Socialist activists and the affluent green elite have been using their networks and influence to re-shape the Western narrative into a crisis with only one solution: we must move beyond capitalism, global trade, industrial growth and international finance. They preach from a perch of social justice, environmental responsibility and focus on diversity. They also preach from a perch of bias, ignorance and self-interest.

Buzzwords abound as this elite lexicon churns out phrases like conscious capitalism, degrowth, beyond growth… with every issue cloaked in some transition (away from the industrial / capitalist model). A green transition, an energy transition, a food systems transition, a political transition towards citizen assemblies until finally, what is essential to all of this is an economic, degrowth transition away from capitalism (now in its last stage of ‘destruction’ and ‘injustice’).

Words matter as they shape our dialogue and empower certain narratives. I have been noticing a subtle term frequently popping up in media groups like the Washington Post to frame what they are trying to portray as the dying days of a system they despise, calling it: late-stage or late capitalism. Professors have been teaching young people this concept for the last decade under part of their postmodernist ideology but it has now entered the mainstream American socialist narrative.

But what does a late-stage capitalist world look like?

A World of Fear

The late-stage capitalist world is presented as a world under continuous crisis from the weight of industry’s destructive exploitation. This crisis rhetoric feeds off (and generates) public fear of impending total destruction. Humanity faces a total collapse of, well, everything. An ecosystem collapse. A climate collapse leading to mass extinction (a biodiversity collapse). An agricultural collapse (with a very limited number of harvests left in our soil). A Third World debt collapse. A human health collapse… Humanity is facing destruction from endocrine disruption (caused by pesticides, plastics and chemicals) and chronic non-communicable diseases (caused by ultra-high processed foods).

From Marx to Piketty, we have been told the only way to survive this crisis is to abandon the capitalist model. Then COVID-19 hit and the argument advanced with the need to return to “traditional” measures like agroecology, natural (organic) food production, restoration of nature, promotion of local markets and economies, banning of all plastics and the elimination of fossil fuels. International finance, global trade and interconnected supply chains have exacerbated the crisis, and thus need to be eliminated. Take total precaution and let the earth heal itself.

Global free trade agreements have put too much strain on the planet, the economy and certain factions in society. We need, they argue, to reestablish and subsidise small, local markets. Western countries are starting to erect trade barriers to protect local industries, friend-shoring to selectively trade with countries deemed politically or morally acceptable, and imposing social and environmental restrictions on others as indirect import sanctions.

Quite simply, the only way to save the planet, biodiversity and humanity is to abandon capitalism and its destructive practices (global trade, intensive agriculture, innovations and growth). The cumulative crises demand a radical shift towards degrowth to turn back the clock – to save the planet and humanity. These crises demand a transition to a post-capitalist world.

Social Justice Collapse

The inequities from capitalism are apparently reaching their zenith. As the 1% profit from their under-utilized personal capital, the growing under-class (the 99%) continue to lose and suffer from a system in crisis. Poverty grows, those in under-developed countries are more desperate to migrate (also now called “climate refugees”) and those who have suffered from the unjust system are starting to try to take what they feel they rightly deserve (hence crime and looting are rising and justified by observers as one more failure of capitalism).

The death of George Floyd energized a movement to fight for their brand of social justice. But these revolutionaries thought the only way to empower those who have suffered injustice (a list that keeps on growing) is to disempower those they felt were responsible for the system (white, affluent males). Revolution, not evolution.

Their answers to complex problems were actually quite simple. As the police were the protectors of the corrupt establishment, we needed to defund them. As governments profited from the capitalist system, we needed to introduce citizen assemblies and citizen science. As corporate coffers grew to the benefit of a few insiders, we have begun to tolerate industrial theft, ranging from absurd litigation damages to widespread looting. As global injustice wreaked havoc on developing countries as the wealthy West exploited the exploited South, we needed to open borders to alleviate the suffering and our guilt.

