The <1% May Have a Plan

But it is not good news

That which does not confront the system becomes its instrument.

Joel Kovel

As I contemplate all the horrific events of the past quarter-century or so, and the abominable waste and harm that is being inflicted on the planet and >99% of its peoples, I continually wonder about those <1% who hold the reins of power here in The West. Are they certifiably insane, sociopaths and psychopaths not only little concerned with anyone else's welfare and happiness but actively displaying sadistic, or suicidal and ecocidal tendencies? Are they necrophiles, as Erich Fromm has described in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness,¹ death-and-destruction loving persons as was Hitler and a few other infamous historical figures of the necrophilous personality type? Just what is with the West's ruling cliques? Don't they themselves wish to live long and enjoyable lives, realizing that a certain quality of the state of the planet and its peoples is necessary? No matter how great one's riches may be, it should be obvious that a non- or badly-functioning planet does not lend itself to a long and pleasant existence.

So what then about all these horrific events the <1% seem to be responsible for, events apparently unrelated to each other except by their universally horrific character? Are they all just random abominations ignited and perpetrated by an independently-acting rogue's gallery of the worst that humanity has to offer for reasons petty, hubristic, arrogant...? Or is there something that ties them all together, a theory or viewpoint that might indicate a common motive — not necessarily a Green Baize Table Conspiracy, but a common goal consciously or unconsciously shared by the <1%-ers? If so, we might not need to so strongly condemn them, providing that their motives and methods merit consideration.

Recently I was once again reading the excerpt I published here awhile back, the Introduction to The Enemy of Nature by Joel Kovel.

It's Been Twenty Years

If you haven't read through it thoroughly, please do so or otherwise the following will fail to have much credibility. Read it again, as a refresher so that the following can be understood from the point of view necessitated by Kovel's analysis. Note that the entire second edition of The Enemy of Nature has been made available online here.

After realizing once again that Kovel's conclusions about Capitalism and the runaway growth of capital are pretty much impossible to refute, what he then recommends as the only possible solution stood starkly revealed.

For human beings are part of nature, however ill at ease we may be with the role. There is therefore a human ecology as well as an ecology of forests and lakes. It follows that the larger ecological crisis would be generated by, and extend deeply into, an ecologically pathological society. Regarding the matter from this angle provided a more generous view no longer trapped in a narrow economic determinism, one could see capital not only as a material arrangement, but more deeply, as a pathological way of being cancerously lodged in the human spirit. And if it is a whole way of being that needs changing, then the essential question 'what is to be done' takes on new dimensions. Ecological politics becomes much more than managing the external environment. It takes on, rather, a frankly revolutionary aspect.

Do not the <1% see the writing on the wall — in this case the writing in this book? What on earth are they thinking? Are they so short sighted that ... a guaranteed year or three living in the lap of luxury is all they desire and maybe by then something will turn up to solve the problems? (Micawberism)

But perhaps there is a slow awakening of at least some members of the <1%?

Ruling Class Finally Awakens to the Reality of America's Decline

But for awakening to result in substantive change to the many decades of Neocon-directed momentum now at its fragile zenith, Kovel is right: Tweaking Capitalism's parameters will do nothing to change the inevitability of collapse. An ecologically viable Capitalism is a contradiction — Capitalism is inherently and irremediably eco-destructive.

...capitalism, by its very nature, cannot help but destroy the integrity and well-being of what we call “nature.” No need for yet another inventory of disturbances in the environment, our bodies, and our psychic balance. The enemy of nature is not oil or pesticides or factories or bulldozers but capital, “that ubiquitous, all-powerful and greatly misunderstood dynamo that drives our society.”

While traditionally the marketplace is a means of exchanging goods for money so as to purchase other goods, under capitalism it becomes a way of accumulating money...

As the basis of economics becomes the trade itself and not the tangible thing exchanged, money is transformed into an all-consuming monster. No longer bound up with the limitations of actual land, people, and resources, it springs to life, an abstraction with a will of its own. “Pure quantity,” says Kovel, “can swell infinitely without reference to the external world.”

There lies the source of our ecological crisis.

