12. The contributist society
Transforming the Social Ecosystem
So far, we have been primarily concerned with developing an understanding of the contributist act — the individual’s assertion of their right to give. But if contributism is a social theory, and not just a personal lifestyle choice, then it must be able to extend beyond the realm of individual acts, and into the realm of social structures.
In other words, we have seen the contributist act — can we see the contributist society?
In order to see the contributist society, we have to first understand what we mean when we say that a society is capitalist, or socialist, or even contributist. For this purpose, I find great value in Erik Olin Wright’s description of the capitalist society in his 2019 book How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century:
Consider capitalism. No economy has ever been—or ever could be—purely capitalist. . . . Existing economic systems combine capitalism with a host of other ways of organizing the production and distribution of goods and services: directly by states; within the intimate relations of families to meet the needs of their members; through community-based networks and organizations in what is often called the social and solidarity economy; by cooperatives owned and governed democratically by their members; though nonprofit market-oriented organizations; through peer-to-peer networks engaged in collaborative production processes; and many other possibilities. Some of these ways of organizing economic activities can be thought of as hybrids, combining capitalist and noncapitalist elements; some are entirely noncapitalist; and some are anticapitalist. . . . We call such a complex economic system “capitalist” when it is the case that capitalism is dominant in determining the economic conditions of life and access to a livelihood for most people.
In Wright’s description, we consider American society to be a capitalist society because capitalism is the dominant organizing form here, not the only organizing form. This is intuitively obvious when we consider that many essential elements of our society are not capitalist at all, and some are even best described as socialist. These include, among others: public libraries, public schools, public infrastructure, the Social Security program, and police and firefighter departments. Or consider that capitalist economies are often described as having three sectors — public, private, and non-profit — and only one of these sectors operates according to capitalist principles. A capitalist society is not a society that is only capitalist; it is a society in which capitalism is dominant.
But what does it mean for capitalism to be dominant? Wright goes on to explain this by way of a metaphor that I consider to be one of the most useful that I have encountered:
Think of a lake. A lake consists of water in a landscape, with particular kinds of soil, terrain, water sources and climate. An array of fish and other creatures live in its water and various kinds of plants grow in and around it. Collectively, all of these elements constitute the natural ecosystem of the lake. This is a “system” in that everything affects everything else within it, but it is not like the system of a single organism in which all of the parts are functionally connected in a coherent, tightly integrated whole. Social systems, in general, are better thought of as ecosystems of loosely connected interacting parts rather than as organisms in which all of the parts serve a function.
In this way, we can see a capitalist society as a complex ecosystem in which the dominant species — the apex predator — is capitalism. In any ecosystem, there is a diversity of needs to be met, and various species find their place in the ecosystem by meeting some of those needs while asserting their own. What makes the apex predator unique is that its presence dominates the ecosystem — when any other species comes into conflict with the apex predator, the apex predator almost always wins. Because of this, the apex predator bends the whole system towards itself; every other element of the ecosystem must take pains to accommodate the needs of the apex predator.
This apex predator role is the role capitalism plays in our society. This is why it is overly simplistic to say that we have capitalism rather than socialism in American society. You can find both, and many other organizing values and approaches as well. The key detail is that, in American society, capitalism is strongest, and we will take every pain to ensure that its needs are always met. When, for example, I read about the ways that private equity firms have been quietly cannibalizing the news media — a pillar of democratic society that once strongly resisted pure capitalism — I am reminded of the way that orca whales (the apex predator of the high seas) have recently begun to massacre sharks off the coast of South Africa, having discovered that their livers are full of valuable nutrients. Though capitalism can generally co-exist peacefully with other “species” of organizing thought in our society, when the time comes that they enter into conflict, capitalism almost always wins.
