Capitalism, Contradictions, and Growth

Marx argued that the internal contradictions within capitalism, which made it an inherently unstable system, would suffice to bring it down in the end. Despite this, capitalism continues as the dominant worldwide economic paradigm 135 years after Marx’s death. Clearly Marx was wrong. Imperfect as it is, capitalism has managed to keep expanding despite its internal contradictions. If the world were infinite, it would probably keep on doing so forever. But the world is not infinite, and capitalism is running up hard against the limits of our finite planet. That fact is what will bring capitalism down, not its many internal contradictions. There is little room left for growth, resources are being depleted at an unsustainable rate, and our planet is unable to absorb all the toxins and waste we continually dump upon it. To put it simply, capitalism is leading us to the brink of an environmental apocalypse, and that fact alone is what will eventually cause the whole system to come crashing down in ruins.

The fact that Marx was wrong about the self-defeating nature of capitalism offers important insights to the failure of 19th century Utopian Socialism. It is obvious to the modern reader that capitalism was not about to enter into terminal decline at any point during Marx’s life. It was still a dynamic force, with plenty of room left to expand. The size of the global economy would grow many times over in the period since his death. Even though the inequalities and injustices of capitalism drove many people in the 19th century to seek utopian alternatives, the optimism over growth capitalism generated was a powerful factor in limiting their appeal and effectiveness. It even injected a curious twist into the Utopian Socialist movement, with many of their communities being organized as joint stock companies. Their allegedly rational and harmonious organization, it was promised, would surely provide dividends that would outpace those of the irrational, capitalist marketplace. Of course it didn’t work out that way. Promoting yourself as a mechanism for outgrowing capitalism was a poor strategy, and one that was clearly at odds with their cooperative framework. This contradiction manifested itself in the internal strife experienced by many of the Utopian Socialist communities of that age, and was a large contributing factor in their eventual decline.

Of course Marxists were not immune to the optimism over growth. They embraced it wholeheartedly. One of the central claims of Marxism is that capitalism actually inhibits growth by limiting production to that which can be sold at a profit. If production were to be socialized, so the argument went, it would unleash the full productive potential of society, and a superabundance of goods could be produced. Having internalized the same growth oriented metric for societal well-being as their capitalist counterparts, the Marxists attempted to beat them at their own game. They announced improbable results for the various five year plans issued by their autocratic central committees, but in the end it became apparent that the productivist mania at the heart of Marxism was no less alienating for its workers, nor any less ruinous for the environment, than it was under capitalism. Eventually it could no longer keep up and collapsed under its own weight.

As we move deeper into the 21st century, though, optimism about growth is no longer a credible position. Some intrepid souls had foreseen the problem as early as the 19th century, but the impossibility of infinite growth on a finite planet is now clearly apparent for everyone to see. What should be equally clear is that Marxism, with its productivist mindset, is an ideology firmly rooted in the material scarcity of the 19th century. It’s emphasis on seizing and utilizing state power has likewise locked it into following the growth imperative inherent to the nation-state model. That it can somehow shed these characteristics and adapt itself to a post-growth world is implausible in the extreme.

What is needed is a solution that abandons the concept of growth as the measurement of societal well-being, while leading the transition to living in a sustainable, post-growth world. The intentional communities and ecovillages of the modern Utopian Socialist movement are just such a solution. As these do not aspire to either seize or utilize state power, they aren’t beholden to the growth oriented economies that are an integral feature of the nation state model. Their success could spearhead the transition toward an economic model based on sustainability rather than the aspiration toward continuous growth that is in the process of pushing us into ecological ruin. So it is the limitations of a finite planet that will cause the global capitalist system to come crashing down, not its internal contradictions. Even though this crash will occur in some form or another, there is no historical necessity that either Utopian Socialism, or any other variety of socialism, will be its successor. Any number of dystopian futures is possible in the coming post-growth world. But the more the groundwork for the Utopian Socialist model is laid out now, the greater the chances are of actualizing a system-wide transformation when the opportunity arises.