Within This Lifetime - 6/19/24

What would you do if you knew, with absolute and inviolable certainty, that within this lifetime, capitalism would fall - and the world would become just, equitable, and caring? How would you live your life?

I’ve been asking this question of myself for the past few days, and despite the potential of the suggested viewpoint to only calcify, to lull me into inaction, I have found that instead it reframes what I do already and allows me to take more concrete joy in the acts of revolution I undertake. I’ve come to believe that operating under this premise – essentially a delusion of certainty where there is none – is one of the best ways to ensure that I work toward that worldly shift. I refuse to imagine the continued existence of global capitalism. It is the things we imagine as possible which inform the worlds we create.

In my MFA thesis, I wrote how as a culture we need to take time to not only grasp the complexities and forces of oppression in our current world, but also to imagine better worlds before we can strategize about moving toward them. The term ‘doomer’ comes to mind – a meme which satirizes the apocalyptic laments of those who can more easily imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. For us, the oppressed, hopelessness is something we cannot afford. When your life and the lives of those you care for are in peril from climate catastrophe, you have no time to wallow.

My neighbors are building a house – not to live in. Why would you build a house that you don’t live in, except as an act of generosity, as a kindness – helping those in your community? But this construction is entirely motivated by lack. Those funding the construction (for truly, they are not doing it themselves, but by exploiting the labor of others) are not self-actualized. They cannot be, for they live under capitalism. My neighbors – though even this term is incorrect, for they will not live there – cannot imagine a world outside the parameters of capitalism. They are victims of ‘capitalist realism’ – of the naturalization of the rules of capital, of the imagined threat that must exist outside of the facade of these exploitative and inhumane systems we live under. They are building a house in order to make more money. All value, under capitalism, has been replaced with the supposedly equalizing value of money (this is profoundly disregarding the ways in which monetary value assignment is itself used as an instrument of oppression). The location of the construction they ordered creates a double irony – the house is built on a cliff at the edge of the ocean.

To presuppose that they will make more money from this cost than they would by doing without requires that my neighbors imagine capitalism will exist in the future – that their investment will have a ‘return’ (truly one of the more abhorrent words co-opted by capitalism from the otherwise rich vocabulary of english), that the home will stand long enough and that capitalism will remain the dominant ruleset of the world long enough for them to reap the benefits. The benefits, in this case, are more capital, more money, more of a thing they do not truly need (they’re building a house by the ocean, trust me – they’re doing fine).

The doubly irony is this: that if they are correct – if capitalism maintains its strangle on all our throats – then the erosion which will swallow the house becomes all the more of a threat. It is under the ruleset of capitalism that multinational corporations see fit to continue and even increase their damage to the planet through emission of greenhouse gasses. If capitalism continues, ocean warming, drought, massive storms and flooding, and increasing sea levels will all conspire to rip the rock from under their ‘investment’. To paraphrase Marx and Engels, we cannot see the world in its truth, because our senses have been informed by industry and by our indoctrination into it.

In this sense, imagining a future endpoint of the system of capitalism is arguably more grounded than the alternative. In the most dire case, capitalism dies when all humans die – but it will die nonetheless. Prolonging the stranglehold of Empire only prolongs human suffering. If we can imagine a world in which we care for eachother without regard for monetary value, then we can create it.

My certainty that capitalism will fall in this lifetime is no more a delusion than the delusion which says it will continue to exist. To be clear, I don’t think this is a simple case of even odds my way and the way of capitalist realism. There are hundreds of compouding factors, innumerable things which will influence the way our culture continues into the future. I cannot with certainty predict that capitalism will fall in my lifetime, but neither can those invested in the system predict the inverse. Unlike the position of capitalist realism which imagines the world as stagnant, I choose to imagine it as constantly changing. And, just as the actions of my neighbors – to exploit others for their own presumptive gain – is framed by their belief in the continuation of capital, so are my actions framed by my belief of the opposite.

I want to convince you to take up the same frame. A world in which capitalism continues is not only more deadly, more inhumane, and more exploitative, it is also, frankly, boring. I choose to imagine a future which inspires me to be a part of that shift in history, to be a part of the change which will inevitably come. In this sense, my certainty that capital will fall in this lifetime becomes as much a goal as a belief. It becomes “capitalism will fall in this lifetime, and I will help it out the door”. And, just as the actions of my neighbors (to exploit workers, to disturb roots, to disrupt the ecosystem) become ‘natural’ actions when put within their frame, I hope that the actions of the collective oppressed (to destroy weapons, to resist violent occupation, to plant seeds on vacant lots, to put art on the sides of buildings) themselves become natural within the framework of a hopeful future.