For all the marvels of capitalism, two core features of capitalist societies expose a devastating contradiction in the capitalist way of life. On the one hand, the era of capitalism has witnessed a growth in material living standards unmatched in human history. On the other hand, evidence abounds that life in a capitalist society is blighted by financial insecurity, existential anxiety, and workplace burnout, none of which becomes more palatable by appeals to the purported deficiencies of alternative economic systems, or the insolent and callous retort that struggle is part of life. Capitalism, in short, leaves us feeling extraordinarily rich and profoundly unsatisfied.
The idea that the material enrichment to which we have become accustomed in capitalist economies goes hand in hand with a long and dark winter of discontent is bound to be denounced, even ridiculed, by the cheerleaders of capitalism. It may not even find a receptive audience among the radicals and sceptics who dare to imagine a society that does not worship the almighty dollar. I have argued that the end of capitalism is upon us (though it may take a few generations, perhaps a few centuries, for it to finally die). But for now, we are in its grip, conditioned from the moment we are born to welcome a life spent with the cold comforts of a society that runs on dollars and cents. As things stand, we are compelled to live in a society in which everything we think, feel, do, and say marches to the tune of profit maximisation, capital accumulation, the power of money, and the sanctimony with which multi-millionaires and billionaires impose their will on society with seemingly little to no regard for democratic consent.
There are countless manifestations of how the pied piper of capitalism lures us into a life in which we capitulate to the totalitarian ethos of commodification. It is evident in how we cannot conceive of human worth except in terms of human productivity. It is evident in how we cannot conceive of human dignity except in terms of the size of our bank account and the professional title we attach to our name on LinkedIn. It is evident in how we cannot conceive of human achievement except in terms of salary, savings, and shareholder approval of a $1 trillion pay package. It is evident in how we cannot conceive of human freedom except in terms of purchasing power and job market prospects. It is evident in how we cannot conceive of a life worth living except in terms of efficiency and convenience. In short, it is evident in the reification of human beings as cost-benefit calculators. In a contemporary world ruled by neoliberal capital, we cannot imagine a life in which our chances for success and satisfaction do not depend acutely on the extent to which we are nurtured to think and act like a neoclassical economist.
For the avatars of our capitalist dystopia, the key to a good life is to acquire marketable credentials, build businesses that maximise revenue and minimise cost, save and invest, compete for customers and jobs, and above all, cultivate the entrepreneurial mindset that seeks to enrich oneself on the basis of one’s own industry and talent. It is to internalise the mindset of ‘meritocracy’ and prudential reason that encourages and promotes a culture of efficiency, economic growth, and hard work alongside a devaluation of leisure as being akin to idleness. Our ability to thrive, and even survive, depends on whether, like Elon Musk’s lapdog Steve Davis, we are eager to help our boss help move data servers on Christmas Eve while our wife and one-month-old child sleep in the office.
To be sure, the economist is not wrong that material gains to society are to be had from a savvy assessment of costs and benefits with an eye toward the efficient management of resources. It is undoubtedly the case that the utilitarian drive of the economist and the competitive zeal of the meritocrat serve us well in critical dimensions of life. Well-run hospitals are imperative for saving lives. Well-managed grocery stores and well-coordinated supply chains are indispensable to affordable, well-stocked refrigerators. Similarly, for many of the conveniences and essentials of modern life. As research by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joel Mokyr has demonstrated, a culture of competitive entrepreneurial enterprise is conducive to economic prosperity.
Unfortunately, however, there is a foundational dark side to all this efficiency and innovation, and it is all too often ignored, unacknowledged, or trivialised in modern life. The current onslaught of investment in artificial intelligence (AI) and the ideological apparatus of capitalism that gives it cover epitomise the whole dystopian nightmare. This latest technological boondoggle of capitalism promises to infect and transform all aspects of life. The equity valuations of the ‘Magnificent Seven’, which drove overall stock market gains last year, are a testament to the expectation of profit-hungry investors that AI is poised not only to automate, but also to further commodify, every bit of modern life as far as possible. It’s AI’s world, and we’re all living in it.
