the Soviert Union). With the US menacing the other two great world powers in their immediate regional spheres of influence (Eastern Europe and the far eastern Pacific), chances of catastrophic nuclear war are probably higher now than they were during the Cold War. Trigger zones include Ukraine, Taiwan, and of course the Middle East, where Israel\u2019s escalated crucifixion of Gaza (after the October 7 Hamas terror attack) has the potential of setting off a wider conflict.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the little problem of fascism, usefully\u00a0defined by the US-based group Refuse Fascism a<\/a>s follows: \u00a0a \u201cqualitative change in how society is governed.\u00a0Once in power, fascism\u2019s defining feature is the essential elimination of the rule of law and democratic and civil rights.\u00a0Fascism foments and relies on xenophobic nationalism, racism, misogyny, and the aggressive re-institution of oppressive \u2018traditional values.\u2019 Truth is obliterated and fascist mobs and threats of violence are unleashed to build their movement and consolidate power.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Fascism is advancing around the world, nowhere more menacingly than in the world\u2019s top imperialist state the United States, which exhibits chilling parallels with the late German Weimar Republic. One of the two dominant US political parties, the Republicans, has crossed into fascist space while the other reigning party, the Democrats, functions as its complicit enabler (while advancing its own more traditional form of authoritarian class rule).\u00a0 The election-denying, climate-denying, anti-science, anti-truth, book-banning, anti-intellectual, white supremacist, women-hating, gay-bashing Republi-fascists control the US Supreme Court,\u00a0the US House of Representatives<\/a>, and more than 20 highly empowered (under the US federal system) US states. Their maniacal putschist leader\u00a0Donald \u201cTake Down the Metal Detectors\u201d Trump\u00a0<\/a>(who was furious that Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and Three Percentrers were prevented from bringing AR-15s to the January 6 putsch attempt) is by far and away their runaway 2024 presidential candidate. This noxious wannabe fascist strongman essentially directs the House Republicans and has the support of more than 70 million Americans, many if not most of whom think that political violence is necessary to \u201csave America.\u201d Herr Trump promises violent \u201cRetribution\u201d to all his political enemies and has an army of policy wonks working up a vast and ambitious blueprint for the consolidation and expansion of Christian white nationalist governance.\u00a0 He stands a decent shot at winning back the White House, notwithstanding his current 91 felony indictments. All but a small minority of \u00a0the Republican office-holders who dislike Trump and don\u2019t share his full fascist world view are too afraid of his base to break from him.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0of course.\u00a0 Why is this\u00a0<\/em>Amerikaner fascism<\/em><\/a>\u00a0surprising?<\/em>\u00a0Capitalism regularly makes transparently illegitimate and inauthentic its \u201cdemocratic\u201d (one person, one vote) \u00a0and \u201cequality before for the law\u201d (unbiased rule of law) pretenses while recurrently generating crises that require big government intervention of some kind.\u00a0 It also sustains and utilizes (even as it reshapes) the \u00a0longstanding revanchist, divisive, and oppressive forces of racism, sexism, nativism, fundamentalism, and nationalism, all of which are critical for the maintenance of capitalist class rule at home and imperial expansion abroad. And it soullessly cheapens human life, rendering billions of people\u00a0disposable<\/em>\u00a0(an essential read here is Henry Giroux,\u00a0The Terror of Neoliberalism: Authoritarianism and the Eclipse of Democracy<\/em><\/a>)<\/em>\u00a0in ways that help fuel the sadistic dehumanization at the heart of fascism.<\/p>\n

It’s a toxic mixture that generates fascist potential and reality like white on rice.\u00a0 It\u2019s in the nature of the beast. At a certain point, the democratic, humanistic, and \u201crule of law\u201d pretenses become expendable for much of the ruling class.\u00a0 The revanchist tendencies of sexism and racism and the like are harnessed not to the preservation of previously normative bourgeois democracy but to capitalism with a new political superstructure: capitalism with an open boot on the neck of the masses. Anyone who tells you \u201cit can\u2019t happen here\u201d is hopelessly out of it in 2023.<\/p>\n

