Enormous problems remain unresolved. The economy has reached an impasse.
The ideal of continuous and perpetual growth in consumer goods has collapsed.
~Cornelius Castoriadis1
Yavor Tarinsky || How are we to think of the future? A future that by all accounts seem to be an uncertain one, to say the least.2 This is a question of an immense importance as no movement forward can be made without some degree of thought and planning. But to plan ahead is not that easy when being immersed in a bureaucratic culture, shaped by capitalism and statecraft, that incentivizes people to be short-sighted due to the primacy of the profit-motive and the thirst for power. That’s why it is important to meditate on what prevents our societies from conducting a serious dialogue on what awaits us in the future, and what can be done to prepare for a potential societal and environmental collapse, provoked by the current dominant politico-economic system.
We should begin by pointing out the fact that a myriad of factors, ranging from climate change, spread of military conflicts around the world, to rising extreme economic inequality, suggests the increasing probability of a variety of bleak scenarios. This has caused a certain sense of anxiety and concern among increasing amount of people. This is a normal reaction to a serious danger, since as Professor Jem Bendell underlines:
When we read the latest news of disasters, disease, extreme weather, changes to our planet and scientists’ warnings, it is natural to feel unease, even fear. Some of you may have even suffered direct consequences of climate chaos, such as failing harvests, forest fires, disease or political unrest from prolonged drought.3
While it is completely normal, and even desirable, for people to experience uneasiness in the face of looming danger, the question remains how our experience and respond to it are shaped by the status quo.
The Capital-Nation-State complex that nowadays dominates human societies worldwide encourages rapid speed and short-term profiteering, placing the economy above politics. In one such environment the logic of economic growth outbids every other aspect of human life, which produces a type of short-sightedness that is the major cause behind the degradation of social ties and the natural world. Political decision-making power is centralized into the hands of a thin layer of state bureaucracy and a lifeless, ruthless mechanism called The Market. This leads to the disempowerment of the great majority of people, who are left with a consumerist lifestyle of individualized antagonism with one another in the economic sphere.
This reality produces specific anthropological type that tends to reproduce what currently exists, even when faced with existential threats such as climate change or societal collapse. The ever accelerating economic growth, capitalism’s dog-eat-dog imaginay, and the ability of the hierarchical state to take quick (undeliberated) decisions has decisively shaped our perception of time. These factors motivate people to act shortsightedly since “time is money” and must “not be wasted”. Long-term planning is seen as unproductive as may leave one lag behind in the economic sphere, or if we speak of a political actor in the electoral field, lose an election. Every aspect of the dominant culture demands from us to be quick and fast-paced, enforcing on us busy lifestyles that leave little room for non-economic activity. Jem Bendell puts it bluntly:
Many of us have busy lives and obligations, which means that although we sense this growing danger, it is difficult to turn towards it. Without time to delve into this issue, how can I know what the real situation is?4
This has negative results when it comes to being prepared for a potential collapse or a disaster. Author and activist Jeremy Williams observes that:
In our minds, we tend to jump to Hollywood visions of a post-apocalyptic society. Collapse happens fast, leading to social breakdown. In reality, it is rarely like that. History shows that collapse can be slow, that people cope, and that life carries on afterwards.5
The problem with one such perception of time is that it leaves one unprepared for certain types of danger, since as authors Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens suggest, the temporality of a collapse will not be linear and its geography will not be homogeneous.6 This is already evident with the climate crisis, for which there is already a plethora of scientific evidence that it is an existential threat to humankind,7 but nonetheless our societies, and the way they are currently being structured, has proven completely unable to do anything meaningful to at least mitigate the consequences of it.
The ruling classes understandably show little to no will to make the drastic changes needed for aversion of a collapse triggered by climate change or some other capitalist-driven factor, because their very privileged position depends on the parasitic nature of both fragmented (capitalist) and centralized (statist) bureaucracy. There is simply no incentive for the top echelons of society to change their ways, because of which Jeremy Williams makes the correct observation that “elites make bad decisions in response to decline”.8 They will hold to and defend the status quo to the very end.
