The Problem With Capitalism

Karl Marx’s critique of capitalism was greatly informed by his observation of the working class in mid-nineteenth century England. Marx witnessed the grinding and subjugating effects of industrialized capitalism, and saw them as a product of what fundamentally shaped the rest of society. For Marx, the economic system of a society was the soil from which everything else in the society grew. Whether it was politics, culture, ideas, institutions, or rituals; for Marx, it all rested upon an economic foundation. Marx even felt that human consciousness itself was determined by material and economic conditions. In my view, this was the major error in Marx’s philosophy. Our reality is determined by our nature as a species, and created via human consciousness. Our economic systems emerge from this; not the other way around.

It is true that once an economic system is established, its nature influences the minds of the human beings that live within it. Yet ‘influence’ is very different from total determination or complete creation. An economic system is created and maintained via decisions that flow from human nature. As the system evolves, deciphering its structure can more easily be reduced to human evolutionary pressures like status seeking, resource acquiring, and producing offspring. A human mind within an economic system responds to that system with the same evolutionary programming that created the system in the first place.

This means that various aspects of our consciousness can be prompted or stimulated by differing economic systems. One system might be weighted towards our capacity for reciprocal altruism or cooperation; while another might ignite our selfish, hedonistic desires. Yet it should be understood that this mode of action is influence, not a total engineering of our conscious experience. The relationship between our minds and our economic systems is an interdependent, dynamic one. Not a zero-sum, simple cause and effect arrangement.

In my view, this is the framework that any true critique of capitalism must work under. The problem with capitalism isn’t the system in itself, or some psionic ability of capitalism’s essence to control our minds. The problem with capitalism is our nature as a species, and our inability to agree upon a universal moral or ethical philosophy. There is no place where ‘capitalism’ exists, or a singular object of capitalism that can be interrogated or changed. There are only laws, norms of interaction, and methods of transaction that were created by, and interact with, the human mind. Ironically, even though the functioning of our capitalist system has become subsumed by our evolutionary impulses; its creation could at least be seen in part as an attempt to mitigate the very impulses that have run amok.

As human beings, a primary part of our evolutionary programming is to accumulate resources. This makes basic evolutionary sense, as every species needs to obtain resources in order to survive and reproduce. Over millions of years, our need to gather resources also inevitably led us to evolve the ability to compete with each other in order to obtain things we need to survive. A twisted, modern day version of this can be seen when rabid consumers wrestle each other into submission for a Black Friday deal on a flat screen television.

If a catastrophic event (man made or natural) ever knocked out all of Earth’s electrical connections for an extended period of time, our situation as a species would very quickly devolve into primal resource competition. Groups would form, and as the norms of modern society began to break down, violence would become a means of ensuring survival. This part of our evolutionary programming, the need to compete for resources (violently if necessary) is what a capitalist structure is supposed to counteract. Instead of fighting, stealing, or killing for land or food, we can use currency or trade to get what we need. Instead of a group of human beings feeling compelled to compete for limited resources, the structures of capitalism are supposed to create an abundance of resources. This then removes any primal urgency that would prompt a human mind into tribalistic survival mode.

In modern times, during what many have called ‘late stage capitalism’, capitalist countries do have an abundance of resources relatively speaking. The basic quality of life for even the poorest of citizens living under Western style capitalism is markedly better than it would have been hundreds of years ago. Supermarkets are full of food, modern buildings offer protection from the elements, and the expanse of the digital world is available to most. Yet despite the successful resource generation of modern capitalist systems, they have also presided over widening inequality, political unrest, out of control corporate influence, inaccessible healthcare, high-priced education, a rising cost of living, environmental degradation, and a general sense of unhappiness for many.

The reason for this is pretty clear: late stage capitalism has devolved into a primal sorting ground by other means. One where money and profit making are to the modern human mind what food and water were to the prehistoric human mind. Instead of a socially constructed item that facilitates nonviolent resource acquisition, money itself has become the main resource item within the mind's eye. Money’s position in modern capitalist society is like a small herd of buffalo situated amid dozens of groups of primitive, hunter gatherer humans. The importance and scarcity of such a primary resource would prompt intense competition between the varying, primitive groups.

