Capitalism Exposed

There is a new book out that I want very much to read. It’s an anatomy of capitalism: The Insatiable Machine: How Capitalism Conquered the World, by Trevor Jackson. Capitalism plainly dominates the world’s economic and social life. “An economy predicated on infinite accumulation, mass consumption, and fossil-fueled industrialization is not reconcilable with a finite planet.”

In other words, the plundering of our planet is killing the prospect of life on it. Capitalism was created by human effort and human effort can still change it. Maybe.  Jackson puts his case this way: “Capitalists have been agents of change, but that does not mean that capital can be reduced to the whims and intentions of individuals. . . . Capital has valued, created, destroyed, and reorganized people and nature on a titanic scale.”

So why have the outcries and lamentations of the global warmers fallen largely on deaf ears? It may be that they have made their pitches mostly on scientific terms, and science is largely a function of capitalism. The warmers have ignored the wider economic implications of how our planet is being destroyed.

The mad king of capitalist destruction is of course Donald Trump. He has taken the capitalistic approach to new heights, radically fighting all efforts to control global warming, promoting fossil fuels, advancing the cause of war, advocating for dictators and the rich (this is what’s called crony capitalism), curtailing governmental powers, encouraging social warfare, advancing imperialism, and so on.

Says author Jackson: “The world I live in will be destroyed within my lifetime. The question of what kind of world will follow it is entirely a question of whether we all manage to kill capitalism or it kills us first.”