Nexus: From Capitalism to Fascism

& The Role of Representative Democracy

Introduction, The Blind Spot:
Within modern socio-political discourse, one thread of debate remains obscured: the degree of compatibility between market capitalism and democracy. Years of pro-market bias in the West, notably birthed during the Cold War, have manifested a mythology that has grown into blind orthodoxy: the idea that the hierarchical business structure, which governs our daily lives, forces submission from the bottom up, maintains dictatorial control from the top down, and fosters a deep societal divide in power and access, is somehow to be seen as part of a democratic system of choice, equality, and freedom.

The irrationality of this assumption is just as overwhelming as the prevalence of belief. Consider the dichotomy in the context of social evolution. Over the past 200 years, there has been an expansive global human rights movement working to equalize group relations, end discrimination, improve health disparities, increase social and political inclusion, and thus push for basic equality and the end of exploitation. The end of abject slavery and segregation, women's suffrage, modern LGBTQ protections, and so on are all examples of this positive social trajectory, best generalized under the umbrella of human rights.

However, there is indeed one area such progress has not dared to challenge in any real way, fought back by a litany of philosophical contradictions and specious rationalizations: economics.

As I expand upon in my book The New Human Rights Movement, economic equality is somehow off-limits in our global march toward improved human rights. Instead of addressing the issue of economic structure directly, euphemistic gestures prevail under a generally accepted delusion. For example, it is common in seemingly progressive circles today, aware of poverty and toxic nature of inequality, to say something like, “We are not seeking equality of outcome. We are seeking equality of opportunity!”

The problem, of course, is that the very system structure of market economics voids any potential for equality of opportunity, by default, making the statement completely meaningless. The common-sense consideration of using modern means to grant all people a right to access free food, water, shelter, and basic necessities is simply out of the question in today’s thinking, as is any recognition of the outright totalitarian structure of business - the market system itself - which operates in the exact opposite manner of what equality, fairness, free choice, collaborative decision-making - and ultimately what a basic democratic condition requires.

Why? Because the system of market economics and its systemic determinations (consequential functions) simply are not and cannot be compatible, on any level, with democratic principles.

Caustic Dynamics:
For example, in the context of its procedural dynamics and internal market needs, while we may humanely understand that solving hunger by free food access, along with supplying the basic necessities of life to everyone in need (which we can do, technically, without question), such a decision also voids precious economic growth-fueling trade.

As most should know by now, removing potential trading activity means a loss of energy (consumption); energy required to maintain the market’s internal stability. If trade slows, demand is lost, purchasing power dries up, jobs are lost, and recession/depression emerges, fostering further public health and social problems. Making anything free voids this energy. Markets are a system based on scarcity exploitation, and without the movement of money by keeping things scarce and humans in constant need to make money-moving demand, the system contracts toward collapse. That is the inalterable nature of the structure.

A second example, this time in the context of power, is that the outcomes of a market-based society are not just about production, allocation, and general economic characteristics – it is also the central factor in the determination of how power is distributed, linking more wealth with more social influence. The ability to purchase large amounts of land and resources, lead workforces, lobby governmental legislation, influence candidates, become close to other powerful people via elite affiliation, and many other mechanisms directly link power and wealth without question, with no democratic force to be found.

The more who participate in the system of trade, the more power-reinforcing wealth moves from the lower classes to the upper classes. This little-recognized systemic reality needs to be firmly understood: It has been proven that markets, due to their competitive structure, intrinsically and extrinsically, constantly move money and wealth upwards, not downwards, with today 1% of the population owning 50% of the world’s wealth. This outcome of extreme wealth inequality is not a fluke or accident. It is what the system does, endogenously.

Point being, deviation from the market’s scarcity-induced pressure is not just about keeping money circulating to avoid economic downturn; it is also about reinforcing and preserving the status quo, power establishment, and moving power, in the form of money and wealth, constantly upwards.

Put another way, if people woke up tomorrow and had their basic needs met for free, not needing to work 40-50 hours a week to barely get by, firstly the time and reduced stress they would have to consider the nature of the world would rise, likely increasing interest in social influence; increasing the potential for establishment destabilization far more than if they remained in their wage-burdened daily reality.

