The Cancer Stage of Capitalism

John McMurtry

Description

The Cancer Stage of Capitalism is a modern classic of critical philosophy and political economy, renowned for its depth and comprehensive research. It provides a step-by-step diagnosis of the continuing economic collapse in the US and Europe and has had an enormous influence on new visions of economic alternatives.



John McMurtry argues that our world disorder of unending crises is the predictable result of a cancerous economic system multiplying out of all control and destroying ecological, social and organic life - a process he describes as 'global ecogenocide'. In this updated edition he explains the 'social immune response' required to fight this cancer, prescribing developments akin to the Occupy movement and the 'Pink Tide' democratic social transformation occurring in Latin America.



In a global cultural orthodoxy that is increasingly hostile to life, this book shows the necessity and possibility of building a sustainable society based on a universal commitment to nature and humanity.

1. Decoding the Cancer System and Its Resolution

2. The Ancient Taboo

3. The Pathologisation of the Free Market

4. The Social Immune System and the Cancer Stage of Capitalism

5. The Life Code versus the Money code: The Paradigm Shift

6. The Great Vehicle of the Civil Commons

Notes

Index

Sujets

• Environmental Science
• Sciences et techniques
• Environment
• Economics
• Science

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 20 juillet 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781849648042
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Cancer Stage of Capitalism
For Life on Earth

First published 1999 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA Second edition first published 2013 www.plutobooks.com
Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Published in Canada by Fernwood Publishing 32 Oceanvista Lane, Black Point, Nova Scotia, B0J 1B0 and 748 Broadway Avenue, Winnipeg, MB R3G 0X3 www.fernwoodpublishing.ca
Fernwood Publishing Company Limited gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Nova Scotia Department of Tourism and Culture and the Province of Manitoba, through the Book Publishing Tax Credit, for our publishing program.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication McMurtry, John, 1939-, author
The cancer stage of capitalism: from crisis to cure / John McMurtry. – 2nd edition.
First edition published: London: Pluto Press, 1999.
Co-published by Pluto Press.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-55266-592-3 (pbk.)
1. Capitalism–Moral and ethical aspects. 2. Economics–Sociological aspects. 3. Economic history. 4. Marxian economics.
I. Title.
HB501.M275 2013 330.12'2 C2013-902838-2
Copyright © John McMurtry 1999, 2013
The right of John McMurtry to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 3314 4 Hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 3313 7 Paperback (Pluto Press) ISBN 978 1 55266 592 3 Paperback (Fernwood) ISBN 978 1 8496 4803 5 PDF eBook ISBN 978 1 8496 4805 9 Kindle eBook ISBN 978 1 8496 4804 2 EPUB eBook
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Designed and produced by Chase Publishing Services Ltd Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Simultaneously printed digitally by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, UK and Edwards Bros in the United States of America
Contents


Acknowledgements

Preface
What is Capital?

1. Decoding the Cancer System and its Resolution
How China and the West Collaborate in Destroying the Living World Without Knowing It


Explanatory Model versus Metaphor
How Global System Images Reverse Reality
The Primary Growth Circuit of the Money-Sequence Cancer System
The Public Investment Alternative Known to Work
Cancer and Disconnection from the System Causing It


Tracking the Cause of the Cancers We Already Know
The Frame of Meaning: Full-Spectrum System Attack on Life-Organization
Understanding Causation Against Disease Masking
Recognizing the System Disease as Taboo
More Deadly as a Causal Mechanism than the Bubonic Plague
Junk Food Claws and Other Deprivations of Life-Means in Globalizing Metastasis
Conflation of Life-Needs and Commodity Desires


Not Zero Growth, But Zero Bad Growth
Living with the Disease: How I Came to Recognize the Cancer Stage of Capitalism
Connecting the Multiple Pathways of Attack on Social Life-Organization


Explaining the Deep Structure of Global Economic Collapse and Recovery
Beyond the Shock Doctrine: The Meta-Programme of the Global Cancer System
There is No Such Thing as Society: Destruction of Social Life-Organization to Grow Transnational Money-Sequences
The Real Entitlement System: Transnational Money-Sequencing Eating Societies Alive
Diagnostic History: Emergence of the Cancer System Across Nations and Time


The Non-Shock Pathologization of Society Growing Beneath Connected Diagnosis
The Cancer System in Formation: The 1991 Eco-Genocide of Iraq as Signal of the Meaning
The 9-11 Strategy to Reset World Uprising to No Resistance
The Rising World Awareness Prior to 9-11
The 9-11 Construction in Historical Overview
New Orleans and the Failed US State
Decoding the Deep-Structural Lies that Block Social-Immune Recognition
From South to North, West and East: System Tumours in the First World
From Big-Oil Devastation to Nuclear Meltdown: Decoding the Global Cancer Driver
A Diagnostic Summary of Degenerate Trends: The Cancer System’s Invasion at All Levels of Global Life-Organization


Synopsis, Clarifications and Illustrations
The Overpopulation Argument
Principled Summary of the Cancer Pattern
Social Choice by Self-Regulation versus Deterministic Explanation and Fate
Life-Capital Sequences versus Money-Capital Sequences: The Turning Point of Understanding and Recovery


