Capitalism on the Rebound

If you’ve been through a tough break up, there is a chance that ‘going on the rebound’ will do you wonders. It may be the perfect remedy for regaining self-confidence, eliminating unwanted anxiety, and forming some sort of base to start enjoying life again.

On the other hand, this could prove to be a hazardous and volatile method of therapy: it may bring out the worst in you, there’s a very real possibility it could do you far more harm than good, and whatever benefits may come of it could probably be gained by other means anyway. And to compound these issues, the impact you may have on those caught up in your self-involved behaviour may be rather harmful, perhaps even exploitative. You may just begin to break a few too many hearts.

Whether it works out for you or not, what’s for certain is that as a long-term strategy this behaviour is disastrous. Play around like this for too long and any increase in emotional wellbeing that may initially have occurred will begin to plateau, perhaps even begin to decline, while the casualties of broken hearts continue to pile up.

Now if you haven’t guessed already, I’m not, in fact, a proficient relationship counsellor (and I’m not even speaking from much experience…). So my simplistic psychological analysis may be a little off the mark. Nevertheless, this thinking has led me to wonder whether this behaviour (and the likely consequences) offers a surprisingly accurate metaphor for those of global capitalism (at least in its current form) and the drive for economic growth. I should probably try to explain what I mean…

First of all, it’s clear that this capitalism has, in many parts of the world brought around some huge benefits. In the Western world, we generally have secure food supplies, good access to healthcare, and a decent amount of leisure time relative to one or two centuries ago (or much of the developing world in the present day). More recently, the opening up to free trade and kick starting of industrial production has brought similar levels of wealth to countries like Singapore and South Korea.

On the flipside to the economic progress we’ve made is that it’s certainly not brought out the best in us. This relentless pursuit of growth has locked us into the on-going practice of exploiting the people and resources of less developed countries, while within our own countries an uncomfortable, unnatural culture has emerged with individualism and materialism at its core. And on top of this we can’t possibly know if there was a way we could have achieved our prosperity without these adverse effects.

These undesirable side effects of capitalism are where the parallels with risky post-break-up behaviour start to become more clear.

Equally worrying is the fact that in many countries capitalist economic programmes, often in the form of ‘shock therapy’, haven’t worked out at all as planned (for example in Chile, Russia, and Iraq post-Saddam; see Naomi Klein’s ‘The Shock Doctrine’). Even when on paper these programmes achieve the economic growth they were aiming for, all too frequently the wealth ends up concentrated in the hands of an opportunistic few, and it shows little sign of it trickling down to those at the bottom who are at the heart of the problem.

So again these hazards resemble those of post-break-up rebounding, which may too either fail entirely as a strategy, or succeed only in satisfying a select few body parts (not including the heart).

Moving back to those parts of the world where the outcomes of capitalism have been more positive, in these countries we are now in a fantastic position to live prosperous lives, but the usefulness of economic growth in increasing our happiness has surely ceased. In another words, once people’s basic nutritional and health needs are met and sufficient leisure time obtained, capitalism seems to have little to offer us: instead it serves only to perpetuate the exploitation of people and planet and accelerate the deterioration of society.

Overall it seems that, although both capitalism and post-break-up rebound may well bring some benefits, they are risky, volatile, inevitably exploitative, and hopeless in the long-term.

The graph shown below (from ‘Prosperity without growth’ by the UK Sustainable Development Commission) gives empirical evidence of the initial, but subsequently diminishing benefits of economic growth. It can be seen, for example, that there are countries with half the GDP per capita of the USA whose people are equally happy, and that generally once a country reaches a certain level of wealth any additional growth has a negligible effect upon peoples happiness. In fact, arguably, the eternal sense of dissatisfaction required to drive consumption and maintain growth eventually leads to a decline in life satisfaction.

 

Yet increases in GDP invariably lead to increases in resource use and pollution emissions, which in turn leads to increasing exploitation as more powerful countries feed on the cheap labour and natural resources of those less well off, and millions (perhaps billions) of lives are disrupted by the environmental damage caused by this resource use.

