The New Prophets of Capital (14 page)

33
Bill Gates, “How Teacher Development Could Revolutionize Our Schools,”
Washington Post
, February 28, 2011.

34
A longer version of this vignette is available at
www.jamievollmer.com/blueberries
.

35
Bill Gates, TED Talk, 2009.

36
Kathleen Megan, “Charter School Group Gears Up to Lower Suspension Rate,”
Hartford Courant
, July 8, 2013.

37
Erik. W. Robelen, “KIPP Study Finds High Student Attrition amid Big Learning Gains,”
Education Week
, September 24, 2008.

38
Eric Holt-Giménez, Miguel A. Altieri, and Peter Rosset, “Ten Reasons Why the Rockefeller and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations' Alliance for Another Green Revolution Will Not Solve the Problems of Poverty and Hunger in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Food First Policy Brief No. 12, San Francisco: Food First, 2006.

39
For a good discussion of the Green Revolution and its problems, see McMichael,
Development and Social Change
.

40
Holt-Giménez, Altieri, and Rosset, “Ten Reasons.”

41
“Giving with One Hand and Taking with Two: A Critique of AGRA's African Agricultural Status Report 2013,” Johannesburg: African Centre for Biosafety, 2013,
www.acbio.org.za/images/stories/dmdocuments/AGRA-report-Nov2013.pdf
.

42
See AGRA Watch,
www.seattleglobaljustice.org/agra-watch/about-us/
.

43
African Centre for Biosafety, “Giving with One Hand,” p. 18.

44
Robert Rothstein, March 8, 2011,
www.epi.org/publication/fact-challenged_policy/
.

45
Dana Goldstein, “Grading ‘Waiting for Superman,'”
Nation
, October 11, 2010.

46
Ravitch,
Reign of Error
, p. 33.

47
William J. Bushaw, “The Seven Most Surprising Findings of the 2012 PDK/Gallup Poll on Public Schools,”
Education Week
blog, August 23, 2012.

48
Maggie Severns, “Whatever Happened to the $100 Million Mark Zuckerberg Gave to Newark Schools?”
Mother Jones
, March 28, 2013.

49
Robert Reich, “A Failure of Philanthropy,”
Stanford Social Innovation Review
, Winter 2005.

Capitalism both creates and destroys, and the past three decades have been no exception. Unprecedented generation of wealth, global integration, and technological innovation have been accompanied by a stratospheric rise in inequality, ever-expanding environmental destruction, and a loss of faith in capitalism as the best possible system. Faith has been replaced by fatalism—most people recognize the deep problems associated with capitalism but doubt the possibility of a better way of organizing society.

Despite their vast wealth and success, the new prophets of capital also recognize these problems, but they haven't lost faith in the possibilities of capitalism. They believe that the solutions to our problems lie in refining the existing political and economic system, expanding the reach of capitalist markets, submitting more and more aspects of our lives to a market logic, and channeling our struggles for a better life through corporations.

The solutions proposed by these new prophets are seductive and resonant. Most of us share the concerns of Sheryl Sandberg, John Mackey, Oprah Winfrey, and Bill and Melinda Gates, and we long for simple, feasible ways to improve society. But the stories and solutions they offer will not end inequality, poverty, alienation, oppression, or environmental degradation. They will not resolve the contradictions of capitalism. Instead, their solutions strengthen existing social relations of power and profit-driven structures of accumulation, and they in fact bolster the very forces that create these negative outcomes in the first place. Paradoxically, they are doing so by voicing grievances against capitalism, forcing the people, institutions, and structures that undergird it to evolve and temporarily work through crises, propping up and strengthening the system for the long haul.

Does this mean that it is pointless to challenge capitalism? That all critiques of the status quo will be absorbed, displaced, or ignored? Capitalism can accommodate the powerful women, the eco-business practices, the essentialist principles, and fund vaccine projects without missing a beat. That is because these critiques and projects do not challenge the in-built drives of the production-for-profit system. But stories and ideas that truly challenge the for-profit architecture are not easy for the existing power structure to absorb, divert, or implement. Were they to be incorporated, they would change the system in fundamental ways, because they are irreconcilable with the status quo. These ideas lay the groundwork for thinking about a very different kind of society—one that is driven by the dictates of human need, not profit.

