"Naming neoliberalism and capitalism is the first step in breaking capitalist realism’s hold over us. By using historically specific terms, we are implicitly highlighting that the economy as we know it today had a starting point. This is useful because it drags the idea of the economy into the realm of time. No longer is the neoliberal capitalist economy something outside of the cycles of birth and death that govern all life. Instead it is something that began. And things that begin are things that can end.
Understanding capitalism as time-bound is not enough. Knowing that something can end does not tell you anything about how it might end. This is where the language of critical disciplines like ecological economics, feminism, and Marxism become useful.
Ecological economics, feminism, and Marxism all take issue with capitalist conceptions of value. They critique and deconstruct it. Ecological economics argues that more is not always better. That in the pursuit of quantitative increases in monetary value, we lose something of the qualitative values of life: the expansion of capitalism has been made possible by the destruction of aesthetic, life giving, and intrinsic values of nature. Ecological economics suggests that there may be other ways to live that are not premised on the relentless expansion of consumer goods.
Feminist economics points to the inherently social nature of any productive activity. The 'economy' is not simply states and markets, rather it is a system by which we produce and distribute goods. Markets would not function without households: workers do not spring fully formed from the ether. They are born and raised in social units. The 'rational' market is ultimately nothing without the many non-monetary, 'irrational' relationships involved in caring for one another.
Marxist economics highlights that ultimately all value captured by capitalists is rooted in the work of their employees. Without employees no business can function. We are the productive heart of any economy. Workers create and do. The product of this work is then removed by a capitalist class who work (through the cultural industries) to keep workers divided and controlled. Marxism points to our role in capitalist and non-capitalist societies: neoliberalism paints us as consumers, yet we are also producers.
Each of these schools of thought has much more to offer than I can cover here — these are the key ways they have shaped my own thinking. But even in these snippets I hope you can see the possibilities. You need not agree with all of Marx to see value in the way his analysis of capitalism provides a way to begin to look beyond capitalism."
- Simon Mair, from "Triggering the Right: The Role of Language in the Culture Wars." Current Affairs, 24 March 2021.