As late-stage capitalism collapses, we need a New World Order. It’s time for the radical left to come in, giving everyone who feels they have suffered their due, taking the wealth of society back from the capitalists who stole from humanity (since colonial times). The structures of global trade, international finance, integrated food chains and the exploitative industries need, they argue, to be dismantled.

This Agenda is Dangerously Stupid

The radical solutions presented in the anti-capitalist agenda are, to be blunt, more than just simplistic, they are dangerously stupid. Trying to assemble a multitude of manufactured fear campaigns to portray capitalism as being in its dying days, to be replaced by some neo-Marxist, naturopathic ideology, is not only opportunist, it is extremely deceptive. It has insidiously wormed its way from campus lecture halls to activist campaigns to media groups to local governments. If enough people talk about the inevitable end of capitalism, then it must be true.

Let’s assume that activists succeed in controlling the narrative and implementing their lies and fear-mongering into policy. What would this post-capitalist world look like?

• The return to peasant farming and agroecology (and away from ag-tech and large-scale agriculture), with a growing (and more affluent) global population, would lead to a rise in food insecurity, malnutrition and famines.
• The forced transition from fossil fuels would result in consumer suffering, blackouts, economic decline and massive unemployment from a rapid deindustrialisation.
• The rejection of innovative technologies, patent protection and industrial solutions will lead to a migration of talent and knowledge from Western research centres.
• The decline in law and order, civil obedience and respect for property will likely cause a rise in violence, extreme right parties and a backlash against the left-wing agenda.
• Cutting back on global trade and international finance will handcuff capital flows to regions where they can be most effectively utilized. Trade barriers will protect inefficient industries and suppress human ingenuity, innovation and development.

So the well-fed are restricting food production; the elite with solar panels are demanding energy emission cuts; the activist with the foundation-funded salary wants to shut the factory down… The post-capitalist ideology is not driven by socialism but rather self-interested zealots.

A Migration of Knowledge and Capital

If the anti-capitalist groups continue to push their agenda and succeed in convincing the media that it is time to transition away from late-stage capitalism, then we are going to suffer violent consequences. Capital, companies, researchers will not wait around for the economic and social collapse that this anti-capitalist agenda will willingly provoke.

Developing countries do not enjoy the affluence and security to pander to such a dreamers’ ideology. Governments in Africa and South-East Asia struggling to support their vulnerable populations are doing what they can to encourage growth, develop agriculture and encourage industry. When you need to develop the energy grid, you look for the best cost-benefit option. When the water is not safe to drink, you promote plastic bottles. When you have a growing population demanding richer diets, you embrace any agricultural technologies that will increase yields and support rural communities. When you need capital and infrastructure investment, you embrace global trade and markets.

Capitalism is thriving in places where risk-taking is a necessity and bellies aren’t full. If populations have real fears to keep them up at night, keep them working hard, then the false fears of the affluent and privileged elite find their true perspective.

Quite simply, influencers in developing countries don’t have time to tolerate dreams from an affluent West that has turned too inward to realize how and why they have been blessed with such prosperity. If the world’s researchers, innovators and industries wish to migrate to more capital-driven markets, they will be welcomed in many developing countries. Sitting in South-East Asia, I can confirm that this is no longer an “if” situation.

Foundation Capitalism

Xenophanes, a pre-Socratic philosopher, once wrote: If horses had hands and could draw, they would draw their gods to look like horses. We define our world by what we see around us.

The activists and academics leading the post-capitalist revolution have never worked in a company, have never risked capital or participated in scientific research that sought discovery or innovation. The closest they have come to hard labour is clicking on their PowerPoint decks. Their wealth is secured by government grants and foundation funding and they assume all of society can thrive from these sources. Their food is delivered in a biodegradable bag as is any material goods. Their plant-based lattes come from a machine.

In implementing their deindustrialisation, degrowth assault on capitalism, these academics and activists do not believe they are sending their societies back to the Stone Age. They assume everyone will live like them, with humanity advancing thanks to abundant government grants and foundation funding.

