What "Late Capitalism is Eating Itself” Means For Your Life and Career

I’m Umair Haque, and this is The Issue: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported publication. Our job is to give you the freshest, deepest, no-holds-barred insight about the issues that matter most.

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Hi! How’s everyone? Welcome back old friends, welcome new ones, and here’s a little Snowy grin peeping up at you.

Today we’re going to apply some of the principles we’ve been discussing. Focusing on a certain question: what does “capitalism is eating itself” mean for your career (and your life)? What should you do about it? 

We are in the middle of a major, major crisis, that’s going unremarked upon. The “job market” is broken. Who can’t find jobs these days? Nobody can. Young people can’t, old people can’t, middle aged people can’t. It’s taking longer and longer for people to find jobs at all, and meanwhile, when and if they do, increasingly, the jobs left are “low wage service work.” You know it’s a problem when even the Wall Street Journal is writing about it.

And you can easily read thread after thread on Facebook, Reddit, and even LinkedIn from people who are in absolute despair, suicidal, hopeless, because they’ve had fine careers, and have now been looking for work for a year, maybe two…with no luck.

What’s going on here?

Is this “capitalism eating itself”? Is it “late capitalism”? 

It’s all that and more, and before I tell you exactly what to do about it, we need to discuss all that a little bit.

And by the way. If you’re not in this situation yet? Don’t preen and gloat. You will be soon.

What “Late Capitalism” Really Means and Why it Matters 

“Late capitalism” is a term we sort of toss around these days to mean this awful dystopia we’re now trapped in.

But it has a very specific meaning, that I want to teach you, historically.

These aren’t my beliefs, by the way, I’m just teaching you something.

Marx didn’t coin this term. In fact, this term was coined by a generation of later thinkers precisely because Marx was wrong.

Marx theorized that capitalism would immiserate people, meaning impoverish and leave them in despair, to the point they’d finally revolt, and after this Glorious Revolution, socialism would sweep the globe.

But something went wrong. In the 1930s, there was indeed a major crisis of capitalism. It was called the Great Depression. But what we saw instead of socialism was fascism.

So the generation of thinkers after this realized that Marx was wrong. And they coined the term “late capitalism” to try and understand why. 

The idea of late capitalism means all that. It means that people are immiserated, exploited, ruined, left desperate. That inequality soars. That there’s no future. That societies lose hope. But instead of coming together and having some kind of constructive revolution, and here we don’t have to agree with Marx, they have a fascist meltdown, which I think we can all agree is a Bad Thing.

People turn on one another. Societies shut down. Companies turn ultra-predatory. Cronyism runs rampant. Economies slide into depression. And instead of some form of positive collective action, the answer to all this tends to be conflict, and maybe even World War.

That’s late capitalism. It’s not just “this is dystopia” or “everything sucks” or even “I’m exploited to the bone.” It has that historical meaning, the very specific one: instead of doing anything positive, making wise decisions, people turn regressive, lose their thinking minds, turn on each other, and instead of the sort of class war Marx envisioned, turn to demagogues who end up starting very real ones instead.

And that’s sort of where we are in the world today, no?

Capitalism is Eating Itself, and You’re Just the Appetizer

Now. What do you do about it?

I’m going to give you some advice, and it’s going to be brutal, so first, take a deep breath, and understand that I say this from a place of love and compassion.

So you and your loved ones don’t Sink With the Ship. Remember all the principles we’ve been discussing?

Part of the “Sinking Ship” I keep talking about is precisely the fact that we’re not just in Late Capitalism The First Time Around, but the Second Time Around. The first time was the 1930s. This time, though? It’s different. Because we should have learned something from those dark times, but we haven’t, and so this era is now in a way even bleaker.

Now let’s get to the pragmatic part. Beginning 

Economies are forecast to stagnate into forever right now.

That’s because we have no sources of growth. What we do have is AI, which won’t be a source of growth, but a source of contraction, since of course, it’s going to rip apart the labor market even more. 

Because we have no sources of growth, we have no growth industries. There are a smattering, and I’ll come back to them shortly, but we certainly don’t have an economy anymore reminiscent of any decade since the 1950s.

Let’s do a brief timeline of growth industries each decade since then to make that clear.

1950s: autos, aviation, shipping, heavy industry.

1960s: plastics, chemicals, oil & gas

1970s: mainframe computing, television, film, music

1980s: personal computing, biotech

1990s: IT, internet, software

2000s: finance, until the crash, real estate, speculative forms

2010s: globalized multinational commerce, aka Big Global Business

That’s an incomplete list, obviously, just shorthand, but I did that to make a point.

That trajectory just came to a sudden end. That entire century long trajectory is now over. 

To have no growth industries is a terrifying thing, at least to an economist like me, and I’m baffled that my peers don’t give more of a shit, but hey, whatever, let’s talk about your life.

This is what capitalism is eating itself really means.

It doesn’t just mean “there are no good jobs anymore” or what have you. Rather, it means that decades of systemic underinvestment and chronic exploitation have left us with no new growth industries. That is a dire omen for the future, because of course without growth industries, who do people turn to, more and more? That’s right, demagogues.