Re-Grounding in Life-Capital Against the Epochal Eco-Genocides
Seeing through the Magic Thinking of the System
Beyond the Classical, Marxian and Neo-Classical Models: The Basic Framework of Meaning
Capital, Goods and Investment: Resetting Understanding to Life-Coherence
Blocks Against Life-Value and Capital Recognition by Even Life-World Theory
Understanding Life-Capital versus Money-Capital Today

2. The Ancient Taboo
Thinking Past the Ruling Order as Age-Old Taboo East and West


Classical Asian Philosophy More System-Oppressive than the Greek
Critical Thought as Social-Immune System


The Suspension of Critical Thought in a Dark Age
Late Modernity’s Questions Begin to Rise


Critical Social Principles from the Twentieth Century On
Value-Free ‘Economic Laws’ as Automatized System Enforcement


The Mathematical Incarceration of Economics in Money-Sequences
Philosophy Institutes the First Premise of Economics as Rationality Itself
From Methodological Censorship to Ruling Value-Programme
Thinking Beyond the Social Script as an Obligation of Human Life


Recognizing Healthy versus Diseased Ruling Value-Systems
Re-Grounding in Life-Necessity to Recognize the Usurpation of Society
Life-Protective Rule of Law Overridden but Available
Technology as Saviour or Destroyer: Unmasking the Ruling Fetishism


The Ruling Value-Programme behind ‘Technological Society’ and the ‘Soulless Mega-Machine’

3. The Pathologization of the Free Market
The Real Free Market


Recovering from the Social Amnesia of the Real Free Market
Money-Sequencing to More versus Exchanging for Life-Goods
The Unseen Mutations of Adam Smith
Unfreedoms Masked as Freedoms


Freedom to Consume
Freedom of the Seller
Freedom of the Producer
Freedom from Government Interference
Lower Costs
The Free Market as Democracy
The Global System’s Covert War


The Unseen Programme of Carcinogenic Assumptions
Manufacturing the Public Debt Crisis: Decoding the Historical Turn to Money-Sequence Rule


Mutations of State Policy to Turn Social Spending into Money-Sequencing
The Case of Canada as Representative of the World Revolution Backwards
Bloodlust of the Neo-Cons as Counter-Revolution Succeeds
The Inner Logic of the Transnational Corporate Rights System


The Genetic Code of the System: To Convert All Life-Goods to Private Money-Sequences
Predictable System Effects in Destroying Planetary Life-Organization

4. The Social Immune System and the Cancer Stage of Capitalism
The Underlying Defence System of Society and its Evolution
The Social Immune System


Without the Social Immune System We are Dead
Society’s Real Defence System
Knowing the Enemy
How to Tell Social Health from Social Disease
The Immune System Model Across Social and Organic Life-Organization
Individuality and Social Life-Requirements not Opposed but Interdependent
Marx’s General Formula of Money Capital and its Alternative
From the Welfare State Compromise to Transnational System Mutations
Re-Grounding in the Universal Life-Requirements of Human Health


(1) Income Security: Continuity of Life-Means to Members of Society
(2) Human Vocation: Functioning Contribution of Citizens to Society’s Real Life-Requirements
(3) Sustaining the Life-Carrying Capacities of the Environmental Life-Host
How the Money-Sequence Cancer Explains the Reverse of Human and Natural Evolution


The Nature of the Cancer Agency
The Emergent Disease Pattern
All Power to the Banks: Recovering from Amnesia of their Coup
Social Immune System Collapse Behind the Global Crisis

5. The Paradigm Shift: From Cancer System to Life-Capital Economy
The Missing Life-Base of Economics


The Absurd Metaphysics Not Seen
Recovering the Life-Ground that is Ruled Out
The Life-Blind Mechanism as This-Worldly God
The Lost Choice Space: Decoding the Laws of the Cancer


Understanding the System as an Absolutist Social Morality that Cannot Be Questioned
Recognizing the Money-Sequence System as Carcinogenic: From Reaganomics and Mass Layoffs to EU Bank Absolutism
Tracking the Future Out of the Past: Money-Sequencing versus Life-Capital
Reversing Civilization as Money-Sequence Freedom
The Life-Capital Base: The Wealth that Creates More Life-Wealth Without Loss


Economic Necessities and Life-Flourishing
Life-Capital: The Base of the Real Economy and Cure
Re-Grounding Well-Being Indexes in Life-Parameters
Getting Life-Capital Right
Life-Capital Accountability versus Money-Sequence Multiplication
Getting Past the Myth of the Invisible Hand
The Common Life-Ground and the Life-and-Death Struggle for It


The Common Life-Ground Defined
Even Ecological Economics Falls Short of Life-Coherent Economy
Tracking the Rogue Pathways of the Money-Sequence of Value


Masking the Carcinogenic Logic as Necessity, Freedom, and the Social Good
Formal Recognitions of the Life-Destructive Corporate Money-Sequences
Li