• During their anti-glyphosate campaigns, activists argued that industry research was so biased that governments would have to conduct all of their own safety and impact testing (assuming they have the capacity).
• During the COVID-19 crisis, it was assumed by anti-pharma campaigners that any vaccines or treatments should not be patented and that governments would be able to research, produce and distribute billions of vaccines (assuming they have the capacity).
• Foundations now are funding academics to conduct environmental-health exposure studies against targeted chemicals that activists then integrate into their campaigns (from the Heartland Study to some of the many EWG campaigns).
• Foundations are now funding news organisations like the Guardian, replacing the corporate model with a campaign-driven structure (ink for ideology).
• Foundations are now funding tort law firms to file public nuisance lawsuits against companies (not to win but to damage corporate reputations and keep companies on the backfoot).
• Foundations are now funding filmmakers to produce and promote films that integrate into activist campaigns.
• NGOs are now largely funded by foundations via dark, donor-advised funds (where third party interest groups like tort law firms or the organic food industry lobby anonymously donate to foundations who then turn around and give the funds to the specified organisation, minus the foundation’s commission).

NGOs, activist scientists and interest groups are swimming in money.

We are in a world where capital (money, wealth) is no longer tied to risk, labour and entrepreneurship. Governments are endlessly printing money and any fixed-supply currencies, like crypto, as stores of value double and then triple while having no real worth. As money grows on trees, this fiscal-free market is producing 30-year-old billionaires who could create an app but are then burdened with managerial roles and public expectations. So foundation consultants are quickly knocking on their doors.

We have never been in a time like this. Foundations were originally created from the wealth of industrialists like Carnegie, Ford and Rockefeller, whose business empires created generational wealth. Their philanthropy built schools, hospitals and research centres, were patrons to the arts and saved billions of lives in developing countries. Today’s philanthropists grew not from seasoned industrialists but from the awkward young nerds who grew unimaginably rich building the Internet, Web 2.0 and the crypto/AI worlds. Pushed by the Giving Pledge, they don’t know what to do and whom to give their billions to.

Enter opportunists like Effective Altruism, essentially a cult targeting Silicon Valley’s rich and their wannabes, who preach the virtue of earning more to give more, packaging their salvation product into “algorithmic donor-bases” while reeling in wicked commissions at the same time. The 2023 Open AI – Sam Altman affair is good example of how today’s tech entrepreneurs see themselves as foundation capitalists. The Effective Ventures bouquet of donor-advised funds managed to convince young pups like FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried to give away $8 billion of other people’s money. It was never perceived as real money so no harm was done, and the foundations and NGOs aren’t expected to give any of the stolen money back.

With so much capital floating around, like Xenophanes’ horses, it is understandable that the activists shaping a post-capitalist world, would believe that foundations and governments will replace industry and corporations in leading economic and financial markets. As foundation money is tied up in stock markets, if there is a crash, then governments are expected to print up more money to bail them out. It was never perceived as real money so no harm is done.

The benign Silicon Valley billionaire is too often a passive investor in a name plate organisation often controlled by a tight network of left-wing influencers who have stacked the board with their allies. There is often a clear trend in the types of beneficiaries and (socialist) objectives behind their strategic giving.

The foundations themselves have created their own opportunistic (capitalist) networks, using tools like donor-advised funds to direct more external billionaire cash into their programmes, earn higher commissions and exert further influence in governments and international organisations. There are foundations that have been created by other conglomerates of mutually interested foundations to carry out campaigns. There are also foundations whose donations are managed by other foundations.

The ecosystem of philanthropy has been taken over by special interests and opportunists.

Foundations are no longer funding the arts, hospitals or underprivileged students. Working with these activists that attack industry, foundations are now funding studies used to attack industry, movies that attack industry, news organisations that attack industry and law firms that attack industry.

Once foundations succeed in overthrowing industry, the age of foundation capitalism will truly begin, where their boards and trustees will be using the billions at their disposal to take control of the levers of power. The people in their networks will do very well. Those who used to make things, who used to work in industry, who used to have jobs in real economies … well, as representatives of the failed capitalist system, they never really mattered for much.

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