In this game, you’re barely even the appetizer. Capitalism is now creating a 1930s level crisis. 

I understand that people who read too much dumb shit will “disagree” with me, but this isn’t some kind of intellectual game, nor is it just my opinion. We are already on the brink of something very much like a white-collar depression, we’re already deep into a recession for many industries, and those words just mean “stagnation and contraction.” That is just a fact. At last count, millions upon millions of white collar jobs had been destroyed in recent years, and that comes on top of tens of millions of blue collar ones in the preceding decades.

We are heading into a world where jobs as we know them are already becoming luxuries. That kind of an age is a depression. 

Again, I want to warn you that the nonsense you read in newspapers these days about the economy is just that. It’s written by people who don’t understand basic concepts, let along history. It’s foolish, and you should ignore it, because it just makes you dumber. How did the Dems lose the election? By telling everyone the economy was awesome, great, fantastic, when we all know something is very, very wrong with it.

That something isn’t just the rich getting richer at astronomical rates, it’s that average people haven’t been able to make it, and now, jobs seem to be becoming a luxury. Again, that’s not hyperbole. In China, an entire generation of young people can’t get decent ones, to the point it’s become a cultural focal point, nor can they in America and Europe. Meanwhile, middle aged people are being forced out way, way before retirement, in their 40s and 50s. 

So what…do you do about all this?

If Capitalism is Eating Itself, You Have to Get Out of the Way

If capitalism is eating itself, you have to get out of the way.

You have to reorient your career away from all this now.

Let me make that concrete.

If you’re young? Forget about a corporate job. Just forget about it. Don’t waste your time.

What’s the point? It’ll take you until your late 30s to get anywhere in the hierarchy, but you’ll be forced out by your 40s. The old prize of staying at the top for a decade or two or three? Forget it. Doesn’t exist anymore.

The payoff does not exist anymore.

So choose something else, while you still can. I’ll come back to precisely what, but first I want to make this point very clear, because right now, a lot of people are bewildered. So let me say it again: orient yourself away from the corporate world. We’re used to thinking of a “job” in it as “normal,” a ticket to the vaunted “middle class lifestyle,” but none of that exists anymore, and chasing it is completely futile. 

Sure, you might get lucky, and be the one who makes it to the top, but even then, as I’ve just pointed out to you, the payoff is not worth it anymore.

If you’re middle aged, I’d bet that the above is already beginning to happen to you. You’re being forced out, at least if you’re in a corporate career. Every mistake isn’t just “I could lose the promotion,” it turned into “I could lose this job,” and now it’s, “that’s the end of my career, because I’ll never find another one.”

Understand that and face it. It is true. This trend of forcing middle aged people out—no matter what their accomplishments are—is here to stay now. It is never going away. This is what the “job market” is and will be for the rest of our lives, and probably beyond, because what did we learn earlier? Late capitalism recurs. It isn’t even a “stage,” as Marx’s descendants thought, but something more like a chronic condition. And we, unfortunately, have it.

Understand and face the fact that you’re being forced out way, way before you thought you’d retire. And switch. Get ready to make a series of tough, but maybe ultimately rewarding, choices.

Or do you want to live like this forever? Existentially threatened, whether you’re young, middle aged, or old, and I’ll come to old shortly?

So. Reorient…to what?

Forging a Post-Capitalist Identity, Professionally and Personally

If we understand that capitalism is eating itself, then you must now “pivot,” as we say these days, to Havens. Places and spaces beyond it. 

There are many, many of those. Let me give you a quick list. But I want to warn you, this isn’t about thinking at this level at all, “where should I go?!,” in a panic and fury. 

It’s about reorienting your life and self.

—You could teach, in all its many forms

—You could join governments, of many kinds

—You could join the third sector, non-profits

—You could join the fourth sector, which is B-corps and so forth

—You could start your own business, and no, that’s not “capitalism” in this sense, until and unless you’re living off the capital income, which 99% of business owners never do

—You could manage forms of organizations that aren’t so inherently capitalist, whether they’re networks, societies, communities, universities, hospitals, and so forth

Doesn’t matter, that’s a just a list to fire up your mind.

The point is that if capitalism’s eating itself, get the hell out of the way. You see, part of the problem people have is that they can’t envision any other life or future for themselves, so they keep on trying to put themselves right back in its jaws. But hey, right now? Not getting that job is the universe sending a tiny miracle your way, because it’d leave you more trapped by this degeneration and implosion in a year or two or whenever they decide to fire you, push you out, or otherwise annihilate you.

And all that means I’m saying, yes, you had better consider life outside the corporate world. The corporate world is nice. I’ve been there, right at the top, running one of the world’s biggest companies. It’s comfortable in many ways, but let’s not kid ourselves, it’s also terrifying, stressful, and unforgiving. But those aren’t the reasons I’m telling you all this. The reason is that that kind of economy is now over.

And you have to forge a post-capitalist self and identity professionally and personally now if you want to make it. This is what a lot of “creators’ are doing, whether they know it or not, by the way, and we’ll use that a jumping off point for…

So what are the “growth industries” of today? We just discussed how there aren’t any.

