By Average Joey
Capitalism is more than just an economic model: it is an all-encompassing socio-political system fueled by the exploitation of human labor and natural resources, and enforced by violence. The logic of capital is the prioritization of profit above all else, which dictates nearly every detail of our personal lives — our relationship to work, community, relationships, even our perception of ourselves. If we start to unveil this logic, we can see how insidious it is to our mental and emotional health.
What is considered “rational” according to the logic of capitalism is often ethically indefensible. Ecological devastation, unspeakable human exploitation, and the violence of war are all permissible under this logic, so long as the profits rise in the upcoming fiscal quarter. A society that worships opulence while it normalizes millions of people sleeping in the streets is deeply sick. What does it do to a person to be entrapped in this framework?
Stuck in a cycle of meaningless labor, vapid consumption, hyper-individualized social alienation and with social bonds captured by profiteering algorithms, we are certain to interpret the world as hostile, competitive, unfulfilling, and isolating, which in turn affects our mental/emotional state for the worse. Diagnoses such as depression or anxiety, are biomedical labels for the natural, healthy and inevitable reaction of people to hostile social conditions.
Modern capitalist society is abnormal, in the grand scheme of our species’ history. For 95% of humanity’s time on earth, we lived in classless communities of mutual obligation. Meeting the needs of fellow members of the tribe was a core necessity for one’s own survival. Under these forms of social organization, the ways in which our basic biological needs were met — that is, communally and in close relationship to the natural world — formed our social needs for group cohesion, trustworthy community, and connection to the environment. Meeting our physiological needs through a collective process of egalitarian social relationships is what shaped our psycho-emotional needs for social belonging within an interdependent community of mutual care.
It is not that prehistoric people were more ethical or virtuous, but that this mutual aid was necessary for survival. The material conditions shaped social relationships, biological evolutionary expectations, and psycho-emotional needs. The same applies to today — in order to survive under material conditions of modern capitalism, people are forced into particular social relationships. However, this social arrangement can be said to be “unnatural” — meaning it is antagonistic to the evolutionary expectations of our species. Capitalism is not conducive to individual and social wellbeing; psycho-emotional distress is all but inevitable.
Propaganda that attempts to frame “human nature” as inherently greedy or selfish comes from a place of either bad faith or ignorance; this narrative is a misdirection, diverting attention away from structures of inequality and the powerful people who benefit from them. Human nature is not fixed. Rather, people act according to the incentive structure of their social environments. It is not some fundamental flaw that makes people behave selfishly or violently, but rather the dysfunctional social conditions which incentivize anti-social behavior — and sets up the personal experiences that result from those conditions. Indoctrinated by the ideologies of capitalism our entire lives, behaviors which maintain the status quo appear to us as fundamental to our nature, but they are historically contingent.
Dialogue around “mental health” tends to individuate and pathologize the experiences people have under these antagonistic conditions, focusing on diagnosing and treating symptoms rather than considering the systemic causes of psycho-emotional distress. A mental health diagnosis can be flattening: “Why do I think/feel/behave this way? Because I have a ‘mental illness’” — end of story. This reductionism reinforces the falsehood that mental or emotional discomfort is the result of individual malfunction and can be fully resolved through medication or “lifestyle changes.”
It is true that many people find great value — personal relief, social validation, and genuine healing — through biomedical diagnosis, medical treatment, and therapeutic management. The alleviation of debilitating distress provided by medication, the support of peer groups, and the tools one acquires through therapy cannot be disregarded outright. However, these are ultimately inadequate if they are understood as the exclusive path to resolution or healing, while the social and political causes of distress go unaddressed. There is nothing disempowering about diagnosis so long as that diagnosis leads to a deeper inquiry into all the factors that contribute to psycho-emotional health — including the social and structural ones. Without a wider analysis, a mental health diagnosis can lead a person struggling with their psycho-emotional health down a path of defeated passivity.
Capitalist social structures are certain to cause stress, loneliness, anxiety, and existential sadness. Our inability to conform to or abide by the demands of the logic of capital is not a flaw — not an indication of a personal malfunction — but a sign that we have not yet relinquished our humanity. You are not wrong to feel depressed or anxious. Given the reality, it would be weird not to be anxious and depressed. Our body/mind/soul’s rejection of these conditions and ideological confines serves as proof of capitalism’s fundamental antagonism to all it means to be human — biologically, emotionally, socially, and spiritually. Our spirits are crying out for something better. If such a large percentage of the population experience “illnesses” such as depression and anxiety, these arefundamentally social problems. Depoliticizing mental health takes capitalism for granted as inevitable, which it is not. Stepping over dying people on a daily commute or passively scrolling past images of genocidal violence should be psychologically disturbing. It does something to the human spirit, or psyche, or soul to live in a culture where such brutality appears to us as mundane.
What is “healthy” or “crazy” depends on the ideologies of a given society or culture. Who is more violent and dangerous: the houseless person experiencing a manic episode in the town square, or the executives of the weapons manufacturers who build, disseminate, and profit from 2,000 pound bombs? Historically, and in the present day, it has been adherence to the status quo which has perpetuated the most egregious violence the world has ever known. In a capitalist world, it is the “normal” people who establish, perpetuate and maintain structures and logics that are inherently violent — that are antithetical to the health and wellbeing of human and non-human life the world over. Those who insist on something better are labeled “crazy.” If alienation is normal, let us embrace abnormality. If insisting on a radically different social reality is irrational, it is time to be irrational. If turning away from capitalist ideology in favor of a radically different world means being labeled as crazy, let us embrace a liberating madness.