At the same time, secondly, the sheer loss of trade turnover from this approach would directly weaken the power establishment because without the constant income and wealth extraction from the working/lower class, keeping them deprived, in need, and in line, the power establishment would be further weakened as that gross distribution imbalance is critical to maintain the gross power imbalance, once again. In other words, the system itself is “hierarchy-enhancing” in its income and wealth flows, and any move to disassemble the system’s power mechanism via reduced trade activity would be “hierarchy-attenuating” (in the words of social dominance theorists).

What I am getting at here is there are mechanisms endogenous to the system of market economics that firmly deviate the market system’s outcomes away from not only common-sense public health interests, artificially perpetuating deprivation, but also common-sense democratic interests and principles. It’s just not what the system is designed to do. Which explains why democratic/governmental attempts to influence the system in an effort to correct related system-produced imbalances (via social welfare programs, wealth redistribution efforts, environmental protections, and so on) are usually met with heavy pushback the majority of the time, always trying to move the market back into its most unaltered condition of being “free,” as libertarians like to say.

And the tragic punchline is this: the more the system and its agents fulfill this gravitation toward pure “free markets” - the worse things inevitably become for the real world on all levels.

The Market Dystopia:
If you don’t believe this, let’s take the internal logic inherent to free market capitalism to its natural extreme of “purity” as a thought exercise. A world where all decisions and outcomes result from trade, markets, private property ownership of the means of production, and the social, procedural, and power architecture that endogenously erects from mass transactional behavior in a “pure free market,” driven only by related incentives, organized by the “game board” as it naturally arises.

The only “regulation” that can occur is self-regulation from the system’s internal dynamics alone (think supply and demand price dynamics, etc.). No governmental regulation or non-market, third-party intervention of any kind. No safety nets. Only the market can determine outcomes. Public health, democracy, income & wealth distribution, the state of the environmental habitat, etc., can only be an outcome of this mass, “free-market” behavior.

What would be the overall result?

Well, aside from an apocalyptic acceleration of ecosystem collapse, since the market has been proven that it cannot regulate itself in such a way and the negative market externalities it creates due to its scarcity-exploiting basis in infinite growth - would explode; and aside from increased, rampant, unstoppable wealth consolidation and class division that would eventually make Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk look like peasants – the overall political/social condition outcome would be 100% fascistic by default.

Resource allocation would occur only by way of submission to the business structure and those that cannot afford something will have no other means of support. Can’t afford food? You simply die. Don’t like leadership (or your “boss”)? Your only choice would be to try and compete in the market game to override their power by your own wealth accumulation, which would be fruitless in most cases, after a certain point, because of how slanted wealth-attained advantage really is in the game: the rich tend to stay rich due to the dynamics of the system. Fluid social mobility has always been a joke in capitalism but would be brought to the extreme in this hypothetical.

Likewise, world power would rapidly consolidate through monopolies and cartels, with very, very few owning most global resources and means of production (think Amazon.com), colluding as such in the “spirit of competition” (see what I did there?) with little to no leverage to move against their dictatorial preferences as well.

If legislative power were introduced, you can rest assured it would only be used to solidify dynamics to preserve the power and wealth of the now business-based ruling class, as another level of competitive advantage. The middle class would then cease to exist, polishing off a neo-feudal architecture where one's right to life, freedom, equality, political voice, and so forth is reduced to merely the amount of money you have – only as free as your purchasing power will allow you to be. Meaning, the only “voting” would be with your dollar and the less money you have the less power you have and, by extension, human rights.

This grand, Ayn Rand dystopian experiment would then end, once again, in total societal collapse, as a pure free-market society would be 100% ecocidal - but only after enormous suffering, disease, oppression, and conflict.

Now, the astute reader may reflect for a moment on this hypothetical and think, "Hmm. While not as extreme, that’s kinda how things are going right now! And if it weren’t for intervention/regulation in the system via democratic-administrative state processes, no matter how flawed, we would likely be in such an extreme libertarian wet dream-nightmare already!"

Exactly.

