The End of Capitalism

Although discussions regarding the end of capitalism have existed since the time of Karl Marx, the accumulation
of capital through market-based social relations has endured and has, due to the globalization of neoliberalism and other imperialistic means, become the dominant form of social organization the world over. Although some have argued that this in fact represents an end point for the further expansion of the capitalist system and thus the beginning of the end of capitalism itself, in reality, the underlying creative destructive nature of capitalism, combined with the autocratic political power of transnational capital in the form of the state, suggests that, discounting natural limits, capitalism isnt going anywhere on its own accord. As a result, ultimately it remains up to the majority of us, the so-called 99%, to put it out of its misery. While protesting and organizing are useful to a degree, in that they serve to educate the majority in various ways as to the common source of their collective plight and to the collective interests they share, as well as to gain there active support, these are essentially political forms of action whos ultimate end is either to force corporations to somehow alter their harmful behavior, or to force the state to use its power to somehow offset the various social dislocations that capitalism is seen to cause, or a combination of the two. In essence, they are reformist at best. But while many suggest that some version of a global Keynesian welfare state, similar to those put in place at the national level throughout the west after WWII (made possible in many ways by the creative destruction caused by both world wars), is the inevitable outcome of such
2 political actions (which is indeed better than certain regressive alternatives), it will ultimately be a temporary solution, eventually becoming a new barrier which, like its predecessor, will require the revival of free market principles to overcome. If capitalism is going to survive that is. Ultimately, as David Harvey points out, capitalism never really solves its contradictions it just shifts them around spatially and temporally. Thus any attempt to partially re-embed the economy within society, or in other words, place the needs of society ahead of the imperatives of the market, will create new contradictions within the global capitalist system, both spatially and temporally, that must eventually be overcome in order for capitalism to survive. These solutions will in turn create their own social contradictions, and thus result in new attempts to re-embed the economy in society, bringing us back to the point we are currently at and to a dilemma Karl Polanyi recognized during the first wave of what he referred to as the double movement. Of course one could argue that if resistance to overcoming the barrier presented by a global Keynesian system was strong enough it could prevent this barrier from being removed, thus allowing the system to eventually collapse, there are several reasons why this outcome would be unlikely to occur. Due to this fact then, it seems that, as Polanyi ultimately concluded, in order to truly and effectively offset the negative effects of capitalism once and for all, capitalism itself must be transcended. But doing so will require more than political action. It will, ultimately, require
3 action of a more revolutionary nature. Thus protest actions must evolve and eventually give way to more direct challenges to the institutions of capitalism. But rather than armed insurgency and the taking of state power, which will most likely fail in the face of the coercive power of the state, and only serve to recreate systems of power if successful (Hollaway), the revolution being proposed here ultimately requires that the majority, and I mean globally, truly act in opposition to capitalism by challenging its main institution of coercion; mainly the free market and the dependent relationship we are forced into with it which results from the commodification of labor power and the commodifcation of land and the separation of the direct producers from the means of production and means of subsistence which underpins the social relations of the capitalist mode of production. What this means is that the majority must find ways to increasingly transcend, or become collectively independent of, the market in terms of it being the sole provider of our social reproductive needs. In essence, we must, effectively, opt out of capitalism in order to overcome it. As a result, the aim of the work is to, eventually, outline how we can go about doing so.

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Although discussions regarding the end of capitalism have existed since the time of Karl Marx, the accumulation

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