From Extractive Capitalism to Relational Capitalism

Can capitalism be anything other than extractive? 

This episode makes the case for the potential and possibility of relational capitalism, which would begin with individuals and communities. Join Rohini as she explores the colonial roots of extractivism, the artificial scarcity engineered into our money systems, and how burnout became normalized under an economy designed to deplete. 

Relational capitalism has the potential to be the antidote: an economic model rooted in reciprocity, care, and the recognition that we belong to Nature. This is an invitation to stop proving your worth through exhaustion and depletion, and start participating in an economy that values quality over quantity, relationship over extraction, and the inherent creative genius in every human being.

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Speaker 0:22

Hello, and a warm welcome to you for this episode of Root and Rise. I'm Rohini Walker, and I am so delighted you're tuning into this conversation, which is kind of a biggie, the topic of moving from extractive capitalism to relational capitalism. Because I think that we're at a tipping point where many of us are ready and capable to steward in this evolutionary leap in our socioeconomic systems, starting from the micro, from the individual and community levels, which is very in keeping with the nature of relational capitalism. And ironically, the morning that I had intended to sit down and plan out this episode and make notes for it, I had a headache. All that my eyes wanted to do was to close and to rest and relax and to not look at a screen. But the frantic voice of the inner shudder, the inner tyrant, kept piping up. Like, you have to do this today, otherwise you'll get behind and everything will fall apart. You have to push through the headache. Do it, do it. Doesn't matter. Just get it done today. And these days, I don't really identify with the inner tyrant anymore. So I'm not led by it. So it can kick up a royal fuss and threaten me and light fires of fear in me, and it has minimal impact because I know and feel that it's a part that's in contraction. And I know it's ultimately trying to protect me by trying to keep me compliantly overriding myself. But the toll that it takes on my system when it runs the show is too great. And as always, it's a contraction in my system that is tended to but not given authority. It's the internalized voice of extractive capitalism. And obeying its programming puts me in somatic debt, which is what happens when we force and push the body beyond its capacity, when we ignore and override and numb out its calls and signals for rest with caffeine and whatever else has been normalized in our culture to silence the body and make it comply to the tyranny of extractive capitalism. And when somatic debt compounds, we end up in burnout, which has become another alarmingly normalized cultural phenomenon. And it's inseparable from extractive capitalism. It's almost a perverse badge of honor. Look how I almost killed myself with all of this adrenalized doing and depriving myself of rest. Doesn't this mean I'm valuable and worthy? Have I not proved my worth? And of course, these behaviors are completely innocent and natural consequences of the dominant culture and specifically of extractive capitalism. There's so much I want to say around this that organizing my thoughts in my notes has been quite the journey. And I guess I could have just got AI to do it all for me, to just write the episode for me. But then I'd feel hollow and empty. And besides, AI is also very much anchored in the culture of extractivism, of digital extractivism, which feeds right into extractive capitalism. So instead, you're going to have to put up with me and my slightly messy and passionate human expressions on this topic. So extractive capitalism comes, of course, from the dominant model of extractivism, of taking and depleting resources from land and sea and soil without any regard for ecological and ecosystem impact, as well as impact on local communities, all for for-profit exploitation and growth. We're immersed in extractivism. Our laptops and cell phones all come from the endless mining of minerals. The energy that powers our daily lives, including solar panels and electric car batteries, all come from extractive methods. Apparently, there's no getting away from it. Now, I'm not suggesting that we all go live in caves and eat foraged berries. I certainly don't want to do that. What I want to look at is extractivism, first of all, and then extractive capitalism to name and shine a light on the systems we're living under and participating in. Because awareness brings degrees of clarity, which brings space and agency to make incrementally different and sometimes inconvenient choices. Because our culture's obsession with convenience is one of the things that keeps the machine of extractive capitalism well-oiled and running. So extractivism annihilates the natural environment. It's responsible for soil depletion, for loss of food sovereignty, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, as well as, of course, harmful social and political consequences. Extractivism operates on non-reciprocal models, which is to say that it operates within the constructs of Western colonial thinking that positions humans and especially humans of a particular skin tone above nature and above other expressions of life. Of course, the economic model of extractivism is nowadays no longer limited simply to the West, but the ontological roots of it and the ideology of it comes from European colonialism and empire. And nowadays, it is what most global economies are built upon and growth is measured by. Naomi Klein writes in her book, This Changes Everything, Capitalism