And no, I am not setting up a classic libertarian duality between the “state” and the “market” as, in cold, hard truth, the basic nature of the modern state today is primarily a result of the mechanisms and cultural adaptation of the market system, not the other way around. Market incentives remain fundamentally in control overall on this planet and what corrective power the pseudo-democratic state does have has been long subdued by market forces (but not entirely overcome), which is why today civilization has some - but yet very weak - environmental protections, for example.

But it could be much worse. And this is the point I am building to - for the pro free market religious gravitation to make things worse - remains strong and growing.

Contrary to everything that’s been propagated by pro-market forces, particularly by the 1980s with the rise of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (by which the world firmly modulated into a Neoliberal free market psychosis), market capitalism is not a stable or sustainable system of production and distribution. All formal and empirical cybernetic/systems analysis prove this. And it most certainly, once again, is not a system of open democratic governance promoting egalitarian consensus.

It is a competitive, scarcity-exploiting, infinite growth, reinforcing feedback loop system, firmly rooted in hierarchical power domination; holistically unstable and cannot “self-regulate” properly at all in the context of human sustainability or equitable existence.

The toxic features are built in. Endogenous in the system’s expression.

Put another way, if you took a billion fresh humans, with no value system, and dropped them on a new planet and forced them to use this market-trade economy game for survival and social organization, as we do now, the core societal features that would systemically/organically arise over time on that new planet would be fundamentally the same as we see around us today. That is how determining the system dynamics are.

Wage Slave:
All that noted, let's return to the context of power, democracy, and fascism. The topological difference, if you will, is that rather than an Orwellian, 1984-style mass bureaucratic oppressive hierarchy consistent with traditional perceptions of fascism, capitalism does something fancier: It breaks the totalitarian character up into parts or nodes, called businesses—companies and corporations.

These business nodes (private power owners of the means of production), networked by the mechanisms and incentives of trade, forge a web of hierarchical power which, from the top down, exploits the inherent disadvantages of the average working person, coercing servitude to the system as a whole, fundamentally violating human rights in general, by all definitions.

I say it exploits the inherent disadvantages of the average person in the sense that anyone born into the system, without requisite privilege of familial ownership of the means of production or having surplus wealth (and the power and gaming leverage that entails), is, by nature of the structural reality, at a strategic disadvantage by default and oppressed.

This coercion is further reinforced by the financial layer inherent to the capitalist economy, rooted in debt (scarcity). Remember, all money is made out of debt and interest is charged on that debt which doesn’t exist in the money supply. There’s always more debt in existence than money - which means society as a whole is in perpetual deficiency, always needing to get out of the hole. No escape.

Hence, everyone must submit to the employment system, some more so than others, in total coercion (under the narrative pretense that they are just “contributing to society,” of course, or that this is a “natural” system, as the propaganda goes, or perhaps most offensive, “you only get what you work for”).

Point being, because there is no right to exist without this submission, meaning food, shelter and necessities are refused as basic human rights provisions in society, market capitalism takes the shape of a debt peonage slavery structure more than anything else.

Just because people get to choose between which company they are forced to work for in the market structure, narrowed even more so by whatever skills they have been fortunate to obtain in their economically strained life to secure a job, is not a system of free choice. An apt analogy would be a reverse slave market in the 18th century where slaves walk around picking their slave owners, as opposed to the other way around. They have to pick one regardless.

Trajectory:
All that being said, the core purpose of this article is to highlight what I see as an accelerating transition in global society, where this looming orthodoxy of free-market philosophy is increasingly reshaping the world in its image, for the worst. The system has had enough of being limited and is ready to fully spread its wings once again. The grace period of the once-dominant “state regulation-market hybrid” is on its way out. The democratically affiliated administrative state is being increasingly dismantled in favor of a pure “free-market” society.

This is not to argue that we wake one day and the state institution no longer exists. The façade will remain, as it does, but the internal function will have moved entirely away from any regulatory or interventionist role, letting the market be increasingly “free,” whereby the quality and purpose of the state is just that of just another corporation, competing only for its business advantage.

It certainly isn’t a new tendency.

Conservative-minded free-market advocates in particular have been putting the blame for any social disorder on “state” interference for a long time, pushing to erode regulatory power when they can, always seeking to “free the market.” But over recent years, that force has grown dangerously stronger and faster, as I will address toward the end of this article.

