Capitalism === Evolution?

[pErvinalia]

Had a thought today* that capitalism is an evolutionary system. Both in process (like "mutation", selection and replication) and in characteristic (i.e. purposeless, insentient units are selected for and lead to the appearance of design and a certain level of predictability of outcome). I'd suggest there are also purposeful manipulations of the system by the powerful, so in that regard it is bastardised evolution. Also, mutations aren't random, so in that sense, we aren't getting anywhere near the best utility out of the system.

What this means is that it's not necessary to have some shady cabal directing capitalism (although, I'm sure there's a few around who attempt it) to disproportionately screw the poor and favour the rich, or to poison the environment, or to merge corporations with "democracy". This stuff is just an inevitable outcome of a system that mainly selects for profits and political power.

Indeed I've ranted on about systems analysis before, and I think most of you would have seen the New Scientist (or perhaps it was Scientific American) article which performed a sort of systems analysis that identified the top 10's of companies that possessed the ultimate decision making power in the system.

Got nothing else to say, really. Therefore.. something.


* I actually had the thought weeks ago. I just snipped this from my facebook page from back then, as I thought Eff (amongst others, I hope) would enjoy talking about this, in light of a current thread concerning capitalism.

[Rum]

Well you aren't too far away from the notion of 'social Darwinism, which incidentally is the subject of today's consistently brilliant In Our Time on Radio 4 (not listen to it yet), though I know you aren't going there with this.

The 'automatic' nature of Capitalism is well known and I am reminded of the anecdote of some City Officials from Moscow who cane to London to see how the 'free market' worked shortly after the collapse of the old command system under Communism and asking in astonishment how the government knew how many bakeries to allow to be open to provide the bread the city needed! There's a sort of artificial 'market' intelligence or dynamic at work, which also, as Marx knew well, inevitably ends up with the means of production being owned by an increasingly small group of people.