In the late 1990s, the Wachowskis gave us The Matrix – Keanu Reeves as Neo, the Chosen One™, a man so bland he could be anyone, which was the point. Once he realised he was living inside a simulation, he learned to bend its laws, to dodge bullets in slow motion and see the code behind the curtain. Enlightenment, Hollywood-style.
Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.
But here’s the twist, the film itself couldn’t stomach: realising the simulation doesn’t free you from it.
Knowing that race and gender are social constructs doesn’t erase their architecture. Knowing that our economies, legal systems, and so-called democracies are fictions doesn’t get us out of paying taxes or playing our assigned roles. “The social contract” is a collective hallucination we agreed to before birth. That and a dollar still won’t buy you a cup of coffee.
Baudrillard, whose Simulacra and Simulation the film name-dropped like a trophy, argued that simulation doesn’t hide reality – it replaces it. When representation becomes indistinguishable from the thing it represents, truth evaporates, leaving only consensus. We don’t live in a system of power; we live in its performance.
The Matrix got the metaphor half right. It imagined the bars of our cage as a digital dream – glossy, computable, escapable. But our chains are older and subtler. Rousseau called them “social”, Foucault diagnosed them as “biopolitical”, and the rest of us just call them “normal”. Power doesn’t need to plug wires into your skull; it only needs to convince you that the socket is already there.
You can know it’s all a fiction. You can quote Derrida over your morning espresso and tweet about the collapse of epistemic certainty. It won’t change the fact that you still have rent to pay, laws to obey, and identities to perform. Awareness isn’t liberation; it’s just higher-resolution despair with better UX.
Neo woke up to a ruined Earth and thought he’d escaped. He hadn’t. He’d only levelled up to the next simulation – the one called “reality”. The rest of us are still here, dutifully maintaining the system, typing in our passwords, and calling it freedom.
NB: Don’t get me wrong. I loved The Matrix when it came out. I still have fond memories. It redefined action films at the time. I loved the Zen messaging, but better mental acuity doesn’t grant you a pass out of the system.
They say no one escapes the Spectacle. Guy Debord made sure of that. His vision was airtight, his diagnosis terminal: we are all spectators now, alienated from our labour, our time, our own damn lives. It was a metaphysical mugging—existence held hostage by images, by commodities dressed in drag. The future was a feedback loop, and we were all doomed to applaud.
Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic. Apologies in advance for the narrators’ mangling of the pronunciation of ‘Guy Debord’.
But what if the loop could be hacked? What if the infinitely halved distances of motionless critique—Zeno’s Paradox by way of Marx—could finally be crossed?
Enter: Yanis Varoufakis. Economist, ex-finance minister, techno-cassandra with a motorbike and a vendetta. Where Debord filmed the catastrophe in black-and-white, Varoufakis showed up with the source code.
Debord’s Limbo
Debord saw it all coming. The substitution of reality with its photogenic simulacrum. The slow death of agency beneath the floodlights of consumption. But like Zeno’s paradox, he could only gesture toward the end without ever reaching it. Each critique halved the distance to liberation but never arrived. The Spectacle remained intact, omnipresent, and self-replicating—like an ontological screensaver.
He gave us no path forward, only a beautiful, ruinous analysis. A Parisian shrug of doom.
Varoufakis’ Shortcut
But then comes Varoufakis, breaking through the digital labyrinth not by philosophising the Spectacle, but by naming its successor: Technofeudalism.
See, Debord was chasing a moving target—a capitalism that morphed from industrial to financial to semiotic faster than his prose could crystallise. But Varoufakis caught it mid-mutation. He pinned it to the slab and sliced it open. What spilled out wasn’t capital anymore—it was rent. Platform rent. Algorithmic tolls. Behavioural taxes disguised as convenience. This isn’t the market gone mad—it’s the market dissolved, replaced by code-based fiefdoms.
The paradox is resolved not by reaching utopia, but by realising we’ve already crossed the line—we just weren’t told. The market isn’t dying; it’s already dead, and we’re still paying funeral costs in monthly subscriptions and attention metrics.
From Spectacle to Subjugation
Debord wanted to unmask the performance. Varoufakis realised the theatre had been demolished and replaced with a server farm.
You don’t watch the Spectacle anymore. It watches you. It optimises you. It learns your keystrokes, your pulse rate, your browsing history. Welcome to feudal recursion, where Amazon is your landlord, Google your priest, and Meta your confessor.
