Orthodox Capitalism is Dead

The crises we face today, the inability to create new jobs and new industries, are the shortcomings of capitalism as we practice it. Umair Haque, the author of the “New Capitalist Manifesto,” challenges us to recognize the cornerstones of industrial-era capitalism to be able to remake it. “Capitalism is a human creation; we made it and we can remake it. We are at a critical juncture to remake it again.”

Profitability is what we mean by capitalism. To rediscover profitability we need to take a critical look at our competitive advantage. For the next-generation capitalism we need creativity, customization, commitment and compliance. We need to unleash creativity by bringing together diverse constituents to generate new ideas and to reach a creative outcome. We need to redefine consumption methods, like iTunes, and give customized purchasing options to consumers to download a digital album in MP3 format or in a single-file format.

Commitment is a process by which we get people to agree willingly to continue to support something. Companies are in need of commitment and compliance – there is a constant fear that people will go home and not come back. People want a say and to be part of decision making. Companies need to engage employees and encourage “make-our-own rules” approach to decision making processes

The 4 C’s become core characteristics of human interaction – the more active the participation, the more creative the decisions and process outcomes, and the more customized to our needs. Systems by which we make decisions need high degrees of collaboration and participation. This is very different from what we are trained to believe.

Our communication practices are still limited by the legacy of an old design. We favor a form of talk that is an argument, a campaign to win, organized around liberal democracy – it is embedded in our constitution. What we inherited is a 16th - 17th century view of human experience.

Partisanship is an outcome of liberal democratic model – it works to polarize into position. We have a model of how talk should be. Our native theory of dialogue is adversarial talk. We advocate a view, we debate, and the better argument wins.

But having the world we want will not come from voting for it.

So we need to look at the communication designs that are available to us. How we talk to each other and what are the native theories?