The Coming Revolution: Capitalism in the 21st Century

by Ben Reynolds

A technological revolution is driving capitalism toward crisis and collapse. Can our society evolve in time to rescue the future? Radical advances in automation, robotics, and computer technology have thrown millions out of work and will only continue to do so in the years to come. At the same time, cheap, individually-accessible machines will wrestle for primacy with both gleaming highly-automated factories and sweatshops alike, ultimately eroding the dominance of industrial production. Economic growth is slowing down, and it is not going to speed up again. The pressures fueling today's global unrest will not go away and are only going to get worse as wages stagnate in many countries, solid employment becomes harder to find, and cuts to social benefits continue. Competing radical and reactionary ideologies will clash as political consensus crumbles and the world's peoples search for answers to these challenges. In its opening decades, the 21st will be a century of war and revolution. By the end of the 21st century, capitalism will be consigned to the history books. Despite the seeming darkness of our era, our future is filled with incredible possibility. If working people join together, we can create a world of freedom, beauty, and abundance, where poverty and tyranny are merely distant memories for our grandchildren. This is the story of The Coming Revolution.

Genres: Economics, Politics

328 pages, Paperback

Published June 29, 2018

Reviews

[Diane Hernandez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Capitalism is dying. What will replace it in the Coming Revolution?

Without growth, capitalism will collapse. Automation and globalized production are radically reducing the need for labor. Massive debt loads are mortgaging the future for current needs. Natural disasters and wars are the only way to bring back prosperity, though temporarily, under capitalism. The author presents a five-stage plan for moving past capitalism and into prosperity for all.

Even this Bernie Sanders voter believes that the author’s vision is unlikely within the lifetime of anyone reading this. The US doesn’t even have a comprehensive, non-work-provided healthcare system yet. However, the social and economic explanations of how we got here especially regarding the industrial revolution and the Great Recession are great. 3 stars!

Thanks to Zero Books and NetGalley for a copy.

[J.D. DeHart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tracing developments and revolutions through time, author Ben Reynolds shows he has done his citational homework. I recommended book to pair with Kuhn’s work on paradigms.

[Arianne X · Rating 3 out of 5]

Capitalist modernity is an unprecedented form of social organization. Challenges that would have been an existential threat to past social orders are an essential part of the capitalist order. Capitalism thrives on crisis and overcoming. If there is a social order after capitalism, it will not be a return to any previous attempted mode of production or organization. Capitalism continues to renew itself with each crisis or challenge. It is difficult to envision what a radically new social order might look like. Is a non-capitalist modernity possible? The fundamental antagonism is between democratic politics (idealism) and capitalist economics (materialism). This is current dialectic. Socialist idealism is a political concept whereas capitalist realism is an economic concept. I think a synthesis will be found when politics is thought of as being about things, issues and concerns, not values and beliefs.

Thinking of a non-capitalist or non-market based, but still modern, social order is rather like living in a three-dimensional world and trying to imagine what a fourth spacial dimension might look like. How can imagine life in four spacial dimension or what a four dimensional objects might look like or how a four dimensional object might appear to look to us from within a three dimensional reality? Attempts to render four dimensional objects within three dimensional space are grotesque deformities such as the tesseract which is a cube from the fourth dimension as would appear to us in three dimensions. In a like manner, a non-capitalist, non-market based but yet still modern social orders have manifested themselves as grotesque and monstrous deformities of social order in example such as Nazism, Communism, Fascism, and other forms of authoritarianism.

This book is not a prediction of revolution but an emotional call to, or wish for, revolution. I can empathize with the author’s heart felt emotional appeal but not agree with his conclusion. Capitalism survives and thrives by creating its own antinomies, antagonisms and contradictions and by overcoming them, chief among these is the lust for revolution. Thus, productivity and innovation outside the frame of capitalism are a fantasy though other human benefits can accrue once outside the all-encompassing frame of capitalism. Revolution is really an old fashioned and romantic notion that appeals to my heart, and perhaps to the author’s heart as well but it will not provide the solution to what ails us. The reality is us. The answers are to be found where the problems are it is to be found, with us and within us. If we want better or more rational politics, more humane economics, and sensible social relations then we must become more humane, rational and sensible people. The method of political, economic or social organization is just beside the point. We can have any so called ‘system’ we desire but its outcomes will be governed by who we are as human beings. So, let’s have the revolution and what will rise from the post-ash will be a new capitalist order, the ‘state of nature’ is capitalist. There is no way out of the capitalist dynamic. A revolution will not overthrow capitalism, it will merely redirect it.

