Review: The End of Capitalism

I found out about The End Of Capitalism from an interview by C. J. Polychroniou, Beyond Capitalism: The Diverse Economies, in which George DeMartino and Ilene Grabel talked about how the path-breaking work of JK Gibson-Graham (the pen name of Julie Graham and Kathy Gibson) fundamentally altered the how many scholars view the concept of “the economy.” A central principle of their work was that economies, such as the US, that we identify as “capitalist” are actually comprised of many different and non-capitalist arrangements. Interesting!

I was sufficiently intrigued to get the original book, which was written in 1996 with a new edition ten years later. As the authors reflected on what had happened over that ten year period, they observed that individuals and groups were pursuing research on a ranged of alternatives, from cooperatives to local currencies to community credit institutions to commons restoration. After Capitalism is not a new thing!

Though certainly no fault of the authors, it was a bit disappointing to note that the oft-used examples of the Zapatista movement and Mondragon were referred to … way back then. The disappointing aspect is that we are still using them today. It’s great that these types of activities have been doing on a long time… not-so-great that fresher examples are not replacing or supplementing them.

I’ll confess I was a bit nervous that I might have missed a potential guiding image, but that was not their purpose [perhaps in their follow-on work A Postcapitalist Politics?].

What I did find that made this a worthwhile read was a compelling case that the notion of capitalism as an over-arching ubiquitous operating system over-states the case. I clearly stated capitalism as an operating system in my work, but I think it is a very fair and useful perspective to acknowledge that here are in fact many alternatives operating around or outside of it. The fact that the economic space is more open and less dominated is grounds for hope in their view. I agree! In their words: “Representing the diverse economy is a deconstructive process that displaces the binary hierarchies of market/non-market and capitalism/non-capitalism, turning singular generalities into multiple particularities, and yielding a radically heterogeneous economic landscape.” I included this quote to advise potential readers that that the prose is heavily academic :-).

By non-capitalist economy, they mean things like the personal investment manager who is a self-employed entrepreneur and leverages their own surplus labor, self-employed workers in general, and those involved in the production of household goods and services. They point out that many economic transactions are non-market transactions in which goods and services are not produced as commodities. Alas, since this book was written, capitalism has been on quest to commoditize everything possible … and has had great success in doing so.  

They were hopeful for a post-capitalist future and saw signs of a decentralized or community-based alternatives having the potential to be globally transformative.” But they also acknowledge a difficult path ahead: “Given present circumstances, we would be crazy to offer an optimistic prognosis for the world and its denizens, but we can learn to call forth hope from our world-battered sensibilities.” This 1996 quotes sounds too much like the present.

Nonetheless, we have an important conceptual insight. Capitalism is not as monolithic as represented and there is indeed room for change. Let the work continue! – Andy Hines