versus the Climate. Extractivism ran rampant under colonialism because relating to the world as a frontier of conquest rather than a home fosters this particular brand of irresponsibility. The colonial mind nurtures the belief that there is always somewhere else to go to and exploit once the current site of extraction has been exhausted. And to expand on this, the colonial mind operates under the alarmingly mistaken premise that humans are separate from land and from nature, that the well-being of bodies of water and bodies of land are not intimately connected with our human bodies, and that we're not all existing in one holistic, interdependent, relational web of life. The colonial worldview has forgotten that we are all related, which is not simply a nice romantic idea for when we're sitting around the fire singing songs, but as a fundamental truth of existence. Indigenous societies from all over the world understand this. Their cultures are built on it. It is the foundation of indigenous science. And crucially, economies can also be designed around this, and more on that in a bit. Back to extractivism, this is what birthed the tyranny of extractive capitalism, which operates under the same constructs of depletion, exploitation, and of course, extraction. There is the official economic and global markets definition of extractive capitalism, as described by Professor Laleh Khalili in her book Extractive Capitalism: How Commodities and Cronyism Drive the Global Economy. The economic models that this is built on is designed to keep the very upper echelons of a corrupt investor class in power by keeping the majority in an artificially implemented scarcity-based construct. To quote from the London School of Economics synopsis of Professor Khalili's book, there are at least two distinct interpretations of the term extractive capitalism. The first of these refers to commercial mining, transportation, and marketing of primary commodities from oil to iron ore across the globe. The second refers to an economic and business model long applied by big corporations and financiers, both domestically and globally, that is heavily geared to personal enrichment. This is achieved by corporate and financial mechanisms aimed at extracting an excessive share of the gains from economic activity. And of course, it goes without saying that there is a significant overlap between these two operating mechanisms of extractive capitalism. And I would also emphasize that nowadays, the extraction of precious minerals for the mass production of tech and electric vehicles is also a large part of this picture. Like I said, these are the official economic definitions of extractive capitalism, but it goes much, much deeper than that. Extractive capitalism is sweatshops and child labor and the near-total exploitation of the global south, including the African nations, which is the inherent racism of colonialism very much alive and kicking as an instituted part of global economics. Extractive capitalism is toxic mass-produced things, from food to toys that desecrate the environment, including our bodies, and that are made for the majority of the world's populations who are unnecessarily living hand to mouth, while the transnational corporations that manufacture them rake in millions and billions for their shareholders and investors. We all know this story. Extractive capitalism is a global economy that's designed to keep the majority in perpetual financial struggle and hardship and constantly running on the hamster wheel while wealth is hoarded and amassed by the few as a way to control and dominate. Again, the hallmarks of colonialism and empire. And meanwhile, the fact is it does not have to be this way. There's a quote that sums it up by the late Bernard Lietaer, who was a senior officer at the Belgian Central Bank and also one of the main creators of the Euro from his excellent book of Human Wealth Beyond Greed and Scarcity. He said, Essentially, greed and fear of scarcity are artificially injected into our money systems. And we, over generations, have been so immersed in them that we don't even know that they're unnatural. We unquestioningly consider this normal and just the way things are. When I do classes and workshops around decolonizing our relationship with money, I sometimes offer this quote as an entry point into somatic exploration and somatic alchemy because it describes how extractive capitalism lives in us, in our psyches and soma. So I invite you two to take a moment and feel into what's coming up for you. Notice how the trauma of this artificial insemination of greed, fear, and scarcity has been handed down from generation to generation. How does this show up in your body through sensation and through your breath? How does this show up in how you relate to yourself, to your body, to others? How does this show up in how you relate to rest, to allowing your body to rest? Do you mentally label rest or time spent being unproductive as laziness? Does it feel like everything will collapse if you step off the hamster wheel of constant doing and achieving and urgency? This is extractive capitalism, which is an imprint of systemic colonial oppression living directly in our nervous systems. And we've all been immersed in it because of the unquestioned and unconscious assumption that this is just the way things are. But it's not, because it is not how nature operates, and we are nature. Which brings me to the evolutionary antidote to extractive capitalism, which is relational capitalism. If extractive capitalism operates under systems of domination, of power over, then relational capitalism operates under systems of power with. And sometimes the question comes up: well, could capitalism ever be anything other than extractive? When we start to contemplate the possibilities