WELCOME TO POST CAPITALISM

Welcome to Post Capitalism. We thought it could never happen. Our powerful and flexible global economic system was supposed to transcend irrational human greed and constitute the objective and the organically practical solution to the sensitivities and needs of both the society and the individual. Capitalism, we had came to believe, was able to organize both our labour and our leisure, giving us all we need materially and spiritually, making us who we are. Capitalism was the negative space and we were the agents of a cyclical failed attempt of its overcoming.

People who have theorized the idea of post capitalism often agree that 'if capitalism is to die, it could do so because its property rights prove to be inefficient.' Of course no one yet has proclaimed that the transformational moment has arrived, and they have suggested the end of capitalism, with the passage of property rights from from "the firms" to other forms of private ownership, like collectives or cooperatives. It's as if somehow people will find the cash or the borrowing power to purchase their jobs from the capitalists and turn them into something more functional and fun like a capitalist commune, socialism inside capitalism outside. Here I like to agree with the first half of their claim and not the second. What we are experiencing right now with the economy is the passage of property rights from one group to another.
but this group of people are high level bankers who privately own the Federal Reserve. We are going from a limited open capitalism to a very closely tight network of elites who would own everything behind the shadows of an extremely powerful government bureaucracy.

For those who claimed that the twentieth century capitalism was an exceptional state, and we have quite a few of those theorists, this basically is the end of the exception and Capitalism is finally settling in its proper form. And in doing so, America and the West are behind quite a longer list of countries with a similar state. China, Russia, Venezuela, Iran, to name a few. Except these societies, due to their cultural flexibilities to the proper form of post capitalist rule have a competitive advantage to their rivals from the West.

So what making the discussion of post capitalism more important than ever?

As US government quietly nationalizes billions of dollars of (useless) banking assets, a classic case of property expropriation, that we usually identify with communism, is sweeping across America. As Gwynnn Dyer wisely observes, the US media and the government are not using the word nationalization when they mention the bail outs. But that’s exactly what these deals are. In most of them, the shareholders are not compensated, rather, and have to move on with their losses. This includes the Chinese Government, who had invested billions in Freddie and Fanny. The enormity of this massive loss of property and value will change the face of the global economic constitution.

Another sign of the end of Capitalism is approaching: the devaluation of the US dollar and the western monies against international average, the paper object that itself functions as the most commonly used stock-share for the company called the United States of America. The dollar, as the US stock, will be facing a humiliating defeat in the hands of those who were supposed to turn it into a universal world currency. Instead, they are abandoning so it can join the south American and third world currencies.

This is not a catch 22 where the government that feeds you ends up eating you. This is really the moment at which capital and state power cannot afford to have two dofferent interfaces, so for the sake of the internal unity, the two have to merge and become one.

This unity will soon produce for the world not a single resulting entity, but again two dialectically related things called state capitalism and private socialism. Was there a metaphor for these transformations somewhere in the opening and the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics? Because the more we look, the more we notice the similarities of China and The coming post Capitalist state in USA, of the inter-conversion of state power and capital on one hand and the private sector and socialism on the other. Were Chinese secretly celebrating their victory over American Capitalism in Beijing?

What is the nature of the new beast that is being created, out the ashes of the 20th century finance capitalism and centralized government, as we speak? Did you know that the US government is now the biggest insurer in the world? Very soon it could own a very big chunk of the banking industry. If this is not the unpredicted end of Capitalism, what is it?

And if this is the end of capitalism as we knew it, one should ask, why didn’t anyone, including the Marxists in the academia theorize and more importantly organize for this moment? Why is it that Capitalism is dying, but the intellectuals, the youth and the working class are depressed and not excited? Why is it that out of the fear of the unknown, no one even wants to admit that the show is over, or at least another show is about to start?

For those of us who knew all along that 9/11 was the beginning of the end, for those of us who started to turn back from the clouds of cultural studies and discourse into the concrete darkness of the mysterious political economy, this is coming at no surprise. For us, finance Capitalism was already identified as the truest form of Communism. For us, the materiality of the central ownership of property and means of production in the willing hands of the federal Reserve could never mask itself behind the ideological edifice of free market. Here, I am not contrasting the reality of market economy against our collective fantasy called democracy. Instead, I am comparing the true totalitarian nature of the American government against the pretense of free market capitalism.

Whether America was or was not a communist country from the get go is up to debate, what we can now finally agree is that even if there was an assurance about the idea of a fair and free market, it can now be safely put to rest.

Post capitalism borrows from socialism, but it’s not the same thing. We know this, because we have been watching China for more than 20 years. The question is, does the new constellation of economic power and political will, in the hands of state bureaucrats, translate into a new form of fascism or not? I don’t think we need to worry about the return of an obvious fascist state, but the possibility for the society to move closer towards a post modern fascism is always there to poke its head out of the background and disturb our lives.

What interest me in this particular moment is the characteristics of this new economic system. Post Capitalism will transform the face of the planet. It will have far reaching consequences on not just economy, but all other aspects of life including education, culture, art and the legal political systems of power. This is going to be an interesting show, but more interesting, if we follow the Brechtian advice and leave our theatre chairs to join the play on the stage.