How does capitalism eat itself to death?
Capitalism is self-devouring. It bellows and howls in pain while engorging the very substance it’s made of. Then it chokes on its remaining life-force, heaving to resolve its crises.
In her seminal work, Cannibal Capitalism, Nancy Fraser explores how capitalism devours four of its structural pillars: Ecology, Social Reproduction, Political Power, and Racialized Expropriation. The peculiarity of Fraser’s argument lies in the non-economic nature of these pillars, differing from widely-held critiques of capitalism’s internal, economic contradictions (e.g. competition and wealth concentration, innovation and falling rate of profit, overproduction, and imperialist expansion). And so, capitalism (an institutionalized societal order instead of an economic system) systematically undermines the very foundations it structurally depends on.
Ecology
Everything is nature and made of nature… including us! Capitalism’s contorted logic invents a separation, treating nature as expendable, objective, and ahistoric—a bottomless pit to freely extract and absorb waste. However, nature is somehow also the most valuable ‘input’ for production. So when entire ecosystems are destroyed by open-pit mines, when cash crops exhaust soil, when river systems become toxic… crisis compounds crisis. Declining biodiversity facilitates widespread disease, climate disasters destroy the physical infrastructures capital depends on, and contestations over resources instigate war. Earth warns us that infinite growth in a world with finite resources results in catastrophe.
Social Reproduction
Wage labour cannot happen in absence of social reproduction. This is the unpaid (gendered) labour that creates and sustains communities, and reproduces society and culture: Housework, child-rearing, education, affective care. Without care-work, capitalism crumbles by depleting its life-force: “Productivity and profitability require(s) the biopolitical cultivation of a healthy, educated workforce.” By relegating production and social reproduction to different spheres, capitalism disavows the latter’s worth by subjugating it to the former. This contradiction is evident when young people are compelled to dedicate their most productive years to long hours of little wage, while the state slashes social welfare. Like an ouroboros, capitalism undermines the care it depends on.
Political Power
The ‘invisible hand’ is a myth. Capitalism has always been constituted by public power. Governments enclose and privatise land, host states grant mining concessions, militaries install far-right dictators to facilitate capital accumulation. However, capitalism has a tendency to erode government intervention, subservient to the immediate interests of global finance, banks, and creditors. This is built into capitalism’s inherent anti-democratic structure. Ultimately, its own logic hollows out the little democratic public power it depends on. It becomes incapacitated to control large corporations, too weak to respond to the climate crisis, and perpetually disciplined by debt.
Racialized Expropriation
The expropriation of wealth from racialised peoples is THE basis for capitalism. For centuries, European powers seized, displaced, and murdered their way through the world. After all, theft is cheap. Imperialism continues today through export-oriented economies, international institutions, and control over knowledge production. By expropriating unfree racialised labour, the exploitation of ‘free’ metropolitan waged workers becomes more profitable. Stolen raw materials are transformed by waged workers into commodities. At the same time, the cost of living is kept artificially low (food grown by migrant workers, clothes made in sweatshops), so waged workers are paid less. This double exploitation-expropriation entrenches social and wealth inequality, destroys the workforce it depends on, and eventually leads to resistance that rejects capitalist logic.
All is to say, capitalism’s been on life support for a while. And the snake is really, really sick. Let’s pull the plug and put it out of its necro-misery!