My discussion here includes what might be called the four horsemen of the 21st<\/sup>\u00a0Century apocalypse that the half millennium-old system of capitalism-imperialism has now brought to the fore:\u00a0ecocide, pandemicide, potentially nuclear global war, and fascism<\/em>. These horsemen<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 let\u2019s keep the gender intact to reflect capitalism\u2019s deep connection to patriarchy \u2013 do not merely stand next to each other, as in\u00a0addition<\/em>.\u00a0 They lethally reinforce and expand each other, as in\u00a0multiplication.<\/em>\u00a0It\u2019s not ecocide plus potentially nuclear war plus pandemicide plus fascism.\u00a0 It\u2019s ecocide times potentially nuclear war time pandemicide times fascism.<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0Thus, for example, the ecocide that capitalism breeds damages global profitability in ways that intensify the inter-imperial competition that accelerates the drift toward global war. The passions of ultra-nationalism that imperial rivalry and war intensify feed the fascist and authoritarian menace within nations. The increased south-to-north migration that capitalogenic ecocide sparks fuel xenophobic neofascist nationalism\/nativism within rich nations. Domestic authoritarianism\/fascism crushes movements for climate sanity, public health (including responsible pandemic prevention and response), peace, social justice, science, and intellectual freedom. \u00a0I could go on.<\/p>\n

As things stand now, a radical reckoning and outcome seems written into the historical-material moment.\u00a0 The now very old bourgeois-democratic regime in all its different national variants (the US version is linked an archaic 18th<\/sup>\u00a0Century slaveowners\u2019 Constitution that combines with the special strength of fundamentalist Christianity, massive arming, settler-imperialist racism, and a long geographic insulation from proximate national threats to produce a distinctive menace to humanity) is on its last legs. The question is what type of radical replacement will follow in its wake: (a) the terrible and oppressive radicalism of neofascism or (b) the liberating radicalism of revolutionary socialism on the path to the abolition of class rule and of all oppressive and exploitative social relations.<\/p>\n

We desperately need (b) and therefore must urgently shed the fatalistic pessimism and intimately related reflexive anti-communism that is so common among the damn near useless (to be candid) Western left. As Marx and Engels said in 1848, it\u2019s either \u201cthe revolutionary reconstitution of society at large\u201d or \u201cthe common ruin\u201d of all. On the current trajectory, with which \u201cthe left\u201d is deeply complicit (in both active and passive ways), the odds are with (a). But it\u2019s not about the odds, it\u2019s about human agency; it\u2019s not merely about understanding history from some academic Mandarin perch on high, at the top of some academic or mindfulness mountain, it\u2019s about engaging in the real world- historical terrain to spark and join a fight for the liberation of all humanity from the exterminist yoke of capital. \u00a0It\u2019s about fighting to change history on behalf of (b), which is both our\u00a0only option<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0possible given the great splits and divisions that have opened up between different factions of the ruling class and the great turmoil those divisions beckon.<\/em><\/p>\n

We need a socialist revolution.\u00a0 The only crazier than saying that is NOT saying it given what capitalism has wrought.<\/p>\n

This essay appeared earlier on The Paul Street Report<\/em><\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The post Let\u2019s Stop Being Surprised at what Capitalism Has Wrought<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This would be a good time \u00a0to stop being surprised by shit going crazy and coming apart.\u00a0 What did we expect?\u00a0This is capitalism-imperialism, folks, a virulent and exterminist oppression system that crushes humanity and livable ecology. We get rid of that system and replace it with revolutionary socialism or the madness and calamity we are More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post Let\u2019s Stop Being Surprised at what Capitalism Has Wrought<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":272,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1304019"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/272"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1304019"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1304019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1304020,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1304019\/revisions\/1304020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1304019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1304019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1304019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}