and potential of relational capitalism, we see that it could. So, as the name suggests, this form of capitalism emphasizes and prioritizes the relational element in the exchange of goods and services. Are actual sustainable long-term relationships being built? The thing to remember here is that relationships are based on reciprocity and care, not extraction and exploitation. So, how would this translate in terms of things like mining or oil drilling? I think that while the human race is still dependent on these resources, and I have my own theories on the potential evolution away from them altogether, but that's for another conversation. So while we're still dependent on these resources, how can things be done in a more relational way? There are two immediately obvious ways that come to mind. The first comes from the lived reality that bodies of land and water are our relatives, and not only that, we belong to nature. What we do to her, we do to ourselves. The practical application of this would be from a regenerative agricultural lens. So, how is the land being allowed to rest and regenerate and heal? What are the wider surrounding ecosystem impacts of resource extraction? How are those ecosystems being cared for and supported? Are there environmental and ecological impacts that are irreversible? And if so, instead of charging ahead anyway, can there be space and time and research for less harmful alternatives? This means that the whole behemoth of corporatism has to slow down. Mass production has to slow down, maybe even stop altogether. Company financial goals and growth need to be mapped not according to stakeholder gains and other private profiteering interests, but according to environmental and ecological sustainability. If something is being manufactured and the apparently urgent market need for it manufactured alongside it, that is irreversibly damaging the environment, the manufacture of that thing has to be stopped until a sustainable alternative is found. And if a sustainable alternative cannot be found, that thing will not be manufactured because the toll that it takes on the planet and on us is too great. Now, I know that this does not sound practical at all. We need so many things. We need cars and planes, we need our cell phones and laptops and all the rest of it. If sustainable alternatives cannot be found to manufacture and run these things, what then? If there's one thing I know, it's that intentionally opening up to possibilities and to the innovations hiding in the unknown invariably bear fruit. Our human imaginations, which are inherently ecological in nature, by the way, can conceive of and bring to fruition all manner of things. So why not harness these imaginations from a place of participating in ecosystems rather than the building of empire and tap into these innovations that require time and slowness and paying attention? Surely the stakes are high enough by now to be worth it to stop the behemoth of greed and extraction and attune to the innovations that nature has for us through the ecology of the imagination. And maybe this sounds ridiculous to you, but actually this way of doing things is already well underway. In her book, Biomimicry, Innovation Inspired by Nature, Janine Benyus maps out some of these pathways, including the manufacture of materials and technology and of ecological repair and stewardship. And the Biomimicry Institute is pioneering this work. But of course, sufficient funding is not funneled towards them and other organizations like them because, well, because of the stranglehold of the empire of extractive capitalism, to put it bluntly. And besides, sustainable alternatives like hemp fuel are already widely known as a viable alternative for running vehicles and planes. But of course, that would not be good for business under extractive capitalism. That is, the low hanging fruit of just drilling for oil and minerals yields more gains for the inflated profit of the few. Because being a billionaire once over is apparently not enough private profit. And of course, implementing these nature-inspired innovations would apply not only to the drilling of oil and minerals, but to food production, agriculture, and to all goods and services that rely on extraction, pollution, and exploitation. Okay, so I could go on about this, but I want to get to the second immediately obvious way that a more relational approach could take place, which is through feeding a meaningful, by which I mean significant, portion of financial profits back to communities that are local to the regions where resource extraction and manufacture are taking place. Reciprocity in action. Paying peanuts for exploitative labor practices, including child labor, does not count as reciprocity. From a relational lens, the practice of child labor would be seen for what it is, beyond uncivilized, because anything that claims to uphold civilization while engaging in things like child labor is the dysfunctional end of the delusion spectrum. Within the relational capitalism model, which operates under the lived understanding that when we harm and exploit each other, we harm and exploit ourselves, practices such as child labor and other dehumanizing ways of doing business would be illegal. No one of us is free until everybody is free, to quote Maya Angelou. And repairing the broken economic systems built on extractive capitalism is a good place to start implementing that as a reality. Again, so much more to say on this, of course. Before any macro implementation of relational capitalism can happen, it has to start on the micro level with the choices that we're making in our lives. For example, we have a vibrant farmer's market where I live, which is something of a weekly ritual for many locals in my community, myself included. Going to the farmer's