The Cancer Stage of Capitalism

by John McMurtry

In this bold new look at the recent uncontrolled spread of global capitalism, John McMurtry, professor of philosophy at the University of Guelph, develops the metaphor of modern capitalism as a cancer. Its invasive growth, he argues, threatens to break down our society's immune system and--if not soon restrained--could reverse all the progress that has been made toward social equity and stability. On every continent, in every state, there are indicators of profound economic and environmental collapse. From the lands of indigenous communities to the currency markets of Asia, from the ocean floors to the ozone layer, the collapse is all-encompassing and deep-reaching. John McMurtry traces the causes of this global disorder back to the mutating assumptions of market theory that now govern the world’s economy. He diagnoses the malaise as a pathologist would a biological cancer, tracking the delinked circuits of the global system’s monetised growth as a carcinogenic disorder at the social level of life-organization. In the wide-lensed tradition of Adam Smith, Marx and Keynes, McMurtry cuts across academic disciplines and boundaries to penetrate the inner logic of the system’s problems. Far from pessimistic, he argues that the way out of the global crisis is to be found in an evolving substructure of history which provides a common ground of resolution across ethnic and national divisions. Reaching beyond conventional textbooks, this fascinating study offers a new paradigm which is accessible to intelligent citizens the world over.

Genres: Economics, Nonfiction, History, Philosophy, Politics

320 pages, Paperback

First published December 10, 1998

Reviews

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book blew my mind, I couldn't put it down. Written nearly 10 years ago it's prescient in it's insights regarding the global financial system as it simply exists to drain the life force of humanity. Basically the equation of money for more money expands globally and disregards any ethical or life affirming values. It has a special resonance in our current economic landscape of financial collapse and how budget deficits are an excuse to cut off the social commons. This is a dense and academic read, and quite depressing at times, but I've been into reading about the economy lately because I think our capitalist value system has gone far off track from being a benifical system to human values.

[Rhys · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Cancer Stage of Capitalism is an interesting book. The writing style is a little opaque – some convoluted sentences and the use of idiosyncratic terms (money-sequence, life-capacities, life-capital, etc.). But once you get the hang of his personal language, the author has some interesting things to say.

Not exactly Marxist in analysis, the author explores the ‘cancerous’ effect of capitalism on society.

This kind of summarizes his thesis:
“Yet if the pathways of metastasis are seen at all, it is in isolation without connective diagnosis – trillions of dollars of tax-cut giveaways to the corporate rich, privatization frenzies moving to corporate-government ‘partnerships’ to get more public money without responsibility for outcomes, ever-growing looting of publically and indigenously owned lands and waters for oil and gas, minerals, forests, fish and crustaceans, endless public subsidies, infrastructures, services, policing mechanisms, state propaganda and foreign wars to attack oppositions, and debt-entrapping governments and citizens at deeper record levels backed by endless ‘austerity programmes’ liquidating social life-capacities and supports to pay more the less they have to do so. The globalizing malignant money sequences eat away at public life-capital bases as their very value-system meaning” (p.18).

I liked his analysis on government debt as a tool to enact austerity on the hoi polloi to ‘hollow out life-systems’. And he is rightly critical of money-making-money in modern financial capitalism. In essence, McMurtry makes a good case of economics ‘for life’ as opposed to economics ‘for accumulation’.

His solution is a little wanting, focusing more on reform than revolution: he suggests creating a “medium of exchange for enacting system cure by progressive taxation, reclamation of publicly owned resources as societies’ life-capital assets, and non-profit banking and credit for public investment in natural and social life-support systems”. In essence, it is about refocussing investment for the development of people within the limits of a balanced ecosystem.

[Christopher Whalen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was recommended to me by my friend, Roman Krznaric, a long time ago (nearly 20 years) and it has been on my list of Books to Read After Finals ever since. I started it on 11 August, 11 days before my big brother Gregory died. It has been a slog but it’s one of those foundational books that has changed how I see the world. I now think of myself as post-capitalist and this book has confirmed it. I’m not going to lie, though: this book was hard to read - as I could tell when just reading through the list of contents at the beginning: the chapter and section headings are a mouthful and it’s incredibly repetitive. It took me at least two sittings to read through the entire list of contents! I feel like it would have benefited from a more stringent editor and a more careful proof-reader. I reported dozens of typos in the Kindle version as I was reading it. I’m not sure I can really summarize it. It also started to meld with other things I’m reading (such as “Less is More” by Jason Hickel), which covers some of the same familiar ground. In essence, private banks and compound interest are destroying life. To fix this, we need to make banking public and refocus the economy so that it supports instead of destroys life-capital. I’m not sure where the language comes from. Is it Marxist? One of the most repeated phrases is “transnational money-sequences”. So we can see the problem and, although the last few sections explain what the solution is, there’s no clear picture about how to transition from the current capitalist system to the necessary post-capitalist system when life-capital is returned to public instead of private ownership and the civil commons. It also gives examples of how certain countries in South America - Argentina in particular - have rejected the IMF / World Bank economic system and its structural adjustment programmes and austerity conditions. I can only hope that our leaders and future leaders read this book (and its derivatives) and take on board the message. Quite gloomy and depressing reading - especially at a time when I was grieving for my brother) - but necessary and something that I feel is now ingrained in my worldview.

