What to Say When People Say “It’s Impossible” 10 smart conversation starters to address some standard defenses of the status quo.


Raining exclamation pointsBY ANDREA BROWER
4 MIN READ
JUN 14, 2013
Those committed to building a more just future must question the taken-for-granted “truths” that support the beliefs that capitalism is the only common-sense possibility and that there is no alternative. We can’t leave this task to the pages of peer-reviewed journals and classrooms of social theory—these conversations can start with family and friends but must spread until we create a new common sense. Here are conversation starters to address some standard defenses of the status quo.
1. Alternatives could never work.
Does capitalism “work”? Even by its own indicators, as we’ve become more capitalist—deregulating finance and promoting “free trade”—economic growth and productivity have actually declined. Capitalism does work for accumulating wealth and power in the hands of a few. Is that what we want, or do we want a system that works for all?

2. Today’s globalized world is too complex to organize things any differently.

Of course the world is complex. But some things are also quite simple—we live in a world where 1 billion people go hungry while we dump half of all food produced. The gift of today is that we have the ability to reflect and draw upon many forms, past and present, of non-capitalist social organization, and to creatively experiment with blending the best of these possibilities.

3. It’s either the system we have, or it’s no progress at all.

Doing away with capitalism doesn’t mean resorting to primitivism, denying the poor their right to development, or abandoning all of our washing machines. There are limits to the Earth’s resources, but we can organize a productive, equitable, and sustainable social order that includes many of the comforts of modern life and the benefits of technology. In fact, getting rid of capitalism gives us the best chance of having time to organize a sustainable system of consumption before it is too late—staying hooked into capitalism may be the quickest route to primitivism.

4. Freedom can only be realized through a free market.

Attaching our values of freedom to the market is not just dehumanizing. It also fails to recognize how one person’s “freedom” of economic choice is another’s imprisonment in a life of exploitation and deprivation. There is no possibility for true freedom until we are all free, and this will only come through a much richer and deeper conception of human freedom than one that consists of going to a grocery store and “choosing” between 5,000 variations of processed corn.

5. Capitalism is the only system that encourages innovation and progress. . . ."

https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/love-apocalypse/2013/06/14/what-to-say-when-they-say-it-s-impossible

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