Current crisis may be last chance to think about life beyond capitalism, says economist

The same connected society that sees algorithms and artificial intelligence invade your privacy – with, for example, advertisements that start popping up insistently on all your screens, after a single visit to a specialized website – is the one that manages to quickly mobilize in the social networks to offer groceries to the family of the boy who asked Santa for meat as a Christmas present.

The era of knowledge, which has accumulated billions of dollars in the hands of tycoons such as Bill Gates (founder of Microsoft) and Carlos Slim (of América Móvil, owner of Claro and Embratel in Brazil), is the same one that enables massive virtual mobilization of workers in a strike for rights, or one that allows small entrepreneurs to sell their products on a national scale.

The transformations that the “information economy” produce on 21st century capitalism and how they shape the way of thinking and articulating throughout society are the theme of economist Ladislau Dowbor’s new book, “Capitalism moves – new architectures social” (Sesc editions).

Finalist for this year’s Jabuti Prize, the book provides a historical counterpoint to the evolution of agrarian and industrial capitalism to information age capitalism – in which society, although it has to deal with some oppression, with the feeling of a “Big Brother” watching all of his steps, like the one described in George Orwell’s book “1984”, also never had as much power in his hands as they do now. For better or for worse.

After all, the same society that spreads the “fake news” of vaccines against the new coronavirus, is also the one that mobilizes the media around campaigns against sexual harassment and racial discrimination, such as the Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements, respectively. . What are we going to do with all this power going forward, in order to stop the ongoing environmental, economic, social, political and humanitarian runaway, is the big question in Dowbor’s work.

“New does not necessarily mean better: the environmental, social and economic dramas on the planet are worsening in an ungoverned manner, and individualized control over populations, through algorithms and artificial intelligence, is already very present. perspectives of a more informed, connected and collaborative society. But the essential thing is that, for better or for worse, the world is starting to function differently. It is a systemic change,” says Dowbor.

Full professor of postgraduate studies at PUC-SP (Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo), former consultant to several United Nations agencies, government and municipalities, Dowbor highlights the problems of the current world in three critical axes, which converge with the pandemic of the new coronavirus.

“We are already almost 8 billion inhabitants, increasing at a rate of 80 million a year, all wanting to consume more. We are destroying the planet’s nature at an absurd rate, leading to climate change, the destruction of biodiversity, soil degradation, contamination from fresh water, the pollution of the oceans with plastic and other residues, the generation of resistant bacteria through the use of antibiotics in the children of animals”, he says.

The axis of environmental destruction is closely followed by the axis of social inequality. “The statistic of 1% of humans who have more accumulated wealth than the other 99% is quite cold”, says the author.

“We have 859 million people suffering from hunger on the planet, of which more than 150 million are children, even though more than 1 kilo of cereals is produced in the world per person and per day. If we divide the world GDP, in the order of US$ 85 trillions, by the world population, we find that what we produce today can guarantee US$ 3,000 per month per family of four”, affirms Dowbor.

The third critical axis of society is financial chaos. “Currently, 97% of what we call ‘liquidity’ are just magnetic signals emitted by banks. With governments controlling national spaces, while liquidity runs through plans at practically the speed of light, there is a radical mismatch between the financial world and the old instances regulators,” says the economist.

With that, the current system has allowed the emergence of fortunes the like of which the world has never seen, in the hands of people who produce nothing and make a living from ​rentism.

Environmental destruction, deepening inequality, financial chaos and the current pandemic thus converge to draw a systemic planetary crisis, says Dowbor. According to him, there is a structural change in how we organize ourselves “in this little space object called Earth”. “I have no doubts in saying that this is a crisis of civilization”, he says.

But the book does not bring an apocalyptic vision of society. For the author, the convergence of crises opens an immense space for new ideas. The connected society brings a profound change of political culture, of active participation, with social protagonism, and this creates opportunities for change.

“The future is not written, the four crises interact chaotically. Among them, this virus, which biologically threatens us and blocks our routine, opens up space for change. We can, of course, defeat it soon and return to the same destruction in slow motion as before. But it gives us the rare opportunity to stop and reflect.” According to Dowbor, it is perhaps the last chance to think about life beyond capitalism.

CAPITALISM MOVES – NEW SOCIAL ARCHITECTURES

Price – R$ 47.99 (also available for free download from the author’s website)

Author – Ladislau Dowbor

Publishing company – Sesc Editions