Capitalism as a cultural construct

[Michael Alexander]

I started this thread as a place to discuss the idea of capitalism as a cultural construct using material from my current manuscript (linked below). I find here at this site people who are interested in the same sort of things as I am. Many people see America in some sort of crisis today. We have the looming problem of climate change. There is the problem of racial inequity and the increasing frustration with capitalism. Extreme political polarization and talk of civil war. It’s a mess.

I’ve pursued social science as a hobby for nearly 25 years. I’ve mostly been interested in historical cycles and how things changed from one period to another. That is, how society has evolved over time.  Since 2014 I have investigated some novel fields: cliodynamics and cultural evolution. Cliodynamics is the study of historical dynamics. Cultural evolution is the application of Darwinian evolution to cultural rather than genetic information.

From cliodynamics comes the concept of the secular cycle, which I use for periodization of our recent history. A secular cycle has four subdivisons: growth, stagnation, crisis, resolution. We are currently in the crisis period of the third American secular cycle which began in 2006. The previous cycle crisis period was over 1907-1929 and the one before that was 1840-1861. So that gives you an idea of previous periods like this one.

A key aspect of secular cycle crisis period is instability due to elite proliferation. Too many elites contesting with each other over a fixed number of positions. This leads to increased competition (which manifests as polarization) and can sharpen into conflict (which manifests as social unrest) if unchecked it can lead to civil war, revolution, state collapse, coup, conquest, and other nasty outcomes. Walter Schiedel refers to things like this the four horsemen of inequality reduction. I note than secular cycles can be tracked as inequality cycles and measures of political instability can be modeled as functions of inequality.

Inequality can be modeled as the outcome of cultural evolution in capitalism in response to environmental changes. The environment is the tax, monetary, fiscal, and labor policy set by governmental actors and so reflects political culture, which itself evolves in response to these other things.

So in the book I describe the secular cycles, cultural evolution and the inequality model, political evolution, and also how cultural evolution in capitalism gives rise to financial crisis (here I rely on Hyman Minky’s and Steve Keen’s insights). I add a chapter on the social contagion model for long cycles to explain current social unrest and new movements and our truly silly foreign policy before applying this material to four problems we face today. And then I wrap is up with a discussion on what to do. Anyway, I would appreciate if people would look at this and provide some feedback.

Thanks

https://mikebert.neocities.org/America-in-crisis.pdf

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