Reversing the Spell of Capital
Contextual Quote
"We have no faith in the invisible hand.
We have no faith in the invisible hand to adjust the natural thermostat.
We have no faith in the invisible hand because it is the one who cast the spell,
The spell of unlimited growth, the spell of endless progress,
The Spell of Capital."
-Eric Bordeleau [1]
Discussion
Eric Bordeleau:
"The spell of Capital works as a collective trance that’s below and around us, lifting us above ground, abstracting us — extracting us — from our shared living conditions. The famous diagnosis according to which it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism tells us something essential in this regard: whatever we call capitalism holds a deep, intimate grip on us that goes well beyond the ideas we entertain about ourselves as being rational economic agents.
Capitalism, or the economy as we know it, must be regarded as an economy of unpaid costs, insofar as a substantial portion of the actual costs of production remain unaccounted for. This is what economists call externalities. We have been so successful in drawing the line between what matters economically and what doesn’t that we are now on the verge of civilizational collapse.
This crisis can be summarized in three divides that disconnect us from each primary source of life: ecological, social, and spiritual. The ecological divide manifests in symptoms like environmental destruction. The social divide manifests in increasing rates of poverty, inequity, fragmentation and polarization. And the spiritual divide shows up in increased rates of burnout and depression, and in an increasing disconnect between GDP and people’s actual wellbeing.
Our challenge is to reverse engineer this destructive process. We need to resist the economic reductionism led by for-profit corporate entities and start building a world beyond it. How can we internalize in commons what has been systematically externalized by the current economic system? We first need to foster a new ecological wisdom — a new ecosophy — that integrates the three dimensions of life aforementioned: the ecological, the social and the spiritual. And: we also need to make it economically viable and operational."