Trump and Musk have ushered in the era of cataclysm capitalism. But I have a plan to counter it | Julia Steinberger | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/02/donald-trump-elon-musk-capitalism-us-democracy
▻https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/feedd7fc0616db9bd67124be8dfade1021ce117a/0_226_8256_4954/master/8256.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-ali
Cataclysm capitalism is the worthy heir to neoliberalism and its disaster capitalism. As Naomi Klein described in her book The Shock Doctrine, neoliberal economic ideology took advantage of crises to deregulate and privatise public services, hobble trade unions and civil society, and generally create conditions ideal for private wealth accumulation and disastrous for equality, work and welfare. Cataclysm capitalism does all this, and goes further. The pace of change is accelerated, the dismantling of public institutions more complete, the attack on democracy more overt. Perhaps the most frightening aspect is that the industries laughing in the face of planetary and social destruction have made a clear calculus: they don’t need prosperous economies to profit. Neoliberalism at least claimed to be serving a form of greater good via winner-takes-all market competition. Cataclysm capitalism dispenses with this illusion altogether.
The fossil fuel companies, the rightwing tech magnates and the financial companies hurrying in their wake have somehow convinced themselves that they don’t need prosperous economies to prosper themselves. They have learned to profit from disruption and destruction. They know from experience that immiserated populations will endure exploitative working conditions and go deep into debt to keep themselves and their families alive.
Paradoxically, the creation of vast economic insecurity favours far-right politics. Voters in a constant state of fear and stress, without a clear understanding of the system creating hardships, are an easy prey for far-right rhetoric blaming migrants, woke and trans people. Sadly, since neoliberal ideology has devoured previously centre-left parties (UK Labour and US Democrats), we are left with much less of an organised opposition, and much more of a pipeline to accelerating disaster.
The picture is grim. We are faced with an organised hostile takeover of democracy, coupled with a dismantling of the economy in favour of the sectors and industries most beneficial to the fossil-fuel and tech magnates, to our detriment and the detriment of all life on Earth. What can we do? I propose a three-pronged plan, short and schematic – enough to get started.