A rhetorical tool of the libertarian right is to associate the capitalist ideology with the hyper-masculine, individualistic attitude that conservatives often posture themselves around. Only wimps support socialism, they say; it’s the rugged, self-made people who understand the need for unfettered business. This mentality among many of the supporters of capitalism will make it a shock when capitalism soon comes crashing down around them.
All the factors crucial to maintaining a society-a solid middle class, a stable financial system, a population that’s satisfied with the political system, a healthy environment-have disappeared. The loss of Americans’ faith in their government, the explosion of poverty and inequality, and the climate crisis are all part of the same process of collapse. This is the collapse of 21st century capitalism, which will prove to be the biggest societal downfall in history.
The defining moment will be when the next time the world’s financial framework unravels. The failure of our lawmakers to reform the banking system after the 2008 crash has created a debt bubble even bigger than the one that burst twelve years ago. In the last decade, we’ve seen the continuation of dangerous money-making schemes like collateralized loan obligations, wherein corporate loans and car loans are packaged to investors with a high risk of loss. The rise of CLOs have been accompanied by additional tools of kleptocracy like the lender option borrower option loans, which entrap investors in escalating amounts of debt for the profit of banks and brokers.
When these instruments of corporate grift produce another market crash, they’ll hit the world harder than was the case during the last crisis. For 1 in 3 Americans, as well as for much of the rest of the world’s poor and working people, the Great Recession is effectively still going on. The calamity that the crash will cause for these great masses of impoverished people, combined with the government’s now weakened ability to ease the effects of an economic downturn, will cause the next Great Depression. And it will combine with other crises to uproot the foundations of capitalism.
Even as the crash proves the system’s destructive nature, the political establishment will no doubt double down on its consensus of fealty to the corporate ideology. Because of this stubbornness of the ruling elites, the worsening poverty crisis won’t be solved for the moment, and neither will the other problems threatening society. America’s crumbling infrastructure will get keep getting worse. More cuts will be made to schools, fire departments, and hospitals. As the destabilization of the climate keeps causing more hurricanes, fires, and droughts, the government will be less equipped to protect the population.
This will be just the start of the collapse we’ve set ourselves up for. The planet has set into a climate feedback loop, where burning forests, disappearing reflective sea ice, and releases of methane and carbon dioxide from the ground are accelerating the greenhouse gas effect. By 2050 alone, the climate will have increased by two degrees celsius above the pre-industrial average, meaning a collapse of crops, the flooding of much of the world’s coastal areas, a decline in freshwater supplies, and the emergence of vast sections of the globe that are too hot for humans to live in. The catastrophic hurricanes and fires that America has experienced in the last couple of years are tiny compared to what we’ll be experiencing in the coming years and decades.
These are the realities that the system’s loyalists won’t see until it’s too late. A non-rich person who aligns themselves with the ruling class is giving up all of their power to appease people who will gladly exploit them. And as capitalism collapses, siding with the capitalist class is both a surrender to authority and an act of self-destruction. The right-wingers who cling to capitalism, and act like this vindicates their sense of individualistic strength, are only making themselves more vulnerable to the coming unraveling.
As our economic and environmental crises expand, the billionaires who the right likes to glorify won’t help us. They’ll retreat into their luxury survival bunkers while leaving the rest of the population to fend for themselves. The government will respond to the calamity by further eroding liberties, militarizing society, and using violence to keep the population under control. Society will become more unequal and authoritarian, with the vast majority of people increasingly living in a hyper-policed, hyper-surveilled state of poverty. And those who’ve defended the system will be put into this underclass along with the rest of the 99%.
This is the consequence of empire. Like past societies that have fallen from inequality, environmental destruction, and the collapse of the network of colonies they’ve conquered, the global capitalist power structure is inevitably imploding. The difference is that now, the collapse is global. “Empire’s never last,” wrote John Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. “Every one of them has failed terribly. They destroy many cultures as they race toward greater domination, and then they themselves fail. No country or combination of countries can thrive in the long term by exploiting others.”
The future is in the institutions and movements which seek to build a new system, one where there are no social classes, the people control the means of production, and human beings coexist with the natural world. This is the goal of the world’s burgeoning socialist and communist organizations, whose increasingly popular ideas will only get more widely accepted as capitalism continues to fall apart. And it’s the emerging alternative to the discredited, unstable old system which the ruling class and their defenders still try to prop up.
Change to Democratic Socialism or perish, the sad thing is we will all perish along because of climate change
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