The short answer is that it has to solve its growth dynamic because in the long run capitalist life on a finite planet has to be based on economics that are growth neutral or circular. David Harvey's excellent 'the enigma of capitalism' describes however the growth dynamic inherent in the system, this growth is exponential and cannot be sustained in the long run. Rockstrom et al's 2009 paper on 'a safe operating space for humanity' also indicates there is a race between our ability to adapt and the planet's ability to make us extinct. Daniel ben Ami's 'ferrari's for all' and Indur Goklany both argue for more capitalist growth to address the challenges but i wonder if they are being too optimistic (https://www.academia.edu/404897/A_critique_of_Ferraris_for_All_In_defence_of_economic_prgress_by_Daniel_Ben-Ami), while Bill McKibben's 'three numbers thesis' suggest we may run out of time: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719
The only economic system that is proven to benefit human race is capitalism. While the earlier generations of human might not have called it Capitalism but where ever is followed it has worked out well.
Capitalism has been most efficient in destroying the ecosystem and producing exploitation and oppression... However, the Marxist-Leninist alternative was based on the same modern outlook and competed with capitalism in the latter's terms, often proving even more destructive because public controls were lesser (there were no means to denounce ecocides and disasters)...
By achieving the very opposite of what it promised—it promised to deliver a technological Eden—the project of modernity, both in its capitalist version and in the bureaucratic deformation of state capitalism spoused by the Marxist-Lenininsts achieved its empirical reduction ad absurdum, demonstrating the errors and the delusion at its root.
The good thing is that this reductio ad absurdum is the only thing that could allow us to finally change all currently prevailing socioeconomic and political systems, revolution technology making it collaborate with the ecosystem, and allow us to rid ourselves of the deluded state of mind that begot capitalism and that was furthered by the latter and its existing alternatives...
To Aimee's question: "Will the capitalist economic system sustain?" I'm tempted to answer simply, "God, I hope not. Sustainable capitalism is a nightmare!" - in whatever form. As Elias has pointed out Western and the Soviet variants of capitalism have proved devastating to both humanity and to the Earth more broadly. To Aimee's sub-query "in terms of efficiency/performance", I would say the usual measures of "efficiency", i.e., productivity, or output per unit of input, are commonly so narrowly defined as to ignore the myriad negative externalities (or byproducts, or consequences) that accompany all capitalist production and infect all of capitalist society. As long as capitalism does "sustain" or "persist", so will those negative externalities - which is why I hope we can figure out how to transcend it sooner rather than later.
In a separate thread, in answer to a similar query by Nematullah Haidari of the UN Development Program, I wrote:
"Capitalism = a social order based on the endless subordination of life – human and non-human – to commodity production. In the case of human life, subordination means the organization of society such that the vast majority of individuals have the vast majority of their time and energy sucked up, vampire-like as Marx wrote, in work producing commodities, either commodities produced for profit – which is then reinvested to impose more work – or the commodity labor power – the willingness and ability to work. In the process, they suffer exploitation, alienation and a host of other ills. In the case of non-human life, it means being converted into the raw materials of commodity production. In the process, they and their life-worlds are poisoned, bulldozed, consumed and destroyed. As a result of these characteristics vast numbers of beings (both human and non-human), naturally struggle to avoid or escape this fate, so capitalism is a system fraught with antagonism and conflict. Sustainable capitalism is, therefore, a nightmare."
As for "existing alternatives", Elias, your own characterization of Soviet-style systems as "state capitalism" implies that they are NOT true alternatives but merely variations. To find "existing alternatives" we must look elsewhere, in the many grassroot, bottom-up efforts to create real alternatives to capitalist ways of organizing various human activities. THOSE are everywhere; in virtually every dimension of society there are those experimenting with non-capitalist alternatives. While capital seeks to either demolish or absorb them (thus ending their character as true alternatives), we should support, defend and contribute to those we think worthwhile. Only through the elaboration and spread of viable, real alternatives can we build other worlds, different from and better than capitalism.