In modern times, we can see the results of this framework in the following examples: the nature of city development, the mechanics of a healthcare system based on profit making, the entire functioning of Wall Street and the financial system, corporate influence on lawmaking and democratic institutions as a whole, the decision making process of politicians, the way workers are treated by large corporate employers, and the way humans in general have treated the environment of the planet. The list could go on, but the point is clear. ‘Free market’ capitalism has become an empty platform for the base instincts of the human mind. Our base ‘resource acquisition’ programming has been tuned to acquire and retain money - and the nature of our lives themselves depend on it.

You might be asking now, ‘well this sounds a lot like Marx’s “economic system creates reality” framework’. Indeed it does. But again, it's important to remember, the reality of modern capitalism has not been imposed on the human mind, it is a creation of it. Over years and years, countless human minds have made decisions, and taken actions which have brought us to where we are today. The nature of those self interested decisions and actions is where I believe we can truly find the problem with capitalism. What is it that allows (over time) a capitalist system to devolve into a primal sorting ground by other means? As with many of humanity’s problems, the issue with capitalism is what is missing, rather than what exists.

In 1958, a young Martin Luther King Jr. wrote an article titled ‘My Pilgrimage to Nonviolence’. Along with discussing his philosophical thinking on nonviolent protest, he conveyed his feelings about capitalism, Marx, and communism. King rejected the ‘materialistic interpretation of history’ and the ‘ethical relativism’ of communist thought due to his Christian beliefs. Yet he acknowledged the validity of Marx’s questioning of capitalism, as he felt that it was Chrisitanity’s duty to perform the same interrogation. King gave Marx a nod in highlighting the problem with an economic system that revolves solely around profit making:

Marx had revealed the danger of the profit motive as the sole basis of an economic system: capitalism is always in danger of inspiring men to be more concerned about making a living than making a life. We are prone to judge success by the index of our salaries or the size of our automobiles, rather than by the quality of our service and relationship to humanity - thus capitalism can lead to a practical materialism that is as pernicious as the materialism taught by communism.

King would conclude this section of his article with his feelings on economic truth:

My reading of Marx also convinced me that truth is found neither in Marxism nor in traditional capitalism. Each represents a partial truth. Historically capitalism failed to see the truth in collective enterprise, and Marxism failed to see the truth in individual enterprise. Nineteenth century capitalism failed to see that life is social, and Marxism failed, and still fails to see that life is individual and personal. The Kingdom of God is neither the thesis of individual enterprise nor the antithesis of collective enterprise, but a synthesis which reconciles the truths of both.

In today’s context, the absence of ‘The Kingdom of God’ has allowed the human mind to devolve capitalist systems into empty pursuits of profit and money. For King, ‘The Kingdom of God’ is obviously a religious formulation. For our modern purposes, ‘The Kingdom of God’ means a universally agreed upon moral or ethical framework that binds itself to the societal and biological mechanisms of capitalism itself. Without such a framework, the pernicious effects of capitalism are allowed to metastasize and grow. This line of thinking somewhat aligns with the thesis of Daniel Bell’s 1976 book, ‘The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism’. Bell’s main analysis was that the success of capitalism undermines the very things capitalism needs to function in a healthy manner.

In a general sense, Bell saw ‘traditional values’ as what capitalism needed, and what it ultimately undermined. But as with Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘Kingdom of God’, Bell’s traditional values formulation has little purchase in 2024. Since the nature of capitalism touches the lives of every single citizen in a capitalist country, any moral structure that came along for the ride would have to have wide, universal appeal and adoption. Moral structures based in a particular religion, or based on Puritan values have limited appeal in a modern, technological, and secularizing age. Not to mention these moral structures are easily subsumed, and used by the human mind as tools to gain resources from others through the mechanisms of capitalism itself. See any megachurch with a well dressed millionaire ‘pastor’, who collects frequent donations from his followers as an example of this.

