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It may serve we supporters of After Capitalism to tamper down the rhetoric on the evils of capitalism. (I know it’s not everybody.) This is strategic advice – not just being nice (of course, there is nothing wrong with being nice!). We are going to need to bring as many supporters of capitalism on board as we can. Inflammatory rhetoric about the evils of capitalism makes it into us-versus-them. Currently the supporters of capitalism have much greater numbers and institutional power. In a straight-up fight, we would get clobbered.
Putting on our strategic thinking hats, we want to avoid us-versus-them. While it may feel good to put out a tweet blasting the evils of capitalism, it simply antagonizes. Even worse, it reinforces the notion that supporters of After Capitalism are radical and to be feared. We have been studying how domains or topics have historically changed. A simple lesson is that change is generally slower than we think. The power structure of the current baseline systems is understandably intent on hanging on to power, and has an advantage in position and resources to do so. One strategy is to paint the advocates of change as radicals. As we know, most people don’t want to change anyway, so if it looks like a bunch of radicals are advocating change, it just takes longer …. and longer.
The good thing, at least from my analysis of After Capitalism, is that supporters are not really radical, but quite practical. Being good environmental stewards, and reducing inequality through fairer distribution of the abundance coming from technology? Sound pretty sensible to me. So, let’s keep our cool. Be patient, and explain that what we are after is really quite practical after all. Some more good news is that support for capitalism is indeed declining. We catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
For those who are angry about capitalism, it might help to think of it as a system that fit an era that is fading away. It fit the industrial revolution, but that ain’t the world we are in anymore. You might even be able to thank capitalism for a job well done, and observe that its simply time to find a system more aligned to the present and emerging future. – Andy Hines
[…] for this – it requires redistribution. This may seem a bit jolting after last week’s post on not demonizing capitalism and not appearing too radical. But we also have to be truthful. And have some difficult conversations … but have them […]