Solving Zeno the Varoufakis Way
So how does one cross the infinite regress of alienation? Simple. You call it what it is. You reclassify the terrain.
“This is not capitalism,” Varoufakis says, in the tone of a man pulling a mask off a Scooby-Doo villain. “It’s technofeudalism. Capital didn’t win. It went feudal. Again.”
By doing so, he bypasses the academic ballet that has critics forever inching closer to the truth without touching it. He calls the system new, not to sell books, but to make strategy possible. Because naming a beast is the first step in slaying it.
In Conclusion: Debord Dreamed, Varoufakis Drives
Debord haunts the museum. Varoufakis raids the server room. Both are essential. But only one gives us a new map.
The Spectacle hypnotised us. Technofeudalism enslaves us. And if there’s a way out, it won’t be through slogans spray-painted on Parisian walls. It will be built in code, deployed across decentralised networks, and carried forward by those who remember what it meant to be not watched.
Let Debord whisper. Let Varoufakis roar. And let the rest of us sharpen our blades.
This is Chapter 5 of Erich Fromm’s The Sane Society. I’ve had this on my bookshelf for quite a while and wasn’t sure how a 70-year-old book could have so much relevance, but it does. Granted, some of it is irrelevant, a victim of the period it was written. This happens.
Sidebar: Whilst praising Freud, Fromm also calls him out, essentially accusing him of projecting his mummy-daddy issues onto the world at large. When I first encountered Freud’s work in the 1980s, it was already largely discredited. Some of what should have been wasn’t. Freud’s work as a psychoanalyst heavily overshadowed his other contributions. In fact, Freud offers some strong philosophical insights into society and civilisation. He’s not all about cigars and dreamscapes.
What strikes me about this chapter is the historical perspective it provides on capitalism. I’m an academic economist. I taught undergraduate economics for the better part of a decade. I’ve read (and recommend reading) Marx’s Capital firsthand.
Audio: NotebookLM Podcast commentary on this content.
Fromm adds additional details here. Firstly, he notes that the capitalism that marked the early days of the Industrial Revolution—the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—differed from that of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The earlier period still had cultural and moral tethers that became frayed or lost in later periods. Without regurgitating the chapter, I cite some themes:
“this underselling practice is grown to such a shameful height, that particular persons publicly advertise that they undersell the rest of the trade.”
People were not very keen on price cutting as a competitive mechanism.
They also note the unfair competitive advantage of the monied elites who could buy materials in cash instead of credit and could thereby undercut prices, who would have to account for paying interest rates or markups on credit.
Whilst in the twentieth century, regulating undercutting is seen as protectionism, the earlier centuries had no problems defending merchants. We do have laws on the ebooks that prevent dumping, but these are rarely enforced, and when they are, it’s a political rather than economic statement. In practice, but done in the name of economics are politics in the same manner as science was used as cover to implement policy during the COVID-19 debacle.
Montesquieu says “that machines which diminish the numbers of workers are ‘pernicious’.” This sentiment echoes the current sentiments about robotics and artificial intelligence.
Nineteenth-century capitalism saw man as the measure of all things supplanted by capital. This is the capitalism Marx rails against—profits over humanity and society, the pursuit of local maxima at the expense of global maxima. This is also where the goal of hypergrowth and growth for growth’s sake came into vogue, ushering us into the Modern Age of Modern ideals—science, progress, order, and so on.
I won’t exhaust the chapter here, but for what it is, it’s a relatively light read. Whether I comment on later chapters depends on whether they engage me. Cheers.
Humans, we are told, are exceptional—unlike the rest of the lowly animal kingdom. We alone possess reason, morality, and the ability to transcend our base instincts. And yet, curiously, this argument is rolled out only when convenient. At times, we are commanded to rise above our primal urges; at others, we are scolded for even thinking about resisting them. This ideological schizophrenia is no accident—it is a feature, not a bug, of our prevailing moral and economic order.
The contradictions of “human nature” arguments can be broken down into two key patterns:
A. We must transcend our animal instincts—but only when they threaten social or economic order.
B. We must accept our animal instincts as unchangeable—but only when they reinforce existing power structures.
This hypocrisy is especially visible in how capitalism and morality are framed. Let’s examine two case studies.