In any case, this writing is not intended to provide a solution for the problem with capitalism, it is only intended to provide a description. It might not even be possible for a truly universal or secular moral structure to emerge that fully countered our evolutionary nature. In fact, it's hard to imagine how it would even be possible at this point in humanity’s journey. Yet it is possible to imagine how such a moral structure would function within a capitalist landscape.

In a broad sense, the human mind would be oriented towards how to live a meaningful life instead of money fueled resource acquisition. Fellow human beings would be seen less as competitors, and more as opportunities for cooperation or reciprocal altruism. Healthcare would be treated as a human right rather than just another market determined by profit. Wall Street and the financial industry would function more like a modest service industry instead of carrying out a form of legalized racketeering. The price of education would be kept at a minimum, as education would be deemed a public good that should be free of excessive cost and debt creation. And city development would consist of building thriving neighborhoods instead of destroying them with profit driven luxury housing construction.

In this ideal fantasy, the framework of capitalism would be second to a universal moral framework. This would mean that the human mind wouldn’t be solely focused on obtaining capitalistic resources. The moral structure would provide guardrails that would shape actions and decisions. It would create a society that was a true ‘society’, rather than a one dimensional culture that revolves around the ways of money.

Over one hundred years ago, the dynamics between Western style capitalism, morality, the human mind, and society were discussed eloquently in the book ‘Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule’. Written in 1909 by Mahatma Gandhi, the text uses an imaginary dialogue to articulate Gandhi’s views on the status of India during British colonial rule. British rule and capitalism kind of blended together for Gandhi as he described the corrosive effect on the Indian mind and soul. He saw the British way of living as morally empty and revolving around base human impulses. For Gandhi, like Martin Luther King Jr. decades later, capitalism was useless without some kind of moral construct. On the notion of what determined a ‘true civilization’, Gandhi would write:

Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to (people) the path of duty. Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms. To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and our passions. So doing, we know ourselves.

The problem with capitalism has never been the imagined (and nonexistent) essence of capitalism. The problem with capitalism has always been the human mind that created it. And without some kind of minimal, agreed upon moral framework to influence decision making within the human mind, the problem with capitalism will persist indefinitely.

Consciousness as the Moral Axiom

In 1963, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was jailed in Birmingham, Alabama for leading a civil rights protest march without a permit. Following his arrest, he was criticized by eight moderate, white clergymen for activities that they saw as ‘unwise’ and ‘untimely’. This prompted King to respond in writing with what would later come to be known as the seminal, ‘Letter From Birmingham Jail’. Part of King’s response in his letter was an answer to the white clergy’s unease over his ‘willingness to break laws’. King addressed the seeming paradox of organizing an ‘unlawful’ march to advocate for the implementation of desegregation laws by raising the notion of ‘just’ and ‘unjust’ laws. King would write that, ‘a just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law’.

King would continue by referencing the Christian theologian and philosopher Thomas Aquinas. Drawing from Aquinas, King would write, ‘an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust’. King would go on to give more pragmatic or practical examples of the difference between ‘just’ and ‘unjust’ laws. Yet the foundation of the moral philosophy underpinning his arguments remained the same. In the realm of morality, the final arbiter of what was right, true, and good, was King’s notion of ‘God’. A God that contained an inherent and eternal goodness; that radiated throughout the reality we experience.

In the 1960’s, this religious underpinning for moral arguments worked well for King and the civil rights movement as whole. It worked because American society at the time was metaphysically aligned with King’s religion. ‘Metaphysically aligned’ meaning that the cultural upheaval and change of the 1960’s hadn’t taken hold yet. The old culture and traditions that contained impactful religious belief were still around. This meant that whether it was the President in the Oval Office, or a bus driver in Chicago; a moral appeal based in Christian metaphysics was recognized as being ‘true’. The idea that God was casting final judgment on the actions and laws of humankind was as true as the sun rising every morning, or winter changing into spring.

