Imagine There’s No Capitalism

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by Allen D. Kanner

All economic systems rest, in part, on fundamental assumptions about human nature and human motivation. Like all institutions, economic institutions not only reflect but also mold our behaviors, values, and beliefs. We might say that, ultimately, economic systems constitute a high-stakes argument that our species is having with itself about what it is and where it is trying to go.

In moving beyond capitalism, we need to abandon its core assumption that Homo sapiens are basically self-interested, competitive, and materialistic. In constructing new systems, careful and even mindful attention is required regarding the assumptions that we do make, for they determine so much. Do we make paramount our capacities for generosity, cooperation, and soulfulness, and therefore nourish them? Do we recognize self-interest, competition, and materialistic desire, but not let these qualities define us?

If all goes well, capitalism will be shed like a tarantula's old skin, cast off as an empty husk from within which a fresh spider rejoins the world. Shedding is far gentler than violent collapse due to resource depletion, incurable new diseases, or severe weather change, which are alternative dooms our archaic economic system could meet, perhaps all at once. But if millions of us find thousands of paths, some individual, some communal, some governmental, some spiritual, some artistic, some humorous, some just plain lucky, to a more wild, thoughtful, and sensual love for each other and our miraculous planet, capitalism might just slide away, recycled into history without need of war, revolution, or savior. In its stead, we build economic systems that weave webs of compassion, not commercialism.

No one knows the "answers." That is not a problem. For we have definite directions to pursue-social and environmental justice, local determination rather than centralized power, and grieving the destruction that has occurred- before rounding the bend of complexity that hides the future.

Now to it.

Allen D. Kanner, Ph.D., is a co-founder of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (www.commercialfreechildhood.org); co-editor of Psychology and Consumer Culture and Ecopsychology; and a child, family, and adult psychologist in Berkeley, California.