The great majority of so-called common people, i.e. those with no access to societal decision-making power, remain passive and indifferent in the face of the increasing probability of social and/or environmental collapse. Being raised and immersed in a cultural environment of hyper individualism and voluntary servitude, they remain focused on their daily hustle while expecting that someone else will “take care of any potential threat”. But as we saw earlier, this trust is in vain.
Of course, with the passage of time the consequences of climate change are being felt by an increasingly growing amount of people and more and more people are, and will continue, to get concerned with the looming danger. The problem is that the current system does exercise certain influence on the attitudes and approaches of such individuals.
From billionaires to poor folk, there is a strand among societies that tends to respond to the potential collapse with we can term “bunker conservatism”. The ultra rich devises their own fortified private cities that will provide shelter to the wealthy when disaster struck. Author Naomi Klein describes this trend in the following way:
Some of the supporters of the Trump administration in the tech industry are talking about wanting freedom cities, for instance, these privatized, corporate cities. And they talk about this as tech Zionism.[…] So, you know, what we’re looking at is like the religious version of that story, the fundamentalist religious version of that story, where you literally believe you’re going to be saved and taken up to heaven, but also the secular vision, where your wealth protects you, or your citizenship protects you, and you get your own version of that golden, bunkered city.9
Then there are the poorer conservatives that don’t have the means to hide behind the fortifications of the private cities of the ultra rich, whose vision transcribes into survivalism – preparing themselves individually by building shelters a of their own and stockpiling on weapons and provisions.
The common trait among both these approaches is that they are deeply submerged within the dominant imaginary of domination. In a state of a constantly expanding bureaucratization of life, at the core of which lays the domination of human over human and of human over nature, the individual tends to get atomized away from the collective whole, threats tend to be externalized, problems get to be approached through hierarchical means, and scarcity is assumed as a given.
Within one such dominant framework it is no wonder that many of those who will pay attention to the warnings of an forthcoming collapse will do so in the way the status quo approaches issues. That’s why survivalists of all types engage with the issue through an individualistic lens that focuses on the protection of one’s own (kin, family, nation), strength (having enough firepower to keep those in need away from hoarded resources), and tends to seek for messianic figures that radiate strength, thus reproducing hierarchy and nostalgia. In regards to the dangers of this, Susan Smith Nash from the University of Oklahoma suggests that:
The sudden loss of sustenance and the imminent end of the world to which everyone has become accustomed (if not wholly content with) trigger the highly manipulative use of apocalyptic narratives to hold “true believers” in thrall to ruthless yet charismatic leaders who promise survival in the here and now and utopia in an afterlife.10
In order to be able to think and prepare for the potentiality of an incoming collapse we have to rethink and reshape the spatial and temporal dimensions of social life beyond bureaucratic parameters. It is becoming increasingly obvious that to successfully tackle the multidimensional crisis we currently face, will require means that differ radically from the ones that got us here in the first place. As Pablo Servigne, Raphaël Stevens, Gauthier Chapelle and Daniel Rodary suggest:
abrupt climate change, a mass extinction of species, a multiple breadbasket failure, a major pandemic, an artificial intelligence or geo-engineering scheme that has gone out of control, a nuclear winter, a major disruption of fossil fuels supply, amongst other scenarios, are not risks that we can manage with our conventional risk management tools and methods.11
A mere economistic criticism of capitalism is not enough without a holistic negation of domination in all its forms, since at the very core of the latter is a predatory essence that actively seeks to exploit people and nature. That’s why systems that have attempted to overthrow capitalist economics, without abolishing pre-existing power discrepancies ended up as exploitative and environmentally destructive as the orders they once replaced. Jason Hickel and Martin Kirk are correct when observing that:
Just like capitalism, [actually existing socialism] relies on endless, indeed exponential GDP growth, ever-increasing levels of extraction and production and consumption. The two systems may disagree about how best to distribute the yields of a plundered earth, but they do not question the process of plunder itself.12
Thinking and preparing for a collapse (itself a byproduct of a system of waste, exploitation and domination) will require that people organize on grassroots level, in order to open up spaces within which they can collectively forge a temporality that will allow for serious reflection, deliberation and long-term planning. The tools of the current system – hierarchy, growth for growth’s sake, and individualistic antagonism – are the ones feeding the myriad of crises that is now threatening life on Earth as we know it. That’s why it is of a dire need that we replace them with:
a) direct democracy where a radical decentralization of power ensures the political, economic, and cultural equality of every single member of society, thus preventing the emergence of parasitic classes of exploitators
b) social ecology where citizens act as stewards of the natural world we are all an inseparable part of, in full consciousness that rather than pseudo-masters of the environment, humans are rather nature rendered self-aware.