What would a radical, anticapitalist model look like? To begin with, the model won't be a single, unified narrative of change. It will be comprised of thousands of stories, all with their own unique visions for a better world. These alternative stories, though they aren't usually loud enough to be picked up by the corporate media, already exist and are being told by more and more people. As part of the Ear to the Ground Project, longtime organizers and activists NTanya Lee and Steve Williams traveled all around the United States interviewing organizers fighting to make the world better—a world where oppression and poverty have no place. They found a myriad of collective projects, some new and some old, run by dedicated activists and organizers.
¹

This collective vision consists of projects with different immediate goals and philosophies. Some groups fight for environmental justice, while others fight for immigrant rights. Some groups want to organize fast food workers into unions, while others want to get high-stakes testing out of their children's schools. Some groups fight against domestic violence, while others fight for the civil rights of ex-offenders and prisoners. The passions and goals of these groups are formed by the passions and goals of the people who fight in them.

All these projects and ideas are different, to be sure. But the really transformative ones have core features in common that set them apart from projects and ideas that don't go beyond merely refining the system.

The first feature setting them apart is their emphasis on democracy, both as a means and as an end. Moving from a profit-driven to a human needs–driven society requires that the institutions we participate in and the places we spend our time (schools, workplaces, communities) be transformed into places where participants have a real voice in how they're run and what their purpose is. The United States is formally a democracy, and most citizens enjoy rights that people in many other countries do not enjoy, but both political parties preach a nearly identical program that channels benefits to elites while demanding that poor and working class people in the United States and abroad shoulder the costs of neoliberal capitalism.

Real democracy is possible only if we apply it to other spheres of life, including the workplaces and institutions we depend on. Workplaces should be owned and managed as cooperatives—places where workers control the business, distribute its surplus equally among themselves, and make decisions about their work-lives democratically. Banks, financial institutions, and the internet (institutions that are now essential to all people and businesses) should be transformed into public utilities. Educational policies should reflect the collective decisions of parents, teachers, and administrators. These types of projects will require us to radically rethink, and broaden, our definition of democracy. This may be a daunting task, but it's worth remembering that the democratic rights that we do enjoy were not handed down from the state or given to us by business, but are rather the product of centuries of struggle from below. This struggle must be expanded beyond the formal trappings of the electoral system, because a collective vision is simply not possible without everyone's voice.

The second principle that the radical, anticapitalist projects share is de-commodification. The history of capitalism has been characterized by both the transformation of more and more aspects of people's lives into commodities and the reshaping of our expectations, values, and norms to align with the needs of business. A fundamental component of any transformative vision is the fight to take back our lives from capitalist markets—to say that things like our health, our desire to learn, and have a roof over our heads should not be subject to our ability to pay. These things should be a right, not a commodity. Every time something is transformed from a right into a commodity the power of the profit motive to dictate our lives is increased. Conversely, whenever our collective projects remove things from the sphere of capitalist markets, we weaken the grip that capital has over our lives. If people aren't worried about losing their home or having no health insurance for their kids, they will be much more willing to stand up to their bosses and fight for projects to increase democracy. Social movements have long fought to de-commodify aspects of our lives and have, for short periods of time, succeeded. But our biggest mistake has been to settle for means-tested benefits—social gains that benefit only certain sectors of the population based on factors like income or occupational status. These benefits foment ill will among those who don't qualify for them and are easy political targets. The contrast between the dismantling of the US welfare system in the 1990s and the resistance, despite repeated attacks, to the elimination of Social Security is illustrative: Historically, welfare programs were available only to the poorest (and most stigmatized) members of society, excluding working-class and lower-middle-class households struggling to get by. Conservative opponents of welfare exploited this disparity, stoking anger among those getting no support toward those receiving (meager) state support. In contrast, Social Security is a benefit enjoyed by nearly everyone: only 4 percent of the population is excluded from receiving Social Security benefits, and 87 percent of Americans want to preserve Social Security for future generations. Creating the space to radically de-commodify our lives will require that social gains such as free higher education, single-payer universal health care, and a minimum basic income be made available to everyone regardless of their income.

The immediate goals of projects and ideas that embrace the principles of democratization and de-commodification may vary, but their long-term goal is always to make people's everyday lives better. To achieve these goals, groups and projects must emphasize a final principle: redistribution. The top 20 percent of households control nearly 90 percent of all wealth in the United States, while the super-elite (the top 0.1 percent) control more than 20 percent of all wealth. People in power of course downplay inequality. They say that just because a few people are extravagantly wealthy doesn't mean the rest of us can't be rich as well. And it is not only people in power who say this. Americans cherish their belief in meritocracy. They believe that if you work hard your circumstances and wealth won't determine your chances of success. This may hold for a small sample of the population, but at a systemic level it is patently false. Extreme concentration of wealth, enabled by tax laws favoring the rich, inhibits democracy and de-commodification in a fundamental way, starving the public treasury and eliminating the means to provide a good life for everyone. Since wealth creation is a collective process, a wealth tax would provide a way for wealth to be shared collectively, while a robust public treasury could ensure that the rights of all people to housing, food, health, education, and a clean environment are met.

