Types of capitalism

I was thinking recently about how there are all these types of capitalism being bandied about in little books and articles over the last few years. They have the most exotic names: Late capitalism. Cannibal capitalism. Surveillance capitalism. Disaster capitalism. Conscious capitalism. Corporate capitalism. Platform capitalism. Woke capitalism. Gore capitalism. Carceral capitalism. Creative capitalism. Extractive capitalism. That is just a very short, quick list. I’m sure you could find a dozen more if you dug a bit.

Why is this happening? What is the point of all these books and commentators pushing these exotic “new” types of capitalism? I have some thoughts.

It serves the purpose of making capitalism seem new and hip, as if it isn’t a 300+ year old economic system that’s operated more or less the same for that whole time. It is actually giving more life to capitalism by giving it these exotic new appelations. This is, it seems to me, the effective outcome, though it’s probably not the intended purpose by most of the authors.

There’s a market for learning about capitalism, but actually slogging through Karl Marx’s Das Kapital is no fun—so these glossy, breezy books and articles about different new types of capitalism serve the purpose of making the people who buy them feel like they have this kind of special esoteric knowledge about capitalism, without ever actually learning the real critique of capitalism. And having this kind of surface knowledge about some niche aspect of contemporary capitalism makes today’s readers feel like they don’t even need to bother going back to learn about the actual original critique of capitalism.

It also helps current conditions stay entrenched, because if there are all these different kinds of capitalism constantly popping up, if it’s evolving endlessly, it really is hopeless to try to fight it, and that’s what the publishers of these books want. They publish these authors who may have sincere commitments to alternative social visions, and who may have good intentions (whatever that means); but the outcome is to entrench capitalism as both an unbeatable force and something hip and new. It’s essentially just rebranding for capitalism.

It seems to me that there are a few distinctions to be made within the “new types of capitalism” industry. But it’s all rebrands. Some rebrands, like conscious and creative capitalism, are intended to rebrand capitalism to make it “work better.” Conscious capitalism is pimped by the CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey; and creative capitalism is pimped by Bill Gates—these are CEO forms of capitalist rebranding. They have their wealth and power tied up in the capitalist system—they obviously don’t want it to be overthrown, they want it to work better, so that they can continue riding high at the top of it. These are rebrands intended to maintain capitalism.

“Corporate capitalism” is an interesting one, because it suggests that maybe there is some other kind of capitalism besides corporate capitalism—some pure essence of capitalism that can be saved, if only it can escape the corporate form.

Then there’s “woke capitalism.” This has died down a bit lately, but you remember it I’m sure—think back to like 2019-2022, when every major corporation made a big show of embracing LGBTQIA++ principles and so on; that was woke capitalism. Anyone with a brain could always see that it was disingenuous, and a way of getting cheap moral credit while continuing to bankrupt the masses and enriching themselves; preaching social diversity while plowing ahead with social inequality. But it almost seems like it was intentionally stupid—like they never expected anyone to really buy it. Or rather, that it didn’t matter if anyone really bought it; it wasn’t intended to last that long; and there’s already been a massive backlash against it—antiwoke shit is bigger than woke shit at this point, really. It even got to the point where the New York Times, which contributed more to pimping woke capitalism than probably any other entity in the world, is publishing pieces about how woke capitalism shouldn’t be trusted. So a rebrand is happening, a rebrand of anti-wokeness; capitalism went woke, so that it can now go full anti-woke—which is what it always wanted most, after all. It donned an obvious mask of wokeness for a bit, which was never intended to fool the masses for very long, in order to triumphantly cast this mask off and be even more rapacious than before. It’s almost like “woke capitalism” was cooked up in order to eventually be used as a way of critiquing wokeness, not capitalism. It’s no surprise that most of the discourse around “woke capitalism” lately hinges on how wokeness is bad, not that capitalism is bad. Woke capitalism is almost occupying the same place as corporate capitalism—that some kind of pure capitalism can emerge if only the woke form is shed.

The last group is the most interesting—it’s the “sincere” critiques of capitalism, the “intellectual” ones, written by “leftists.” There’s sort of an implicit understanding with these ones that they are being offered in an antagonistic, radical way—that they are lamenting the power capitalism has, and merely analyzing the exotic new forms it is taking, so that their sincere readers can be better equipped to combat capitalism in its insidious new instantiations. This, of course, is mostly bullshit.

