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Not exactly, but there are signs on the path to After Capitalism. Back in 2018 I posted Degrowth: A Growing Issue in the Future? that asked “is it okay yet to talk about degrowth in polite society or mixed company yet? Last year I noted the growing opposition to degrowth is a sign of progress. New ideas are at first ignored by the establishment — they aren’t worth bothering about. When new ideas start getting attacked, then we know they are making some progress — they’ve hit the radar screen, so-to-speak.
That said, we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. Progress, sure, but still a long way to go. Growth is a very, very powerful meme. “Growth = Success.” Good” is the fundamental assumption supporting capitalism. One pathway to After Capitalism is to point out the growing contradictions of “Growth = Success.” It hasn’t sunk in yet, but there is increasing evidence that economic growth is hitting a wall or a dead end. We’ve commoditized, monetized, and integrated practically everything into the economy, and we’re running out of new things to incorporate. We are truly moving into an era of artificial scarcity, where “value” is often created by making something that isn’t scarce, seem scarce. Supporters of capitalism will say that everything is fine and manipulate the numbers to say the growth is continuing, but when you look more deeply you’ll see that they increasingly aren’t adding up, or should I say, not adding value. — Andy Hines
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