On his book Foretelling the End of Capitalism: Intellectual Misadventures since Karl Marx
Cover Interview of September 16, 2020
Lastly
Umberto Eco has shown us that a book can have
different implications to different readers, often beyond the author’s
intentions. This is perhaps inevitable, but I would nevertheless like to take
this opportunity to say two or three things about the spirit in which I wrote
it and what I think are the main points to take home.
First of all, this is a book written from
the left and to remind the left of its responsibilities. There is not the
slightest complacency on my part in narrating the misadventures of thinkers who
hoped for a world liberated from capitalism and exploitation—a world in which
human beings could be truly free—if anything, there is pain. I sometimes
receive interview requests from conservative media eager to use the book’s
conclusions to back reactionary agendas. Those looking in it for evidence to
legitimize the status quo have taken the wrong direction.
My main point is that capitalism has
survived so many predictions of its demise not because it is a particularly
efficient system, nor because of some magical virtues of the markets, as the
cliché would have it, but because it is rooted in the hierarchical and
individualistic structure of modern Western societies. These elements—hierarchies and individualism—have taken shape over many centuries and cannot
suddenly go away. No matter how much one fights the system, social
institutions cannot be ended by acts of will.
The awareness that there are limits to what
can be done, but that at the same time the existing order isn’t a fact of nature
but a human construction, leads one to abandon both unhelpful feelings of
resignation and pointless utopian fantasies and instead take the path of
reasonable political change. The political message of the book is, therefore,
an invitation to rediscover and practice radical social democracy. Capitalism
can be governed by the state and forced to work to the advantage of the many.
It is not an easy road, but one that has proved its value in the past and is
worth trying again.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
Lastly
Umberto Eco has shown us that a book can have different implications to different readers, often beyond the author’s intentions. This is perhaps inevitable, but I would nevertheless like to take this opportunity to say two or three things about the spirit in which I wrote it and what I think are the main points to take home.
First of all, this is a book written from the left and to remind the left of its responsibilities. There is not the slightest complacency on my part in narrating the misadventures of thinkers who hoped for a world liberated from capitalism and exploitation—a world in which human beings could be truly free—if anything, there is pain. I sometimes receive interview requests from conservative media eager to use the book’s conclusions to back reactionary agendas. Those looking in it for evidence to legitimize the status quo have taken the wrong direction.
My main point is that capitalism has survived so many predictions of its demise not because it is a particularly efficient system, nor because of some magical virtues of the markets, as the cliché would have it, but because it is rooted in the hierarchical and individualistic structure of modern Western societies. These elements—hierarchies and individualism—have taken shape over many centuries and cannot suddenly go away. No matter how much one fights the system, social institutions cannot be ended by acts of will.
The awareness that there are limits to what can be done, but that at the same time the existing order isn’t a fact of nature but a human construction, leads one to abandon both unhelpful feelings of resignation and pointless utopian fantasies and instead take the path of reasonable political change. The political message of the book is, therefore, an invitation to rediscover and practice radical social democracy. Capitalism can be governed by the state and forced to work to the advantage of the many. It is not an easy road, but one that has proved its value in the past and is worth trying again.