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People talk about "capitalism" as though a thing as thingie as things seemingly get.
Yet isn't it really an emergent property - aka mind re-presentation - of the integral (or is it the average? *damn* those maths...) of self-centered behavior of individuals of a given population?
So, like, when people (I used to be one of 'em) start saying (in so many words) "we need to change from capitalism to <whatever>ism", isn't that a bit like a rug attempting to pull the rug out from beneath itself, when in fact *it's* the rug?
That would be the worst case scenario. I wish people would look at those more. Have you ever personally talked to a sociopath?
~tatterdemalion wrote (thread):
While the "capitalism" isn't a thing you can poke with a stick, and a map isn't the territory, maps still exist, and are often pretty useful.
"Capitalism" is a map; it's a pretty good description of the social relations, especially the social relations around production and distribution of goods and services, in our present global culture. Other cultures have had different social relations; even the European societies of a few hundred years ago in which capitalism developed had a different set of relations. You'd need the map labeled "feudalism" to make sense of their culture. And as you get farther afield in both time and space, you'd need more maps, and even complete different collections of maps (though anthropologists love to argue about what to call different collections of maps, and what maps to put in each collection).
When people start saying "we need to change from capitalism to whateverism", they mean "we need to change our culture (i.e., the way we as an aggregate think and act) to reflect the social relations described as whateverism". And people have done that thing a lot before, in history and prehistory. I second the recommendation for the Graeber and Wengrow book, though I'm not sure it's the absolute best place to start.
If the rug is fighting itself because the frayed ends that always existed within it's fabric are rotting apart, maybe it's time for a new rug?
Personally I disagree. The idea that Capitalism is an emergent property of the human experience isn't really backed up by anything. Research into the evolutionary course for humanity strongly contraindicates against hyperindividualism or radical self interest. Evolutionary homo sapiens got as far as we have mostly because of cooperation. From an Evo Psych perspective the research into human's inherent bias towards greed is shaky at best and people like Kroputkin have strongly argued against this idea.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-mutual-aid-a-factor-of-evolution
Believing that Capitalism is some kind of state of nature is obtusely neoliberal and frankly silly. Behavioral genetics is unprovable nonsense and people have shown time and time again that they can make decisions that seem to violate whatever evolutionary drives they might have. So even in the worst possible case scenario, Greed and therefore Capitalism are inevitable products of the human condition, that doesn't prevent us from striving towards a better world regardless.
The rug can't be pulled from under itself, until the rug tries realizing all at once that it never was a rug. The presence of the rug had made it forget the vast and infinitely tiling surface it rested upon. In that moment it knew that no matter what direction it choose it was now free from the metaphysical confines of the rug and now more able then ever to seek a better place.