The Alibi of Capital: How We Broke the Earth to Steal the Future on the Promise of a Better Tomorrow

Political theorist Mitchell (Carbon Democracy) offers a paradigm-shifting critique of the logic that underlies the modern economy. Today is “an age in which extraordinary wealth seems to arrive from unfathomable sources,” Mitchell writes, noting that even critics of the current system seem unable to reckon with the vast and concentrated wealth “conjured... out of thin air” by speculative financial markets. To fully reckon with this “mode of acquiring unearned wealth” that is “the defining feature of our contemporary form of life,” Mitchell argues that one must understand what capital actually is. Capital, he asserts, is foremost “a practical means of consuming the future.” By way of explanation, he traces the origins of “modern investor-owned firms” back to “armed trading corporations” like the Dutch East India Company, which had displaced “older merchant networks... of the Indo-Islamic world” that had put limits on speculation as unethical. With the colonial expansion of Europe, such limits were disregarded. Today, rampant speculation is seen as natural, with the rich living on “unearned income” that “those coming later” are expected to pay. Ultimately, it is time itself that has been “colonized,” Mitchell chillingly explains. He chases his theme across centuries and around the globe, along the way emphasizing the most drastic and global consequence of capital’s theft from the future: climate catastrophe. This bracing and original analysis demands a reorientation of many received wisdoms. (Mar.)