Naomi Klein is maybe the most famous of these authors; she popularized the term “disaster capitalism,” which is how corporations profit from disasters, like hurricanes or even wars. It’s not that complex of a concept—of course capitalists profit from disasters; they seek profit from everything! Why wouldn’t they seek to profit from disasters? This is how all these “intellectual” new capitalisms operate—they show how profit-seeking takes place in different ways…as if that would be a surprise, and as if anything else would be expected! Platform capitalism—how capitalism makes money from social media platforms; surveillance capitalism—how capitalism makes money from surveillance technology (this book, incidentally, says almost nothing about capitalism; that word was just put into its title for marketing buzz, as it came out in 2018, when Bernie Sanders style fake socialism was at its peak, and anything related to a weak-ass critique of capitalism was marketable).

Then you have the really authentic ones—gore capitalism, carceral capitalism, and cannibal capitalism. The names themselves pull you in and make you feel like something really interesting and different and new is happening. This is from the book description of Gore Capitalism: “tortured and mutilated bodies have become commodities to be traded and utilized for profit.” As if this is something new! Has this author never heard of slavery and slave plantations? Pretty sure that was part of the origins of capitalism. A quote from the book: “Death has become the most profitable business in existence.” As if this is something new! As if war, and imperialism, haven’t always been the health of capitalist systems; as if war profiteering wasn’t ingrained in capitalism from the start! Notice how the phrase “has become” gets used; “bodies have become commodities”; “death has become profitable”; it sounds like something new is happening, a new development taking place—and it has this air of somber finality too. Notice also—this book is published by MIT Press; MIT, of course, has gotten the vast majority of its funding for its existence from the Pentagon; I’m sure they have a sincere interest in promoting critiques of capitalism.

Much the same can be said about Carceral Capitalism—another book published by MIT Press. From the book description: “{The author] shows that the new racial capitalism begins with parasitic governance and predatory lending that extends credit only to dispossess later.” They even put the word new in there to let you know—this is new stuff, folks! This isn’t the same old capitalism…it’s somehow worse. But of course, this is how capitalism has always been. This trick—of making this “new” capitalism seem somehow more evolutionarily advanced and threatening than “old” capitalism, on the surface seems to be done on the side of communism; that capitalism is being analyzed so that it can be overcome; but it’s really just reentrenching it and making it seem insurmountable—that it’s getting worse, and will keep getting worse. There’s a facade within these types of books, Gore and Carceral Capitalism, of caring so much about the victims of capitalism, especially the minority victims, so we’re just supposed to go along for the ride into this nihilistic, perverse pseudo-critique of capitalism which is actually just a fetishization and morbid celebration of it.

Last one: Cannibal Capitalism. Wow what a wild name! Spooky! From the book description: “A trenchant look at contemporary capitalism’s insatiable appetite…” Here again we see the emphasis on newness—it’s “contemporary” capitalism; meaning the type of capitalism happening now, today, as if that’s somehow different than what took place before. This emphasis on new, contemporary types of capitalism has this guise of seeming to empower the reader to be on the lookout for new forms of capitalism, so that you won’t be exploited by them; but the real effect is that it cuts you off from the history of capitalist critique, and the history of communism that goes along with that—and that is the whole point of these books; to isolate you. And the emphasis in this book on the “insatiable appetite” of capitalism, how capitalism is “cannibalistic” and hungry—it gives capitalism itself a kind of subjectivity; as if it has an existence of its own, over and above us; as if it is itself a kind of God that we are powerless to oppose. What role can we play against such a rampaging, omnipotent force? Precisely none—and that is the point. We think we are getting informed and empowered, but we are actually getting the opposite.

The effect of this last group of books, this last group of exotic, “intellectual” new capitalisms, is a rebrand of capitalism (look at all these exotic new types!) and a reentrechment of it (if it’s taking all these new forms all the time, it really must be unbeatable!); but also it sucks up so much energy and attention; it takes a lot of effort and work to get through these stupid, fake intellectual books; and you end up learning nothing about capitalism (or anything else); that is really what propaganda is about—not so much telling you wrong things to think, but sucking up your attention into worthless directions, so you have nothing left, and end up just as they want you: confused, exhausted, hopeless.

Capitalism has never been discussed by so many in so many different ways, and yet it is no closer to being better understood; in fact, I think it’s less understood than it used to be before all of these exotic new types of capitalism started being promoted.