One such political framework allows for time to flow in a more slow manner – what Zapatistas call the pace of the snail. In contrast to bureaucratic modes of top-down management where time is considered a scarce resource that must not be “wasted”, the democratic and ecological paradigm suggested here views it as something that has to be experienced and shared. In this sense the temporality of grassroots deliberation and collective reflection is something to be valued, rather than disregarded. It is within such temporalities that the pluralism of individual and communal experiences collide and can nurture projects of ecological resilience, social equity, and political equality.
Such a horizontal and grassroots-led framework also allows for greater flexibility in approaches and strategies when applied in different contexts and geographies. This stands in stark contrast to bureaucratic forms of top-down management, which tend to apply the same recipes regardless of specifities or conditions. The inflexibility of statecraft and capitalism (both inherently bureaucratic) can be seen today around the world, where the Capital-Nation-State complex has a complete domination, and their inability to efficiently tackle any of the crises they have sparked in the first place. The democratic and ecological paradigm discussed here implies that each community gets to collectively figure out ways of dealing with the challenges it faces in its respective geography, rather than follow a ready made blueprint handed from above by supposed experts.
And here comes the final difference between bureaucratic and non-bureaucratic approaches to crises and potential collapse: the place inspiration for solutions are being drawn from. Bureaucracy by its very nature seeks to separate the great majority of people from the way their lives in common are being managed. Thus, it suggests that it is up to experts and their sterile bureaus to come up with solutions to urgent matters. Democratic and ecological approaches, on the other hand, seek for inspiration from what people and communities do on grassroots level in the here and now. Chinese scholars Lau Kin Chi and Sit Tsui point out that:
There are always local initiatives showing possibilities for the collective use of resources and people’s voluntary participation in social life. They result from people’s efforts to find solutions to problems created by the imposition of directives and organization from above according to objectives of modernization in competition with the West. These local initiatives contain elements of the traditions of rural communities. It is these elements, rooted in people’s knowledge and practice, that can constitute the resistance to becoming completely engulfed by globalization. They can lead to openings for alternatives by engaging with everyday life, reviving such elements in different contexts. The innovative moves of the people are neither traditional nor modern, but contemporary—and we must learn how to grasp the spontaneity and creativity of these resistances. People think on their own feet, grasping the very situations in which they are thrown and coming up with answers to the very reality posed to them.
To mitigate the adverse effects of globalization with capital flow and labor migration, we must return to localization, re-communalization, and re-ruralization. The alternative path goes for small peasantry, ecological agriculture, self-sufficiency, and community regeneration. We must continue to defend food sovereignty and to explore local plans for water and energy. They should be small-scale and not spectacular mega projects. Small is beautiful as well as powerful.13
Having highlighted the differences between bureaucracy and the contours of a democratic and ecological project, it becomes clear that the current path to self-destruction that humanity has embarked on has been chosen by a tiny, yet powerful ruling class in it’s quest for more power and wealth. Being created by, and itself reproducing, a system that fetishizes authority and affluence, this elite won’t put a stop to all of this. And what is worse, the social environment produced in the process is one that preoccupies the time of people with competing with one another for wasteful consumer goods that are destined to be tossed as soon as possible and replacement with new ones. Humanity’s only hope to putting an end to this self-destruction and mitigate the effects of a collapsing system is by getting as much people as possible to self-organize on grassroots level in order to open up spaces and develop temporalities from which an alternative project of direct democracy and social ecology can emerge that will directly challenge and replace the current order of domination. As Cornelius Castoriadis suggested back in 1987:
In my opinion, either there will be a major catastrophe—war, economic, ecological (after all, these are all connected)—or a portion of the population will begin to understand what is happening and a new, truly revolutionary political movement will emerge. Revolutionary not in the sense that knives will be drawn and people will be killed. In the sense that this movement will seek real change in social structures. It will seek to establish a real democracy, with everyone participating in the management of the commons, in the administration of the commons. A revolutionary movement that will lead to the self-government of productive and local units, countries, and nations. This is the only political goal that makes sense and is worth working for.14
Footnotes
1 Castoriadis, Cornelius. “Castoriadis: ‘Western Societies Will Not Be Able to Function in Their Present Way for Long’.” Aftoleksi, March 11, 2024.
https://www.aftoleksi.gr/2024/03/11/kornilios-kastoriadis-oi-dytikes-koinonies-den-tha-mporoyn-na-leitoyrgoyn-ton-paronta-tropo-epi-poly/, originally published in Greek.
