Jason Hickel Profile picture
Apr 18, 2022 16 tweets 3 min read Read on X
People often assume that capitalism is defined by "markets and trade". But markets and trade existed for thousands of years before capitalism. Capitalism is only 500 years old. So what is distinctive about this economic system? Three things (well, more, but three for now):
1. First, and most importantly, it is defined by enclosure and artificial scarcity. The origins of capitalism lie in a systematic effort by elites to restrict people's access to commons and independent subsistence, in order to render them reliant on wage labour for survival.
Over the past 500 years, this has taken the form of privatization of commons, forced dispossession, destruction of subsistence economies and - particularly in the colonies - taxing people in a currency they do not have in order to induce them to seek wages in that currency.
This continues today, with attempts to ensure an artificial scarcity of access to essential goods such as housing, healthcare, education, transit, and so on - goods that could very easily be provided, at high quality, on a universal public basis.
Where universal public goods do exist, these have usually been won by longstanding struggles by labour movements and other progressive forces (including the anti-colonial movement).
2. Second, capitalism is organized around - and dependent on - perpetual expansion, meaning ever-increasing production of commodified goods. It is the only intrinsically expansionary economic system in history (meaning it basically has a crisis if it doesn't continually expand).
Crucially, under capitalism the purpose of increasing production is *not* primarily to meet human needs, but rather to extract and accumulate profit. That is the overriding objective. (It is also the main objective of innovation).
It's important to distinguish here between small businesses, which quite often operate with a steady-state, use-value logic (and which obviously preceded capitalism), and corporations whose main objective is expansion and accumulation (which define the capitalist era).
To sustain the process of perpetually increasing surplus accumulation, capital requires an ever-rising quantity of inputs (labour and nature), and requires that these inputs be obtained as cheaply as possible.
This introduces a constant pressure to depress real wages and attack environmental protections wherever possible (in the absence of countervailing political forces). The result is a system that, left to itself, automatically generates inequality and ecological breakdown.
3. Finally, capitalism is notable for precluding democratic decision-making. Even in countries that prize political democracy, democratic principles are rarely allowed to operate in the sphere of production, where decisions are made overwhelmingly by those who control capital.
The result is that decisions about what to produce, for what purposes, for whose benefit, and under what conditions are generally made in the narrow interests of the capitalist class (workers, the people actually *doing* the production, rarely get a voice at all).
It is worth pondering how our production priorities (and our treatment of labour and nature) might be different under conditions of economic democracy. Existing evidence suggests that democratic conditions lead to less exploitation, more equality, and more care for ecology.
In sum, the tendency to equate capitalism with "markets and trade" naturalizes a system that is not natural, and prevents us from having a clear-eyed view of how it operates and how we might want to do things differently.
(The "more" I referred to involves exploitative relations of race, gender and imperial power, which are effects of the tendencies described here, and which sustain them, but this deserves a thread unto itself - coming soon).
We can have a democratic economy organized around meeting human needs at a high standard, where production is socially just and ecologically regenerative. Such a system is possible, but it will require a political movement to bring it into being.

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More from @jasonhickel

Jun 29
I was honoured to write this for @tri_continental Pan Africa:

"One of the most damaging myths about the ecological crisis is that humans as such are responsible for it. In reality it's caused almost entirely by the states and firms of the imperial core." thetricontinental.org/pan-africa/new…
@tri_continental Because everyone always wonders about the China data, yes, as of 2019 (the final year of data in our analysis), China was responsible for only 1% of global emissions in excess of the planetary boundary. globalinequality.org/responsibility…Image
@tri_continental Curious users can check out the data for China and any other country they want using the interactive tools here: goodlife.leeds.ac.uk/related-resear…
Read 4 tweets
Jun 26
About Spain's tourism problem... it seems intractable but the solutions are actually quite straightforward.

First, we need to recognize that tourism is not a good allocation of real resources and labour. It means producing goods and services that do not themselves directly benefit the local population. In fact, they are actively harmful to locals... gobbling up public space, destroying neighbourhoods, driving housing prices up, worsening climate change, etc.

It is much more rational and beneficial to allocate all this labour toward creating things that people actually need, like public services, affordable housing, renewable energy, and so on.