Case 1: Prostitution—A Market That Must Be Morally Suppressed
Sex is as fundamental a biological drive as hunger or thirst. One would think that in a world where everything is commodified, prostitution—the most direct transaction of supply and demand—would be embraced by free-market capitalists. But no. We are told that engaging in this “base” activity is degrading, immoral, and must be curtailed. The same capitalists who defend free enterprise at all costs suddenly become moralists, urging us to resist temptation and rise above our urges. Sex, despite being one of the most natural acts imaginable, is treated as an impulse to be tamed rather than an economic exchange to be normalised.
Case 2: Capitalism—A System We Must Accept as “Natural”
Contrast this with how we are told to think about capitalism. Greed, exploitation, and ruthless competition? Those are “just human nature.” The strong thrive, and the weak perish. We are warned not to question the system because to do so would be to fight against nature itself. Socialism? A naive fantasy. Economic cooperation? Impossible. Mutual aid? Utopian nonsense. We must accept that humans are selfish creatures, that hierarchy is inevitable, and that billionaires accumulating obscene wealth while millions starve is simply the way of things.
Why are we ordered to suppress our instincts in one case yet surrender to them in another? Because morality, in its institutional form, is not about virtue—it is about control.
The Convenient Flexibility of “Human Nature”
This selective logic is designed to keep power structures intact. The rules shift depending on whose interests are at stake:
If an instinct challenges profit or control, it must be suppressed.
If an instinct benefits the ruling order, it must be accepted as natural.
Thus, the same societies that demand moral restraint when it comes to sex, leisure, or pleasure suddenly rediscover their inner Darwinist when defending capitalist greed and economic cruelty.
The “Natural Order” Myth
The claim that capitalism is the inevitable result of human nature is one of history’s greatest ideological scams. If it were indeed “natural,” it would not require:
Constant propaganda to reinforce its legitimacy.
Violent suppression of alternative systems.
Trillions in government bailouts every time it fails.
Moreover, humans are not only competitive, selfish creatures. We are also wired for cooperation, altruism, and communal living—traits conveniently erased from discussions about economics.
Final Thought: Breaking the Cycle
If we can rise above base instincts for sex and violence, why can’t we rise above capitalist greed and exploitation? Why is overcoming “human nature” only demanded when it suits power? The truth is, we are only commanded to rise above when it keeps us obedient—and ordered to accept reality when it keeps the powerful in control.
The only real rebellion is to reject this hypocrisy entirely. The future belongs not to those who passively accept the contradictions of the present, but to those who refuse to play by its schizophrenic rules.
It’s not uncommon to label workers under the capitalist system as wage slaves.
As with the abolition of slavery in the United States, the future will one day recoil at Capitalism, wondering how humanity could ever have justified the exploitation of others for commerce and profit. Then again, that’s the same question, isn’t it?
As with the old story, a man asked a lady: “Would you be willing to sleep with me if I paid you £1,000,000?” Without hesitation, she answered, “Yes.” “And what if I only paid you £5?” The irate lady fumed: “£5? What do you think I am?” The man replied: “We’ve already established that. Now we’re trying to determine the degree.”
Capitalism is only a matter of degree from slavery. In practice, slavery is a Capitalist’s wet dream.
But this post isn’t about the book. It’s about what all good books should do: make you think.
If you’ve followed my writing over the years, you’ll know that I have little patience forpsychology, which I regard as the astrology to neuroscience’s astronomy. Reading Fisher’s Capitalist Realismhas only reinforced this perspective.
Frankly, I should do away with psychology altogether. Much of it—no, not just the vacuous self-help drivel clogging the internet and bookstore shelves—is pseudoscience. To its credit, it did function as a stepping stone to neuroscience, but that’s like crediting alchemy for modern chemistry.
Psychology’s greatest sin? Missing the forest for the trees—or, more precisely, ignoring the structural forces that shape the so-called individual. Western capitalism, ever eager to monetize everything, finds it far easier (and more profitable) to blame the individual rather than the system. It’s like the old joke about the man searching for his lost keys under the streetlamp, not because that’s where he dropped them, but because that’s where the light is. It’s just more convenient (and profitable) that way.
Enter psychology: the perfect tool for a society steeped in narcissism and instant gratification. Feeling anxious? Depressed? Alienated? Just take a pill! Never mind the material conditions of your existence—your stagnant wages, your crushing debt, your eroding sense of community. No, the problem is you, and conveniently, there’s a profitable solution waiting on the pharmacy shelf.