But first, please allow me to bore you with a bit more theory and history in the effort to help better communicate the nature of the situation in question: Capitalism as today’s most foundational precondition for fascism.

The Red Bogeyman:
The rise of the Soviet Union in the early 20th century introduced a symbol that has served a valuable function in propping up the assumed superiority of market capitalism in public perception. That symbol is called “communism,” which can also be referred to as socialism or Marxism, as they are all basically the same in function when it comes to arguments defending capitalism.

To be clear (as I expressed in a prior Substack article), there is no system design inherent to socialism, communism, or Marxism. There is no structure. There is no map. There is no blueprint. There is only the relative association to some degree of deviation from the practices of capitalism. These terms represent an extremely loose, highly subjective moral philosophy and antagonism toward market economics by which a country may build upon in their own novel way, historically in the form of some kind of top-down decision-making bureaucracy.

Anyone who uses such slogans as “socialism doesn’t work” has no idea what they’re even saying, simply drowning in age-old, repeated symbolic propaganda. What they are actually saying is “anything that isn’t market capitalism doesn’t work,” which is a painfully dogmatic and unfounded notion. But it serves to give the illusion that market capitalism is the best humanity can do.

Regarding the merit of the USSR, its so-called “communist” structure was novel to itself as a bureaucracy. Whether they deemed themselves communist in a positive expression or the United States labeled them communist in a negative one is utterly meaningless. Criticism of the Soviet Union is simply criticism of the Soviet Union and not that of any assumed system claimed to have underscored it and defined it.

A system has to have self-regulatory, feedback-driven features to be understood as one. Anyone can conjure up any kind of system in this context. Bitcoin is a pop culture example of this (and no, I do not promote it as a solution to anything). The code is written with system structure and dynamics already determined. If such code was applied in some other environment or context, we hence recognize it as the same system, even if applied in different areas.

Communism has no shared code. But capitalism does. Huge difference. Capitalism is, indeed, a measurable system as trade and its dynamics are endogenously structured. Communism is not measurable as it has no endogenous, self-generating structure or feedback-driven aspects of a defining nature. Rather, it is just a kind of philosophy that attempts to move away from certain aspects of capitalism, once again.

That understood, in the early to mid-20th century, when the United States and much of Europe went through deep economic trials (i.e., the Great Depression), coupled with growing mass awareness and objection to the brute, miserable, unregulated industrial market condition - which included rampant child labor, 18-hour shifts, extremely low wages, no union support or basic labor protections, no health care, safety provision, etc. - those that sought to preserve capitalism in this “battle” with the USSR’s antithetical “communism” (decoded as losing faith in capitalism) realized the need for a mass public relations campaign to try and keep the elite system in place.

In this strategy, the USSR, rather ironically, became not capitalism's greatest threat as much as its greatest scapegoat and boogeyman: A comparative marketing tool where anti-communist (pro-capitalist) propaganda helped buttress respect and tolerance for the US market-based society, forging this false duality which is still widespread to this day. In the long game, the destruction of the USSR was still ideal to “win,” preserving the market-based power system of the West, in the same way the US, even today, continues to strangle small countries like Cuba and Venezuela, making it appear that the problems those countries face are the sole result of “socialism” or “communism” - as a failed system - when they are, often in very large part, actually the outcomes of endless sanctions and external sabotage.

They can’t let the “anti-market virus” gain strength, no matter how small, while also maintaining the PR comparative view, hoodwinking populations to associate the problems of such nations with anything “anti-capitalist”. And it has worked well. The force of global capitalist hegemony constantly seeks to pollute or destroy anything that can take economic activity away from it or pollute its image as superior.

Egalitarian Pandering:
Amusingly and in pure, manipulative contradiction to many other pro-market arguments, with the rise of the Industrial Revolution and the emerging age of mass production in the early to mid-20th century, state-business propaganda also decided to try and co-opt some “communist” moral themes folks seemed to like, in the PR effort. One angle was to push the idea that mass consumption - and the more, the better - was the true avenue towards the coveted egalitarian goals of communism/socialism. Yes, this actually occurred.

