the end of capitalism

I have learned to deal with the lack of certainty and now I am no longer afraid.

Perhaps because the experience in the United States has confronted me with many extreme situations.

Or perhaps cured of humility by the fact that the changes I would like to see happen slip out of my hands, I get up, calm although with a certain restlessness, every day, ready to breathe another day of uncertainty in a world that, little by little, , presents symptoms of collapse and seems to be covered by a wave of delirium.

A collective madness to which I have become accustomed in order, precisely, to integrate myself into it without making too much noise.

However, sometimes the spark jumps, I turn around in fear, and that generates some misunderstandings.

It was lunchtime and my mother had made stew.

The vegetables - it has tomato, pepper - have risen in price lately but, removing that trifle, the rest went on with an overwhelming normality, one of those that weave everyday life and affections.

Until she, without hiding a concern for my future related to my recent arrival in Spain, reluctant to the little stability that writing, my profession, provides, insisted that I become a civil servant: if you take some oppositions you will have a good pension assured.

Just like that, the plan that would save her daughter from the historical storm that lies in wait for us was articulated in her mind;

Thus, with a linear and ascending trajectory, she would be protected from whatever labor thrashing, crisis, pandemic or weather shock intensified.

When I replied that

in 30 years —the ones that would theoretically remain for me to retire—, the world would have nothing to do with the one she projected in her head, something broke on the table;

the plate of stew began to vibrate to the sound of our nervous spoons and, with our stomachs already closed, a tear began to sprout in both of our eyes, something between itching, anguish and the forgiveness we owed each other.

Evoking the future has become more and more a challenge to the most consolidated conventions, to our rigid frameworks of thought and action, and to the understanding between generations that, due to the different paradigms that have passed through, speak from distant places trying to find a common point that sometimes resists.

Three years ago, very few could have predicted the pandemic;

The same can perhaps be said of an energy crisis and climatic chaos that do not let up and now reveal their jaws in all their splendor, despite the fact that we have a huge number of scientific studies that warned of their arrival.

For the first case, for example,

the report on the European Strategy for Energy Security published in 2014 already warned of the need to diversify energy suppliers and reduce dependence on fossil fuels through an economy that is as green as possible;

for the second, dozens of summits and meetings of high international prestige, from Kyoto to COP26, represent a string of empty promises whose result is being the increase in polluting gas emissions to unbearable levels, breaking record after record, as is the case with temperature.

Suddenly, we look at ourselves in a distorted mirror in whose landscape there is a lack of water, electricity and gas are unaffordable for many people and companies, and —in a desperate attempt to maintain a

for the second, dozens of summits and meetings of high international prestige, from Kyoto to COP26, represent a string of empty promises whose result is being the increase in polluting gas emissions to unbearable levels, breaking record after record, as is the case with temperature.

Suddenly, we look at ourselves in a distorted mirror in whose landscape there is a lack of water, electricity and gas are unaffordable for many people and companies, and —in a desperate attempt to maintain a

for the second, dozens of summits and meetings of high international prestige, from Kyoto to COP26, represent a string of empty promises whose result is being the increase in polluting gas emissions to unbearable levels, breaking record after record, as is the case with temperature.

Suddenly, we look at ourselves in a distorted mirror in whose landscape there is a lack of water, electricity and gas are unaffordable for many people and companies, and —in a desperate attempt to maintain a

that has led us to ruin—more coal is burned and, as

examined , we cut down entire forests for firewood in fear of a cold winter.

In the conversations of the European leaders, as in my interrupted lunch, perhaps a kind of epiphany begins to float that is becoming clear: capitalism does not work.

The marginalist energy market, that capricious construct, requires an “urgent intervention”, as Ursula von der Leyen recently pointed out.

What until now seemed to be written in stone is vanishing while the "hunger stones" are emerging in Germany, ancient inscriptions located in the depths of rivers that warn of drought.

France, taking a loss, nationalizes its main electricity company and, in the UK, half of the Conservatives are in favor of adopting similar measures.

Voices are heard that propose caps on the prices of gas, electricity, food;

in Scotland, rents are frozen and evictions are banned;

much of the transport miraculously becomes free, and taxes are imposed on the

banks and electricity.

Like a rusty machine whose gears are already screeching, capitalism has broken from the abuse of using it so much and, exhausted in its rust, the solutions that are predicted from above go through an interventionism that is inappropriate for market freedom that also concerns savings measures energetic.

In the middle of the imbalance, as in any period where uncertainty reigns, and driven by lacerating misinformation, it is not uncommon to coincide with right-wing groups that call for a limit on the cost of gasoline (let the Government stop it!, they shout, on fire , oblivious to the doctrines of neoliberalism that they venerate), or to left-wing groups angry about the energy restrictions that land from Europe, often covered with a patina of environmentalism (they will affect the poorest!).

Chaos also induces the predictable contradictions of an era that is ending, dying: if, on the one hand, restraint is requested in the use of fossil fuels, on the other hand they are subsidized.

The last available resources, such as water from Doñana, are exploited uncontrollably in a shameless exercise of contempt for biodiversity and the nature that constitutes us;

Likewise, the aim is to fleece all of Extremadura in search of a lithium that will not bring wealth, but rather toxic waste and the obsolete echoes of an era that will never bear fruit as it did in its day: extractivist capitalism.

In the background, the cries of unrest are already palpable: in Prague, driven by 18% inflation, a demonstration that brought together people of great ideological diversity demanded to stop the shipment of weapons to Ukraine and new agreements with Putin.

predicted the imminent end of the boom

from

, from which the liquefied gas that lands on our shores is obtained.

Winds of planetary instability;

Sometimes a message and its opposite are enunciated by the same politicians, generating confusion and not a little social pain, like Biden, who, in his star law against climate change, has subjugated renewable energies to the granting of gas and oil permits.

Interventionism but "freedom", freedom but that the governments take our chestnuts out of the fire, because it turns out that the invisible hand that regulates everything suffers irreversible damage.

A delirium walks freely and prevents us from thinking in the long term;

my retirement, that of so many, is suspended, on the fly, a friend of unicorns and with the same credibility as the tricks of an illusionist when we hardly know how we will get to winter.

If this is the end of capitalism, as the climate emergency, aberrant inequality, geopolitics indicate,

Azahara Palomeque

is a writer and doctor in cultural studies from Princeton University.

Her latest book is

(RIL publishers).

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