Sure, psychology has made some strides in attributing behaviours to neurotransmitters—dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, and the rest of the usual suspects. And sure, pharmaceuticals can sometimes treat symptoms effectively. But they are just that: symptoms. The root cause? Often stressors imposed by the very society we refuse to scrutinize. And guess what rarely makes the diagnostic checklist? The system itself.
We need to zoom out and see the whole damn forest. We need to ask the hard questions—run the classic five whys to get to the root of the problem. And spoiler alert: the answer isn’t some chemical imbalance in your head.
Capitalism, often celebrated for its ability to generate wealth and innovation, also brings with it a darker legacy: the untold millions of lives prematurely lost due to its systemic failures. Capitalism can be attributed to more than 10 million excess deaths per year, and these numbers will continue to increase. These deaths are not simply unfortunate byproducts but are structurally baked into the system itself. Whether through poverty, healthcare inequality, environmental destruction, or war, capitalism’s logic of profit maximisation places human life at the mercy of market forces, with devastating consequences.
Audio: NotebookLM podcast on this topic.
Friedrich Engels famously referred to these preventable deaths as social murder, a term that highlights how capitalism creates conditions in which certain populations are systematically neglected, deprived, and ultimately destroyed. Today, Engels’ critique is more relevant than ever as we examine the staggering human toll that capitalism has left in its wake, often invisible in the glow of GDP figures and economic growth.
Poverty and Hunger: The Silent Killers
One of the most pervasive ways capitalism generates excess deaths is through poverty and hunger. Despite the extraordinary wealth produced by capitalist economies, millions still die from hunger-related causes every year. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), around 9 million people die annually from hunger and malnutrition, mostly in regions where capitalist-driven global inequality has made basic necessities unaffordable or inaccessible.[1]
Capitalism’s defenders often point to rising standards of living as evidence of the system’s success, but this narrative suffers from survivorship bias. The success stories of those who have benefited from capitalist growth obscure the countless lives that have been lost to the system’s structural inequalities. As Engels noted, these deaths are not natural or inevitable—they are preventable. They occur because the capitalist system concentrates wealth in the hands of a few while leaving vast populations to suffer without access to food, healthcare, or basic resources.
“For the dead, there is no measure of progress or rising standards; they are simply erased from the narrative.”
This disparity in wealth and access to resources creates a global system of social murder, where the deaths of the poor are written off as collateral damage in the pursuit of profit. These deaths are not merely unfortunate consequences; they are inherent to the capitalist system’s prioritisation of wealth accumulation over human life.
Healthcare Inequality and Preventable Deaths
The lack of access to adequate healthcare is another major driver of deaths attributable to capitalism. In the United States, the richest nation in the world, an estimated 500,000 deaths between 1990 and 2010 were linked to healthcare inequality, according to a Lancet study.[2] Globally, millions die each year from preventable causes—such as pneumonia, diarrhoea, and malaria—because market-driven healthcare systems fail to provide for those without the means to pay.
In a for-profit healthcare system, those without money are often denied life-saving treatment. Healthcare becomes a commodity, rather than a human right. This commodification of care creates deadly disparities, where a wealthy few receive world-class medical attention while millions die from treatable conditions. Engels’ notion of social murder is evident here as well: the system does not kill through direct violence but by neglecting the vulnerable.
“Capitalism’s market-driven healthcare system perpetuates a structural violence where the poor die from treatable conditions simply because they cannot pay.”
This situation is exacerbated by the ongoing commodification of healthcare through privatisation and austerity measures, which strip public systems of resources and force them to operate on capitalist principles. The result is a world where profit motives dictate who lives and who dies.
Environmental Destruction and Climate Change: Capitalism’s Long-Term Death Toll
Capitalism’s unrelenting focus on short-term profit also drives environmental destruction, contributing to a growing death toll linked to climate change. The WHO estimates that by 2030, climate change will cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths each year, driven by heat stress, malnutrition, and the spread of diseases like malaria and diarrhoea.[3] These figures are conservative, as the cascading effects of climate-induced migration and conflict are difficult to quantify.
David Harvey’s concept of accumulation by dispossession is central to understanding how capitalism contributes to environmental devastation. Capitalist economies extract and commodify natural resources, often at the expense of local populations who bear the brunt of environmental degradation. Deforestation, mining, and fossil fuel extraction displace communities and destroy ecosystems, creating conditions that lead to death, displacement, and disease.
