For Life on Earth
First published 1999 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
Second edition first published 2013
www.plutobooks.com
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
McMurtry, John, 1939-, author
The cancer stage of capitalism: from crisis to cure / John McMurtry. – 2nd edition.
First edition published: London: Pluto Press, 1999.
Co-published by Pluto Press.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-55266-592-3 (pbk.)
- Capitalism – Moral and ethical 2. Economics – Sociological aspects. 3. Economic history. 4. Marxian economics.
I. Title.
HB501.M275 2013 330.12’2 C2013-902838-2
Copyright © John McMurtry 1999, 2013
The right of John McMurtry to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 3314 4 Hardback
ISBN 978 0 7453 3313 7 Paperback (Pluto Press)
ISBN 978 1 55266 592 3 Paperback (Fernwood)
ISBN 978 1 8496 4803 5 PDF eBook
ISBN 978 1 8496 4805 9 Kindle eBook
ISBN 978 1 8496 4804 2 EPUB eBook
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This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
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Acknowledgements
The nature and conclusions of this now almost 20-year study have made it a rather solitary project. Taboos block system diagnosis and cure at all levels. So without the support of others, the work might not have reached book publication. Pluto’s commissioning director and former chair Rogervan Zwanenberg proposed the plan for the ‘very unusual’ second edition. When Roger retired, David Shulman became his vitally supportive replacement. Jeff Noonan and Giorgio Baruchello have been responsive co-researchers in the advance of life-value onto-axiology. In the hardest days near the end, Joel Bakan read the new first chapter and responded with a revealing review which bridged across the editions.
What specially prepared me for this second edition was a seven-year research project for UNESCO’s Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems. Although an independent project entitled ‘Philosophy and World Problems’, the concept of ‘life-support systems’ as our ultimate bases of being alive is the bedrock on which I build.
Persons who have been kindly supportive or helpful in this edition include Ellen Brown, Allan Connolly, Jim Fetzer, Rajani Kanth, Peter Joseph, Wahu Kaara, Stephen Lendman, Jeff Noonan, Marcel Schlaff, Bob McMurtry, Matthew Stanton, Frank Trotz and Howard Woodhouse. Tracey Dando has been an acute proof-reader. Responses and editing throughout the multiple drafts by Jennifer Sumner have been more than invaluable.
Contents
Table of Contents
Preface
1. Decoding the Cancer System and its Resolution
- HOW CHINA AND THE WEST COLLABORATE IN DESTROYING THE LIVING WORLD WITHOUT KNOWING IT
- CANCER AND DISCONNECTION FROM THE SYSTEM CAUSING IT
- Tracking the Cause of the Cancers We Already Know
- The Frame of Meaning: Full-Spectrum System Attack on Life-Organization
- Understanding Causation Against Disease Masking
- Recognizing the System Disease as Taboo
- More Deadly as a Causal Mechanism than the Bubonic Plague
- Junk Food Claws and Other Deprivations of Life-Means in Globalizing Metastasis
- CONFLATION OF LIFE-NEEDS AND COMMODITY DESIRES
- LIVING WITH THE DISEASE: HOW I CAME TO RECOGNIZE THE CANCER STAGE OF CAPITALISM
- CONNECTING THE MULTIPLE PATHWAYS OF ATTACK ON SOCIAL LIFE-ORGANIZATION
- Explaining the Deep Structure of Global Economic Collapse and Recovery
- Beyond the Shock Doctrine: The Meta-Programme of the Global Cancer System
- There is No Such Thing as Society: Destruction of Social Life-Organization to Grow Transnational Money-Sequences
- The Real Entitlement System: Transnational Money-Sequencing Eating Societies Alive
- DIAGNOSTIC HISTORY: EMERGENCE OF THE CANCER SYSTEM ACROSS NATIONS AND TIME
- The Non-Shock Pathologization of Society Growing Beneath Connected Diagnosis
- The Cancer System in Formation: The 1991 Eco-Genocide of Iraq as Signal of the Meaning
- The 9-11 Strategy to Reset World Uprising to No Resistance
- The Rising World Awareness Prior to 9-11
- The 9-11 Construction in Historical Overview
- New Orleans and the Failed US State
- Decoding the Deep-Structural Lies that Block Social-Immune Recognition
- From South to North, West to East: System Tumours in the First World
- From Big-Oil Devastation to Nuclear Meltdown: Decoding the Global Cancer Driver