These three principles don't constitute a magic formula, nor will such ideas and projects change the system overnight. There are no shortcuts. But there is possibility. In this present moment, characterized by crisis, uncertainty, and anxiety a new spirit of capitalism is being formulated. So far, the loudest voices defining the contours of the new spirit are those of the super-elite. People with money and power are preaching a new spirit of capitalism that absorbs and displaces radical criticisms of the status quo. Sheryl Sandberg, John Mackey, Oprah Winfrey, Bill and Melinda Gates, and others like them are developing a new ideology for why capitalism is the only, and best, system possible.

This doesn't have to be the case. At the end of the day, for capitalism to function most of us must believe in the system and voluntarily devote our energies to it. But these existing beliefs and norms are not primordial or fixed. They can change and evolve. Collective projects and radical visions can foster new dreams and ideas and different beliefs and norms about how we should organize our lives and society. Instead of thinking about how to fix capitalism, we can start thinking about a different kind of society. We can imagine a world designed for the needs of people instead of profit, and we can get to work building it.

________

1
NTanya Lee and Steve Williams, “More Than We Imagined: Activists' Assessments on the Moment and the Way Forward,” Ear to the Ground Project,
eartothegroundproject.org
.

In this short book I have drawn on the work of many scholars, distilling their analyses and frameworks to make a straightforward argument. Inevitably, the essence of what makes these works great is lost in such a process, so any reader interested in the topics discussed should turn to the original source material. Below is a condensed list of works that inform the theoretical framework of the book.

On ideology, stories, and society

Luc Boltanski and Eva Chiapello's
The New Spirit of Capitalism
is a major source of inspiration for this book and a must-read for anyone interested in capitalism's remarkable adaptability and longevity. Their book builds on the foundational work of Max Weber, and asks how capitalism evolves in the face of critique. They focus mainly on neoliberal management practices in France, but I have expanded their framework to think about the role of critique, ideology, and adaptation at the level of society.

On the market and the state

Karl Polanyi's classic,
The Great Transformation
has shaped my, and many other people's, thinking about the relationship between the state and the market, and how states create, shape, and sustain capitalist markets. There is also a great deal more recent scholarship that deals with these questions. Greta Krippner unravels the relationship between the state and financial markets during the neoliberal era in her book,
Capitalizing on Crisis
. Bernard Harcourt approaches the question from a different angle in his examination of free market ideology and punishment in
The Illusion of Free Markets
. Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch use a wide-angle lens in their book
The Making of Global Capitalism
to show how the US state has played a central role in creating and sustaining global capitalism.

On nature

The relationship between nature and capitalism has been explored by many authors, though perhaps most fruitfully by Neil Smith in
Uneven Development
. Smith's work examines how capitalist society creates not only space, but also nature itself. Erik Swyngdeouw's work explores similar themes. His article “Impossible Sustainability and the Post-Political Condition,” (appearing in David Gibbs and Rob Krueger's
The Sustainable Development Paradox
) is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the problems with sustainable capitalism.

On capitalism and neoliberalism

The body of literature on both capitalism and neoliberalism is incredibly broad. David Harvey has thought deeply about the fundamental drives of capitalism. In this book I drew from
The Enigma of Capital
but he has written numerous other great books that cover similar territory. Giovanni Arrighi's analyses of global capitalism, financialization, power, and hegemony are essential to any study of restructuring over the past three decades (see for example
The Long Twentieth Century
and
Adam Smith in Beijing
). Studies of neoliberalism run the gamut from economy to culture. Janice Peck's book
The Age of Oprah
is a fascinating window into the culture of neoliberalism and the cult of the individual.

On gender, work, and identity

Kathi Weeks has written a fantastic book dealing with questions of work and feminism:
The Problem with Work
. This examines the centrality of the work ethic to the feminist project, but also takes on much bigger questions about developing alternatives to dominant work-centric visions of utopia and the power of radical demands to create space for a new utopian vision. Any reader interested in work and labor more specifically should turn to classics like Harry Braverman's,
Labor and Monopoly Capital
, Dan Clawson's
The Next Upsurge
, Rick Fantasia's
Cultures of Solidarity
, and Beverly Silver's brilliant,
Forces of Labor
.