Zak Stein on integral anti-capitalism

See it here. He would benefit from reading our IPS discussion on the topic as follows: part one, part two. A few excerpts from Stein:

"[O]nce we know more about capitalism, if we want to be true to the principles of integral meta-theories, especially Wilber, Habermas, and Bhaskar, integral practitioners should be explicitly and actively anti-capitalist or trans-capitalist. Thus, revolutionary praxis, or totalizing depth praxis—integral activism aimed at replacing capitalism with a new economic system—should be one of the goals of the integral movement, perhaps its most important goal."



"It is exactly this taken-for-grantedness that should have us alert to the ways our own thinking can simply reproduce the very systems it claims to be “transcending but including ”—as so many integral practitioners claim to be doing with capitalism. But what does this mean? That we aspire to have an integral capitalism, or to transcend but include capitalism? Does one have integral forms of slavery, or aspire to transcend but include feudalism? No. We negate these forms, but preserve important lessons. (“To negate and preserve” is another formulation of the Hegelian dialectic summarized often as “transcend but include.”) So it should be with capitalism. Integral meta-theory might harvest the seeds of tomorrow in some of capitalisms distributed networks and organizational and technological modalities. Yet it must nevertheless articulate a future in which, to continue with our example, individuals are free from the compulsion to be exploited by selling their body into the wage labor system."

"So yes, I do believe a commitment to integral meta-theory entails a commitment to the disruption and ultimate overthrow of capitalism. We need to work out an integral diagnostic critique if capitalism, leavening integral theory with the best of the non-reductive Marxists (or Integral Theorists could actually read Bhaskar’s Dialectic). We also need to engage in projects that articulate and exemplify real alternatives, integral concrete utopian[4] futures for economic and productive systems, as well as new forms of organizational governance and cooperative structures. So what this looks like on the ground is a longer story…"