The Role of Values in After Capitalism

With the proverbial magic wand, and one change to make to facilitate the transformation to After Capitalism, I choose …. Shifting Values! Regular readers know I’ve been championing values shifts for some time (see Consumershift). I also cite Donella Meadows work on leveraging systems change, which asserts that that paradigm shift is the most effective lever … and the hardest to bring about.

So when I saw Editor Adam Cowart’s call for papers for a special issue of World Futures Review: “Futures in Transition: Designing Transitions and Future-Making for Systems-Level Change,” I had to make a contribution. The special issue resulted from a partnership with the Transition Design Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, and the UH Foresight Activation Lab at the University of Houston. The specific question I responded to is “How might worldviews and value systems influence assumptions of change?” My answer is: “The Role of Values and Worldview in Societal Transitions: The Case of “After Capitalism.”

The After Capitalism research is being used here as a case study that fits with the special issue’s call to explore approaches “to the wicked and intractable problems which took decades if not centuries to reach their current entangled state.” The current capitalist system is so wickedly entrenched that it is assumed to be inevitable and its supporting values hard-wired. But the data suggests a shift from today’s modern values toward postmodern and integral ones opens up the possibility of a paradigm shift. A key aspect of this shift is the emergence of the second-tier integral values, which are a potential resolution for the “my values are the right ones” stalemate of today. Integral values see utility in all value types and seek the best situational fit. The challenge is that values changes, like wicked problems, are slow, messy and complex. Nonetheless, the After Capitalism research suggests a timeframe of two or three decades for this societal transition to play out. I believe the values shifts are perhaps the single most important factor to the success of a transition away from capitalism.

The pattern depicted in Figure 1 is a shift from left to right: from traditional to modern to postmodern to integral. Traditional values were once predominant, but eventually gave way to modern values, which are now the most prevalent type. But modern is giving way to postmodern, which will eventually give way to integral if the pattern holds.

One could argue that on a continuum from capitalism to After Capitalism, the more postmodern countries tend to be further along with policies and development more compatible with the After Capitalism images than countries where modern or traditional values are more prevalent.

In conclusion, the reason for the disintegration is that capitalism fit well with the industrial revolution system that prioritized economic growth above all else. The current context is moving away from this system and emphasis toward a new context aimed at addressing problems such as inequality and the environmental issues of climate change and challenges to carrying capacity that resulted from the over-emphasis on growth. Thus capitalism is losing its fit. In values terms, the modern “achieve” values that supported capitalism and the industrial revolution system have likely peaked and increasingly giving way to postmodern and integral values that fit better with the new emerging context. It should be noted that the After Capitalism images are presented a positive pathways based on values shifts, but there are other pathways possible.  – Andy Hines