As John Maynard Keynes wrote, quite sincerely in his case, in his 1929 essay “For Our Grandchildren,” a picture was painted where the fruits of private enterprise would foster, eventually, shorter work weeks, higher wages, lower prices, the end of poverty, and basically a move toward capitalism’s own obsolescence through strategic abundance via technology.

Obviously, none of this happened.

But the assumed prospect was great fodder for PR exploitation. You can still find US magazine articles from the 1950s describing the proposed emerging egalitarianism of the new consumer’s republic, implying its active superiority in contrast to the fleeting “whims” of socialist philosophy.

To be clear: Market capitalism has not self-regulated or adapted toward anything egalitarian, nor have there been any market-driven improvements to labor rights and other concerns. All of that has occurred, to whatever degree, through interventionist policies via democratic engagement and hence regulatory use of the administrative state. Only keeping such a choke collar on the capitalist rottweiler has fostered such effects.

The true dynamics that have given the allowance or illusion of increased human rights, equity, and egalitarianism have been rampant overproduction and consumption that has, as propagandists say, “increased our standard of living more than any other social system!” A wasteful, unsustainable economic strategy, tied to the infinite growth market function, that does not challenge the system with intervention.

The insanity is such that economic growth itself (increased production and consumption, regardless of by whom) is now deemed by most economists the best and only means to reduce poverty, as opposed to directly ending poverty through the administrative state or non-market means. As an analogy, it is like flooding your entire lawn just to water one plant.

Here we see a common, overall delusional theme: to try and “marketize” every problem to avoid any external intervention of a non-market nature. You see the same bad logic with attempts like carbon credits, which try to use market forces to curb pollution. Hasn’t worked and it won’t. There have even been libertarian proponents that’ve argued, quite insanely, that legal legislation itself can be generated by and enforced by private enterprise.

Coming back to our PR history lesson, because of the brute nature of industrial capitalism in the early 20th century, regulatory moves were also made to ease the many negative, system-forged public health and oppressive realities. While on one side it simply made sense to do these things, on the other side, such moves also served to compete with the values of assumed “communism” working to win public opinion, once again.

In this rare period of time in the US, there was very high taxation of the wealthy (up to 90%), sweeping social welfare reforms, the introduction of retirement programs, unemployment insurance, unions & labor protections, the start of state-assisted health care, and many other such things that many in the pro-market trance today will still deem “socialist” and heretical.

But it was imperative at that time for the capitalist West not only to push the narrative belief system that the “free market” economy was superior to its so-called “communist” competitor in the East but also to create material conditions that artificially gave that assumption through the administrative state. I’m not arguing this was the sole motivation for these changes, of course, but the geopolitical effect was exactly that.

But then the USSR fell.

Now (and this is what I’m getting at here as a force of system adaptation)- with the stamp of capitalism’s symbolic triumph over communism firmly implanted globally by this historic event, pro-market loyalties and priorities slowly started to shift “back to center,” loosening the choke collar.

Tolerating the semi-corrective interventionist policies put forward to ease public opinion prior was increasingly unneeded, in the political, PR sense. There was no longer an ideological enemy to win hearts and minds against capitalism. And since that time, up through today, we have seen a slow but consistent erosion of and attack upon regulatory institutions, labor rights, retirement security, supplemental healthcare, wealth distribution policy, poverty alleviation and just about everything that can be perceived as an interference with the decisions of the free-market God.

The religious goal has been to return to a “free,” deregulated, privatized and ultimately laissez-faire condition, by which now the democratic, administrative interventionist “state” itself has become the new post-communist symbolic enemy - and the market economy the savior.

By the 1990s, the laissez-faire orthodoxy rapidly spread across the world in the form of Neoliberalism – a pro-market, anti-regulatory theory that overflowed into every major international institution and, as noted prior, any nation attempting to move away from this open commerce, anti-nationalization, pro-private property, anti-regulatory privatized religion --- were/are to be increasingly considered rogue, with many attacks deemed - quite ironically – “undemocratic.”

And hence our modern trajectory.

Our Defining Debate:
The most important socio-political consideration today is not between left and right or conservative and progressive, or other vague categorical labels that do more harm than good.

It is between those who believe in the religion of free markets and those who dare to consider something else, understanding its dire flaws, seeking the need to further collar the beast through regulation and/or replace the beast itself, in time.