May be my drawing parallels between post break-up behaviour and economic institutions is worthless, but the motives for scrapping the doctrine of economic growth seem flawless, even though putting this into practice is a truly daunting task. And in any case, environmental constraints will force us to abandon this doctrine eventually anyway, which begs the obvious question ‘what the hell are we waiting for?

Unfortunately, metaphorically speaking, most of civilisation seems to have become dangerously addicted to sleeping around, rather than searching for a stable life partner.

Notes:

See ‘Development Economics’, at MRUniversity.com’ for a discussion of many of the arguments revolving around the various approaches to tackling poverty with economic programmes (albeit, with a bias towards free-trade and privatisation, and in my opinion far too little discussion of environmental limits).

In contrast, ‘Prosperity without growth’ by the UK Sustainable Development Commission is focused on our urgent need to drop the doctrine of growth.

The Rational Russian

She’s been referred to as the “Goddess of the Market”, but the ‘Goddess of selfishness’ would be an equally appropriate title for Ayn Rand: and one I’m sure she would be perfectly content with.

Rand’s ideas, and her philosophy of “objectivism”, have strongly influenced conservative politics and economics, and hordes of fans – often in powerful positions, such as Alan Greenspan, Margret Thatcher, and Paul Ryan; who, if the Republicans have their way, is set to be the next US vice president. Her final novel ‘Atlas Shrugged’ has even been voted the second most influential book ever written in one survey, behind only the bible.

I recently made it through the controversial book myself, and it certainly warrants at least one blog post. But instead of writing a standard book review I thought I’d write an ‘objectivists manifesto’, which includes various direct quotes and hopefully summarises many of the books ideas. At the same, I’ve attempted to integrate my thoughts on her ideas.

The Objectivist Manifesto

The foundations

At the core of the objectivism philosophy is the idea that one’s life should be guided only by the rational, objective perception of the mind, and the rational desires of the individual. To this end, the laws of the ‘mystics of spirit’ and the ‘mystics of muscle’ should be rejected, and all sacrificial or altruistic behaviours abolished. Thus, we must reject these external shackles and recognise the absolute of existence. We must accept that each Man is an end within himself, and therefore that the only morality is to live in pursuit of our own happiness, guided by our own rational minds, with productive achievement as our noblest activity.

Rejecting the mystics

The mystics of spirit –those purveyors of religion and faith– demand from us the surrender of our minds to their mystical beliefs, guided from another dimension. Some preach this to us openly, without fear, proclaiming that our original sin was to eat from the “tree of knowledge” – that act of acquiring knowledge and a rational mind. Thus the sin of which these mystics speak was simply that of no longer fully surrendering the mind to them.

And the mystics of muscle –those who demand from us continual sacrifice for the good of an invisible, undefined society and the welfare of an unspecified public– they too demand that we sacrifice our minds to them, so that we may be tools in their quest for the ‘greater good’. But the essence of their plan, the pure evil that underlies it, is that reward should be based upon need rather than ability, with the justification they proclaim to be noble: that through this the “greatest good for the greatest number” can be achieved. In reality, their only wish is to exploit the virtues of the ‘men of mind’ and redistribute their wealth amongst the undeserved, lazy savage cannibals that are the poor.

Thus, these mystics, in all their forms, must be renounced from the mind.

Rejecting altruism

Altruism and self-sacrifice –the behaviour which provides the human flesh upon which the cannibalistic mystics of muscle rely– must also be rejected in its entirety. The moral code of the altruist demands that you offer your respect, wealth, and love to all other men as your duty, and the less they deserve these offerings, the higher the value of your moral sacrifice.

But there can be no causeless wealth or causeless love. And when any other man is allowed to make a claim upon your life, wealth is transformed to need, happiness to duty and self-esteem decays to self-denial.

True morality and the ego

With these mystics rejected, we must recognise that existence exists, and that each man exists within the absolute of existence as an end within himself. Thus, the only moral way to live is to confidently obey the rational perceptions of our own minds above that of all others, and guiltlessly elevate our desires above the needs of all others.

For this life to be led, the ego must be embraced in full.

