Fernando Alcoforado*
This article aims to demonstrate that humanity will face in the 21st century with numerous catastrophes related to the foreseeable end of capitalism as the dominant economic system and the resulting political and social upheaval around the world, the environmental degradation of planet Earth resulting from the depletion of the natural resources of the planet Earth and global climate change with all the dire political, economic and social consequences and the escalation of international conflict compounded by the rivalry between the great economic and military powers and regional conflicts that could endanger the survival of humanity by the outbreak of a new world war.
The catastrophe related to the end of the world capitalist system will occur in the middle of the 21st century because, if the declining trend of the world profit rate of the period 1947-2007 is maintained, it would tend to be zero in 2097, considering that the rate worldwide profit was 30% in 1947 and 18% in 2007, and because the US corporate profit rate would reach zero in 2059 with the declining rate of profit at the historical cost of fixed capital in US corporations, which was 32% in 1947 and 15% in 2007 in deflated values. It follows, therefore, that the world capitalist system would be economically unfeasible between 2059 and 2097 because it would have a profit rate of zero in these years and negative in subsequent years.
In this way, the foundations of Marx’s theory of the inexorable downward trend in the profit rate of the world capitalist system are being confirmed. The decline in its profit rates shows the historical, transitory character of the capitalist mode of production and the conflict that is established with the possibilities of further development. Karl Marx predicted in The Capital that the rate of profit will tend to fall over the long term, decade after decade. Not only will there be ups and downs in each boom and crisis cycle, but there will also be a downward trend in the long run, making each boom shorter and each fall deeper.
Another trend that is also manifesting with the evolution of the world capitalist system is the decline in the growth rates of the world economy which shows a clear decline in the PBM (World Gross Product) from 1961 to 2007 when it showed rates of 4.8% in 1961 and 2.4% in 2007. With this declining evolution, the growth rate of the world economy will reach zero in 2057. It can be seen, therefore, that the world economy is continuously decreasing in its growth. It is noteworthy that the zero growth for the PBM in 2057 converges with zero value for the world profit rate in 2059 confirming the unfeasibility of the world capitalist system from 2059.
We all have a tendency to imagine that the society in which we live will endure forever, forgetting or unaware that other economic systems have arisen and disappeared such as slavery during ancient Greece and the Roman Empire and feudalism during the Middle Ages in Europe. Unlike the transition from slavery to feudalism, which was characterized by the violent overthrow of the Roman Empire by slaves and barbaric peoples, the transition from feudalism to capitalism was managed by the holders of power because capitalism was already in gestation within the feudal system.
It should be noted that the transition from slavery to feudalism took place violently because the exploration of slaves and barbarian peoples by the Roman Empire did not allow the managed transition from one system to another. European feudalism, which lasted 1000 years, had its transition to capitalism carried out in a managed manner, despite the numerous peasant wars that took place in Europe. This transition was administered by the holders of political and economic powers as opposed to the transition from slavery to feudalism whose oppression of feudal lords against servants did not reach the same dimension as the time of slavery. In feudal society, relations of economic production were based on the lord’s property over the land and great power over the servant who cultivated a piece of land ceded by the owner of the large estates.
The main factor that caused the transition from feudalism to capitalism to take place in a managed manner was the birth of capitalism within the feudal system with the emergence of a new social class, the bourgeoisie, which dedicated itself to commerce, became rich and energized the economy in the late Middle Ages. This new social class also gained political strength and had an interest in the weakening of the feudal economic system. The immobility of the feudal economic system led to its destruction from the escape of the serfs into the emerging cities driven by commerce and the birth of a dynamic, commercial, pre-capitalist structure. By the twelfth century, with the disintegration of feudalism, a new economic, social and political system began to dominate: capitalism. The essential feature of the new system is that it is wage labor and no longer servile as in feudalism. Capitalism was gradually formed during the Middle Ages, to finally dominate all of Western Europe from the 16th century. But it was only after the Industrial Revolution, begun in the eighteenth century in England, that capitalism was driven.
Why wouldn’t capitalism have the same fate as slavery and feudalism? Just as slavery and feudalism had a beginning and an end, capitalism that began in the twelfth century in Europe will follow the same path culminating its end in the late twenty-first century. This is demonstrated by the downward trend in world economic growth that tends to reach zero in 2057 and the downward trend in the profit rate of the world capitalist system that tends to reach zero in 2097, as well as the fall in US corporations’ profit rate that will reach zero by 2059. It follows, therefore, that the world capitalist system will be unfeasible in the United States from 2059 and worldwide from 2097 because profit rates will be negative from these years. Most likely the catastrophic scenario is likely to occur with capital holders acting from 2059 or even earlier by using violence to maintain the capitalist system in the same way that the Roman Empire acted in the struggle to maintain the slavery system against slaves and the barbarian peoples. However, another non-catastrophic scenario of the transition from capitalism to a new economic system could take place in a managed manner, as happened in the transition from feudalism to capitalism, if societies in all countries of the world considered the implementation of social democracy with the same model of Scandinavians which proves to be the most successful economic system implemented in the world by providing shared economic and social progress across in benefit of the entire Scandinavian population.