Deep angst over ongoing and seemingly inevitable social disruptions—job loss; intellectual piracy by machine learning algorithms; deep fakes; a simulated, impoverished cultural and aesthetic life; ecological damage from the proliferation of data centres that prolong our reliance on fossil fuels—is widespread. But as AI runs amok, we worship at the altar of its promised gains in efficiency and productivity, feeling powerless to exert any degree of influence on its use or direction because we are resigned to the total domination of uber-rich cyber barons who seem to be the only ones positioned to be on the winning side of AI’s rising productive tide. But even the cyber barons cannot escape the competitive pressure to keep investing millions to win the race to automate society. This mania even includes investments in elaborate underground bunkers, as if the cyber barons are expecting an Armageddon that they—with all of their billions, or perhaps because of their billions—feel powerless to avoid, or even make sense of.
As a consummate example of how the manic blitz of AI is poised to further entrench the capitalist malaise of our consumer society, consider how Amazon—the online retail giant founded by headstrong billionaire and unapologetic champion of free market capitalism, Jeff Bezos—has leveraged AI in its relentless quest to commodify every feasible aspect of our lives that it can identify. Amazon employs AI to advance the ceaseless march of commodification by doing such things as enhance its Alexa assistant to think and talk as much like a human as our closest friend; improve product listings; bamboozle us with dazzling advertisements; help customers pay with the palm of their hand; review and highlight product features; help predict a blitz on Thursday Night Football; eliminate checkout lines; and make it easier for us to read our prescriptions.
All fascinating stuff, but the upshot is to integrate our souls more fully into the orbit of buying and selling in the marketplace—the sort of existence that an economist is trained to perceive as the natural order of things, that Amazon employees work day and night to optimise, and that Jeff Bezos extols as a virtue knowing full well, as one of the world’s richest men, the salient effect on his bottom line. Meanwhile, Amazon has plans in place to replace, with robots, half of its workforce of 1.2 million criminally over-worked employees—which presumably includes many superordinate ‘Amabots’ who are such compulsive workaholics that they ‘become at one with the [Amazon] system’ (apparently without any expectation that they will be rewarded for their allegiance to the cause).
The slogan ‘Warning: Contents may cause happiness’ that we see plastered on Amazon delivery trucks is a clever marketing ploy that exploits our tendency to forgive a seemingly innocuous embellishment by reminding us of the undeniable dopamine hit we get from the convenience of a delivered package, or the exhilaration of one employee who gloats about how ‘a customer was able to get an Elsa doll that they could not find in all of New York City, and they had it delivered to their house in 23 minutes.’ But as Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno might have remarked, 75 years after their mid-20th century critique of the culture industry, the truth that it’s all just business is made into an ideology in order to justify the noise and distraction that nudge us to shell out more money on the glitter, or rubbish, we keep buying; or to attenuate the shock to employees hooked up to the grind machine when they realize that robots have made them expendable. Meanwhile, the dehumanising dystopia of modern capitalism, with AI as its latest ‘innovation’, hums along.
Most, if not all, of us can appreciate the extraordinary efficiency with which Amazon is able to gratify consumer wants and needs. Many of us may also be familiar with the ruthless performance metrics with which Amazon micromanages its workforce, or the way it trains its AI models by outsourcing hundreds, if not thousands, of microtasks to nonunionised workers around the world who answer not to a human but to an algorithm, and are paid paltry piece rates, without benefits, rather than a stable, livable wage. In either case, it is far from a foregone conclusion that Amazon seamlessly facilitates human flourishing. In many ways, especially in the case of its workers, it makes life worse.
Amazon is only one firm, of course, but as it increasingly becomes the focal point of merchant capitalism along with Walmart, Amazon exemplifies how a capitalist economy can deliver optimal price and performance for the consumer without crafting any portrait of a life not drenched in the colour of money, while maximizing profit at the expense of the worker’s liberty and peace of mind. The temporary dopamine hit from a delivered package lasts for maybe a minute or an hour before the customer feels tempted to return to the Amazon site to browse and shop, further feeding the algorithms that nudge and expedite additional purchases that line the pockets of Jeff Bezos and Amazon’s shareholders. Amazon, in fact, epitomises how firms empowered by the latest advances in information technology—e.g., data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence—exacerbate the anomie that consistently erodes the morale of those living in a capitalist society.