Yet King’s appeals, while rooted in Christianity, seemed to work for another reason. They worked because they were just ‘right’. Right in an intuitive human sense, separate from any religious underpinning. Even back then, I suspect many Amercians who were not blinded by tribal hatred would have acknowledged that it is simply wrong to deny a group of people equal rights based on their skin color. They would have known in an inherent, almost unconscious manner that turning fire hoses on peaceful protestors violated some unseen moral truth. At the end of the day, they wouldn’t need a moral appeal to God, or even a legal argument invoking Constitutional rights. At a certain level of human intuition, they knew that what was right was ‘right’, and what was wrong was ‘wrong’.

In our present day, we seem to rely heavily on this basic human intuition reading of morality. With the fading of religion as an overarching metaphysical force, and the advent of liquid modernity and the metamodern hypergraph; a broadly agreed upon foundation for moral judgments is nowhere to be found. There are still plenty of individuals who use religion as the source of their moral philosophy. Though unlike Martin Luther King Jr., these folks tend to use religion as an empty facade to simply justify their personal biases or tribal impulses. In lieu of religion, there are others who look to the written law for moral guidance. Whether that means the Constitution, state laws, or Supreme Court decisions. Yet these legal formulations can never be seen as ‘foundational’ moral truths. For they are secondary products of moral or political philosophy.

For many (especially younger), liberal leaning individuals, it seems that the basic human intuition reading of morality has risen to a dominant position. When dealing with the moral issues of the day (police brutality, women’s reproductive rights, indigenous reconciliation, etc); many on the left loudly advocate for noble and correct positions. Yet through no fault of their own, their moral judgments have no ‘first cause’. This is to say that a moral judgment that is derived from a liberal political philosophy, while it might be correct, is drawing from a well of secondary causes. Remember for Martin Luther King Jr., his moral philosophy could be drilled all the way down to the first cause, which for him was, ‘God’.

Yet almost sixty years after King’s ‘Letter From Birmingham Jail’, it is not feasible or practical to attempt to root a universal moral philosophy in the Christian religion. The time of liquid modernity or the metamodern hypergraph is not one where a single religious view can (or should) be used as a first cause for a moral philosophy that covers all of humanity. This then begs the question, what could be used as a first cause for moral reasoning in our current times? What could we point to when we advocate for economic justice, minority rights, or freedom for those that suffer under dictatorship? What foundational axiom could we point to when we intuitively feel something is right and good? In my view, the first cause for a modern universal moral philosophy is consciousness itself.

It cannot be argued that consciousness is not a universal quality across human kind. The ‘lights are on’ for all of us so to speak. And of course this raises all the perpetually maddening questions about consciousness. What does it mean for the ‘lights to be on’? Why do we experience anything at all? How does consciousness relate to the rest of the universe, or quantum mechanics? For the issue at hand I believe we can set aside these weighty questions and focus on a single, seemingly certain aspect of consciousness. The fact that the reality you and I experience is dependent on the nature of human consciousness. In fact not only is our reality dependent on it, one might say our consciousness ‘creates’ it.

University of California professor Donald Hoffman is one of the most prominent ‘consciousness centric’ thinkers of the day. ‘Consciousness centric’ meaning Hoffman’s theory of everything, his theory of what lies at the true foundation of reality, is consciousness based. Hoffman likes to use the phrase, ‘spacetime is doomed’ as a reference to a growing scientific consensus that the physics surrounding space and time are not the base level building blocks of reality they were once assumed to be. This new scientific terrain has opened the door for exciting new theories about what lies beyond spacetime. Hoffman’s theory on how consciousness might relate to what is fundamental to our physical existence is bold and interesting. Yet in reference to this writing about a potential first cause for universal morality, it’s Hoffman’s description of how our consciousness evolved to define our reality which is important.

