The capitalist economic system, despite its many flaws, dominates the entire planet today, whether we are talking about private capitalism, represented essentially by companies, or state capitalism, as in China, for example, or a mixture of the two in varying doses, as in Canada or Quebec. A questioning of this hegemony no longer seems to be on the agenda, even if it should be. There is no lack of desire, but that will not be the subject of this text, at least not directly.
In fact, capitalism is not only an economic doctrine, but also a philosophical one. It is based on a rather narrow view of human nature, essentially selfish.Homo economicus would live only to satisfy his own needs and desires, which are in principle unlimited. Given the fundamentally limited nature of the goods and services that he can produce and consume, humans thus find themselves in constant competition with their peers, both on the side of their production, whether through the ownership of companies (capital) or their labor force (labor market), and on the side of their consumption.
Humans would therefore be driven by a competitive spirit at every moment of their existence.
The “elites” of the capitalist system seek to make us believe that this all-out competition is the driving force behind “innovation” and, consequently, progress. In fact, history shows that this “innovation” primarily serves the interests of its master, capital. There are countless “innovations” with undesirable side effects that have rather hindered true human progress. The greatest paradox in this regard comes from the fact that human development, since the origins of our species, has been made possible thanks to our ability to collaborate. It is in this collaboration that “innovation” allows us to truly progress.
A brake
The zero-sum game of competition from which he must constantly emerge as a “winner” pursues humans relentlessly in all spheres of their lives: work, leisure, ideas, overconsumption, politics, wealth, and even their offspring, who must also be among the “winners”. In order to check whether they are part of the group of “winners”, humans have developed an activity that fascinates them: comparison. They first compare themselves personally with their neighbors, friends, co-workers, celebrities, etc., but they also do so on a collective scale, for their community, city, province, country, institutions, etc. All this leads us to a culture that privileges our rank, our ranking in a list, rather than our well-being or our progress towards it.
We now compare ourselves in all areas, without exception. The “best” in their field are adulated, not to say idolized. I will not dwell here on individual comparisons, whose deleterious effect on living together and tolerance of difference is already too well known to everyone. Collective comparisons are now an integral part of the landscape aimed at justifying decisions or actions that are questionable to say the least.
For example, in the field of health, we will be told that a country or province spends more or less than us on “average” per capita. In reality, the wider we cast the net, the less valid the comparison is, because the disparities between the two groups multiply almost infinitely. In this field, we will also be told that, without the accelerated aging of our population, the level of service would be “comparable” to what it was 25 or 30 years ago. We will fail to be told that this aging was not only predictable, but expected, and that it will continue for a long time. In any case, the suffering person who has been waiting for an operation for too long does not give a damn, and rightly so, about such insensitive and useless “comparisons”. Another paradox: we often measure the level of “health” of a population by its life expectancy, while aging is supposedly an obstacle to receiving appropriate care!
Another example, in the field of education, international PISA test results are used as a measure of the quality of our education system. Quebec boasts of being among the best in the world, particularly in mathematics, while neglecting to note that its results have been in continuous and progressive decline since the early 2000s. What does it mean to be among the best in a world where everyone is in decline? Meanwhile, the percentage of people suffering from literacy deficiencies is not improving.
The examples could continue ad nauseam. This paradigm of competition and untimely comparison constitutes one of the main obstacles to true human progress. The song of the capitalist sirens rings increasingly false. Let us sing a new hymn to cooperation in order to get us out of the current quagmire and truly progress towards a more inspiring and meaningful human condition.