As part of the project Debt, Empire, and the Future: Dialogues with Michael Hudson, a public discussion took place featuring Michael Hudson, Steve Keen, and Hannah Chadeayne Appel (Part 3).

The discussion focused on the future of capitalism, and one of its most fascinating threads was the idea that capitalism might begin to reformat itself.

There’s an interesting parallel here: as David once noted, the Soviet elite dismantled their own system in order to shift the deep anthropological structure of kinship and pass their privileges on to their children. In a similar way, capitalism today might begin dismantling itself — in an attempt to escape the logic of production and consumption.

With the rapid advance of automation, we are moving toward a world where labor is no longer needed — and without workers, there are no consumers.

So what comes next?

Hannah Appel is right —it’s time to add debtors’ collectives movement to the trade union movements.

There should be many more of them.

Everyone has been living on credit for a long time.

Robots will do the work (which is a good thing), but we’ll still have to fight over who controls the money printed by the state: private banks or society.
As Michael Hudson says, “money is a public good.”

And it’s hard to disagree with Steve Keen:
“Michael and I are fighting capitalism, but we understand how it works better than the experts hired to maintain it.”