The productive, rational being

In order to live life as rational beings, we must adhere to this morality. We must allow our rational perception to guide us though life, remembering that there are always two sides to every issue; one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.

The irrational men that have surrendered their minds to the mystics should no longer be considered to be human. But the machines, metals and railroads that came into existence because of those heroic men who have lived the moral life; who have shaped the earth and its materials with their minds, continually answering every question of right or wrong, true or false; these machines, metals and railroads are an extension of those man who built them. They are more human than all those men who have sacrificed their capacity for reason.

Productiveness we hold as our noblest activity; our primary means of acquiring happiness. We will remake the earth in the image of our selfish, egotistic values. And, although we believe each man is an end within himself, we will extend ourselves invasively into the environment upon which all others depend for their prosperity.

Most importantly, we must endeavour to make the following promise to ourselves:

I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.

Thank the lord for the free market

The only way that this individual freedom and our rigid form of individualistic happiness can be obtained is through the system of laissez-faire Capitalism. This allows every man the chance to flourish by exercising his mind through continual material production, and the selling of his goods through free-trade and voluntary exchange; a system which alleviates physical force as a means of obtaining property and goods.

With their persecution of the rich and productive, all other socialist ideals are fundamentally evil, and lead inevitably to corruption. But we must have faith that our political ideology –even though with its reliance upon human greed it is the most precarious of them all – will not become corrupted and violent itself.

Furthermore, we must blank-out the fact that, even in theory, our ideology is flawed by the unavoidable juncture that is encountered when everyone’s material needs are met; the point at which no rational person will continue to consume, while for us slowing our orgy of material production and accumulation of wealth is not an option. We must not acknowledge that we rely upon a supply of irrational people to feed upon our excessive production and generate our wealth, nullifying the possibility that a world of rational beings could ever exist, and rendering our already erroneous argument that ‘there is no conflict of interest between rational men’ an irrelevant ideal. But fortunately we need not worry about this juncture, as we can easily maintain a pool of irrational people by implanting and nurturing foolish, materialistic desires in the minds of the masses.

So we must proclaim the benefits of the deregulated Capitalist system to the world: the freedoms it brings and the industrial and technological progress that will be achieved by allowing our limitless human potential to be maximised. Only through this system will advanced technologies and industries be continually replaced by those more efficient and more powerful, leading to increases in the quality of human life everywhere. Although, these benefits may not be felt by everyone for some time, and they must be measured by the indices we choose.

Finally, we must be certain not to apply this same logic to Capitalism itself: we must stress that at the moment we believe it to be the best system that has been developed, and hence it must not be meddled with, even though it may in fact be possible that it could easily be exceeded or progressed.

Our rational self-destruction

So we, the objectivists must lead the world in a linear unquestioned goal of material progress. We will be like a flock of birds, flying not in formation and unity, but in bitter competition with one another to reach ever higher heights in our single-minded pursuit. Even those who do not share our vision of happiness will have no choice but to join us in this flight, as it continues defiantly upwards, until eventually the strongest and most arrogant of us lead the flock into thin air, devoid of oxygen: one of the gifts of the natural world which we have taken for granted; omitted entirely from our philosophy; dismissed as an externality of our rationality.

But we have little cause for worry, as when the flock breaches the limits of the environment, when we all grow weak from the thin air and fall from the sky, it will be us, the rational beings, that led the rest into danger, who will have the greatest chance of recovering before we hit the earth. The only casualties will be those that we dragged, unwilling, into this self-destructive pursuit.

A final note...To those that know me, and have perhaps not read Atlas Shrugged, it may seem from this post that I've lost much of my sanity. While there may be an element of truth in this there is no cause for panic, as in general, anything cruel and cold hearted in the above is Rand, while anything sarcastic or otherwise is me.

If you have been pondering reading the book, then perhaps this post will help in the decision, as it gives an indication of Rands rather psychotic character and aggressive condemnation of all things altruistic or egalitarian: over a thousand pages of this is quite difficult to stomach.

If you do however decide you’d like to read the full book, then you can find a copy at my local Oxfam shop, where, in a defiant act of pure evil, I will be gladly parting ways from mine.