[John G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly, one of the most important books I've read in a long, long time. It lays bare and clearly exposes or in the author's words "decodes" or "unmasks" some common market myths. If you're of a certain ilk, this book will totally validate some of your long held assumptions that always go unstated in the mainstream. His basic argument is that our economy is all based on transferring public wealth into private profit at the expense of life itself. He calls our current economic system a cancer which is feeding on the healthy host of society and that our immune system has been disabled. This is a serious and deep book, but is written in clear and strong language. The author does not by any means pretend to be objective and value free, as so may pseudo scientists and writers tend to do, he takes sides and I'm on his side. The author deftly combines analysis of philosophy, ethics, morality, history, and economics to diagnose our Great Sickness. Really, the ruling disorder tries to present its ruling principles are natural or divine when really they are nothing more than value judgements that they have worked very hard to bring about, but yet hide. It's ultimately a decision that societies must make, what is of ultimate importance? My favorite part of this book is the author decoding the ruling principles and value system that NEVER gets articulated by the media, academia, business, government nor religion or as he calls them "captured." It's rare indeed to find such a straight shooter willing to lay bare the destructive value system embedded within the toxic notion of globalization. A good companion book to this is Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism" which is much more about the results, rather than the underpinning principles or philosophy of free market capitalism.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though the earnestness of McMurtry's mission is clearly established and obviously impassioned, the subject matter suffers greatly from having been laboriously expounded in an enormously difficult and frustrating writing style, with the author favoring constant repetition and all manner of idiosyncratic sentence structures and neologisms to hammer his point home. This gives the rather unfortunate impression that one is in actuality reading an undergraduate thesis, which could have benefited from being considerably shorter in length and spared the patience of the reader in the process. This is, as pointed out by numerous other reviewers, immensely irritating and does not make for an enjoyable read at all. It is also worth mentioning that there are hundreds of typos and words missing, no doubt due to the second, expanded edition being rushed through a terrible and rather amateurish re-edit prior to its publication. However, and not withstanding the above criticisms, the fundamental importance of this work resides in its capacity to challenge the destructive magnitudes of the neoliberal hegemony under which we all live. And that cannot be understated enough if one is a conscientious human being worried about the future, as of course McMurtry indeed is.

[Ajay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a crucial inspiration behind my work and life. McMurtry's diagnosis of the pathologies of modern-day capitalism is deep and cutting. Moreso, McMurtry creates a conceptual framework, the outlines of a solution, and articulates the mechanisms by which real life is destroyed in this world.

This vision of global finance capitalism, isn't a rejection of everything that we have come to know and believe, but it is a panoramic, encyclopedic, and breathtakingly original take of the system.

Tldr; any entity that defines itself through exponential growth blind to real life conditions can only have one outcome: catastrophic failure. This is the state of the world today and we can fix it.

[Clivemichael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Articulate and densely descriptive, erudite and enlightening, intense and disturbing. A brilliant analysis of troubling situation. Well researched. Full of chilling reminders of our societal denial and closes with some suggestions.
“Presupposing and identifying with the value system one has been indoctrinated in day in and day out as a native member of a society creates a mental block against exposing its presuppositions and mind-sets. It is assumed as the structure of one’s own being, and so critical observation of it risks the collapse of one’s identity. pg 20 “As the world’s institutionalized agency for preventing ‘monetary instability’, the IMF prescribes, in other words, that still more of the host society’s life-sustenance be appropriated to feed the non-productive circuits of continuous money demands from foreign financial institutions. This disordered process of appropriating from domestic life sequences to feed foreign money sequences is, in fact, carcinogenic in its nature… pg 97
“The evident derangement of expending over $700 million a day on weaponed forces to obliterate an enemy that no longer existed, while attacking the life-spheres of the public sector for money ‘savings’ at the same time, was not insanity from the standpoint of the money sequence paradigm. It was maximally rational, and further ensured scarcity of life goods to favour its continued global market selection for production and sale. pg 175
“Relating rates of interest to society’s most basic life-requirements by distinction between enterprises which are productive for the life economy and enterprises which are not would by itself enable domestic economies to fulfil the actual common interest of societies. It would do so without a single intervention in private property rights. pg 251