Admittedly, the idea that AI and Amazon encapsulate not only the benefits of capitalism but also the dystopian dehumanisation inherent in capitalism may strike the reader as peculiar, if not outlandish, to say the least. The more frequently we use Amazon, the more Amazon learns about our apparent preferences as inferred from our shopping habits. Every search, click, view, rating, and subscription that reflects our activity on its site is a data point Amazon feeds into AI models that predict our next purchase. The goal is to persuade us to buy as conveniently and frequently as possible by guiding us through a few additional clicks on the way to a fast and furious delivery. An Amazon customer can find, purchase, and receive almost any commodity available for sale, as fast as anyone has ever been able to do in history. It is merchant capital at its finest.
And yet, for all the dopamine hits we get from the convenience of its AI-driven efficiency, Amazon exemplifies the false idol that is capitalism. The capitalist world is a world in which, from the moment we are born to the moment we die, we cannot help but internalise a suffocating, bedrock belief that the purpose of life is to buy and sell, and that the maximalist pursuit of ‘utility’ and profit is a law of nature as well as the motor and measure of all progress and prosperity, all the while knowing in our hearts that money cannot buy happiness. It is a world in which people cannot escape the stress, uncertainty, and despair of life in a neoliberal economy, which prioritises flexibility at the expense of security, profit-driven performance-monitoring at the expense of equanimity, and burnout of the kind that strains family life. It drains the imagination of the capacity to think beyond the parameters set by profit and capital and minimises the time and energy that could be used to engage in more creative and fulfilling leisure activities like art, music, carpentry, and other avocational pursuits that apparently slow down brain ageing and perhaps may make life a little more worth living, even if it means that we have to wait a few extra days for Amazon to deliver art supplies, a keyboard piano, or the tools we need to work on that antique car in the garage.
To invoke a holiday analogy, it is helpful to remind ourselves of the obvious truth that presents under the tree on Christmas morning may light up the eyes of children. But they mean very little compared to the health and happiness of the family and friends with whom we share the experience of a holiday gathering (and wouldn’t such gatherings be so much more worthwhile without having to commiserate with them over Christmas dinner about the constant challenges of confronting the adversities of the capitalist way of life?). In the same vein, the dopamine hits we get from a delivered package are no replacement for the steady contentment we obtain from the harmony of our relationships with other people, from the creative and purposive activities in which we pursue objectives that go beyond the confines of the bottom line, and from productive aspirations for which the mission is more meaningful than the money.
It is people, not profits, that enrich our social life. It is passion, not performance plans, that animates our creative and productive endeavours. It is purpose, not the punching of timecards, that makes life meaningful. Amazon and AI can surely help us live better lives, but not if our souls must die on the sword of cutthroat efficiency, and not if we must sacrifice the autonomy and leeway that we require for our hearts to blossom and our minds to decide for ourselves what constitutes a flourishing life. Otherwise, we fail to imagine a life of success and satisfaction beyond helping a billionaire boss like Elon Musk move servers on Christmas Eve while our wife and child sleep in the office, or hovering over an ill-gotten hoard like a miserly, miserable Scrooge while the overworked and underpaid Cratchit goes home to his beloved family without gifts to light up the eyes of his children. It is about time that capitalism, AI, and Amazon received a visit from Jacob Marley.
Related reading
Is Democracy Overrated? The Vacuity of Curtis Yarvin and His ‘Dark Elves’, by Jonathan Church
Artificial intelligence and algorithmic bias on Islam, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid
Ethical future? Science fiction and the tech billionaires, by Rahman Toone
I can see the concrete slowly creepin’, by Giuseppe Novelli
The Left-Liberal Tradition: Or, How Liberalism and Socialism Can be Allies, by Matt McManus
Meaningful Control: The Pursuit of True Economic and Political Democracy, by Zwan Mahmod
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