An image of tree stumps, as far as the eye (or camera) can see. A massive dam project, destroying a village. Absurd McMansions in gated communities.
Images circulating about social media, each stamped “Late-Stage Capitalism,” a condemning indictment of…. What exactly?
The tree stumps? One image was from Siberia. Not exactly Oregon. The Three Gorges Dam is in China.
The McMansions were in the United States. I wish I could claim otherwise, simply because we own one of those strange homes with faux windows and extra roof peaks.
My favorite is a meme showing oil rigs, factories, and a sweatshop making denim jeans. “Behold, the efficiency of Late Capitalism!” the meme proclaims. You could easily find more depressing images from the early 1900s, as the Industrial Revolution was in full swing. Plus, the black-and-white images from a century ago are particularly haunting.
Exploiting people is wrong. Destroying the environment is short-sighted.
Are these memes depicting the evil horrors known as Late-Stage Capitalism? Nope. Just human horrors. (Not that McMansions rival the Three Gorges Dam… but they are crimes against functional design.)
Late-Stage Capitalism or merely Late Capitalism, has come to mean anything and everything negative attributed rightly or wrongly to “capitalism” by people unfamiliar with the historical origins of the phrase. Posts on social media toss about late-stage capitalism for all things suggesting greed, inequality, and corporatist.
Late Capitalism isn’t from Karl Marx. He never used the phrase, or anything similar, in his work. Nor did Friedrich Engels. Marxist theory does hold that there are economic stages to human social evolution. Remember, Marx believed he was working on a “scientific” review of history, enabling him to make scientific predictions. We often forget that Marx assumed there were natural stages in social evolution: we couldn’t skip these with force. (His famous reply to radicals was that if revolutionary violence was Marxism, then he himself wasn’t a Marxist.)
However, the term late capitalism does originate with a German economic philosopher and theorist, Werner Sombart. Not a great figure in either economics or philosophy, Sombart (1863–1941) was a vile anti-Semite. His works on late capitalism include The Jews and Modern Capitalism. His works on socialism and nationalism likely influenced the National Socialist movement.
Sombart was, like Marx, working towards a “scientific” study of economics. He used psychology and sociology to suggest the greed of Jews explained their success in capitalist economies. Sombart’s theories still appeal to many, who omit the anti-Semitism. There’s an entire genre of book on the psychological profiles of successful executives.
Late capitalism starts as a theory that a global network of Jews are exploiting workers and hoarding wealth.
The phrase was revived in the late 1980s and 90 through the works of Belgian economist Ernest Mandel (1923-1995). Another Marxist theorist, Mandel used late capitalism as a label for the Post War period from 1945 through 1972 (approximately). According to Mandel, this was the time of great global consolidation and the rise of global capitalism.
This wasn’t the “end” of capitalism, but rather the “late stage” of capitalism’s early expansion. Think of it as the “end of the beginning” of globalization. However, this theory ran into the Vietnam War, the (temporary) raise of the Soviet Bloc, and China’s emergence. Mandel revised his theories, right into the mid-1990s.
Scholars call out Mandel for being slow to critique “Marxist” dictators. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Mandel spent time exploring why Marxism was distorted so easily and capitalism, instead of dying, adapted by embracing social democracy in Europe.
Mandel still viewed social democracies as capitalist systems, but with softer edges. He never stopped embracing what he considered the “correct” readings of Marx and a “true” Marxist value system.
I offer this brief overview because, even according to the writers most associated with the phrase, we are not in late-stage capitalism. Not if history holds. Systems last 400-1000 years, sometimes longer. Mercantilism lasted past Victoria. The Industrial Revolution is still occurring in many places.
If we assume Marxist historians are correct, social democracy prolongs a more accurate capitalism, which only emerges with a more meritocratic democracy.
Late Capitalism? Nope. Early, if that.
Some theorists argue that we’re barely into corporatism, a bit beyond mercantilism. These Marxists argue we’re to to “capitalism” and not socially ready for socialism. We’re still in the Robber Baron stage. The Industrialist stage.
Step back and ask why there’s so much criticism of capitalism and markets within nations that rely on capitalism. Even the social democracies of Europe depend on capitalism and markets to support their social safety nets.
The ability to critique a political democracy with a capitalist economy reflects the strength of those two systems together. The “marketplace of ideas” allows democratic capitalism to change and evolve, ideally preventing the system from devolving into anarcho-capitalism.
European democracies, the North American trio, and other democratic systems with markets evolved during the Industrial Revolution. The citizens demanded constraints on the markets and the Industrialists who were manipulating the markets. It’s quite possible we’re in a similar moment, one that leads to reforms and constraints appropriate to the Information Age.
What surprised many die-hard Marxists was the agility of nations with market economies. Change might not come instantly, but it still comes quickly as measured by history. There are no pure systems in practice. That’s actually a market dynamic: consumers (the voters, the citizens) demand changes. Leaders, wanting to remain in power, offer some concessions to the populism of the moment.
Will the United States see a Teddy Roosevelt busting up monopolies again? Will we see another round of labor law changes? I have no idea. What I do know is that things will change and our systems will evolve.
It’s popular to predict the end of something, but rarely do prognostications prove accurate. The collapse of the Soviet Union was something of a shock at the time. The “end of Marxism” was overblown, however. It might be popular on the left to confidently proclaim the collapse of capitalism, but that’s just as mistaken as it was 100 years ago.
As the twentieth century began, capitalism certainly looked like it was about to fail. The Great Depression could have easily led to something entirely different.
Marxism today isn’t the work of Karl Marx. Capitalism isn’t Adam Smith. The real question is what hybrid systems of governance and trade emerge this century.
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