- A DIAGNOSTIC SUMMARY OF DEGENERATE TRENDS: THE CANCER SYSTEM’S INVASION AT ALL LEVELS OF GLOBAL LIFE-ORGANIZATION
- LIFE-CAPITAL SEQUENCES VERSUS MONEY-CAPITAL SEQUENCES: THE TURNING POINT OF UNDERSTANDING AND RECOVERY
- Re-Grounding in Life-Capital Against the Epochal Eco-Genocides
- Seeing through the Magic Thinking of the System
- Beyond the Classical, Marxian and Neo-Classical Models: The Basic Framework of Meaning
- Capital, Goods and Investment: Resetting Understanding to Life-Coherence
- Blocks Against Life-Value and Capital Recognition by Even Life-World Theory
- Understanding Life-Capital versus Money-Capital Today
2. The Ancient Taboo
- THINKING PAST THE RULING ORDER AS AGE-OLD TABOO EAST AND WEST
- CRITICAL THOUGHT AS SOCIAL-IMMUNE SYSTEM
- LATE MODERNITY’S QUESTIONS BEGIN TO RISE
- VALUE-FREE ‘ECONOMIC LAWS’ AS AUTOMATIZED SYSTEM ENFORCEMENT
- THINKING BEYOND THE SOCIAL SCRIPT AS AN OBLIGATION OF HUMAN LIFE
- TECHNOLOGY AS SAVIOUR OR DESTROYER: UNMASKING THE RULING FETISHISM
3. The Pathologization of the Free Market
- THE REAL FREE MARKET
- THE UNSEEN MUTATIONS OF ADAM SMITH
- UNFREEDOMS MASKED AS FREEDOMS
- THE GLOBAL SYSTEM’S COVERT WAR
- MANUFACTURING THE PUBLIC DEBT CRISIS: DECODING THE HISTORICAL TURN TO MONEY-SEQUENCE RULE
- THE INNER LOGIC OF THE TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATE RIGHTS SYSTEM
- PREDICTABLE SYSTEM EFFECTS IN DESTROYING PLANETARY LIFE-ORGANIZATION
4. The Social Immune System and the Cancer Stage of Capitalism
- THE UNDERLYING DEFENCE SYSTEM OF SOCIETY AND ITS EVOLUTION
- THE SOCIAL IMMUNE SYSTEM
- Without the Social Immune System We are Dead
- Society’s Real Defence System
- Knowing the Enemy
- How to Tell Social Health from Social Disease
- The Immune System Model Across Social and Organic Life-Organization
- Individuality and Social Life-Requirements not Opposed but Interdependent
- Marx’s General Formula of Money Capital and its Alternative
- From the Welfare State Compromise to Transnational System Mutations
- RE-GROUNDING IN THE UNIVERSAL LIFE-REQUIREMENTS OF HUMAN HEALTH
- HOW THE MONEY-SEQUENCE CANCER EXPLAINS THE REVERSE OF HUMAN AND NATURAL EVOLUTION
5. The Paradigm Shift: From Cancer System to Life-Capital Economy
- THE MISSING LIFE-BASE OF ECONOMICS
- THE LIFE-BLIND MECHANISM AS THIS-WORLDLY GOD
- THE LOST CHOICE SPACE: DECODING THE LAWS OF THE CANCER SYSTEM
- Understanding the System as an Absolutist Social Morality that Cannot Be Questioned
- Recognizing the Money-Sequence System as Carcinogenic: From Reaganomics and Mass Layoffs to EU Bank Absolutism
- Tracking the Future Out of the Past: Money-Sequencing versus Life-Capital
- Reversing Civilization as Money-Sequence Freedom
- THE LIFE-CAPITAL BASE: THE WEALTH THAT CREATES MORE LIFE-WEALTH WITHOUT LOSS
- THE COMMON LIFE-GROUND AND THE LIFE-AND-DEATH STRUGGLE FOR IT
- TRACKING THE ROGUE PATHWAYS OF THE MONEY-SEQUENCE OF VALUE
- LIFE-KILLING COMMODITIES AS MIDDLE TERM OF PRIVATE MONEY-SEQUENCE GROWTH
- THE CANCER SYSTEM AT THE MARROW: TRANSNATIONAL MONEY-SEQUENCES MULTIPLYING WITH NO OTHER FUNCTION
- The General Formula of the Money-Sequence Cancer
- The Public Banking Alternative Kept Invisible
- Beyond Money-Sequence Amnesia
- Debt-Servicing Obligations = Bleeding Societies Dry
- The IMF: Life-Capital Wrecking Ball for Full-Spectrum Money-Sequence Invasion
- The Law of Inverse Relation
- Human Nature or System? The Killing Fields of Rwanda
- Twenty Years Later: The Money-Sequence Dismantling of Greece
- The New Totalitarianism: Transnational Money-Sequencing Consuming Life and Life-Bases as its Metabolism of Growth
6. The Great Vehicle of the Civil Commons
- FINDING THE COMMON LIFE-GROUND: THE CASE OF FRANCE AND EUROPE
- Equating the Economy to Transnational Money-Sequencing: The European Union and its Crisis
- Structural Blindness of the Global Market Paradigm: The Case of the World Bank in Conflict
- A Republican Leader Recognizes the Cancer System
- Decoding the Civil Commons Ground Beneath Parties and Money-Sequence Positions
- The Great Sickness Marches On with No Paradigm Shift Conceived
- THE HIDDEN WORLD OF THE CIVIL COMMONS: DEFINING THE LOST GROUND AND CHOICE-SPACE OF HUMAN SOCIETY AND WORLD CIVILIZATION
- The civil commons = any and all social constructs that enable universal access to life-goods.
