Why Capitalism Forces Us to Do Without and Why We Could Work Less
By Lothar Galow-Bergemann and Ernst Lohoff
Excerpt from a text in the book Shutdown. Klima, Corona und der notwendige Ausstieg aus dem Kapitalismus ISBN 978-3-89771-292-8, Unrast Verlag, 14,00 €
deutsche Version
The world as we know it is disintegrating at a rapid pace. For years, the word crisis
has taken on a life of its own – regardless of whether it is a matter
of climate, finance, economics, social systems, democracy, migration, or
international relations. In the critical social sciences, people talk
of an age of „multiple crises“ (Brandt/Wissen 2017). With the spread of
the corona virus, this general crisis has come to a head at a speed and
scale that hardly anyone could have previously imagined.
The corona and climate crises
demonstrate how ‚our economy‘ is failing to meet the existential
challenges of the time. Eternal growth, maximum profit, and rising share
prices are the lifeblood of the economy. Without them, it immediately
begins to crumble. The climate crisis reveals that growth programmed for
infinity will amount to the destruction of the planet in the medium
rather than the long term. The challenge posed by the corona pandemic,
on the other hand, has abruptly demonstrated that such an economy can
produce mountains of corpses in a very short time1
if it is not subjected to massive intervention. At first, many
countries tried to rein in the market economy to varying degrees and, on
the whole, not very successfully. Incidentally, in doing so, they did a
remarkable job, in the blink of an eye, of reducing to absurdity much
of what had previously been considered irrevocable and sacred – from the
“debt brake” to faith in the supposedly beneficial effects of the
market itself. For a brief moment, it became clear that acting against
the economic logic of capital is not only possible, but also necessary
for survival. This is an important experience that should be sustained,
because it is highly valuable for any emancipatory movement.
But it did not take long for the brutal constraints of capital exploitation to gain more and more ground against the lukewarm health policy measures. Weiterlesen →