Humankind may face in the 21st century two major environmental disasters: 1) the exhaustion of the natural resources of planet Earth; and 2) global climate change. As for the exhaustion of the natural resources of planet Earth in the 21st century, all available data point to the fact that planet Earth is already reaching its limits. Competition for resources such as oil is currently the largest potential source of global conflict. Water is becoming a source of war because of international competition for water resources. The food production capacity of the planet is also reaching its limits. An indisputable fact is that humanity already consumes more natural resources than the planet can replenish. The current rate of consumption is a threat to the future prosperity of humanity.
Today, due to the current rate of consumption, the demand for natural resources exceeds 41% of Earth’s replacement capacity. If the escalation of this demand continues at its present rate in 2030, with a planetary population estimated at 10 billion people, it will take two Earths to satisfy it. It is noteworthy that from 2050, when the world population may exceed 10 billion inhabitants, the planet Earth may not resist the demand for natural resources. Today, more than 80 percent of the world’s population lives in countries that use more resources than their own ecosystems can renew. The central capitalist countries (European Union, United States and Japan), ecological debtors, have already exhausted their own resources and have to import them. In the Global Footprint Network survey, the Japanese consume 7.1 times more than they have and it would be necessary four Italy to supply the Italians. The consumption pattern of developed countries disorganizes this balance. An indisputable fact is that humanity already consumes more natural resources than the planet can replenish.
Competition for resources such as oil is currently the largest potential source of global conflict. Growing demand for oil will outstrip global supply by 2020 or 2025, pointing out that the world will be experiencing “the twilight of oil,” that is, a moment of transition between abundance and scarcity. The dispute over the remaining oil can lead to a permanent state of war characterized by the presence of large powers in their producing regions. In the past, big companies in the industry discovered more oil per year than they could extract, which is not the case today. There is currently more oil extraction than the ability to replenish with new discoveries.
Another major catastrophe that could occur in the 21st century is global climate change as a result of global warming resulting from the greenhouse effect of heat retention in the Earth’s low atmosphere caused by the concentration of gases of various kinds. The natural climatic balance was broken by the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century. Since the nineteenth century, carbon dioxide concentrations in air have increased by 30 percent, methane has doubled, and nitrous oxide by 15 percent. Global warming gases derived from human activity are produced by fossil fuels used in cars, industries and thermoelectric plants, agricultural production and forest burns, among other factors.
Global warming is produced by human (anthropogenic) activity on the planet and also by natural processes such as the decomposition of organic matter and volcanic eruptions, which produce ten times more gases than humans. For ages, natural processes alone have ensured the maintenance of the greenhouse effect, without which life would not be possible on Earth. Since 1961, the amount of man-made pollutant gases in the atmosphere has grown 10-fold. If there is no immediate reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, the means of adaptation will not be sufficient and life on the planet will be threatened. Climate change will not leave any part of the globe intact. If climate change is not reduced, scientists predict severe and irreversible impacts on humanity and ecosystems. Livelihoods will be disrupted by storms, floods from rising sea levels that can overwhelm many coastal islands and cities, and periods of drought and extreme heat around the world. Extreme weather events can lead to the breakdown of infrastructure and service networks. There is a risk of food insecurity, lack of water, loss of agricultural production and income, particularly in poorer populations.
The 2014 IPCC report confirms that the effects of climate change will be widespread, affecting agriculture, human health, ecosystems, water supply and some industries. To mitigate these risks, there must be a substantial reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions that must be achieved along with strategies and actions to improve disaster preparedness as well as to reduce exposure to events caused by climate change. Defrosting the poles and mountain ranges, migrating species, decreasing crop yields, increasing disease and increasing extreme events are some of the factors cited in the IPCC report as evidence of the need for the international community to make appropriate choices to better adapt and mitigate the negative effects of global warming.
The international community made a major deal in 2015 at COP 21 (UN Conference on Climate Change) in Paris to get a maximum of 2 °C rise in average temperature on planet Earth. For some scientists, this is an almost impossible mission, a colossal challenge. What will be the required milestone? What commitments will be made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Will flexibility be maintained for large emerging countries such as China to continue polluting in the name of the right to development? The issues are many and complex, but the goal is to limit global warming to 2 °C above pre-Industrial England levels in the early 18th century.
