We will keep on praising capitalism as the “best” economic model until one day we completely and irreparably destroy our planet. We are already seeing what capitalism is doing to our planet. But because the powers that be have so much vested interest, they have thrown a deaf ear to alternatives to capitalism. It has to be capitalism. You’ll hear “we can tweak it to better align with our general environmental and social goals,” but not “what are some alternatives that we can replace capitalism with?”
This is because of the immediate consequences of eschewing the model. The US will potentially lose its grip on influence as a superpower. The backbone of the Western economies, the stock market, seemingly cannot operate in any other economic model. It will require a complete reset, and the West is not ready for it.
So we’d rather keep going with the model that is harming our planet, exacerbating political polarities, and threatening the peace of the whole world.
Manfred Max-Neef, in the seminal work, Co-operatives in a post-growth era: Creating co-operative economics (Webb & Novkovic, 2014), paints a gruesome picture in October 2008, when the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that hunger was affecting 1 million people, and an estimated 30 million US dollars would suffice to save those lives.
Instead of resolving to end hunger, six central banks (the USA, the EU, Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland) poured 180 billion US dollars into the financial markets in order to save private banks. (This was during the financial crisis.)
Max-Neef poses a powerful rhetorical question about the world we live in – a world where there is never enough for those who have nothing, yet always enough for those who have everything: Would a world without misery not be better for everyone, even for the banks?
I pity Africa, because our cultural values and principles are deeply rooted in socialism, but because we want to integrate with the West, we are compelled to adopt the foreign capitalistic policies and frameworks. In fact, we go ahead to point out how socialism failed in countries like the United Republic of Tanzania.
But this is only in reference to wealth creation and a result of the neoclassical thought of examining economic considerations in isolation, as if economic actions do not produce environmental and social impacts and vice versa. How about peace, nation-building, and equity-based governance?
The beauty of capitalism is that it can empower anyone, regardless of their background, to ascend the social and economic ladder based on their effort and talent. However, this can lead to toxic rat races, such as the one we are currently seeing between China and the US, which can lead to catastrophic endings or even the complete fall of humanity as we know it.
So, is there a way to tailor capitalism in a way that it promotes healthy competition, builds the moral fabric of society, and most importantly, restores the environmental health of our planet?
Even more fundamentally, considering its impact and the work that has been done to try to steer it away from its shortcomings, does it make sense to continue tinkering with capitalism, or is a complete shift to a new model required?
For Africa, clearly, capitalism is a foreign idea that was imposed on us during the colonial period. Is it possible to detach from it and adopt indigenous ideologies that are aligned with our cultural identities? What are the implications of detaching?
Even more fundamentally, is it possible, considering our economies’ connection to the Western capitalistic financial institutions?
