Capitalism is unsustainable—environment, economy, social relations

John, Professor Emeritus, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO. “Sustainable Capitalism: Our Best Hope for the Future.” Prepared for presentation in Cabin Fever Lecture Series, Baraboo, WI, January 23, 2008. https://ikerdj.mufaculty.umsystem.edu/presentation-papers/sustainable-economies/sustainable-capitalism-our-best-hope-for-the-future //InTr

We are in the midst of a great transition. Our economy, our society, and our natural environment are going through a period of fundamental change. This transition is at least as great as the industrial revolution and possibly as important as “the enlightenment” – the beginning of science. Contrary to popular belief, this is not a technological revolution, although new electronic and biological technologies are certainly relevant to the transition. It is a philosophical revolution, a revolution in thinking about the nature of reality, about how the world works and our place within it. Ways of thinking that seemed adequate in the past are incapable of meeting the challenges of today and of the future. To complete the transition, we must rethink virtually every aspect of our lives. The industrial era brought many material benefits to humanity, and none of us would choose to return to a pre-industrial agrarian society. Capitalism has proven to be the most efficient economic system and no alternative system has proven capable of meeting the material needs and wants of society. However, the industrial era of development is inherently dependent on natural and human resources that are rapidly being depleted. And today’s capitalist economies, being inherently dependent on those resources, quite simply are not sustainable. The mechanistic worldview that dominates scientific thinking today is incapable of resolving the most pressing ecological and social challenges of tomorrow. New electronic and biological technologies will simply create more problems that we cannot solve and deplete more resources that we cannot replace, unless we use them in ways that reflect a new understanding of the world and our place within it. There is a growing realization among an increasing number of people that the things we are doing to address today’s challenges aren’t working, and are not going to work in the future. The unending military conflicts in the Middle East, the inevitable decline in fossil energy production, and the climate changes triggered by global warming are but symptoms of deeper, more fundamental problems within all modern industrial societies. Capitalist economies are very efficient and tremendously productive but they are using up the resources upon which they must depend for their future productivity – they are not sustainable.[3] This is not a matter of personal opinion; it is rooted in the most fundamental laws of science. Sustainability ultimately is a matter of energy. Everything that is of use to humanity – our houses, clothes, food – requires energy to make, energy to use, and in fact, is made of energy. All useful human activities – working, thinking, managing – also require energy. And equally important, the usefulness of human energy is a product of society. We are not born as productive mature adults but as helpless little babies. We have to be nurtured, socialized, and educated by society before we are capable of being useful to society, and that requires social energy. According to the first law of thermodynamics, energy can be used and reused but can never be created or destroyed. However, the second law of thermodynamics – the law of entropy – states, whenever energy is used or reused some of its usefulness is lost. When energy is used, it is always transformed from more concentrated, organized forms to more dispersed, less concentrated forms, as when we burn fuel in an automobile or fuel our bodies with food. In fact, the usefulness of energy arises from its natural tendency to disperse. Even though no energy is lost when it is dispersed, it must be collected, reorganized, reconcentrated, and re-stored before it can be reused. All of this requires energy – energy which is no longer available to do anything else. This is the essence of the law of entropy and entropy is inevitable. The only source of energy available to offset entropy is the daily inflow of solar energy. The fundamental problem is that capitalist economies provide powerful incentives to use and reuse energy but provide no incentives to collect and store solar energy for the purpose of offsetting the energy lost to entropy. Even the solar energy captured through agriculture and forestry is put in the marketplace for consumption rather than used to regenerate and renew energy resources for future use. The basic problem is that economic value is inherently individualistic in nature; it accrues to the individual and thus must be expected to accrue during an individual’s lifetime. It makes no economic sense to invest anything for the sole benefit of someone else, certainly not an unknown someone of some future generation. An economy driven by economic self-interest, as is increasingly the case in all modern capitalist economies, actually accelerates the process of entropy. Such economies are not physically sustainable. Less appreciated but no less important, capitalist economies also dissipate social energy because they weaken human relationships. Economic efficiency requires that people relate to each other impartially, which means impersonally. People must compete rather than cooperate, if markets are to work efficiently, and competition degrades personal relationships. Economic efficiency encourages people to work away from their homes and shop outside of their local communities. They make more money but they have less time and energy to spend sustaining their families and communities. Modern capitalist economies turn human relationships into economic transactions, depleting the social energy needed to create productive people, thus accelerating the depletion of social energy. Such economies are not socially sustainable. In addition, all economic value comes either from nature or society. An economy creates nothing; it is simply a means of facilitating our individual relationships with each other and with the earth. If we continue to extract from nature and to exploit society for our short-run, individual benefit, eventually there will be no remaining sources of economic value. Capitalist economies take from nature and society but give nothing back to sustain either nature or society. Today’s capitalist economies are accelerating the tendency toward economic entropy and quite simply are not economically sustainable.