2 Holger R. Maier et al., “An Uncertain Future, Deep Uncertainty, Scenarios, Robustness and Adaptation: How Do They Fit Together?,” Environmental Modelling & Software 81 (2016): 154–164, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2016.03.014
3 Jem Bendell, “How Everything Can Collapse – My Foreword to New Book,” blog post, March 28, 2020, JemBendell.com, https://jembendell.com/2020/03/28/how-everything-can-collapse-my-foreword-to-new-book/
4 Jem Bendell, “How Everything Can Collapse – My Foreword to New Book,” blog post, March 28, 2020, JemBendell.com, https://jembendell.com/2020/03/28/how-everything-can-collapse-my-foreword-to-new-book/
5 Earthbound Report, “Book Review: How Everything Can Collapse, by Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens,” Earthbound Report, March 2, 2020, https://earthbound.report/2020/03/02/book-review-how-everything-can-collapse-by-pablo-servigne-and-raphael-stevens/
6 Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens, “How Everything Can Collapse: Excerpt,” Resilience.org, August 10, 2020, https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-08-10/how-everything-can-collapse-excerpt/
7 Dianne Plummer, “Climate Change: Is It the Greatest Crisis or a Global Deception?,” Forbes, January 31, 2025, https://www.forbes.com/sites/dianneplummer/2025/01/31/climate-change-is-it-the-greatest-crisis-or-a-global-deception/
8 Earthbound Report, “Book Review: How Everything Can Collapse, by Pablo Servigne and Raphaël Stevens,” Earthbound Report, March 2, 2020, https://earthbound.report/2020/03/02/book-review-how-everything-can-collapse-by-pablo-servigne-and-raphael-stevens/
9 Amy Goodman, interviewing Naomi Klein, “‘End Times Fascism’: Naomi Klein on How Trump, Musk, Far Right ‘Don’t Believe in the Future’,” Democracy Now!, May 5, 2025, https://www.democracynow.org/2025/5/5/naomi_klein_trump_silicon_valley
10 Pablo Servigne, Raphaël Stevens, and Gauthier Chapelle, “Another End of the World Is Possible: Living the Collapse (and Not Merely Surviving It),” World Literature Today, Autumn 2021, reviewed by Susan Smith Nash, https://worldliteraturetoday.org/2021/autumn/another-end-world-possible-living-collapse-and-not-merely-surviving-it-pablo-servigne
11 Pablo Servigne, Raphaël Stevens, Gauthier Chapelle, and Daniel Rodary, “Deep Adaptation Opens Up a Necessary Conversation about the Breakdown of Civilisation,” openDemocracy, August 3, 2020, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/deep-adaptation-opens-necessary-conversation-about-breakdown-civilisation/
12 Jason Hickel and Martin Kirk, “Don’t Be Scared About the End of Capitalism—Be Excited to Build What Comes Next,” Films For Action, September 14, 2017, https://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/dont-be-scared-about-the-end-of-capitalismbe-excited-to-build-what-comes-next/
13 Sit Tsui and Lau Kin Chi, “Surviving Through Community Building in Catastrophic Times,” Monthly Review 74, no. 3 (July–August 2022): 54–68, https://monthlyreview.org/articles/surviving-through-community-building-in-catastrophic-times/
14 Cornelius Castoriadis, “Castoriadis: ‘Western Societies Will Not Be Able to Function in Their Present Way for Long’,” Aftoleksi, March 11, 2024, originally published in Greek, https://www.aftoleksi.gr/2024/03/11/kornilios-kastoriadis-oi-dytikes-koinonies-den-tha-mporoyn-na-leitoyrgoyn-ton-paronta-tropo-epi-poly/
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