So, why do tourism at all? Two main reasons.

One reason is to get foreign currency. In this sense, tourism is basically an export (but where the export factories are plunked disastrously right into the middle of your historic downtowns). Why do exports? To pay for imports.

The solution here is simple: reduce unnecessary imports. Reduce luxury goods imports (these only benefit the rich), reduce car/SUV imports (build up your public transit system instead), etc. There are many options here. This reduces pressure for obtaining foreign currency.

A second reason to do tourism is to create jobs. This one seems like a strong argument but in fact it's not.

The obvious solution here is to implement a public job guarantee. Not only does this solve unemployment (a major problem in Spain), it mobilizes labour around socially and ecologically useful things that benefit society, rather than allocating labour to useless things like serving tourists.

In other words, there are simple alternatives to the two main reasons people cite for needing tourism. Any political party that realises this can ride the current wave of popular discontent and translate that energy into real, practical social improvements.

This is not to say that tourism should be abolished, far from it. But it's clear to everyone that extreme dependency on tourism is socially and ecologically destructive and it has to stop.
And for anyone wondering how to go about the practical business of actually scaling down the tourism industry, the answer is the same as for reducing any damaging industry (eg, fossil fuels, luxury goods, SUVs, etc): credit guidance! jasonhickel.org/blog/2024/8/20…
And for the avoidance of all doubt, tourism is an absolute, unmitigated climate catastrophe: nature.com/articles/s4155…
Read 4 tweets
Jun 20
I'm excited to announce this new paper we have in The Lancet Planetary Health.

We show that the world is not moving towards a just and ecological future for all. Growth in energy and material use is occurring primarily in countries that do not need it and is not occurring fast enough (or is declining) in countries that do need it.

The capitalist world economy is not delivering for human needs and ecology. A substantial redistribution of energy and material use is required—both within countries and between them.Image
Here's the paper: thelancet.com/journals/lanpl…

And some key findings:

1. Globally, we use *a lot* of energy and materials. In fact, we use at least 2.5x more than would be needed to ensure decent living standards (DLS) for all.

DLS includes universal healthcare, education, modern housing, nutritious food, sanitation systems, transit, fridge-freezers, phones, computers, etc.
2. And yet, billions of people are denied access to DLS.

We find that 50% of nations do not have access to enough energy to ensure DLS, given existing national distributions. And for 20 of these countries, their consumption is actually *declining*. This is an extremely bad situation.
Read 8 tweets
Jun 17
Hi everyone, I'm excited to announce this new project: a website dedicated to research and data on imperialism and inequality. You're going to love this... (links in thread below): Image
It includes 14 topics and more than 100 interactive graphs, drawing on recent research published by our team and others, including on unequal exchange, gender, climate, military power, financial flows...

Freshly launched! Here's the link: globalinequality.orgImage
Here's the page on global income inequality: globalinequality.org/global-income-…Image
Read 12 tweets
Jun 16
I did this interview for @rosaluxglobal with several brilliant colleagues. We talk about liberalism, socialism, strategy, and the urgent need to overcome the capitalist law of value. I think you'll like it: rosalux.de/en/news/id/535…
"We live in a world of immense productive potential, and yet we face deprivation and ecological breakdown. Why? Because under capitalism, production only happens when and where it’s profitable. Social and ecological needs are secondary to the returns to capital."
"The law of value explains why we experience shortages of socially and ecologically essential goods, even in an age of unprecedented productive capacity. If something isn’t profitable, it doesn’t get made — no matter how necessary it is."
Read 13 tweets
Mar 10
US politicians commonly claim that the US has been a "beacon of democracy" for the past 250 years, at home and abroad. Let's have a look a the evidence. 🧵 Links at the end.
The US was an apartheid regime at its founding, and governed as an oligarchy.

US states generally limited voting to white males who owned property (about 6% of the population). Working class people, women, and people of colour overwhelmingly did not have the right to vote.
Virtually all Black people (some 20% of the US population) were subject to mass enslavement and had no rights whatsoever, and Indigenous Americans were targets of government-sponsored ethnic cleansing and genocide.
Read 14 tweets

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