We can discuss abortion rights, specific human rights, police brutality, war, religious extremism, educational problems, political corruption, and other political hot topics that are often assumed to have no relevance to the nature of an economy. Yet, in truth, they very often do, as they are deeply linked to propagandized belief and value systems that center around the role of markets versus the role of the regulatory state/democracy, emotionally absorbed by many market proponents as a cartoonish battle between “individual freedom” (markets) and “oppressive coercion” (state power). This then fuels more complex belief systems with similar associated themes.

Furthermore, while it is difficult to prioritize the litany of social woes we have on the planet, one thing we do know is that few of them will matter if we destroy our habitat. Free market fundamentalism is, without question, the most rapid systemic method to ensure we do just that, as it is premised on cyclical consumption and infinite economic growth endogenously. On this issue alone, one could literally dismiss every other real or apparent argument. The system is completely environmentally unsustainable.

Which brings us back to the connection between capitalism and fascism.

As argued, the defining structure of capitalism and its endogenous outcomes are the opposite of democratic on all levels. From the dictatorial structure of business rooted in a top-down power hierarchy, to the ownership class network of control exploiting a structurally deprived common citizenry by mathematical default, intrinsically siphoning money from the poor to the rich, to the most basic reality that freedom itself can only be “bought,” and you are only as free as your purchasing power will allow you to be in the context of not having to sell your labor to somebody else, in the dictatorial system, as the defining feature of your life’s time.

The means of alleviation that have been attempted to reduce harm within the system have been interventionist regulation through state government and, by extension, democratic choice through representative democracy. The power of the market system's prevalence – the power it creates and the values it fosters - have always sought to erode the democratic regulatory state in favor of market “freedom,” once again.

If this post-USSR, post-“communist” trajectory toward free market fundamentalism continues, as it very much is and increasingly so, two emerging characteristics will intersect, making increased global authoritarianism and emerging fascism that much more probable, if it wasn’t problematic enough already:

(1) The endogenous, underlyingly dictatorial characteristic aforementioned, inherent in the very nature/structure of the system, intersecting with the (2a) accelerating social destabilization rooted primarily in environmental decline, but also in (2b) domestic outrage from increased socioeconomic inequality and its resulting, further destabilizing consequences.

The result of these forces, sad to say, will not inspire fresh new, brilliant ideas towards problem resolution, the advent of a more sustainable and humane social system, or the like. These stress pressures can and will only manifest in a tighter boot pressed down on the neck of civilization by establishment power.

They will predominantly result in public fear, confusion, misplaced blame, and a need to force order through coercion, which much of the population will welcome. More police, more laws, and more welcomed authoritarianism under the reaction of fear and anger. The only thing that can truly, in the long run, change this trajectory is structural change and the hope that creative minds will put forward an economic alternative much sooner than later that can provide an off-ramp to the current system, shining light on a real alternative, before things get too destabilized.

As an aside, as it is beyond the scope of this article, this is a subject of interest in my new film “Zeitgeist: Requiem,” along with discussion on my podcast Revolution Now! I will also be writing more Substack articles on the architecture of what I call “Integral” - which is a parallel economy project designed, if utilized in mass, to scale out and replace market economics as a whole. It will be an attempt. Work in progress. And we desperately need more people thinking this way.

But until such radical creation and true system change are finally unfolding, efforts must be made to fight back against current political movements and related policies relentlessly trying to push things back into free market purism (i.e., Go look up the Chevron Deference and what the US Supreme court is doing right now).

Likewise, as implied prior, we cannot think that things getting worse will be the first stage of them getting better. We hear this rhetoric in many revolutionary circles, saying: “The system has to collapse before we can properly rebuild and/or values will adjust.” This is wrong. The worse the social condition gets, the more acclimated people will become to the new normal, as a general rule, with the mild exception of increased anger, which will be mostly misplaced because the only change that is workable in this trajectory is system change and most have not come to that conclusion nor do they have a vision to work toward.

Not to mention, allowing further deterioration of the ecosystem offers the prospect of “the point of no return.” Even if social destabilization led to a radical, positive socio-political revolution, if the damage is done environmentally, the damage is simply done. Systems theorists that have run models for the kind of environmental crises we see now and can expect in the future, given our “business as usual scenario,” will point out that alleviations to these outcomes/trajectories cannot and will not be immediate. Even if all pollution stopped right now, for example, the effects of the prior pollution will go on for decades.