Even with decisions at the Paris COP 21 that limited the rise in global average temperature to only 2 °C, the IPCC estimates that future generations will have to deal with sea levels 12 to 22 meters higher than today, according to scientists at Rutgers University in New Jersey, United States. They focused on data from the late Pliocene era, between 2.7 and 3.2 million years ago, when the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was similar to the current one and the temperature was 2 °C higher than now. Sea level rise would be due to the large volume of water that would be released from melting across Greenland, which is the world’s second largest ice reserve, West Antarctic ice sheets, and some parts of Antarctica Eastern. Rising oceans would flood the coasts around the world and affect about 70% of Earth’s population.
Another catastrophe heralded for the 21st century is the escalation of international conflicts. There are several countries that can become hotbeds of war in the world, among them Syria, Palestine, Israel, Iran and North Korea. In the contemporary era, international geopolitical chess points to the existence of three major protagonists: the United States, China, and Russia. Future clashes between these 3 major military powers could result in alternative scenarios to the current one characterized by the loss of US hegemony on the world scene since the end of the bipolar world in which the United States and the Soviet Union confronted each other during the Cold War.
Peace has already been defined as the absence of war. Clausewitz’s formula, war as a continuation of politics by other means, is now replaced by the opposite formula: politics becomes the continuation of war by other means. Historically, the pursuit of peace between nations has had four characteristics: the balance between the great powers, hegemony, empire, and the structuring of a federation of free states along the lines proposed by Kant in The Perpetual Peace as the Concert of Nations in 1815, the League of Nations in 1920 and the United Nations in 1945. In a given historical space, either the great powers are in balance, or are dominated by one of them exercising hegemony, or they are surpassed by the forces of a great power (empire) when all the others lose their autonomy and tend to disappear as centers of political decision. Just as the balance between the great powers, hegemony and empire, the structuring of a federation of free states was not able to build world peace.
It is important to note that the absence of war does not result from the approximate equality of forces that reigns between the great powers, preventing any of them and any coalition of these units from imposing their will. The situation of approximate equality of forces, for example, between the great powers before the outbreak of World War I and World War II is proof that this situation did not prevent the outbreak of such conflicts. The domination exercised by the British Empire in the nineteenth century did not prevent the outbreak of World War I. The hegemonic state does not abuse its hegemony and respects to some extent the external forms of state independence as it did the United States immediately after the end of the Cold War. Today, the hegemony exercised until recently by the United States has been replaced by equality between the great powers (the United States, Russia and China), which is a precarious way of maintaining world peace, as the period before the outbreak of World War I and World War II shows. For its part, the UN representing a federation of national states has been powerless to secure world peace.
In the face of the impossibility of an imperial state, of powers in balance, of a hegemonic power and of a federation of national states such as the UN to ensure world peace, the time has come for humanity to equip itself as urgently as possible for world peace building and the control of its destiny. Tomorrow, who will rule the world? The worst case scenario is that no global governance is foreseen. No country, however powerful, cannot coordinate and control the international system. However, the economic, financial, ecological, social, political crises and the development of today’s illegal and criminal activities show the urgency of a world government. It must also be understood that the international economy cannot function properly without the rule of international law that cannot be applied and respected without the presence of a world government that is accepted by all countries. A world government will be sustainable only if it is truly democratic. The building of a new world order based on these principles is urgent. This government will exist one day even if it happens after successive disasters. It’s urgent to think about it before it’s too late.
Current international relations demonstrate the precariousness of the international system to ensure world peace. World government becomes a requirement to ensure world peace and prevent disasters such as large-scale economic crises, extreme ecological crisis, cascading wars, the spread of an organized crime economy, global pandemic, a meteorite crash on the planet. and the advance of the terrorist movement. Preserving peace is the first mission of every new form of world government. A world government would aim to defend the general interests of the planet, ensure that each national state respects the sovereignty of each country in the world, and seeks to prevent the spread of global systemic risks. The constitution of a world government imposes itself in the face of the failure to structure a federation of free states along the lines proposed by Kant in Perpetual Peace as the 1815 Concert of Nations, the League of Nations in 1920 and the United Nations in 1945. who were powerless to secure world peace because these organizations had no means of making decisions or apply sanctions against those who did not respect it.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 79, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is author of the books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016), A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017), Esquerda x Direita e a sua convergência (Associação Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018, em co-autoria) and Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019).
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