Breaking Up With Capitalism

鈥湵醭兮€檚 easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism,鈥� wrote Mark Fisher in his 2009 book . This sense pervades our culture like a dense fog, helping to create the societal ethos that leaves our extractive economic system to its untroubled functioning鈥斺€渕etabolizing and absorbing anything with which it comes into contact,鈥� as Fisher put it.

Many young people today are breaking the trance and challenging the system鈥攕upporting positive alternatives, like worker cooperatives, public ownership of water and electricity, B Corporations, impact investments, community loan funds, co-housing, community land trusts, and other models of a democratic economy.

Despite the growing movement for such alternatives, the depressing fact is we鈥檙e losing ground faster than we鈥檙e gaining it. We can see this in the ways in which the 鈥溾€� is replacing the once-stable employee relationship; in the high cost of living that is as they try to pay for housing, college, and retirement; and in our crumbling health care system, which is increasingly becoming to suck wealth out of the the hands of ordinary people and into those of the already wealthy.

The economy is simply not working for the majority. A found, half of Americans鈥攁cross generations and races鈥攂elieve capitalism is headed in the wrong direction. This suggests we are at an important moment, one where capitalism鈥檚 legitimacy is beginning to be open for debate.

This moment provides an important opportunity to challenge our economic system, one that goes beyond building alternatives that capitalism promptly absorbs or marginalizes. We need to help each other recognize how our own mindset helps hold the system in place, and thus how a change of our collective mind could itself be the foundation of deep change. My point is this: We begin to change the system when we change our minds. How can this be?

We Can Change the System by Denying Its Legitimacy

First, consider the fact that we will never win against extractive capitalism if it鈥檚 a matter of raw power. But we the people wield a more subtle power鈥攊n the end, the ultimate power鈥攚hich is legitimacy. When we withdraw legitimacy, we fatally weaken the system, turning its cultural foundation to sand. Why did apartheid fall? Because it lost moral legitimacy when people around the world denounced it as white supremacist, illegitimately favoring white people over people of color.

Second, recall the admonition of systems theorist , who advised that the single most effective place to intervene in any system is at the level of mindset: the mind out of which the system arises, in other words, the paradigm.

What constitutes a paradigm, , is society鈥檚 deepest set of beliefs about how the world works, the shared idea in our minds: 鈥渢he great big unstated assumptions鈥攗nstated because [they are] unnecessary to state; everyone already knows them.鈥�

We often point to 鈥渃orporate power,鈥� 鈥渋nequality,鈥� and 鈥済reed鈥� as the problem. But pointing these out doesn鈥檛 help us get to the root of the system鈥檚 dysfunction. We need to challenge the system paradigm, which I call 鈥攖he bias that institutionalizes infinite extraction of wealth for the wealthy, even as it means stagnation or losses for the rest of us. Personal greed is certainly operating. But the system problem is how greed is mandated, rewarded, normalized, and institutionalized in the practices and institutions of the system.

滨迟鈥檚 in how investments are managed, how corporations are governed; the aim of both is maximum income to capital. In operation, wealth supremacy takes the form of capital bias鈥攖he way in corporations, for example, while workers are disenfranchised and dispossessed. We see it in how a rising stock market is equated with a successful economy, even as the rising profits that drive stock prices often come from mass layoffs that feed the bottom line. This in turn drives a disaffected working class , damaging democracy.

We see wealth supremacy and capital bias in the way that property rights are considered sacred and untouchable, while worker rights and environmental protections are constantly contested. We see it in the way Exxon Mobil鈥檚 , as it followed the accepted norms of corporate governance (maximize gains to shareholders), even as those norms led to forests burning and cities flooding.

The very heart and soul of the system is the idea that our economy exists to serve the wealthy, to allow them to extract limitless, maximum amounts from the rest of us, and from the planet. Protecting and growing their financial wealth鈥攃alled 鈥渃apital鈥濃€攊s the aim of the whole system. As such, it is contrary to our democratic values. It means in a democratic society founded on the truth that all persons are created equal, we have permitted an economic system based on a directly contrary principle: that the wealthy matter more than the rest of us.

Paradigms may seem harder to change than practices or processes in the physical world, . 鈥淏ut there鈥檚 nothing physical or expensive or even slow in the process of paradigm change,鈥� she continued. 鈥淚n a single individual it can happen in a millisecond. All it takes is a click in the mind, a falling of scales from eyes, a new way of seeing.鈥�

A paradigm shift for our economy begins when we name and see the bias that lies at the heart of the capital-centric system. It begins when we see wealth supremacy clearly, in the same way that we鈥檝e learned to name and see white supremacy and male supremacy. When we do so, we undercut capitalism鈥檚 legitimacy and challenge its standing as an acceptable cultural norm.

Many grassroots organizations are already practicing such paradigmatic changes, educating their communities, naming the harms of extraction, and building alternatives: the Highlander Research and Education Center鈥檚 in Appalachia, Boston鈥檚 , , and of Mississippi, to name just a few.

