Rules: you’re not allowed to say “never.” We already know it’s possible it will end when everyone dies because of nuclear war or climate change or some other disaster. Name a specific year (within this century plz) and describe why capitalism will end at that time. Whoever is closest will get an extra food coupon at the local worker canteen. If you joke around I will be extremely disappointed in you :heartbreaking:
Scenario 1: The CPC loses power. The international bourgeoisie regains the upper hand in geopolitics as the earth warms. AI advances to the point where human labor is displaced, but it is under the firm control of the capitalist class. This results in massive violence and wars of population attrition. Climate change is still a thing; none of the social or ecological problems have been solved. Life on Earth begins to resemble a Ulysses Tuggy novel. The remaining humans are subjected to extensive cybernetic mind control, kept in perpetual digital serfdom. Assassination drones prevent anyone from building power among the underclass. The few dozen of the world’s trillionnaires and hundreds of multibillionnaires escape Earth to live on the Mars Colony. Capitalism extinguishes itself and devolves into techno-feudalism in 2055.
Scenario 2: China gradually grows and becomes the economic and military world hegemon. Luckily, they were the first to reach the breakthrough in quantum computing. The US balkanizes, and by a combination of caution and good luck, none of the nukes are fired. Led by China, world socialist movements are victorious, and we are well on our way to the next horizons of human development by around 2082.
Scenario 3: We reach the point of peak everything. Climate change gets really bad, with 1 billion refugees fleeing across the planet, and we run low on oil, phosphorus, cobalt, rare earths, topsoil, and freshwater aquifer levels. Technological collapse causes social collapse around the globe. It doesn’t happen evenly- some places hold out for a while longer- but the several thousand localities are all sent back to 1800s technology or worse. There’s a wide variety of political/economic forms that take root, but anything that can be called capitalism is defunct. The new hodgepodge of protean civilizations advance in various directions at various rates, but the most successful ones are the ones who got together early on in the collapse, dedicated to principles of ecology, appropriate technology, and communism, which are blended together in new religious movements. The global network of capital and commodities finishes flickering out by 2110.