Harvey's follow up is '17 contradictions of capitalism' clustered into a) foundational because wherever capitalism is, these contradictions apply, b) moving, because their forms are dynamic and geographically mobile and c) dangerous because they might actually end capitalism (and us!). Harvey is not deterministic about this, He sees that capitalism could survive but at the expense of current civic society and nature - think plutocrats safe in gated communities protected by technology and a police/military apparatus in a wasteland dystopia. Far fetched? The current forms of this dystopia are already taking root.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/videoAndAudio/channels/publicLecturesAndEvents/player.aspx?id=2371
Harry, I quite agree with your words above... The only difference I see between our respective proposals are that I emphasize a change of mind, a revolution of the psyche that puts an end to the antagonism toward nature and other human beings and the fragmented perception at the root of both ecological crisis and the currently prevailing dystopia... However, I am more interested in coincidences than in differences of emphasis...
Certaintly Capitalism is unsustainable because of ecological constraints, but so are all systems based on growth. Many ancient sages opposed growth in Chinese Taoism, various Greek Hellenism philosophical systems, Buddhism... And then again beginning in the twentieth century with authors including Ivan Illich, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen and then the French Décroissance movement started by economist Serge Latouche... I myself have been writing from that perspective for many years, even before the term ungrowth / degrowth was coined.
Sorry for contradicting you, Raj, but Capitalism might be the system that has stood for a shortest time in economic history, and the only one that has led humankind to the verge of self-extinction (and I include the bureaucratic deformation of state capitalism that prevailed in self-appointed Marxist countries within the rubric "capitalism").
Historically, the main engine for the capitalism has been the dynamics of technological innovation. Actually – growing inequalities apart – the major topics discussed among economists are: ‘zero interest rates’, ‘secular stagnation’, ‘productivity puzzle’. From a Marxian point of view, the main contradiction of the capitalist mode of production is between the development of productive forces and the social relations of production. If it is true that the development reached by the productive forces does not translate into productivity gains, and that the most developed capitalist economies grow less and producing growing inequalities , then the capitalist economic system sustains itself with growing difficulties.
Maurizio,
The "dynamics" of "technological innovation" involve both the imagination and creativity of workers and what becomes of them within capitalism. More often than not they are adopted and implemented only when they serve the capitalist objectives of increased social control and increased profits (that finance increased social control in the future). The formula - " the contradiction between the development of productive forces and the social relations of production" - that you quote from the short 1859 Preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy must be interpreted in the light of the far more extensive analysis provided in Capital and elsewhere. As your countryman, Raniero Panzieri pointed out back in the 1960s (and illustrated with concrete research) the "capitalist use of the machine" has always been a political co-optation of workers' creative power not just to raise productivity but to increase control over workers - and the social factory more generally.
What determines the degree to which that creative power continues to be used to destroy lives and the earth and the degree to which it is used to repair the damage already done and elaborate healthier alternatives is the balance of power between capital and those of us seeking and demanding alternatives. We can see this playing out in, among others, the energy sector where many are elaborating alternatives to the continued capitalist use of planet-destroying hydrocarbon fuels. In the process, capitalists are, once again, doing their best to adapt and confine such changes within their own social structures. It's our job to find ways to thwart those efforts and leverage these changes (that we have been forcing) to develop alternative social structures. The ways we develop those alternatives must include organizational forms appropriate to the situation and the kind of changes in mind and spirit that Elias evokes in his comments.
Susan,
I haven't read Ghiselin's book but his statement that you quote reveals a very contemporary economist way of looking at things: competition in the presence of scarcity. He is certainly right that there is cutthroat competition in science in this period of cutbacks in funding that is driving many scientists out of the field altogether. He is also correct that in current circumstances getting credit (that makes getting another research grant more likely) is often more important to PI's than the substance of their work. Under such circumstances projects of "solving a problem" only provides a framework for competition.
As for alternatives to capitalism for sustaining "our visions of a more just human society", I'd say they abound, not only in various world views, but in the many, many projects folks have initiated to create better ways of doing things and better ways of being.
With respect to Marxism and "international unification", I'd say the latter was the aim primarily of the 3rd and 4th Internationals (Comitern and Trots). Wiser Marxists have only sought complementary in struggle against capitalism (One NO) but been open to diverse alternative ways of meeting human and Nature's needs (Many YESES).
https://www.genfound.org/media/1136/advocacy-3-sustainable-capitalism.pdf
https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/07-037.pdf
https://cergu.gu.se/digitalAssets/1667/1667953_nr-2017.3-louise-warenius-wp.pdf
https://www.ced.org/pdf/The_Challenge_of_Sustaining_Capitalism%2C_March_2014.pdf