Wealth Grows Through Extracting From the Rest of Us

The need to infinitely increase wealth is what is leading the system to its most destructive behavior, which is the extreme financial extraction we experience today. The subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 was triggered by bankers trying to squeeze as much as possible from families with the fewest resources. Today, the homes foreclosed a decade ago are being who raise rents and skimp on maintenance to advance earnings for shareholders. As a result, housing is increasingly unaffordable and more and more families find themselves houseless.

The bias of capital is built into the economic system at every level, yet its destructive force is hidden by language. We valorize so-called investing and the way it 鈥渃reates wealth,鈥� as if wealth can be created out of nothing. But much 鈥渋nvesting鈥� is really extraction; it鈥檚 a form of taking that undermines the resilience of families and communities.

This is obscured by the way in which portfolio gains are reported, depicted as pure numbers rising, as though these gains just fall from the sky, pristine and unblemished. 滨迟鈥檚 rarely explained to us how these gains come from squeezing ordinary Americans: private equity bankrupting companies, polluted air and water undermining health, stagnant wages and lost jobs, families losing equity in their homes, students accumulating crushing debt.

We鈥檙e not connecting the dots yet. When big tech firms鈥� share prices are lofty, we don鈥檛 conclude that this is linked to a post-truth society or the corruption of democracy. When we hear about the rising number of billionaires, we don鈥檛 think about the opioid crisis or local firms shut out by chains. We could, because these outcomes are the result of root causes found in the structures and practices of our capital-centric economy and in the power that this system creates for a wealthy elite.

This squeezing of ordinary people is what economists call 鈥渇inancialization.鈥� It means financial wealth is so overblown, it鈥檚 come to dominate our economy, our culture, the natural world, even our ostensibly democratic politics. For decades, economists have been ringing alarm bells, telling us that financialization is destabilizing society. We need to see that the problem of too much financial wealth in too few hands is as much of an emergency as the climate crisis. Indeed, it is to the climate crisis.

Where Do We Begin?

Financialization is the logical, inevitable result of a system built on wealth supremacy. But it remains invisible. 滨迟鈥檚 time to start talking about it鈥攁bout what it is, how it functions, how it鈥檚 driving or exacerbating the catastrophes people are experiencing in their daily lives: unrelenting storms, heat waves, and wildfires; insecure work; out-of-control health care costs; unaffordable housing.

When I was a kid in the 1950s, financial assets (stocks, bonds, debts of all kinds) were roughly equal to the national gross domestic product (GDP), which is the flow of income and spending in the real economy. Today, financial assets are five times the GDP. Yet the economic system鈥檚 goal is eternal growth of those assets.

To continue operating our economy based on maximum growth of capital is madness. In addition to talking about the rising number of billionaires, let鈥檚 also talk about the underlying rules and structures that create that obscene wealth. Let鈥檚 help each other understand that financialization is more than a collection of obscure charts in academic papers. 滨迟鈥檚 a force in our society鈥攁n extractive force of unprecedented power and unimaginable size, creating devastating effects: precarity, monopolies, and the capture of democracy.

Financialization and Wealth Supremacy Are Real

Deep change鈥攖hat is, system change鈥攃an begin in earnest when society understands the problem of financialization and wealth supremacy and how it鈥檚 impacting our world. It is not an ideological shouting match. 滨迟鈥檚 a reality we need to face. Recognizing this is a prelude to the great task ahead: transferring wealth and power from the hands of the few to the control of the many, creating a democratic economy designed not to maximize financial wealth but to keep life flourishing.

To continue its dominance, capital extraction requires that we accept its normality, its technical necessity, its inevitability.

Where we begin to transform this system is in our own minds. This is where we stop accepting it as legitimate. This is where the system begins to lose its grip. This is where we begin to win.

Adapted from (Berrett-Koehler, 2023).聽

CORRECTION: This article was updated at 3:23 p.m. PT on May 22, 2023, to correct a misstatement of Mark Fisher鈥檚 quote in the opening line of the piece. Fisher wrote 鈥湵醭兮€檚 easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.鈥� Read our corrections policy here.

Marjorie Kelly is distinguished senior fellow at The Democracy Collaborative, a nonprofit working to catalyze the creation of a democratic economy, where people reclaim control from extractive capital, and where all economic institutions are designed for justice. She is a leading theorist in democratic economy design, including next generation enterprise, place-based impact investing, and a next system of capital. Kelly is the author of聽four books, the most recent of which is聽Wealth Supremacy聽(Berrett-Koehler, 2023). Her first book,听The Divine Right of Capital, was credited with inspiring the creation of the B-Corporation movement and named one of the聽Library Journal鈥檚聽10 Best Business Books of 2001. Her writings have appeared in聽Fast Company,听Stanford Social Innovation Review,听Harvard Business Review,听Chief Executive,听The Boston Globe,听猫咪社区!,听and聽the San Francisco Chronicle, among others.

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