[From a review at COUNTERPUNCH]

The obvious conclusion is that the <1% — The DeepCapitalists — know only too well that they cannot change the course of Capitalism, and that case is made in spades by Kovel. But what if they are, in fact, doing something they see as revolutionary but we do not recognize it? Could many of the seemingly irrational and unexplainable events of the past decade or two be the Capitalists at work, trying to slow the runaway growth of capital and thus prolong their treasured system?

IS THERE METHOD IN THEIR MADNESS?

A possible but dismal theory came to mind when I recently read an article by Ed Dowd in which he claimed that the only thing keeping the West's economic system afloat was government spending. And many, if not all of the otherwise unexplainable disasters we are considering here certainly feature massive government spending: The wars of the past few decades, 9/11 and the subsequent "War on Terror", the 2008 banking near-collapse and subsequent bailouts of institutions "too big to fail", COVID and VAXSCAM, the runaway trillions of debt and the government's blasé attitude about it, and more... all the events, in fact, that have seemed somehow strange and avoidable, seemingly unrelated to each other... are attempts at limiting the growth of Capital.

I do not claim that all the events described were meticulously planned by BigMoney — but if not planned, they were certainly allowed to happen, encouraged and magnified by further BigMoney initiatives — in an ongoing effort to slow the runaway growth of excess capital. Slowing runaway capital growth is in the interests of all — no need even to discuss it.

And now the admittedly endless war effort in Ukraine, with endless and limitless funneling of funds to constantly up the ante, irregardless of whether a major proportion of those funds are captured by corruption. The <1% are pulling out all the stops, arriving even at the brink of a nuclear confrontation with Russia. Nuclear bombs are, it seems, the only thing that hasn't yet been tried.

And that other threat: runaway climate change. Are the <1% thinking of gambling it all on igniting just the necessary number of nuclear explosions to fill the stratosphere with just enough dust and smoke to begin a cooling trend? And of course diminish the population of certain areas of the globe... No, what a crazy idea. It just couldn't be. No bipedal apes who see themselves as human could possibly... But what if all the efforts so far to slow the Capital cancer are seen by them — correctly, I fear — as having had an insufficient effect? What means remain?

Kovel says there must be a revolution, please read again what he says. But even the <1% know full well that even with all their money and control over governing institutions, an appeal to world populations to accede to a plan that would of necessity involve severe rationing would lead to mayhem, not a steering committee.

If the above represents even modestly the current situation... If this what the WEFistas mean when they say "You will own nothing but you will be happy"? After enough A-bombs go off to cool the planet and starve the multitudes, ownership will be moot and anyone capable of surviving will be... happy? I've just bought a new battery for my Geiger counter.

Ends and Means.

Aldous Huxley wrote, long ago when another set of rich and powerful maniacs were making vast plans with their half-vast intellects,

Good ends, as I have frequently to point out, can be achieved only by the employment of appropriate means. The end cannot justify the means, for the simple and obvious reason that the means employed determine the nature of the ends produced.

Arrive at Utopia by blowing the planet to Hell?

I appear to be not alone in worrying about a nuclear contest:

On this account, no greater oracle of the transition had spoken at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum than Sergei Glazyev.² Here’s a breakdown of his thoughts as the final point of course:

• The American system is ending

• We are currently working on a new international currency system which will eliminate the possibility of using unilateral sanctions and other economic terror against nations

• Russia as chairman of the BRICS organization for 2024 will help champion this initiative

• The United States’ model is experiencing a death agony—it cannot offer anything to the world anymore, neither a model of governance nor values

• This year is a turning point, our prediction is after the American election it will be clear that Pax Americana has come to an end

• The chief risk remains that the U.S. will need to create a small, local nuclear war in Europe in order to maintain its hegemony

Glazyev’s words about the U.S. model having become totally exhausted, with nothing left to offer the world in the way of a inspirational path forward was echoed by Putin in a 2023 speech, where he said:

“Without exaggeration, this is not even a systemic, but a doctrinal crisis of the neoliberal US-style model of international order. They have no ideas for progress and positive development. They simply have nothing to offer the world, except perpetuating their dominance.” — Putin

1. Full text in pdf of The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness

2. Russian politician and economist, member of the National Financial Council of the Bank of Russia, and, since 2008, a full member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.