“The victims of capitalism’s environmental destruction are not accidental casualties; they are the inevitable outcomes of a system that prioritises short-term profit over long-term sustainability.”
This environmental violence is compounded by disaster capitalism, a term coined by Naomi Klein to describe how capitalist interests exploit crises like natural disasters or financial collapses for profit.[4] The destruction of vulnerable communities by climate change is not simply a tragedy—it is a consequence of capitalist expansion into every corner of the planet, sacrificing human and ecological health for economic gain.
War and Imperialism: Capitalism’s Violent Expansion
The human toll of capitalism extends beyond poverty and environmental degradation to include the millions of lives lost to wars driven by capitalist interests. The illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, for example, led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, many of which were tied to the geopolitical aims of securing control over oil reserves. Wars like Iraq are not isolated failures of policy but integral to the functioning of a global capitalist system that seeks to dominate resources and expand markets through military force.
David Harvey’s theory of new imperialism explains how capitalist economies rely on the expansion of markets and the extraction of resources from other nations, often through military means.[5] The military-industrial complex, as described by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, thrives under capitalism, profiting from perpetual war and the destruction of human life.
“Wars driven by capitalist interests are not just geopolitical strategies; they are extensions of capitalism’s relentless drive to dominate resources and secure markets.”
The death toll of wars driven by capitalist expansion is staggering. From the millions killed in conflicts over resources to the long-term destabilisation of regions like the Middle East, these deaths are directly tied to capitalism’s global ambitions. The victims of these wars—like those who suffer from poverty and environmental destruction—are casualties of a system that prioritises wealth and power over human life.
Conclusion: Reckoning with Capitalism’s Death Toll
The deaths attributable to capitalism are not abstract or incidental; they are the direct consequences of a system that places profit above all else. From hunger and poverty to healthcare inequality, environmental destruction, and war, the capitalist system has claimed millions of lives—lives that could have been saved under a more just and equitable economic model.
“Capitalism’s greatest violence is not its wars, but its everyday acts of neglect, where millions die not from bombs but from lack of food, water, and care.”
The true success of capitalism, then, is not in its ability to generate wealth for the few, but in its capacity to obscure the structural violence that sustains it. By framing poverty, healthcare inequality, and environmental destruction as unfortunate consequences of “market forces,” capitalism avoids accountability for the millions it leaves behind.
It is time to reckon with this hidden death toll. Only by facing the human cost of capitalism can we begin to imagine a future where economic systems prioritise human life over profit. The victims of capitalism are not just numbers—they are the casualties of a system that, as Engels pointed out, murders through neglect, exploitation, and greed.
Endnotes:
[1]: World Health Organization, “Hunger and Malnutrition: Key Facts,” 2022. [2]: “The Lancet Public Health,” Study on healthcare inequality in the U.S., 2010. [3]: World Health Organization, “Climate Change and Health,” 2022. [4]: Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Picador, 2007), pp. 9-10. [5]: David Harvey, The New Imperialism (Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 145-147.
In the contemporary world of deepening inequality and environmental degradation, capitalism continues to hold a powerful ideological grip on much of the global population. Yet the irony is that many of its staunchest defenders are not the elites or the true beneficiaries of the system, but the very workers and middle-class individuals whose lives it exploits and controls. These defenders are not capitalists themselves; they are, in fact, cogs in the machinery of a system they imagine will eventually reward their loyalty. This illusion is strikingly captured in a quote often misattributed to John Steinbeck: “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”[1]
This phenomenon, which we might call the temporarily embarrassed millionaire syndrome, reflects not only a profound misunderstanding of capitalism but also the effectiveness of the system in controlling its participants through hope and aspiration. Capitalism promises upward mobility, convincing even those at the bottom of the economic ladder that their current misfortunes are temporary. But as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels observed, this is a system of exploitation that not only alienates workers but effectively destroys them.
Survivorship Bias and the Myth of the “Rising Tide”
Capitalism’s defenders frequently invoke the idea that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” The metaphor suggests that when capitalism prospers, everyone benefits. However, this vision of progress masks the reality of capitalism’s winners and losers. As economist David Harvey has pointed out, capitalism is not a neutral system of wealth creation—it is a system of accumulation by dispossession, constantly expropriating wealth from others, often through privatisation and the commodification of public goods.[2] The rising tide does lift some boats, but it simultaneously leaves others stranded, or worse, sinking.
