If forced to choose one scenario as the most likely to occur sometime around 2050 (if nothing else in the meantime interfered), I would plump for a lower-growth global capitalism spreading more equality of condition across the world but carrying a casually employed or unemployed lower class of somewhere between 10% and 15% of national populations, a mixture of the two scenarios depicted above and very much like the 19th century industrializing countries. I would not predict much revolution.
There is a further obstacle to revolutionary change. The communist and fascist revolutionary alternatives to capitalism were disasters, and they are the only ones to have emerged so far. There are no other alternatives around and almost no one wants to repeat either of those. Socialism, whether revolutionary or reformist, has never been weaker. Fundamentalist Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam are the surging ideologies of the world and they tend to contemplate otherworldly as much as material salvation. This-worldly alternative ideologies of the 20th century failed. In poorer countries brought into the global economy we might expect the rise of socialist or similar movements, but they are likely to become reformist. Modern social revolutions have almost never occurred without major wars destabilizing and delegitimizing ruling regimes. In the two biggest revolutions of the 20th century, in Russia and China, world wars (with different causes than capitalist crises) were necessary causes of revolution. Wars are thankfully in decline around the world—in fact only the United States continues to make interstate wars—and there are no anticapitalist revolutionary movements of any size in the world. Revolution seems an unlikely scenario. The end really is nigh for revolutionary socialism.
The future of the left is likely to be at most reformist social democracy or liberalism. Employers and workers will continue to struggle over the mundane injustices of capitalist employment (factory safety, wages, benefits, job security, etc.), and their likely outcome will be compromise and reform. Developing countries will likely struggle for a reformed and more egalitarian capitalism just as Westerners did in the first half of the 20th century. Some will be more successful than others, as was the case in the West. China faces the severest problems now. The benefits of its phenomenal growth are very unequally distributed, generating major protest movements. Revolutionary turbulence is certainly possible there, but if successful it would likely bring in more capitalism and perhaps an imperfect democracy, as happened in Russia. America also faces severe challenges since its economy is overloaded with military and health spending, its polity is corrupted and dysfunctional, and the ideology of its conservatives has turned against science and social science. All this amid the inevitability of relative decline and the growing realization that American claims to a moral superiority over the rest of the world are hollow. This seems a recipe for further American decline.
THE END OF THE WORLD?
Yet all the scenarios I have sketched so far might be thrown out of gear by two other potential crises which might be even greater than the two world wars. Both are absolutely novel and both would be truly systemic and global. These would not be confined within national or macro-regional borders since they emerge out of the atmosphere all humans breathe.
The first global threat is the military one of nuclear war. The severity of this threat is almost completely unpredictable since it depends on a whole sequence of events any one of which might not happen. So far there have only been two-power confrontations, first the United States (and its British and French allies) against the Soviets, then India against Pakistan, flanked by a rather passive China. In these cases the threat of mutually assured destruction has been obvious to the two sides and the response, after a couple of half-crises, has been disciplined avoidance of escalation. Nuclear deterrence has worked.
However, when more than two powers are involved in more complex conflicts, outcomes become more fraught. It was multipower conflicts in which some could not read the intentions of others which produced both world wars. In the Middle East Israel already has nuclear weapons, Iran is nearing that goal, and that might provoke neighboring powers to drive for them as well. That would be dangerous for the Middle East, for their neighbors, for much of the world’s oil supplies, and even for the whole world. These arms races have little to do with capitalism. If nuclear war did break out, then capitalism would be seen by any survivors as having been only a minor player in the disaster. However, maybe Iran will be persuaded away from nuclear weapons; maybe Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Turkey will not retaliate by acquiring them; and maybe human reason can even surmount the dangers posed by multiple rival powers armed with nuclear weapons. Yet then there is the possible scenario of terrorists stealing a nuclear weapon. Who can predict the outcome here since some terrorists do appear to be motivated by otherworldly goals? Theirs might be the most dangerous ideology ever.
The second systemic crisis is in contrast highly predictable—unless extraordinary evasive action is taken. Climate change is happening (I deal with this in Volume 4, Chapter 12). The air, sea and land are warming while also experiencing more fluctuations in temperatures, predominantly because of human actions. The threat is global, since greenhouse gas emissions anywhere affect people everywhere. These emissions come flanked by other disaster scenarios: food and water shortages, polar icecap and tundra melting, seawater inundations, etc. Millions of people are already dying prematurely as a result of global warming and the survival of a few poorer countries will be threatened within twenty to thirty years unless human societies radically change the direction of their development.
If humanity does act in time to substantially reduce emissions, it has to radically challenge and reform the three major institutions which have achieved such success over the last century. The first one is capitalism—though only because this is now the dominant mode of production in the world. State socialism in its heyday was just as destructive of the environment. As radical environmentalists say, we have to get society off “the treadmill of profit.” This might mean disciplining business through a severe regulatory “command and control” state, or through taxation levied on the throughput of resources in enterprises, or through market mechanisms like stringent “cap and trade” programs which provide incentives for capitalists to turn toward investment in virtuous low-emissions industries. If such policies are pursued rigorously, capitalism will survive, even if far more regulated. Since many industries are not high-emitters, there need not be united capitalist opposition to such policies. This might also provide another phase of “creative destruction,” in which low-emissions technologies generate profits and new jobs. Some entrepreneurs are already banking on this and switching into investment in alternative fuels, wetland and forest preservation, and other environmental novelties. At present alternative energy technologies do not create more net jobs in the world, but this might change if they became the norm. A recent report from the Copenhagen Consensus Center suggests that net job gains could be made in the alternative technology sector if several conditions were met: rapid technological innovation, rapid progression of economies of scale, global implementation of similar green policies, and perhaps adoption of protectionist measures such as tariffs or local content requirements. Tax policy could also be directed at job creation. If taxation is levied on the total throughput of nonrenewable resources and not on either business or labor in general, as at present, then that would encourage the hiring of labor. This could be the next wave of creative destruction. It would certainly destroy the fossil fuel industries.