In the end, once again, without having an alternative economic method in place to absorb those finally completely alienated by the market system, all the angry outbursts, protests, insurrections, and violent social destabilization will simply be met with, once again, more police, more prisons, and more draconian legislation.

So, aside from working to build the structure of a new social system to replace the old, a new level of vigilance is required to do whatever possible in the meantime to stop gravitation toward this toxic, suicidal free market fundamentalism and acceleration of the social and environmental problems it is responsible for.

The Reality of our “Democracy”:
For those of us who have seen through the veneer of the great lost hope of representative political democracy – an insultingly feeble and utterly corrupt attempt at public empowerment, given its entrenchment in the overwhelming, overriding, morally contradictory, and non-democratic structure of market capitalism and its dominant “power winners” – the natural response to the suggestion that “you should go out and vote!” is one of enormous cringe.

Perhaps the greatest insult of all is the naïve grandiosity; the blanket relegation that declares that this ‘voting for other people to represent us’ thing – people that have no actual binding agreement to do anything they offered once elected, with the only consequence being voted out after years go by, only to be replaced by yet another figure that, by most all empirical trends, will continue to have more loyalty to their personal financial well-being and power than anything else, more often not (by far) already quite wealthy and hence ideologically loyal to the market system that made them so.

In a driven, focused activist world, as I have brazenly recommended in prior film works (see Zeitgeist:Addendum), an act of great vigilance would be a truly massive boycott of the entire electoral system, just to make a statement to acknowledge just how offensive this so-called “democratic” structure we are told is the pinnacle of human freedom and egalitarian consensus to affect a society’s future - is. Of course, beyond this gesture of rejection, such an act would only truly be effective if the rebelling population had an alternative to turn to and prop up to showcase as a replacement, as noted before, meaning a total change to the economic system, coupled with applications of direct democracy, including highly ubiquitous referendums, such as the population’s ability to refuse going to war by popular vote, etc., etc. But, once again, without economic change there really is no political change.

That stated – coupled with the reality that, historically, when it comes to the “different” entities our system shuffles into line as forefront “candidates,” an initial process devoid of public involvement, driven by monetary and vested institutional support, leading to a homogeneity of the choices presented to the public, regardless of party – there is still, quite pathetically, a place for participation in the electoral system and, at times, a critical place, as we are in right now.

You see, the way most people think about the act of voting is all wrong. They either do it as a passive act of social acceptance, to fit in and give the specter they have time to care as they focus on their income and family; or they have bought the mainstream delusion hook, line and sinker, ignorantly associating national or world dynamics to the microcosm of elected politicians, which, as noted, only has a minor role in what actually occurs in society due to the overwhelming power of relying on market forces instead; or they move toward the view that the whole thing is pointless and find it insulting to be involved at all.

All such views misunderstand what they are actually involved in. The system role of representative democracy, inside the context of market capitalism has only two true macro functions, as alluded to before: (a) Moving in favor of “freeing the market” and the trajectory of the religion and all its distorted consequences, pushing firmly toward fascism and ecocide – or (b) moving against it in whatever way possible. Yes, I know that sounds like an oversimplified false duality and yes – I understand there are other issues at stake, as talked about before, with different levels of relationship to the general economic polarity I am suggesting.

But when it comes to saving this civilization from itself now, all energy needs to move against the market orthodoxy, fighting back all of the cancerous tumors of the disease: privatization, deregulation, wealth attainment advantage dynamics, economic growth, profit-driven pollution, the cascade of market-fueled elitism, class bigotry, life-blind resource overshoot, habitat degradation and on and on – all the while – working to build a new system, as touched upon before.

Those activist angles: One to slow the decline and one to replace the destructive system of markets – is the true activist focus for anyone that cares about the future of humanity and is paying attention to the true root of the problem, on the macro level.

In this, we must change the psychology associated with the act of “voting” in this (yes, pathetic) global democracy. The way you do that is you only look at the policy ecosystem of who is in play and nothing more. The people and, to a degree, the parties - are meaningless.