In describing the reality we experience via our conscious perception, Hoffman says that, ‘whatever reality is, it is not what you see. What you see is just an adaptive fiction’. While profound in its implications, Hoffman’s statement seems rather obvious when one begins to ponder it. You or I can only visually perceive a narrow range of the electromagnetic spectrum. We cannot perceive radio waves, gamma waves, or ultraviolet light. Our hearing is limited to a range of certain frequencies, while our vision allows us to only see a certain distance. In addition to the physical limitations of our perceptual systems, there are the deterministically embedded ‘essences’ our consciousness maps onto reality as well.

‘Essences’ meaning certain judgements about objects or aspects of our reality that have been programmed into us via evolution. An example of this would be if you were hiking in the woods and a snake suddenly slithered across your trail. You would immediately freeze, and act with a heightened sense of alert and trepidation. Not because you learned to fear snakes through television or school. But because over tens of thousands of years, your primitive ancestors evolved to associate snakes with ‘danger’. Yet the snake in itself is not dangerous, it is just an organism operating on its own level of evolution and consciousness. But to us humans, in the reality that is defined by our mode of consciousness, the snake is a threat to our survival.

This kind of thinking can be applied to physical phenomena as well. For example, if the temperature outside of your house dropped to -60 degrees Fahrenheit, that would be ‘too cold’ for a human being to survive over a long period of time. Yet -60 degrees Fahrenheit is not ‘too cold’ in its essence. It is just too cold for how our physical bodies have ended up through evolution. The same thing could be said for temperatures that are ‘too hot’, air that is too thin to breath, or substances that are ‘toxic’ to the human body. All of the essences that we subscribe to these things are determined by how we evolved to survive as a species. The feelings and thoughts we have about them are guides to keep us alive. They are not indicators or signals that reveal the true nature of the reality around us.

One more way to think about the ‘consciousness creates reality’ notion is to try and imagine things from the perspective of other living creatures. For example, the robust auditory system of dolphins that allows for underwater echolocation must create a completely ‘alien’ form of reality compared to our own. Or how about the Mantis shrimp which possesses the world’s most complex visual system. These tiny creatures have sixteen photoreceptors in their eyes, while we humans have only three. This allows them to see UV light, visible light, polarized light, and retain the honor as the only creature known to be able to see circularly polarized light. One could debate whether this little shrimp is ‘conscious’, yet it cannot be argued that its visual experience doesn’t create a completely different reality than the one you and I see. And just imagine for a second if we were someday able to genetically or mechanically alter our vision to trend more towards the capabilities of creatures like the Mantis shrimp. The reality we experience would change. But not because our external, objective reality had changed, but because our consciousness had been altered.

The point to all this is that it seems clear that the reality we experience is contingent on the nature of our consciousness. And in my view that means there is something inherently important and sacred about consciousness itself. Every piece of art or music. Every person or event. Every story, emotion, invention, family, or place; it all depends on human consciousness. The world we inhabit is not inherently special, it is special because our minds create it. Every single human being helps build our reality through their own consciousness. Thus each human being carries with them an inherent right to dignity, respect, and freedom. There is no hierarchy to human consciousness. That is to say, the universality of human consciousness demands that no form of human consciousness be viewed (or treated) as better than another.

In this time of liquid modernity, when traditions have melted away; religious formulations of morality seem better suited for personal reflection than broad philosophical application. In the metamodern hypergraph, moral appeals deriving from ‘God’ are just personal belief systems bouncing around untethered from the broader reality. When issues or dilemmas involving moral arguments arise, subjectivity reigns supreme amid the chaos of clashing perspectives. Frequently we know what is ‘right’, but have no real philosophical way to root our judgment. Pragmatism or utilitarianism very often rise to the occasion as ways to justify some kind of universal moral outlook. Yet in my view, if we truly want to find an axiom, or first cause for a morality that we can universally apply during liquid modernity and beyond - we need look no further than the consciousness you, and I, and every other human being has evolved to share.