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>A gift economy will replace capitalism > >Adapted extracts from an article entitled 'What comes >after capitalism?' by Peter Cadogan in Freedom (Jan >15th 2000). >It is perfectly possible that surplus will destroy the >market within the next 30 years. That means the end of >capitalism as we have known it since the 12th century. >It means that we shall have to devise a new accounting >system not based on price and locate new incentives in >a non-material order. > >Writing in the USA in 1930, John Maynard Keynes >foresaw this situation when he addressed a paper "to >my grandchildren". Interestingly, what worried him >most was not the drastic rethinking in economics that >would be called for, but how would millions of people >brought up to live with money and material values >cope, when those values cease to have meaning? We face >an epoch of bewilderment as we inch our way towards >the gift economy of the future. > >As the opening pages of any economic textbook will >tell you, capitalism turns upon the fact, the >assumption, of scarcity. Use-value is produced by work >(given natural resources) but price is produced by >supply and demand in the market. And supply and demand >presuppose scarcity. Scarcity mediates the whole >system. Abolish scarcity and capitalism collapses. > >When scarcity is threatened, drastic steps have to be >taken to restore it. Consider the Milk Marketing Board >keeping the production of milk down to a quota in >order to assure a high, artificial price! Look at the >history of butter mountains and wine lakes. Today we >have an impossible surplus of cattle, sheep and pigs >reducing stock farmers to desperation. > > >'Last year Europe produced a surplus of four million >cars' >Or to take another example: last year Europe produced >a surplus of four million cars. This is the real story >behind the Rover and Ford crises. > >A new dread word is in circulation in the City - >deflation. In 1999, prices fell by one per cent. We >have had crises of overproduction before. They lead to >financial collapses but, to date, they have always >been temporary. Some years of belt tightening, a war >to destroy so much that demand returns, and the system >gets back on course. But that supposes that there is >continuity in technology and trade. Now the IT >revolution is disposing of that continuity. The >silicon chip and the internet are transforming >production, management and communications. E-commerce >has arrived. Does the retailer have a future? > >We are now going through a second industrial >revolution more revolutionary than the first; that >started with the steam engine and worked through the >new power sources - gas, electricity, oil and the >atom. What happens when China really gets going? The >rate of change is itself changing - upwards. There is >no levelling out in sight. We are already into the >beginning of surplus, as deflation is our witness. > >Peter Cadogan, 3 Hinchinbrook House, Greville Road, >London NW6 5UP (tel 020 7328 3709).
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