The author speaks of the new production paradigm characterized by increasing de-industrialization, globalization, automation, computerization, cybernetics, AI and robotics requiring less human labor, skill, intervention and management. The result is the paradox of rising productivity combined with declining income and employment. As radical automation overtakes human labor, people are displaced, and a great deal of suffering occurs during the adjustment period. This further results in desperation, poverty, blight, crime and stunning levels of income and wealth inequality. From my own perspective, this is why a robust public sector is needed to backstop a market economy with welfare and unemployment benefits, better regulation, access to education and job training, healthcare as well as stronger unions. The increasing trend of replacing of human effort, physical and intellectual, with automation via technology, what Keynes called ‘technological unemployment’, is what leads to the proposal of the ultimate public sector backstop measure, universal basic income that could be made possible by sharing the rise in productivity due to automation, computerization, cybernetics, AI and robotics. From the author’s perspective, this is an illusion and the problems are so fundamental that the solution is beyond benefits and ballots, hence the call to revolution and establishment of revolutionary communes as the solution. I feel that many of the changes brought by technological development are inevitable and unstoppable but that does not mean that human beings or the earth must be to suffer as a result of the changes. The problem is not the existence of markets and states, it is the failure of markets and states. The blight the author sites in places such as Detroit and Baltimore are examples of the dual failure of the market economy and the public sector.

The cracks in the economic foundations of neoliberal capitalist organization also lead to political instability and a shirking and increasingly ineffectual political center which I think is the only barrier of separation between revolutionaries on the left and reactionaries on the right. The fundamental philosophical problem that I see is in finding a way to fill the hole in objectivity left by the death of God. The death of God presents us with a landscape of human action characterized by less hope and less fear but greater ambiguity. The question is how to structure our common existence upon shared values. Can such a basis be built upon on the shared activity of exchange and commerce which is as old as the human civilization? Any such exchange and commerce would have to be conducted in accordance with the principles of reason and good faith.

Some Critical Comments

The author posits a theory early in the book (p. 16) that I think exhibits a fundamental misunderstanding of human relations and a misreading of history. This is the basis of the revolutionary communes proposal. To wit: the author claims that if the medieval era peasants had vanquished their feudal overlords, they would have come to hold land and resources in common consistent with the peasant traditions of Europe. Remaining true to the peasant traditions, they would have established a new paradigm for industrial production, one based on cooperation and common ownership. The fallacy here is that once the peasants overthrow their overlords, they become the overlords. Once they come into the position of ownership, they are no longer peasants and the peasant traditions of common ownership and cooperation will give way to the model of private ownership and competition that we recognize. This new peasant world would become unrecognizable as such as it takes on the characteristics of competition, private ownership, authority and hierarchy, no different than the one overthrown by the peasants. This is a new world in which we can pretend that all peasants are equal but one in which we will find that some peasants are more equal than others. Class structure would reassert itself again. Success is the great undoing of all great dreams. Orwell was right. The author assumes more nobility on the part of humans than is actually present. In the annals of human history, we have few experiences of a society based solely and fully on common ownership and mutual voluntary cooperation, to reach the levels of wealth and technology to which are accustomed, without positive or negative inducements, which could take the form of honor, recognition or pecuniary renumeration. There is most often an incentive to cooperate based on reward or punishment. Authority and hierarchy arise naturally out of the need to organize for the simple goal of survival. Institutional structure and bureaucracy naturally emerges and separates the leaders from the base as has been the case with every social movement, political party or union organization once they each gain acceptance and legitimacy. The gap between revolution and management is unbridgeable as the contradictions come into sharp relief. In this sense, Marx was correct in claiming that ‘capitalism’ is an economic system that lives off labor rather than a system where human survival itself lives off work. As Ben Reynolds points out, labor is the commodification of human effort, or work.

Ben Reynolds marvels at how capitalism was saved after two destructive world wars and many a financial crises. It did so because it is nothing special, it is just the name given to what people do naturally, viz., by, sell, exchange and try to improve their material well-being and standard of living. Unless of course we want to say is that what people do naturally is to nastily oppress one another. I think there is some truth in each of these perspectives. However, some of the worst pollution and abuse of the environment and ecological devastation took place under socialist regimes. I do not believe that communism will lead to freedom the fulfillment of human needs as the author suggest. It seems to me that apocalyptic actual history of the 20th century screams against these dreams. The author suggests a system of voluntary work and the distribution of resources based on need. I am not sure if the author has actual human beings in mind for this paradise. The author would like for us to learn from the history of the failed socialist states of the 20th century and try again and learn from their mistakes so we can ‘get it right this time’, seriously? The continuance of neoliberal capitalism is not a solution and is the cause of many social dislocations, economic disruptions and ecological degradation, but state socialism is a dead-end road already traveled. Capitalism is characterized by the wealth problem and socialism is characterized by the power problem. The only solution to this dilemma offered by the author is unrealistic platitudes about the ‘people’ holding direct political power through the reintroduction of the revolutionary communes as the panacea to all political issues, social relations, economic problems and cultural challenges. If it is revolution that Ben Reynolds wants, then he does not go far enough. A true radical revolution must embrace the totality of reality, both imminent and transcendent. A revolution limited to the organization of society, social, political and economic, ignores the totality of existence and collapses into a set of abstractions. Thus far, this were every revolutionary movement has landed.

