Complexity and capitalism

Recall this post from the pomo and complexity thread, wherein a Ph.D. dissertation applied the Prigogine and Morin sort of complexity to various issues. The referenced post is the last chapter's application to capitalism. Consistent with the above are some excerpts from that post indicative of capitalism's metaphysical and dualistic idealism typical of Enlightenment formal operations:

He starts by describing capitalism as a restricted economy with ideological components [...] [which] causes one to avoid any empirical evidence to the contrary, because the idea is what is important, not the empirical material on the ground. [...] A general economy though does not oppose the ideal with the actual, and consequently impose the former on the latter. This opens the system to possibilities never considered in the restricted version due to contingent forces on the ground.


Restricted economies like capitalism are present-centered. The future can only be based on possibilities inherent to what is present, not some novel challenge. It’s a 'feedback trap' that only narcissistically reinforces itself instead of responding to a changing environment. Interestingly, this is tied to 'awakening' to truth, 'a different consciousness' where time stops in an eternal present (259-61). Which all of course feeds back into a timeless Causal or Ideal [that is] bivalently juxtaposed with the actual or material.