Canadian perspective on capitalism as an evolutionary process

Canadian Perspectives of Capitalism as an Evolutionary Process believe it is possible for us to live wisely, agreeably and well in a society of abundance. The "free-market" capitalist system we live under is suffering growing pains, but overall is relatively nascent. Evolution is a series of processes by which an organism learns and adapts. This adaptation never ceases, instead it goes through stages of growth and turmoil, interspersed with stages of stability. The current economic system has yet to reach a stage of stability, in large part because it is so new, being roughly a century and a half in the making. The evolutionary process is one of experimentation - when faced with a problem, numerous solutions are tried with only the successful ones failing. At the current stage its life, capitalism is still faced with many failures but over time, those concepts unable to sustain the system will fall by the wayside.

There are several current failings in our global capitalist system. It would be easy to dwell strictly on these failings and allow the complexity of dealing with these failings to overwhelm us and make us believe that we cannot exact change. In fact, change has already begun, simply by the fact that so many of us have begun to recognize these failings for what they are. We are disconcerted with the fact that these failings must cause more strife before change will occur, but again that should not allow us to believe that the changes will never occur.

In a speech in Toronto in 2000, John Ralston Saul used the example of Toronto's homeless as a structure around which to build a discussion of this issue. The various failings around the world - the degradation of our environment, the failure to engage the entire world in our progress - these are analogous to Saul's example of Toronto's homeless. Saul reminds us in this speech that there are many analogies between Canada and the capitalist system. The principles on which this country were founded were idealistic, but imperfect. There were many issues, from suffrage for women to treatment of natives, that were not addressed. In the course of Canada's evolution, these issues have in turn been addressed, and continue to be. It is neither the individual failures nor the individual successes that we should focus on, but rather the continuation along the trajectory began with the vision of our country.

In the same way, I view the current failures of the capitalist system in the same way. When the system began, it was but one ideology, competing for supremacy. It has taken until recent years for this ideology to gain global supremacy. It is only recently that we as world citizens have had the luxury of measuring capitalism against itself. This began the current course of refinement of the model that is only now beginning to gather steam.

The previous course of the model, that of materialism, of excess consumption, of Social Darwinism, is dominant. But the flaws of that model have become evident. Saul spoke of the Toronto homeless as an issue in which we feel an urgency of emotion, but one that does not translate to an urgency of action, at least among those who have the capacity to enact solutions. This is because those who have inherited power within the present structure of capitalism, the technocrats who have created an arcane system choked with bureaucratic minutiae, are obsessed with just one aspect of capitalism's benefits, that being the pursuit of wealth and power.

The view, however, that wealth and power are the ends, rather than the means, is a misinterpretation of capitalism that has taken the ideology along the wrong path. Capitalism's strength is in its ability to leverage the base needs of human beings to improve the world in which we live. As George Soros put it, "Market economies...are adult environments in which people take responsibility for their own actions and react to the perceived incentives and opportunities around them." The flaw, he illustrated, is that "unsure of what they stand for, people increasingly rely on money as the criterion of value...what used to be a medium of exchange has usurped the lace of fundamental values."

Yet, humanity still retains many of those self-same fundamental values. In measuring capitalism against itself, many of us have begun to see how our present model is failing the environment, the developing world, and even elements within our own society. We see ancient cultures reject our values, not out of spite but out of wisdom. When the King of Bhutan states this his country will only measure Gross National Happiness rather than Gross National Product, it is because he understands that happiness is not dependent on money. Examples like this exist in societies all over the world.

The shift that needs to be undertaken has already begun. More importantly, it has always been there. During the industrial revolution, pollution in England's industrial heartland was staggering. People were drawn to the cities with the promise of money that would improve their lives. Over time, the people learned that the money wasn't enough and the pollution and living conditions were deplorable. Eventually, they demanded change with such a strong voice that it was granted. So too we see today the undercurrent of anger amongst many of the world's citizens at environmental degradation and the failure to incorporate all the world's people in the distribution of wealth that the capitalist model has generated.

The reforms that followed the Industrial Revolution occurred because the citizens of that time undertook a fundamental shift from being spectators to their own lives to that of being actors. Saul has pointed to such actors as Louis Lafontaine and Robert Baldwin, who set out the foundation for what would become Canada's national character, even at the sacrifice of some of their own material wealth. As the concepts of environmentalism and minority rights have grown in the past decades, this shift is again emerging. Increasingly, people be they middle-class Westerners or activists in the developing world, are understanding that to merely express their ideas is insufficient. The tide of failures of the system have not been stemmed by talk. These citizens now understand that they need to be actors, that is that they need to get inside the system in order to change it.

The architects of the current materialism are those who stand to benefit the most from it. They have built a dense network of structures to consolidate and defend their power. It is only recently that we have recognized this, and even more recently that we as a society have begun to realize we must untangle this network. One of Saul's central points is that this network now works to defend itself, rather than the principles upon which it was, long ago, founded. When citizens who put principle above personal need become actors, we can begin to refocus the capitalist system back towards its most valuable principles.

How will this work? Those that have become actors are initially highly-principled individuals, the activists. In marketing terms the early adopters. From there, the shift becomes more mainstream. These issues, particularly environmentalism, are becoming more prevalent in mainstream politics, even amongst actors otherwise committed to the present flawed model, an example being the surprisingly green budget recently tabled by the BC provincial government. As these issues become more mainstream, they gain more currency and the system becomes re-tooled, re-oriented towards these objectives. This mainstreaming stage sees a good, but not great version of the ideals. But the great version will come next, as more pure form environmentalism and equality are demanded. This is evident even today. Much progress has been made towards the integration of women and minorities into our system, but yet we remain unsatisfied. There is still demand for more progress.

This is the power of the evolutionary process at work in the capitalist economic system. Ideas are tested, some rejected and others refined. We are now in a process whereby we've tested the globalization model and found it needs significant refinement. The next step, realigning it back towards the basic principles of equality and relatively even distribution of wealth, has begun. It took decades of miserable pollution and labor conditions for the mistakes of Industrial Revolution England to be unwound. So too will the mistakes of the present capitalist course be unwound, given time. The reason for my optimism is that not only are the success factors in place, but that they fit with the normal course of evolution as applied to the capitalist model.

In terms of the way this will manifest itself, the tools of modern capitalism will be to some degree realigned to meet different needs. Communication and transportation will be repositioned from a goal of pure wealth to one more geared on interaction and information. Elements of society not engaged by the current system will not be force-fed the new alignment through top-down guidance. Rather, they will be provided the means and information by which to pursue their own path. One of the failures of the current system is that it often does not account for cultural and resource differences between nations - instead a one-size fits all economic system is imposed universally. Over time, each society will find its own path. Some societies will fail to adapt and ultimately disappear. That is part of the evolutionary process. The key is that right now all societies are not given the same opportunity to succeed whereas the fundamental principles of capitalism suggest they should be.