Survivorship bias is essential to understanding how capitalism maintains its legitimacy. The success stories—the wealthy entrepreneurs, the individuals who “made it”—are lauded as proof that the system works. But the vast numbers of people left behind, those who toil in exploitative conditions or who die from poverty and neglect, are erased from the narrative. In Engels’ terms, these are victims of social murder—individuals who die prematurely not by direct violence, but through the structural forces of deprivation imposed by capitalism.[3] Their deaths are rendered invisible, falling out of the metrics of rising living standards and growth.
“The system’s victims are not accidental casualties but inevitable outcomes of capitalism’s relentless focus on profit over life.”
Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England
Engels’ critique of industrial capitalism is as relevant today as it was in the 19th century. The modern mechanisms of exploitation may be more complex, but they are no less deadly. In a late capitalist world, the poor and marginalised are still being “murdered” through the structural violence of inadequate healthcare, poor working conditions, and environmental degradation. The millions left out of the capitalist success story are not anomalies but integral to the system’s operation.
Alienation and the Tragedy of Defending the System
Marx’s theory of alienation provides another crucial lens through which to understand why capitalism’s defenders often remain blind to their own exploitation. Under capitalism, workers are alienated from the products of their labour, the process of production, their own humanity, and from each other.[4] The worker becomes a cog in a machine, detached from the value they create, and unable to control their working life. Yet, even in this state of alienation, many still defend the system, believing that their hard work will eventually lead them to wealth and freedom.
This defence of capitalism, often articulated by those whose lives it degrades, reflects Antonio Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony. Gramsci argued that the ruling class maintains power not just through economic domination, but by shaping the cultural and ideological landscape.[5] Capitalism’s defenders are, in part, products of this hegemony, believing in the very values—individualism, competition, the ‘American Dream’—that bind them to a system of exploitation.
“The most effective form of domination is one that is not felt as domination, but rather as a form of freedom.”
Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks
This illusion of freedom under capitalism is deepened by what Herbert Marcuse calls repressive desublimation. Capitalism offers false freedoms in the form of consumer choice and superficial pleasures, giving individuals the illusion that they are exercising autonomy, even as the system remains unchallenged.[6] Workers may identify themselves in their commodities—luxury goods, tech gadgets, cars—but these objects only serve to reinforce their alienation and dependence on the capitalist system. The temporarily embarrassed millionaire clings to the dream of eventual success, all the while contributing to a system that offers only superficial rewards in return.
Social Murder and the Structural Violence of Late Capitalism
The notion of social murder offers a stark framework for understanding capitalism’s indirect, yet pervasive, violence. As Engels explained, this form of violence is not inflicted through overt means, but through the systematic neglect of basic human needs. Whether it’s the millions who die due to lack of access to healthcare or the global poor displaced by climate-induced disasters, capitalism perpetuates a form of structural violence that is invisible to those who benefit from the system’s success.[7]
The American political theorist Naomi Klein extends this analysis through her concept of disaster capitalism, where crises are exploited for profit. Whether it’s natural disasters or financial crises, capitalism uses these events as opportunities to privatise public resources, dismantle social safety nets, and deepen inequality.[8] The victims of these disasters—often the poor and vulnerable—are, in Engels’ terms, socially murdered by a system that thrives on their dispossession.
“Extreme violence has a way of preventing us from seeing the interests it serves.”
Naomi Klein, Shock Doctrine
The Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaire as a Tool of Control
The illusion that one’s current position is only temporary—that any individual can rise to capitalist wealth if they work hard enough—is central to maintaining the capitalist system. This aspiration prevents individuals from seeing their exploitation for what it is. They do not identify as part of an exploited class but instead believe they are merely waiting for their turn at wealth. Zygmunt Bauman’s concept of liquid modernity—the perpetual state of instability and insecurity produced by late capitalism—helps explain this phenomenon.[9] Individuals are constantly told that their position is fluid, changeable, and that their big break is just around the corner.
But for most, this “big break” never comes. The dream of becoming a millionaire is a powerful form of social control, one that keeps individuals invested in a system that benefits only a small fraction of its participants. As Marx reminds us, “the worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range.”[10] Capitalism does not reward the many; it exploits the many for the benefit of the few.
Conclusion: Facing the Irony and Imagining a Post-Capitalist Future
The greatest irony of capitalism is that those who defend it most fervently are often those who will never realise its promises. These are not the capitalists of the system, but its workers, its underclass, and its exploited. They see themselves not as oppressed, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires—an illusion that keeps them bound to a system that offers them no real future.
