Imagining a better economy for the 21st?century

The crises of contemporary capitalism are threatening the well-being of people and the planet, contributing to pessimism about the future. In this essay, I revive an old idea for explaining why we are in the state we’re in, and use this to explore the importance of imaginative solutions that challenge the status quo and offer a different vision for the future.

Capitalism as permanent catastrophe

Do you find it hard to imagine an optimistic vision of the future? You are not alone. From wildfires, floods and pandemics to the cost of living and energy crises, it is easier to imagine the future as an endless series of catastrophes than anything else.

Yet the pessimism we are experiencing in the 2020s is not new. Anika Horn’s book ‘Future as a Catastrophe’ reveals how 20th century film and literature was filled with catastrophic and dystopian visions of the future. Nor is this pessimism particular to the UK. Researchers at Indiana University argue that since the turn of this century people across the world have become increasingly stressed and anxious due to underlying cultural, economic, and social changes. When it comes to thinking about the future, catastrophising is increasingly the norm, while utopias have waned in public consciousness.

“These days, we are good at envisioning future ecological disasters or technological threats. Yet much more than our predecessors 50, 100 or 200 years ago, we struggle to picture how our society could be significantly better a generation from now.”

Geoff Mulgan

Why is this? One argument is that our dominant economic system — capitalism — has reached a point where it is no longer able to manage the negative consequences it creates. Beyond the psychological impact of an emphasis of individualism and extrinsic values such as wealth, power and public image, there is a strong case to be made that the economic, social, and environmental crises that have arisen from capitalism’s unfettered pursuit of profit are threatening the well-being of people and the planet.

“Thiel, Pinker et al believe the problems of the world are because we’ve lost faith in progress, blaming na?ve nostalgia and the disasters of the 20th century as the drivers of this sentiment.

But they’re wrong. It’s not a crisis of faith. It’s a crisis of results.”

Ellie Hain

What is the solution? To address these many crises, we need to be more focused and sophisticated about rising to the challenges of our time. The answer to the crises of contemporary capitalism cannot be ‘more of the same’. We need something different. We need imaginative solutions that challenge the status quo that offer a more optimistic vision for the future.

The triad of basic controls

The charge sheet against contemporary capitalism is long and well-documented. But how and why has it contributed to catastrophising and pessimism about the future?

I want to try and explain this using a forgotten concept developed by the German sociologist Norbert Elias, who founded the department I studied at. The ‘triad of basic controls’ seeks to connect psychological conditions with how we organize society and interact with the environment. It consists of the natural world, the social world, and the inner world, and they are highly interconnected and interdependent.

Natural world

The first side of the triad refers to humans control over ‘natural’ processes. Elias wrote “the taming of fire, wild animals and plants for human use…were steps in exactly the same direction as the exploitation of mineral oil or atomic energy for human purposes.” He was primarily interested in how humans have exploited ‘non-human nature’, and muscle power was displaced over time by animal power and then coal, electricity and gas. With the rise of renewable energy and the advent of quantum computing, we might extend this domain to include human’s manipulation of physics too.

Social world

All of this connects to the second side of the triad. Greater exploitation of, and control over, non-human nature requires specialised knowledge and human labour, as well coordination. Thus certain types of social organisations emerged, such as governments and businesses, to facilitate this. So in the case of energy, government’s legislate, grids coordinate and firms deliver energy to our homes.

Inner world

But these types of social organisations can only be maintained with the benefit of a stable control of short-term affects and instincts. In particular he argued for this as the reasons why violence has declined over time and there had been a trend towards privatisation. His theory was that there has been increasing social pressure on people to exercise self-restraint over their feelings and behaviour, driven by an advancing threshold of repugnance regarding bodily functions such as eating, drinking, defecation, urination, sex and sleeping, as well as to engaging in and witnessing violent acts. That all of this happened to facilitate the functioning of capitalism — rather than inhibiting it — is not coincidental. Whilst this is the more contentious component — the idea that we internalise self-control in order to facilitate cooperation, and in turn enforce this through our organisations and institutions, it has been argued many times elsewhere too.

Figurational sociologists have used this model to study the connections between technological developments, developments in social organisation, and in self-controls. As Elias said:

“One side cannot develop without the others; the extent and form of one depend on those of the others; and if one of them collapses, sooner or later the others follow.”

What we are experiencing now is a collapse in one or more of these sides.

It all falls down…

The natural world is obvious starting point for exploring the collapse of the triad of basic controls. We all know that capitalism has denigrated nature and the climate, and it is obvious we can’t control it like we once believed we could. Whilst the growing prevelance of solar panels and qubits suggest it is still possible for humans to master non-human nature, floods in Pakistan, hurricanes in the USA, and wildfires in the Artic Circle remind us the picture is more complex.

These complexities have been provoked by the carbon-intensive industries (coal, gas) that we organised society and our economy around. But capitalism today is different from the system that crystallised during the first industrial revolution. The invisible hand no longer makes pin heads but instead writes code. Technology continues to advance, and in turn undermines our social organisation, our social world. For example, blockchain technologies have facilitated alternative cryptocurrencies which undermine central banks and now promise decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOS) which may undermine our existing conceptions of a firm or business. Thus our faith in the social organizations that once exerted control over us is also being undermined, and we can’t trust the new forms emerging at the edges.

All of this impacts on our inner world. Not only are we compelled to show self-restraint and push acts connected with biological functions increasingly behind the scenes, but as Sophie K Rosa argues, we are simultaneously encouraged towards ‘self-commodification’, packaging ourselves up as goods to be sold on social media and data-driven dating apps for instance. As Oliver Eagleton argues, capitalism has “created the conditions for collective flourishing while thwarting any attempt to realise it.”

Modern capitalism provides less and less meaning for more and more people. No wonder then that the Indiana University research concluded that “catastrophising” ways of thinking have risen so sharply, with utopias displaced by dystopias in our collective mind.

Re-imagining the triad for the 21st century

To address these crises and their adverse effects, we need to reinvigorate all sides of the triad and the interconnected links between them. What might this look like? While this is what I intend to explore in more depth in the next instalments of the Dark Flow series, I offer a simple example here as an illustration of what might be possible.

The growth in renewable energy for example has not yet been matched by a reorganisation of social organisations and institutions. Its costs have been accelerating downwards in recent years and could soon reach zero. If it reaches its destination, it could mean free energy, forever, that not only reduces emissions, but also frees up disposable income. It would create another reality from what exists today. What types of organisations might we need if this possibility becomes reality?

It is clear that the answers to questions such as this will take us beyond the parameters of capitalism as it exists now. It will require developing new models of ownership and governance that prioritize the well-being of people and the planet.

That is why we not only need to develop innovative solutions to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change, but we also need to explore new economic models and rethink our social and political institutions. We’ve done this before during times of great upheaval and transition, and often it starts with demonstrators at a local level. e can do it again, and there are lots of ideas currently being developed in communities across the country that offer potential blueprints for societal transition. Each of which is raising important questions about mutual dependence, disintermediation, plural ownership, and socialized data that can lead to optimistic futures.

Answering questions such as these will not only enable us to imagine more optimistic visions of the future, but bring them into being. And in turn will quell the existential malaise that currently grips us, enabling us all to move beyond self-control towards agency and liberation. I believe the triad of basic controls provides one framework for re-imagining capitalism in the 21st century. By focusing on imaginative solutions and challenging the status quo, we can create a more equitable, sustainable, and prosperous world for all.

This is the fourth instalment in the?Dark Flow?series.

#capitalism #climatechange #innergrowth #socialimpact #socialinnovation