Rethinking capitalism

1. What does anti-capitalist actually mean these days?

Ending capitalism isn’t just hard to realize; it’s hard to theorize and operationalize. That is: “Under capitalism” means that even with always-late capitalism, we have

laissez-faire capitalism, monopoly capitalism, oligarchic capitalism, state-guided capitalism, party-state capitalism, corporate capitalism, corporate-consumerist capitalism, bourgeois capitalism, patrimonial capitalism, digital capitalism, financialized capitalism, political capitalism, social (democratic) capitalism, neoliberal capitalism, crony capitalism, cannibal capitalism, wellness capitalism, petty capitalism, platform capitalism, surveillance capitalism, infrastructural capitalism, algorithmic capitalism, welfare capitalism, authoritarian capitalism, imperialistic capitalism, turbo-capitalism, post-IP capitalism, green (also red and brown) capitalism, climate capitalism, extractive capitalism, libidinal capitalism, clickbait capitalism, emotional (affective) capitalism, tech capitalism, American capitalism, British capitalism, European capitalism, Western capitalism, transnational capitalism, global capitalism, agrarian capitalism, disaster capitalism, rentier capitalism, industrial capitalism, post-industrial capitalism, fossil capitalism, settler-colonial capitalism, supply chain capitalism, asset manager capitalism, information (also data) capitalism, cyber-capitalism, cybernetic capitalism, racial capitalism, necro-capitalism, bio-capitalism, war capitalism, crisis capitalism, managerial capitalism, stakeholder capitalism, techno(scientific)-capitalism, pandemic capitalism, caring capitalism, zombie capitalism. . .

Oh hell, let’s stop there. Much of this ironically looks like classic product differentiation in competitive markets. In this case: by careerists seeking to (re)brand their lines of inquiry for a competitive advantage in professions that act more and more like markets anyway.

Now, of course, it’s methodologically positive to be able to differentiate types and varieties of capitalism, so as to identify patterns and practices (if any) across the diversity of cases. But how is the latter identification to be achieved with respect to a list, namely the above, without number?

That is, some of the currently listed terms do seek to denote specific contexts and levels of granularity and commonalities across cases. But, as others do not, what then does being anti-“capitalist” actually mean?

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2. The answer: Anti-capitalism depends on which losers in any such list as above matter most to you.

Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel economist, confirms: “Only around half of Americans born after 1980 could hope to have earnings higher than their parents (down from 90 percent for the cohort born in 1940).” But even if true, is the implication that at least some of the capitalisms listed above were “better” then than now?

For example, pathologies arising from increased financialization have been “blamed on the disappearance of capitalism in its classical form, with the latter now painted in retrospect as a system in which market logics led to productive investment, more-or-less shared growth and functional politics.” But haven’t we always been told capitalism is bad? Didn’t many of our parents and grandparents suffer under conditions of capitalism all along just as we are?

Yet any such conclusion leads to an obvious question: What if the seriatim crises of capitalism are treated as proof-positive not of “its” death rattle but of the vitality in morphing through losers after losers after losers? That is, it’s the losers in the above list that first need to be differentiated and tracked.