To those who have grown weary of capitalism’s reign, this picture might be more than a bit depressing. But Wright actually uses the ecosystem metaphor to describe a vision of how capitalism might one day be unseated:
In such an ecosystem, it is possible to introduce an alien species of fish not “naturally” found in the lake. Some alien species will instantly get gobbled up. Others may survive in some small niche in the lake, but not change much about daily life in the ecosystem. But occasionally an alien species may thrive and eventually displace the dominant species. The strategic vision of eroding capitalism imagines introducing the most vigorous varieties of emancipatory species of noncapitalist economic activity into the ecosystem of capitalism, nurturing their development by protecting their niches and figuring out ways of expanding their habitats. The ultimate hope is that eventually these alien species can spill out of their narrow niches and transform the character of the ecosystem as a whole.
What if, Wright asks, we began to look for new species to replace the old? Not the same ones which have already found their place in this ecosystem — the ones which we have repeatedly seen challenge capitalism on these lands, on this soil, in this climate, and be thrashed — but new ones which capitalism has not yet seen and prevailed against? What if we reached beyond the economic systems that we know, and instead grasped hold of new values and principles by which to organize ourselves — ones that strike us as unfamiliar yet promising, imaginative yet intuitive, reassuring yet bold?
This is, in essence, the strategic theory underlying the case for contributism. The contributist society is not one in which capitalism is erased, but one in which contributism replaces capitalism as the dominant organizing form — not one in which the right to give is our only right, but one in which the right to give is prioritized over the right to own and capitalize property.
And the path towards a contributist society is not one of revolutionary overthrow, but one of revolutionary erosion. Rather than imagining some great coup in which we round up all of the capitalists and throw them into the Mississippi river, imagine a gradual but intentional introduction of contributist policy, organization, rhetoric, and action into society. Imagine that the contributist policies work more effectively in improving society than their capitalist counterparts, and that the contributist organizations have happier employees and create better outcomes for the communities they inhabit. Imagine that the capitalists lose ground not because they have been forced out at gunpoint, but because their way has been made obsolete — squeezed on all sides (by policy, competition, and public opinion) by something that we can all see simply works better for us.
In other words, if contributism can thrive on these lands, on this soil, in this climate, then simply by its own thriving, it will begin to challenge capitalism’s chokehold — and it will begin to “transform the character” of our society. And if the contributist ethos is truly a better fit for our ecosystem, then when it inevitably comes into direct conflict with the apex predator, we will find that contributism, not capitalism, almost always wins.
The Contributist Society
So, then, to understand what the contributist society might look like, we do not have to imagine a world in which every aspect of society is run by contributist principles. That would be like trying to imagine a capitalist society without any public services. Instead, we should try to understand a world in which contributism is simply dominant — in which more people would say that their livelihood and day-to-day life are characterized by contributism than by capitalism.
This is the world that I, Pablo Parabola, am eager to share with you — to describe it to you in writing, yes, but also to invite you to inhabit it with me. And while I can tell you in no uncertain terms that it is a better world than the one we live in today, I must also confess that it would be impossible for me to show you this world in just a few paragraphs, or even just a few entries. And indeed, it would be senseless for any one writer to attempt to show it to you alone, because the contributist society is not one writer’s society, but a society made up of many individuals, each with their own unique means and style of contribution.
That is why I am not one writer, but an idea carried forward jointly by many minds, and this publication is not one work, but a collection penned by the hands of many contributors. The goal of the Contributist Reader is to serve as the first consciously contributist act — by inviting all humanity to help build out the vision of the contributist society, we simultaneously provide and assert the right to give, as we challenge one another to begin to live lives characterized by dignity and fulfillment.
With these first twelve entries, we have set the basic foundation of contributism — now it is time to extrapolate. From this point forward, entries in the Reader will become more experimental in style and in scope. We will sketch out new ideas and explore new directions, never too certain of ourselves, and always inviting discussion. We will paint in broad and narrow strokes of every color, each entry helping us to see from a new angle, bringing the full picture of contributism into clearer focus.
You, too, are a member of this project. By simply reading, you engage your inner contributist — you assert the right to give us your time, and you perhaps carry our ideas forward into your corner of the world. But you are also invited to contribute more fully, if you are willing, by engaging in discussion with us — challenging, questioning, or extending the ideas you read — and perhaps even to become Pablo Parabola with us, by submitting entries of your own.
And so the contributist society begins with the contributist act — a community defines itself by giving.
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