Capitalism and everything else: existence and extermination 2/4

A crime the size of mankind

It goes without saying that human life and its joys is not possible without planetary life. The UN, the Pentagon and the ruling classes know very well the ways in which the annihilation of biological life brings about social processes of human life extermination: a spiral of starvation, authoritarianism, violence, water conflicts, breakdown of nations, mass migrations, genocides, nuclear war, a generalized decadence of human civilization. Those are the social consequences of capitalist action in nature. However, not only through oxygen deprivation and water theft capitalism threatens everything we call culture and society.

One may not like racism, patriarchy or war as distinctive characters of humanity. But who or what crazy thing might be against an essential, deeply human, and, let’s not be insensitive, beautiful activity such as trade? Despite all appearances, capitalism.

Champions of capitalism love bragging about free trade under capitalism. Sure, free trade and free markets exist for Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and a few more in the information technology market. The same goes for Ab InBev and little more in the beer market. Free trade is real for Pepsico, Nestlé, Unilever, Coca-Cola and a handful more in the global food market. It is real for Lokckheed Martin, Boeing and several others in the aerospace, arms, defense, telecommunications and satellites industry. And there is Bayer in the industry of pure evil.

Several of these names might not sound familiar at all. That is the point, they are so big you cannot see them with the naked eye. No one has ever seen an electron either and yet they are everywhere. This is the case with megacorporations, they are your phone calls and your internet, the food you eat and the toilet paper you wipe your ass with, the virus and the vaccine, production and consumption, the bombs that blow up children from Yemen to Ucrania.

Little fish should not think he plays in the shark team only because they have flippers too. In our world, only the true business owners own the political system. They alone have daily shady dealings with the legislative and regulatory authorities who rule commerce: governments, the IMF, the WTO and the World Bank among others. Between the revolving door and the lobby, they suffocate free trade all day every day. If you are not convinced, just ask yourself how much money a campaign for the senate or the presidency is worth these days.

Giving birth to monopolies and oligopolies is natural to capitalism. It is the inevitable outcome of the interaction between the drive for infinite profit and competition under the adequate conditions. Along with financial elites (darker yet than dark matter), megacorporations control world trade. They are the supreme power on Earth, the invisible hand, the gods of capital: omniscient, omnipresent and almighty. In contrast, the visible hands are for instance the English and American frigates and aircraft carriers whose mere presence near any commercial port of the world has historically enforced the hypocritical laws of liberal trade for companies of those very nationalities. Capitalism is intrinsically against free trade and free markets.

Guardians of capitalism also maintain that all human creations in the last 500 years is a victory of the system they defend. They say we owe science to capitalism. According to Mr. Harari, instead of admiring Galileo, Darwin and Einstein, we should better praise “the willingness of governments, businesses, foundations and private donors to channel billions of dollars into scientific research.”[1]

It is true that big money goes to scientific research. Mostly with the expectation of a technological feat that allows cost reduction, acceleration of productive processes, replacing employees with machines or developing new products the consumer will desperately need from the moment he watches them on TV. Science in the capitalist world can only result in more intense exploitation of nature and humanity as well as domestication of individuals.

Whenever resources are channeled to that human endeavor to understand our world, which we call science, that happens as consequence of processes alien to capitalism including very often strong social demands to redistribute accumulated wealth. To the system and way of life we call capitalism science is of no interest, science fiction at most.

Like the fiction – bullshit is the technical word – that has cultivated an aura of science around people like Bill Gates and Elon Musk who paid their way to the top by appropriating technologies developed by others who are true scientists. Such is the great ability of a capitalist: if he cannot steal, he buys.

Science, a heritage of all mankind, is appropriated by capital and put at its service. Whatever looks unprofitable must get out of the way. Arts and philosophy are useless to the system. Their ways, means and rhythms are contrary to those of capital. A philosopher-worker and a manager with aesthetical pretensions will doom any business. That is why philosophy, the humanities, free and critical thinking hardly survive under capitalism.

Capital seeks to function not only in big numbers but also in series. And art is the endeavor of the exceptional. To art, capitalism opposes the multimillionaire business of the dull obvious joke it has been telling since Duchamp, any video, any piece of trash glued to the wall, its own crap deemed art only for being placed within four white walls and charging entrance fees. That and showbiz: countless unimaginative remakes of the same movie, countless echoes of Michael Jackson hits with the same pyrotechnics and the same choreographies. After all, uniformity facilitates production and exchange. That is why the capitalist world is full of monoculture, lots and lots of merchandise in the ports, identical houses, uniformed fashions. To infinity.

Sure, in its right measure, uniformity is necessary for industrial processes and activities. The problem is capitalism industrializes everything. So we must concern ourselves with the diversity that dies for uniformity to live. If there is such a thing as humanity, it is diversity of cultures, societies – humanities, we could say with Krenak the philosopher. If mankind exists, it exists as a plurality of tongues and languages, cosmogonies and epistemologies, wisdoms, technologies and worldviews which have barely survived 500 years of insatiable European colonialism and 200 years of industrial capitalism. That plurality will continue to be smashed as far in the future as we can see. This is extermination. Capitalism exterminates diversity in the lab, the factory, the office and the human spirit.

Extermination may come in direct and brutal ways for purposes of exploitation of nature and labour. It may also come as subjection and homogenization for purposes of commodification, fetishizing, and creation of markets. In any case, the system destroys what it cannot understand, everything regarded as not sexy, not cool, everything “sorry, I don’t speak English… sir”, everything not blonde and not blue eyed. Capitalism is an European creation after all.

Every day the last member of an ancient people dies, a tradition succumbs, a millenary technology is abandoned or a language is spoken for the last time. We become simpler, poorer as humanity, oblivion gets larger. Everything non capitalist that exists is threatened by the voracity of the system and its implacable reasons. For capitalism to live, everything else must die. It’s not just contra naturam, it’s also inhuman. Capitalism is a crime the size of all mankind.

[1] Yuval Noah Harari. Sapiens. A brief history of humankind. Penguin Random House, London, 2011, p. 303.