Sebastien's Reviews > Disassembly Required: A Field Guide to Actually Existing Capitalism

“Privatize the gains, socialize the losses.” Mantra of the neoliberal era.

First off, excellent excellent book. It does an impeccable job in explaining contemporary financialized and globalized capitalism - the analysis is measured, lucid, incisive, smart, exhibits strong fundamentals and understanding of systems and their historical evolutions. I learned a lot, Mann is very adept in his presentation and makes complex issues accessible and understandable (explanation of subprime implosion is topnotch). I def recommend this one even if you disagree with certain political economic viewpoints in this text because Mann has great analytical ability and knowledge base when it comes to economics.

One thing that must be understood about Mann, and this may turn some people off: he comes at things from an anti-capitalist perspective. He doesn’t smother the text with this (although he does allude to it), but he does explain his position at the end of the book. In spite of his positioning, I do respect that regardless of how he feels about capitalism, he makes efforts to give credit to its power, its ability to innovate and inherent vitality allowing it to ascend as a hegemonic power throughout the globe. He also explains it is not monolithic, it has various iterations, and like any system it has strengths and weaknesses and he is pretty fair in this overall assessment I think.

Personally I'm not anti-capitalist, I'm more a believer in reformed and properly regulated capitalism (some will argue this is impossible), coupled with a certain level of redistribution and socialized aspects like education, healthcare, safety net with a vision of spreading out opportunity to empower the citizenry. I also think there will have to be an exploration and experimentation with the concept of universal basic income - which may be critical depending on how the nature of labor shifts due to the evolution of technology. Many of these things I think are necessary in order to counteract capitalism’s most pernicious tendencies which naturally creates and stokes vast inequalities. I also think we need to find ways to strike balance between labor and capital, things are totally out of whack with financiers and mega-wealthy and mega-corporations dominating power, hijacking policy, dictating and manipulating the rules of the game.

At the end of the book Mann makes the pitch for anticapitalism, and potential visions for what this might entail. This part? Huh, wha? He kind of demands a sort of magical thinking, leaping of logic that defies my abilities. I respect the reasons he feels we need to transcend capitalism, the hegemony of money and markets in our lives, hyperconsumerism, privatizing every last atom to kingdom come, commodification of every aspect of our lives, these things are problematic and erode us spiritually and culturally (not to mention economic aspects this all entails!). And in fact I agree if capitalism keeps being practiced in the current incarnation it might very well implode by destroying earth systems it relies upon to generate wealth and buttress economies. That is a prospect I have a deep fear of. And capitalism is inherently very volatile, and now that it has pursued and developed financialization of the economy to such extraordinary levels - which I think is incredibly risky to system stability - we face a much more amplified (and dangerous) volatility.

Capitalism naturally lends itself to vast inequalities and without guardrails cannibalizes resources and earth systems if they can be monetized in any way. That’s why we need guardrails, otherwise capitalism will destroy itself, imho. But I have an inability to buy into the anticapitalist vision, maybe it is a lack of imagination on my part, or maybe I’m too enmeshed in the current system and status quo worldviews, and maybe I have too much personal stake in this current system. All legit questions which I can’t adequately answer, but I think the inherent problem is that no coherent vision is being offered (at least in this book)! I also think a transition to any other system involves the potential for great suffering, and this is not really touched upon too much, or only at a glance.

Far as I can tell capitalism is the least ugly dog in the line-up. Mann’s knowledge and critique are impressive, but as he stretches his vision he loses me. In my thinking you always have to be careful to not trade tyranny of one system for tyranny of another haha (or plain anarchy)! And you know, to be fair, he cites as warning some of the catastrophic failures of other modes of production and ideological systems that were not capitalist. I do hold hope for a form, and reformed form, of capitalism surviving, just not the current form suffocating humanity and cannibalizing the environment. Capitalism is not monolithic, and if it is to survive it will need to morph into various iterations that find greater harmony with the world and we will need to counterbalance the inherent excesses of this mode with smart policy.

Ultimately, my view is that the great existential test for late capitalism will be the environmental crisis and inequality crisis we are facing (not necessarily completely separate problems). Both of these things could turbocharge instability leading to implosion. I have to say, in regards to inequality, I have a worry we may keep seeing the top 20% (full disclosure I'm part of this class, or at least it is my background and this critique can fully apply to me) walling themselves off, further consolidating resources, opportunities, and power, further distancing themselves from collective problems humanity faces (even though they are better resourced and positioned to tackle some of the major issues). This prospect, of elites purposefully walling themselves off, is a great fear I have (and a theme consistently explored in various dystopias, I’m a bit of a moth to flame with that stuff haha). It would represent a great abdication in my mind. Hopefully those in power will assume some responsibility and agency, but as things stand I am not confident the turn can be made before it is too late, if it's not already too late (which isn't an excuse for all of us to give up or do nothing of course!). When you are rich, you can buffer yourself from problems and avoid, ignore, deny them (people can be incredibly creative with the mental somersaults they do to maintain illusions!) for longer than the rest of people who are more exposed, but eventually they catch up to you and by this moment the opportunity for effective action may have passed.

I believe Keynesianism saved capitalism from its worst tailspin (a tailspin caused by its worst qualities), and it will take deep and various experimentation to figure out how to make capitalism work if it is to survive. Various ideas will need to be explored, maybe need to inbuild mechanisms that counteract capitalism’s very nature which is to create inequality and consolidation of economic power in the hands of the few, and find ways to counteract the sometimes extreme volatility of its cycles. Maybe this involves inbuilding adjustable tax rates, higher tax rates when economy heats up and lower tax rates as economy cools down, pegging tax rates to the economic cycle and including tailored progressive tax policies to recapture some of the wealth that consolidates at the top.

Hegemony of markets, corporations, oligarchs, and financiers will have to be tackled. Is that doable who knows, but Teddy Roosevelt provided a blueprint that some form of curtailment was possible via government power. As it stands the power of mega-corporations and oligopolies is still waxing, fully captured gov, and is gaining greater and greater control over our lives in the process (highly recommend this read: https://cryptome.org/2015/07/big-othe...). I also think missions of corporations will need to broadened with a dedication to multiple stakeholders, expanding beyond the domination of the shareholder to include community, workers, management, consumer, environment.

As I said, in my eyes the big tests for capitalism will be how it confronts the environmental and inequality crises, the seeds of its destruction or salvation are planted in those things. If there is implosion, who knows what comes after, it might just be a more fragmented and fractionalized form of current systems or it could be something different (the black box, who knows what you’re going to get, devil you know vs devil you don’t). But we will be left to pick up the pieces, and clean up the mess, which could be beyond our capacity, depending on what the outcome is for environment and its systems.

Random note: Mann’s comparison between Chicago school and Austrian school was interesting and insightful for me, there is important variance in their view of the free market (I mistakenly lumped them together). He has a lot of wonderful analysis of economic history, economists, various economic schools of thought. This was a real highlight of the book for me.

Regardless of how I feel about anticapitalism and Mann’s position on this, I feel he treated the material with an even-handedness that I really respect. He has a humility and honesty about his own views and analysis that I found refreshing, in spite of the subject matter he wasn't moralizing, preaching, self-congratulating. The text helped me think about economic issues and systems more deeply, it helped broaden my thinking but also helped me bone up on some economic and historical fundamentals.

I’d be interested to hear what others think on this one.