For example, in the context of America’s upcoming presidential election, Joe Biden as a person is meaningless. Donald Trump as a person is meaningless. The question isn’t how horrible they are, who is too old, etc. - but what are they advocating in terms of the values, beliefs and policies proposed and how do those ideas fit in the context of working to “free the market” or “regulate it” in favor of environmental sustainability and human rights. In this assessment, if the check boxes move any candidate most toward clamping down on the disease of business and its complete inability to operate environmentally sustainably or with good conscience – they are the ones you vote for – or, if you prefer – the more free market orientated competitors are the ones you vote against. No matter who they are or whatever else they think, bluntly put.

Any political party or person, once again, that takes a libertarian view of markets and/or a business view of how society should operate - is to be shut down as they are part of the most dominant, toxic viral trend. They are the ones that, if they succeed, will push society past the point of no return environmentally, as touched upon before. They are the ones that will modulate the already deeply elitist, class-oppressive structure of capitalism into full-blown fascism, working to superimpose the business dictatorship architecture directly upon domestic society as a whole, as it collapses.

It’s time to stop the idea that voting for XYZ means you support XYZ as an individual or group, seeing yourself as wandering around with a picture of some idiot politician on your shirt. That isn’t how you use the feeble yet still relevant tool of modern representative democracy today. Just like the phrase, “voting for the lesser evil” is actually missing the point as well.

Time to stop the identity neurosis. Those who say things like “I hate Donald Trump but I simply can’t vote for Joe Biden because of XYZ” are lost in egotist identity. It has nothing to do with “who” you like or do not like. It has nothing to do with being for or against any person or group in this sense. It is about larger order policy context only – moving against the capitalist sickness in form.

And if need help with this, here is a general list to follow:

-Do not vote for anyone promoting the following, ever:

• Deregulation of industries such as finance, telecommunications, and energy

• Privatization of public services, including transportation, healthcare, and education

• Reduction of corporate taxes and tax breaks for the wealthy

• Free trade agreements aimed at reducing tariffs and barriers to international trade

• Reduction of government intervention in the economy, including limited oversight and enforcement of antitrust laws

• Promotion of market competition and consumer choice as primary drivers of economic growth

• Support for deregulated labor markets, including weakened labor unions and decreased worker protections

• Emphasis on individual responsibility and self-regulation within the market

• Advocacy for minimal government interference in pricing mechanisms and market dynamics

• Limited government spending on social welfare programs, with emphasis on privatization or reduction of entitlements

Vote for anyone promoting the following, all the time:

• Implementation of comprehensive regulatory frameworks to oversee industries and protect consumers and the environment

• Expansion of social welfare programs, including universal healthcare, unemployment benefits, and social security

• Strengthening of labor rights and support for unionization to negotiate fair wages and working conditions

• Adoption of progressive taxation policies to redistribute wealth and address income inequality

• Promotion of sustainable development and environmental protection through strict regulations on pollution and resource extraction

• Establishment of public ownership or control over key industries and utilities to ensure equitable access and prevent monopolies

• Investment in public infrastructure and services to address societal needs and promote economic development

• Enforcement of antitrust laws to prevent monopolistic practices and promote fair competition in the market

• Support for consumer protection measures, including product safety standards and regulations on deceptive advertising

• Implementation of financial regulations to stabilize markets, prevent fraud, and protect investors and consumers from economic downturns

In conclusion, I want to reiterate that, in these dire times, absence of participation and apathy offer nothing for anyone, except the selfish egoism of the individual. If one has any care about the future, every avenue will be taken to work for change, even if it means lumbering into a polling place to cast a vote for the “lesser evil,” or whatever.

Is it THE solution? Of course not, once again. But it is another means to help hold back the dam that is about to explode for the worst, giving us time to overthrow the entire economic system and reshape our civilization to a truely sustainable, egalitarian democracy. That is the true goal and the only goal of relevance.

If, through all such effort, large and small, we can finally create and implement a new economic foundation for society; one that does not inexorably and endogenously move towards ecosystem collapse, along with structurally codifying true human rights and a humane distribution of resources - this civilization might have a chance. In the meantime, we fight back against the market lunatics - hard.