30 Futuristic Thinkers And Their Contributions

“In order to act otherwise, we have to be able to imagine otherwise.” — Henry Giroux

Billionaires, politicians, and economists alike try to convince us that capitalism is our best and only option. We’re supposed to believe the best innovations always come from a profit-motive. We’re supposed to be grateful for the goods that capitalism has provided and ignore the costs at which those goods were produced.

There’s even a popular maxim to defend capitalism in its darkest times: “capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the other ones.”

It’s sophistry disguised as self-awareness. However, this type of crafty rhetoric poses a serious danger to our collective imagination by belittling any possible alternatives to our current situation.

It’s a bold statement to suggest that capitalism is the lesser of all evils. But somehow this has become an unquestionable truth in Western culture.

There may not be a coherent alternative economic theory today, but capitalism wasn’t coherent when it came into being either. It was so disorganized it wasn’t even called capitalism (that name came from its critics.. disparagingly).

To create a new economic theory, we must first abandon the ridiculous idea that capitalism is worth settling for.

As Henry Giroux says: “in order to act otherwise, we have to be able to imagine otherwise.”