Debt: The First 5000 Years - autonomous learning

(1971-THE BEGINNING . . . ) 383
In other words, there seems to have been a profound contradiction
between the political imperative of establishing capitalism as the only
possible way to manage anything, and capitalism's own unacknowledged
need to limit its future horizons lest speculation, predictably, go
haywire. Once it did, and the whole machine imploded, we were left in
the strange situation of not being able to even imagine any other way
that things might be arranged. About the only thing we can imagine
is catastrophe.
I I I I I
To begin to free ourselves, the first thing we need to do is to see ourselves
again as historical actors, as people who can make a difference
in the course of world events. This is exactly what the militarization of
history is trying to take away.
Even if we are at the beginning of the turn of a very long historical
cycle, it's still largely up to us to determine how it's going to turn out.
For instance: the last time we shifted from a bullion economy to one of
virtual credit money, at the end of the Axial Age and the beginning of
the Middle Ages, the immediate shift was experienced largely as a series
of great catastrophes. Will it be the same this time around Presumably
a lot depends on how consciously we set out to ensure that it won't be.
Will a return to virtual money lead to a move away from empires and
vast standing armies, and to the creation of larger structures limiting
the depredations of creditors There is good reason to believe that all
these things will happen-and if humanity is to survive, they will probably
have to--but we have no idea how long it will take, or what, if it
does, it would really look like. Capitalism has transformed the world in
many ways that are clearly irreversible. What I have been trying to do
in this book is not so much to propose a vision of what, precisely, the
next age will be like, but to throw open perspectives, enlarge our sense
of possibilities; to begin to ask what it would mean to start thinking on
a breadth and with a grandeur appropriate to the times.
Let me give an example. I've spoken of two cycles of popular
movements since World War II: the first (1945-1978), about demanding
the rights of national citizenship, the second (1978-2oo8), over access
to capitalism itself. It seems significant here that in the Middle East, in
the first round, those popular movements that most directly challenged
the global status quo tended to be inspired by Marxism; in the second,
largely, some variation on radical Islam. Considering that Islam
has always placed debt at the center of its social doctrines, it's easy
to understand the appeal. But why not throw things open even more