The Dangerous Collapse Pathway to After Capitalism

The initial step in Imagining After Capitalism is circulating the images and [hopefully] generating discussion and interest in moving towards them. The next step is addressing the inevitable “how do we get there?” questions. While we are far from done on the former, it is useful to start plotting the latter.

Let’s review the flow. As the Horizon 1 Baseline, Neoliberal Capitalism, declines, the seeds of a new system in Horizon 3 are emerging. These are our thee AC images. But our research suggests it is very rare that we leapfrog from H 1 to H3. There is a transition phase, Horizon Two, with the major types of transitions:

• Collapse: the system and its rules fall apart
• New Equilibrium: the system re-sets gradually in a looping

We covered particular scenarios for both pathways in the book. We’ve been exploring the Collapse pathway first, mostly because it has captured more attention. We explored Collapse and reviewed several works on it:

• Collapse: The “Comforting” and The Scary
• Is Collapse the Most Common Pathway to Transformation?
• Why Societies Collapse from Jared Diamond
• The End of the World
• Cavalier about Collapse? Consider X-events
• Tribalism as a Lubricant for Collapse
• After Capitalism Evolution or Revolution
• Lessons from the Red Tsar

A couple observations about Collapse in general:

• It is typically slower and more gradual than we think
• It is relative. Some suffer more than others, and some even benefit.
• There seems to be an almost cavalier attitude about it emerging, like “we might as well just collapse and get on with it.”

It’s interesting how often the question of Collapse comes up when I talk about the three positive guiding images of After Capitalism. I note the possibility of Collapse and I did scenarios of it, but light, because my purpose was to focus on the positive, since we have plenty of entries into the Collapse sweepstakes. To sum up where I’ve landed on Collapse regarding After Capitalism:

• It would be far longer, messier, and difficult to emerge from than we think
• It steals resources away from the rebuild; the longer and deeper the collapse, the less there is to rebuild with
• We need more time! I could be persuaded that Collapse might make more sense, IF we had alternatives in place, or at least solid ideas of alternatives. We don’t. We need time to develop the supporting worldviews, systems and infrastructure of the After Capitalism future.

So, we’ll start looking at a “loopy” gradual New Equilibrium pathway. It may be frustratingly slow  and will certainly require patience, but it gets us “in motion” and starts to build momentum and gives us time to do the necessary work. – Andy Hines