In this light, the true success of capitalism is not in its creation of wealth, but in its ability to mask the conditions of exploitation, alienation, and social murder that underpin it. The path forward requires a dismantling of these illusions and a recognition that the system’s failures are not accidental but integral to its design.
“Capitalism’s greatest trick is convincing the exploited that their suffering is temporary, that their turn at wealth is inevitable.”
Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine
Only by facing these uncomfortable truths can we begin to imagine a future beyond the constraints of capitalist ideology, a world where human flourishing is no longer measured by wealth accumulation but by the collective well-being of all.
Endnotes:
[1]: Misattributed to John Steinbeck, this quote encapsulates a critical observation about American capitalism’s appeal to aspiration rather than solidarity. [2]: David Harvey, The New Imperialism (Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 145-147. [3]: Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (Oxford University Press, 1845), p. 112. [4]: Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (Progress Publishers, 1959). [5]: Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (International Publishers, 1971), p. 12. [6]: Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (Beacon Press, 1964), p. 10. [7]: Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, p. 114. [8]: Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (Picador, 2007), pp. 9-10. [9]: Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Polity, 2000), p. 14. [10]: Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, p. 68.
Fast forward a century. The future’s looking back, not with nostalgia but with a critical eye. Will they see our age of capitalism as we see the era of slavery – a moral misstep, a societal blight?
2023: Here we are, knee-deep in capitalism. It’s everywhere, in every transaction, every ambition. But beneath the veneer of progress and prosperity, there’s a darker narrative unfolding.
Wage Slaves in a Modern World
Wage slavery is the reality for many in a capitalist system where survival hinges on selling labour. The concept? Simple yet brutal. People are chained not by physical shackles but by economic necessity, a cycle of paycheck-to-paycheck existence. It’s freedom, but only in the loosest sense.
The Surplus of Inequality
Wage surplus – the lifeblood of capitalism. The more you squeeze out of workers, the fatter the profits. It’s a game of numbers where human cost rarely figures. The working class toil, and the upper echelons reap the rewards. Sounds familiar? It’s a throwback to the days of slavery, just dressed in modern garb.
Capitalists’ Dark Fantasy
A state of slavery – every capitalist’s secret fantasy? Perhaps not all, but for the ruthless, it’s the ultimate dream. A world where workers are mere cogs in the machine, dispensable and replaceable. No rights, no voice, just endless labour for minimal reward.
The Capitalist Paradox
Here’s the paradox – capitalism, in theory, champions freedom and innovation. But in practice, it often veers towards oppression and exploitation. The gap between the haves and have-nots widens, and social mobility becomes a myth, reserved for fairy tales.
The Future’s Judgment
In 2123, will they shake their heads at our era? Will they wonder how we allowed economic systems to morph into modern-day slavery? How we sold our souls for the illusion of prosperity?
A Glimmer of Hope?
But the tide is turning. Voices of dissent are rising, challenging the status quo. The call for a fairer, more humane economic model grows louder. There’s hope yet that we’ll steer away from the shadow of capitalism’s excesses.
Conclusion
As the world spins on, we’re at a pivotal moment. Will we continue down this path, or will we pivot towards a more equitable future? The choices we make today will echo through the annals of history.
Call to Action
What’s your stance? Is capitalism veering too close to a modern form of slavery? Drop your thoughts below. Let’s ignite a dialogue.
By fall, I don’t mean autumn except perhaps metaphorically speaking. The accompanying image illustrates a progression from the pre-Enlightenment reformation and the factors leading to the Modern Condition and increases in schizophrenia in people, societies, and enterprises.
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This image is essentially composited from a later chapter in Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary. In it, he outlines a path that commences at the Reformation that led to Lutheranism and Protestantism and further to Calvinism (not separately depicted). Max Weber argued that Capitalism is inextricably linked to Calvinism and the workmanship ideal tradition.
McGilchrists argument is founded on the notion that Catholocism is a communally oriented belief system whilst Protestantism is focused on the individual and salvation through personal work. The essence of capitalism is the same.
Of course, history isn’t strictly linear. In fact, there are more elements than one could realistically account for, so we rely on a reduction. In concert with the Reformation but on a slight delay is the so-called Age of Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, which led not only to faith in science but then to the pathology of Scientism.