- Decoding the Civil Commons Base of Human Evolution
- The Origin and Through-Line of the Civil Commons in Socially Constructed Language and Rules
- The Destruction of Knowledge and Creation Sharing by the Transnational Money-Sequence System
- The Civil Commons as Basis of Human Discovery and Development
- System Overview
- The Civil Commons Nature of the Great Spiritual Meanings
- The Civil Commons Usurped: The Lost Moral Compass of the Contemporary State
- The Undeclared War of Corporate States versus Civil Life-Standards from 1991 On
- The Lawless Reversal of Civilization, the Cure in Law, and the Big Lie of Free Trade
- The Ultimate Choice: Standing for Society’s Life Against the Transnational Money-Sequence Occupation
- People Will Not Accept It If They Know: Re-Grounding in the Life-Principled Base of All Human Advance
- BEYOND THE REVERSE PROPAGANDA OF THE SYSTEM: UNDERSTANDING THE FORMATION OF CITIZENS IN FREE COMMUNITY AND MORAL CIVILIZATION
- THE LIFE-AND-DEATH CHOICE-SPACE OF THE WORLD: LATIN AMERICA BEFORE AND AFTER 2000, CANADA VERSUS NORWAY TODAY
- Life-Capital Values and Investment: The Known Imperatives of Recovery
- Progressive Taxation as a Primary Principle of Responsible Government
- The Logic of Prosperity and Recovery Across Developed and Developing Worlds
- The Inner Logic of Self-Multiplying ‘Investments’ that Consume the World with no Life-Function
- RECLAIMING PUBLIC RESOURCES = RECOVERING FROM THE MONEY-SEQUENCE CANCER SYSTEM
- TRACKING THE FALLS OF JAPAN AND THE EUROPEAN UNION TO TODAY
- The Lesson Writ Large: The Macro Law of Economic Failure
- From Cancer System to Cure: An Overview of the Four System-Deciders
- The Life-versus-Death Choice-Space of Europe Over 60 Years
- The Financial Inner logic of the Great Sickness
- Austerity Programmes = Bleeding Peoples to Death to Pay the Banks More for Their Failure = Cancer Spiral
- How Did Europe Go So Wrong?
- Decoding the Financial Erasure of Responsible Government
- Locking in Money-Cancer Rule by Reverse Projection
- The Transnational Money-Sequence Treaties Called ‘Free Trade and Capital Flows’
- The Bank of Banks Ruling Behind the Scenes
- PUBLIC BANKING SYSTEM AS LONG KNOWN BUT REPRESSED IMPERATIVE OF ECONOMIC WELL-BEING
- THE ULTIMATE DETERMINER OF ECONOMIC LIBERATION: PUBLIC POLICY AND SECURE FUNDING FOR COMMON LIFE-CAPITAL ADVANCE
- The Long Pull Beyond the Great Sickness: Overcome the Impoverishment of Mothers and Children First
- The Case of Brazil’s Bolsa Familia as Global Lesson
- Structural Poverty Reduction Across Borders: Defined and Funded Public Policy Determination Decides the Economic Liberation
- Recovery By Life-Capital Investment: The Lesson of Public Spending that Works
- BEYOND EQUALITY AND INEQUALITY AS SYSTEM SYMPTOMS: PUBLIC SPENDING TO ENABLE PEOPLE’S LIVES AS SUPREME ECONOMIC GOAL
- Concrete Examples
- The Carcinogenic Investment Cycle in Reprise
- The Unspoken War
- The Reclamation of Society by Democratic Methods and Public Investment
- What the Occupy Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street Movements have Lacked
- The Grammar of Democratic Recovery: Transformation by Life-Capital Policy-Deciders
- Beyond Keynes and Marx to Public Investment in Life-Capital
- REGAINING LIFE-BEARINGS FOR EARTH RECOVERY: THE LIFE-CAPITAL PRINCIPLES OF ECOLOGICAL ECONOMY
- Latin American Leaders and First Peoples on the World Destruction
- The Recovery Begins At The Level Of Life-Capital Meaning
- The Life and Life-Capital Measure
- The Ultimately Regulating Principles of Human Advance and Extinction
- The Real Ecological Economics: Life-Capital Economy Clarified and Distinguished
- Knowing the Power of Sovereign Democracy Against the Financial Cancer
- THE THREE Rs OF ECO-LITERACY: FROM CIVIL COMMONS MOTTO TO FIRST PRINCIPLES
- The Clarifying Questions of the Three Rs of Eco-Literacy as Formulae for Terrestrial Life-Recovery
- Reduce by Rational Allocation to What Life-Capacities Require to Flourish
- Re-Using Life-Goods as Goods: The Second ‘R’ Towards Real Economy and Non-Waste Recovery
- The Social Immune Response is Underway but Incoherent
- Re-Use as Political Economy Defended by Law
- System-Wide Recovery
- Sustainability as Re-Usability After Use
- Real Efficiency: Recycling for the Future
- From System Ignorance to Material Control
- Beyond the Theoretical Mind-Locks of the Ruling Paradigm
- THE LOST VALUE BASE OF ECONOMICS: LIFE-COHERENT SUPPLY AND DEMAND
Index
Thank you for your terrific collation of this important and profound thinker.