A lot of today’s corporations as we know them aren’t going to exist for very much longer. See how many mergers there already are? Saks and Neiman, two of the biggest automakers, two of the biggest ad agencies. There’ll be many more. All that M&A means way, way fewer jobs. The economy is changing permanently now.

“Industry” is a corporate, capitalism term.

There aren’t growth industries left anymore, but there are growth fields.

Let’s now tackle a few.

—Biomedicine will grow immensely as populations age, and that means everything from research to pharmaceuticals to medicine

—The “creator economy,” and I don’t like that term, but let’s use it, is very real, and it’ll continue to grow, but it’s not really an “industry” in the capitalist sense, it’s built around people, not corporations

—New forms of finance will continue to surge, like crypto, and beware because they’ll stay incredibly risky, we’ll talk about them more, but they’re another growth field, and the more they try to be a typical capitalist “industry” the more they’ll keep on having the problems they’ve been having, they need new organizational forms

—In some places, what we might call civilizational infrastructure is now a growing field, and by that I mean things like bioplastics, green steel, cement, agriculture, and so forth, but of course, all this is heavily influenced by political risk

—Therapy and psychology will be immense growth fields, as people suffer the terrible depredations of late capitalism in more and more severe ways, from depression to ruin to war

Becoming a Post-Capitalist, Or Applying the ID Principle to a Life You Hate, Anyways

Those are just a few. If you want even more, we can talk about them. But the point is very simple. Practicing it is what’s hard.

So let me refer you back to a principle we just discussed. The ID Principle. Remember that? It means: “I’m done.” We talked about with respect to many things, toxic people, toxic relationships, toxic platforms and ideas, toxic jobs. But it’s also true for your orientation, professionally and humanistically.

Now the time has come for many of us to leave behind the system that we’ve come to hate. “Late capitalism,” as it’s called. It cannot provide for us. Cannot. The more that you chase this elusive dream, the faster and harder you’ll Sink With the Ship.

The time has come now for many, many people to forge post-capitalist lives, careers, professions, and futures. They might not know it yet. Their despair and bewilderment is a reflection of how little this guiding principle is discussed, understood, or talked about. That doesn’t mean that they all have to go out and be activists or revolutionaries, lol, not at all, we just discussed how being a creator is something that’s post-capitalist.

Those careers? A lot of them haven’t been invented yet. They will be, when people start accepting the challenge of igniting them. And that can only happen when they are finally ready to leave behind the very system that they’ve come to despise.

Post-capitalist means something very simple. In a corporate job, and even many non-corporate but still pretty capitalist ones, institutions only care about how much money you make them. Now take creators. We don’t follow creators because they make us money. We follow them for a million other reasons. That’s the beginning of a post-capitalist orientation professionally and personally (even if many influencers still preen over their baubles.)

Do you see what I mean a little bit? I’m not saying that you have to go be an activist or critical researcher or whatever lol. I’m just being pragmatic and telling you a few hard truths, chief among which is: predatory capitalism will not provide for most of us anymore, and so now we have forge avenues professionally and personally beyond it, and that’s OK in a sense, too, because we all sort of hate it, unless we’re College Republicans or Fox News hosts, and nobody likes them to begin with, so.

That can be as simple as a business, being a creator, becoming a therapist, researching medicine, doesn’t matter what, the point is what matters, the personal and professional orientation post-capitalism.

What does it mean to “be a post-capitalist"? Many of us are starting to find out. It means running a network, community, organization, thingie, maybe a business, in certain dimensions but not along strictly profit-maximizing capitalist lines, but more humanistic ones, in a sense, and that’s not a bad thing, when you think about it.

(I know that there are the kinds of annoying leftists and liberals both who love to argue who’ll “disagree” with me, by the way, but whatever, this isn’t an intellectual debate, this is about your life. Marx’s ghost is right over there, and I’m sure he’d love to argue with you while the world burns.)

New systems won’t exist in our lifetimes. We are in an age of implosion now. But new lives can. And will. That is the choice you still have. Make it wisely. Forge a confident, mature, poised relationship with this imploding world, I always say, and now you know what it means a little bit more. 

We’re all panicked, afraid, and bewildered these days. It’s OK to feel all that. But now you must find strength, courage, and wisdom, too, and you do that by listening to yourself, and what you already know. Your gut, your intuition, already knows all this, and it’s your mind that argues. This conflicted way of living is what traps you in the system you hate. Like it traps millions upon millions. That is the paradox, too, of this age. Self-deceit and self-destruction are two of the characteristic features of “late capitalism,” as we discovered in the 1930s.

I believe in you, my friend. I’m always here for you. Take my hand and feel its stillness. I can teach you, but you are the one who must take the leap over the edge. That is the true message in all the panic and despair. The systems that we expected to govern our lives sanely and stably are now all broken, and they will never be repaired. They are gone, over, finished, done. Perhaps new ones will rise, but we will be long gone by then. So now we must all find paths through their wreckage, and then beyond their ruins.

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