This Protestant-Scientismic nexus brought us to Capitalism and into the Industrial Revolution, where humans were devivified or devitalised, trading their souls to be pawns to earn a few shekels to survive. Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution led to Marxism, through Marx’s critique of Capitalism, but Marxism has the same fatal flaw as Capitalism inasmuch as it doesn’t view people as humans. It does afford them a slightly higher function as workers, but this still leaves humanity as a second-tier aspect and even historicity is elevated above as a sort of meta-trend or undercurrent.
From there, we transition to Modernity, which yields the modern condition and schizophrenics in one fell swoop. This is no coincidence.
Although I end this journey at Modernism, McGilchrist is also leery of the effects of post-modernism as well as philosophy itself as overly reductionist in its attempts to categorise and systematise, valuing signs and symbols over lived experience. His main complaint with postmodernism is that it moves from the objective perspective of Modernity to the subjective perspective, and so there remains no base foundation, which is the shared experience. I’m not sure I agree with his critique, but I’m not going to contemplate it here and now.
In the end, this journey and illustration are gross simplifications, but I still feel it provides valuable perspective. The challenge is that one can’t readily put the genie back into the bottle, and the question is where do we go from here, if not Modernism or Postmodernism. I shouldn’t even mention Metamodernism because that seems like an unlikely synthesis, as well-intentioned as it might be. McGilchrist gives examples of reversals in the trend toward left-hemisphere bias, notably the Romantic period, but that too was reversed, recommencing the current trajectory. My feeling is that if we continue down this dark path, we’ll reach a point of no return.
It seems to be that it’s growing at an increasing rate, like a snowball careening down a slope. It not only drives the left-dominant types further left because an analytical person would reinforce the belief that if only s/he and the world were more analytical things would be so much better—even in a world where net happiness is trending downward—, but it also forces this worldview on other cultures, effectively destroying them and assimilating them into the dark side, if I can borrow a Star Wars reference.
Epilogue
I wasn’t planning to share this story—at least not now. In another forum, I responded to a statement, and I was admonished by Professor Stephen Hicks, author of the book of dubious scholarship, Explaining Postmodernism.
I responded to this query:
If you’re a single mother and have a son I’d suggest putting him in a sport or martial arts to add some masculine energy to his life. It’s not a replacement for the actual father but it can help instil structure and discipline into the core of his being.
— Julian Arsenio
“Perhaps this world needs less discipline and structure, not more,” was my response, to which Hicks replied.
The quotation is not about “the world.” It is about boys without fathers. Evaluate the quotation in its context.
— Stephen Hicks
“Disciplined boys create a disciplined world. Not a world I’d prefer to create or live in. We need more right-hemisphere people. Instead, we are being overwhelmed by left hemisphere types, leading to Capitalism and the denouement of humanity as it encroaches like cancer, devouring or corrupting all it touches.
“In the end, it is about the world, which from a left hemisphere perspective is a sum of its parts. Right-hemisphere thinkers know otherwise,” was my reply. He responded,
You seem to have difficulty focusing. From a quotation about fatherless boys you free associate to [sic] weird psychology and global apocalptic [sic] pessimism. Pointless.
— Stephen Hicks
“I’ll suggest that the opposite is true, and perhaps you need to focus less and appreciate the Gestalt. This was not free association. Rather, it is a logical connexion between the disposition of the people in the world and lived reality.
“Clearly, you are a left-hemisphere structured thinker. The world is literally littered with this cohort.
“I suggest broadening your worldview so as not to lose the woods for the trees. I recommend Dr Iain McGilchrist as an apt guide. Perhaps reading The Master and His Emissary and/or The Matter with Things would give you another perspective. #JustSaying”
And still, rather than addressing the issue of fatherless boys, you go off on tangents, this time psychologizing about people you’ve zero first-hand knowledge of.
— Stephen Hicks
Feel free to interpret this as you will. For me, his attempt to limit discussion to some notion he had in his head and his failure to see the woods for the trees, as I write, suggests that he is a left-brain thinker. Having watched some of his videos, whether lectures or interviews, this was already evident to me. This exchange is just another proof point.
I considered offering the perspective of Bruno Bettleheim’s importance of unstructured play, but as is evidenced above, he is not open to dialogue. His preference appears to be a monologue. This is the left hemisphere in action. This is an example of how insidious this convergent thinking is, and it makes me worry about what’s ahead in a world of people demanding more structure and discipline. Foucault’s Discipline and Surveillance comes to the forefront.
Philosophics 