Amusing Contradiction

The author suggests an economy of cooperative enterprises without profit is impossible (p.244) with a social system that will provide benefits based on taxes on the cooperatives (p. 248). How is this possible since taxes are assessed against profit? The author would have us outlaw profit and tax it at the same time, like I said, amusing. This is a necessary step on the way to the social paradise where resource scarcity is magically abolished.

Possible Fallacy

There is something called the ‘Broken Window’ fallacy identified by Frederic Bastiat. On several occasions, Ben Reynolds sites war and destructive catastrophe as opportunities for capitalism to reset itself and grow after reaching a natural stop. This is a dubious idea, such destruction owing to war and natural causes results in replacement and rework and not additional wealth. Accumulated assets and wealth are destroyed and need to be replaced. The resources utilized in the replacement and rework (economic activity) could have alternatively been employed in creating additional wealth and assets but for the disaster. The problem, it is not possible to see what additional wealth and assets would have been created if the destroyed wealth did not need to be replaced. Replacing something lost is not the creation of something new.

Some Analysis

Beyond this, the author provides a very readable and valuable history of economics and industrial production with a cogent analysis of the underlying faults in the modern market economy such as falling real incomes combined with incentives for increased consumption that are funded by debt rather than income with the fiction of accounting for the debt as if it was going to be repaid. The dramatically asymmetrical distribution of income and wealth facilitated by the modern market economy forces those without the income and wealth to fund needed and desired consumption with debt. The debt is now growing faster than growth itself. This will eventually produce a crisis in the debt markets and then in the public equity markets. One would think that in the long-term, the rate of economic growth will converge with rate of population growth, subject to resource and environmental constraints. This being the result of a saturation point being reached in terms of additional goods and services needed as well as diminishing marginal utility of additional consumption and thus decreasing profit. This is disastrous in a system of capitalism that requires aggressive revenue and profit growth. In any case, the benefits of raising productivity do not get translated into uniformly higher rates of income. The asymmetrical income and thus wealth building features of the current state of affairs is a natural feature of a market economy and we end up subsidizing private profit with public loss.

The current, and age old, pathologies brought about by change and evolutionary development (not to be confused with improvement) which are often painful and unfair is that costs and benefits are seldom distributed with justice or equity. Our current condition is characterized by the glaring contradiction of a constant growth paradigm within a world of finite resources, but this is a contradiction not limited to late capitalism, it is the result of growth in the human population under any form of economic organization, political authority or social consensus. Capitalism is just the current instantiation of one of the oldest vices, human greed. All forms of human activity are undertaken for gain or improvement. This is just called out and measured under the convenient label of capitalism. Profit did not arise with industrialism as author asserts, improvement and gain just acquired a more formal designation as a result of formal industrialization, organization and measurement. Industrialization, which requires organization on a vast and unprecedented scale, requires more sophisticated methods of organization and measurement. The concept of measurable and reportable profit is one of the results of increased complexity. Pre-industrial and non-industrial production are still human activities and still exhibit the same characteristics, but in a more informal manner. In any case, perspective solutions to the very real problems leading us to catastrophe (ecological) collapse (financial) and conflict (resources) are not be found in fanciful delusions requiring a radical and metaphysical transformation of what it means to be human. How do we overturn the settled natural order or repeal the ‘laws’ of nature or expunge the core features of human development and human bias? Expanding human development based on increasing population will combine with the human cognitive bias for ‘more’ or continuous improvement and will not abate. The best we can do is to reform and transform the current neoliberal form capitalism into the social democratic form of capitalism with improvements to welfare and unemployment benefits, better regulation, stronger unions, access to education and healthcare.

I am not defending neoliberal capitalism, but the author speaks too easily of capitalism collapsing under the weight of its internal contradictions. These eschatological predictions have been made since there was a phenomenon that could be called capitalism. How long must we wait for the neo-paradise? It was not capitalism that reached its inevitable limits and collapsed, it was socialism, the system vaguely defined and preferred by Ben Reynolds, that reached its inevitable limits and collapsed. It would seem the only ceiling on the growth of capitalism is that of the constant growth paradigm within a world of limited resources. The contradiction of infinite growth from a finite base of increasingly depleted resources is the inevitable killer of capitalism where economic growth will drop below population growth leading to decreasing standards of living and material well-being. The risk is the human population and its needs exceeding that carrying capacity of the environment. The one thing that our fetish goddess Technology cannot do is conjure up infinite resources from a finite environment. We are instead on a collision course with environmental and ecological reality. The other contradictions presented by Ben Reynolds as unresolvable are 1) capitalism depends on exploiting labor while making labor increasing obsolete and 2) providing an elite class with monopoly powers over the means of production while encouraging and creating new form of distributed production. These two are not truly contradictions. How can we give up capitalism without having precise and concrete ideas about what will replace it? For example, in the absence of markets, what will determine prices and regulate distribution ?

The other genuine contraction is ethical. Our shiny new clean advances, the pristine purity and beauty of the cloud as well as the gleaming cathedrals of technology are built upon maintaining violence, degradation, servitude and inhumanity in support of these. Ironically, the cloud and its perceived immateriality actually requires the starkest material reality of vast buildings, servers, cables, lines, wires, and a large base of carbon-heavy infrastructure to produce more electricity etc. A great deal of our pleasurable and peaceful progress is built upon violence and oppression which are as much a part of the global market paradigm as technological advancement and greater material wealth. While climate change may indeed be a part of the Earth’s natural cycle, as Ben Reynolds point out, the current rate of change is not and is unprecedented.

An Offbeat Solution (Not in the Book)

There is a blind spot in financial and cost accounting is that it does not assign expenses to externalities. Environmental regulations do not seem to work owing to the comprised political nature in which they are promulgated, exceptions granted, outright cheating and the haphazard enforcement. Perhaps a better approach would be for the private accounting authorities to develop new socially based principles of accounting and accounting standards

[Joseph Spuckler · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Coming Revolution: Capitalism in the 21st Century by Ben Reynolds is the prediction of the fall of capitalism by its own means. Reynolds is an author and activist based until recently in New York City. His essays, articles, and commentary have appeared in ROAR Magazine, CounterPunch, Center for a Stateless Society, China-US Focus, and The Diplomat.

There can be no doubt that capitalism has raised the standard of living where it was practiced in some form. England grew into a world power. The United States followed. Now, China has reformed its centrally planned economy and is now the second largest economy on the planet. Capitalism does raise the standard of living for some. Capitalism relies on markets for goods, profits, and raw materials. It requires growth to sustain itself. Raw materials are creating environmental problems as well as a new wave of colonization. Profits are unevenly distributed. Markets become saturated and planned obsolescence creates repeat buying. Capitalism built a pyramid scheme and is running short of new ideas to keep it alive.

Reynolds looks at the history of capitalism and how mechanization has changed production. For example, the printing press was one of the most important inventions in history. It changed many things. Many more people had access to books. Literacy increased. The printing press did something that hand copied books couldn't do. The price became cheaper after producing the first book. Once the type was set many copies could be produced with very little labor. Certainly less labor than copying a book by hand. The printing press ultimately was responsible for creating unemployment. There is little argument against the printing press; it's good certainly outweighs any negatives. Today, it is even better. E-books allow publishers to create a single file and replicate it without any effort.

Automation is one of the areas Reynolds examines and its effects on workers. Machines produce more and more products without human intervention. 3D printing is adding another level to automation. It will just be a matter of time before items can be cheaply printed in metal and other materials. Factories would only need to be supplied with raw materials. The costs for producers would drop. Aside from not requiring human employees, factories would not need to be heated, cooled, or even lit.

Reynolds does examine economic theory in this book. From the efficiency of industrialization, the centralization of workers and capital, and even the internet have changed how the economy works. In 2015, MP3 sales overtook CD sales. This is significant because reproduction and distribution of MP3s require almost no cost. The is no physical product to distribute. A Chinese company has begun computer printers using cement and waste to build prefabricated housing at a rate of ten houses in twenty-four hours. The revolution that Marx predicted might just be an evolution. The efficiency of capitalism and (computerized) industrialization is changing the world economy. American industrial production has not decreased as commonly believed, it has increased, but uses far less labor.

As of 2012, almost 80% of US employment is in the service sector. Employment in the industrial sector has dropped. Farm employment has also declined with large-scale farms and automation. The service sector employment will soon drop too with automation. As retail moves online and warehouses become more and more automated, there will be even less demand for labor. Although more is being done with less labor, products have to be bought. If no one is employed, no one has the money to purchase the goods being produced. This creates an interesting dilemma. A well-written history and projection of capitalism and hope for the future without revolution.

[Aaron Schuschu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Said it would get more into Zapatista governance but didn’t. Lot of stuff about automation.