market is for me such a beautiful experience of relational capitalism in action, of talking to the people who grow the food I eat on land that they tend to, of paying them directly, of having a sense of place and connection and context to what I'm consuming, of being in sync with the seasons through the food I'm eating, and then generally feeling more called to eat seasonally as a result because it feels so good in my body. I know not everyone has access to farmers' markets, and I'm not saying stop going to grocery stores and the like. Instead, what are the small creative ways that relational capitalism can consciously be given more real estate in our lives? Are there local farms, maybe even regenerative farms that you can connect with and build relationships with and buy food from directly? Could you set up a small co-op with local friends and neighbors who would be into doing that together? Because relational capitalism starts with building community in these micro ways. Or when we're buying clothes, can we look into manufacturing practices and let that guide our choices? Can we buy one well and ethically made item that maybe costs a little bit more rather than five cheaper things that are mass-produced from toxic, environmentally degrading materials by humans in sweatshops? Can we opt for quality rather than quantity and disobey the dictates of extractive capitalism that tell us that more is always better, so that the well-oiled machine of corporatism and mass production can keep on running? Can we choose not to buy or drastically reduce buying things made from nylon and rayon and other synthetic materials that use heavy industrial chemicals that leach out on and poison land, water, sky, and of course plastics, but no one needs to be reminded of that. I'm aware that the elephant in the room here is the tech hegemony and digital extractivism, which is a relatively new and sinister tentacle of extractive capitalism. That deserves its own episode, really. But what I will say is choosing to opt out of participating in these in ways that we can opt out of them is a good place to start. So for me, this has looked like stepping off Instagram last year. Facebook has not been in my reality for many years. Because for me, meta typifies extractive capitalism and so much else that is eroding our well-being. And I don't have to use meta. I don't have to use meta in the same way that I have to interact and engage with other aspects of life that come from extractive capitalism. I can choose not to because regardless of what Meta says, it is not a mandated part of life. My life won't come to a standstill without being on any meta platforms. And another way that I am personally choosing to uh not participate in digital and tech extractivism is being really circumspect about AI before using it and generally avoiding it as much as I can. Definitely not for creative work. And to be clear, I'm not telling you to do these things too. As always, tune into what feels right for you. If something has not been sitting well with you, but you're told that you can't run a business without it, or that basically you can't be a human being in the world without it, and that everything will fall apart without it, unbelieve that because it's not true. Follow your inner authority and guidance, because relational capitalism also starts with reclaiming our relationships with ourselves, with our intuition, our instincts, our values, and our bodies, and making our choices from there. So I'm circling back to where I began because this is where a lot of my work is located: liberating the body from the vice grip of extractive capitalism. That conditioning to override the body's capacity and to burn ourselves out and then feel some sort of perverse pride in that, because that's what we've been trained to do. You may already know this, but the Monday to Friday nine to five system of working was first brought in by Henry Ford in the 20s, in the 1920s, for his factory workers. And on weekends, they were expected to be good consumers and spend the money they made to keep that behemoth of extractive capitalism ticking along. And of course, as we know, weekends in this linear nine to five Monday to Friday system, weekends are usually spent trying to escape from that dreary, mechanized reality of life, which the body starts to brace against on Sunday evenings with feelings of dread. I don't know about you, but to me it's bananas that we still have this system in place, that we've become so conditioned by it that it feels like we're lazy and good for nothing if we don't comply with that mechanized linear way of working. Humans are not machines. And I know that that's a loaded statement these days with the whole AI thing. But that aside for now, we're not supposed to work in these linear, mechanized ways. Especially women. Our bodies move in cyclical rhythms, very much like nature's rhythms. But of course, the systems that have been set up see this as a weakness, and female bodies are expected to contort to that linear, mechanized productivity, and just deal with the escalation of hormonal and autoimmune issues that are so commonplace for women in the post-industrialized era. Again, this is extractivism and extractive capitalism at work. A body that does not fit into the standard systems of linear mechanized productivity is seen as weak and lazy and blah, blah, blah. They should be paid less or not be given positions of responsibility because the inherent myopia of the current system can only measure value and worth through those narrow constructs of its unnatural extractivist lens. Acknowledging and honoring the diversity of bodies would not be good for the greed-based bottom line. You don't need me to tell you that that way of doing things is way past its expiry date. And no, I'm not talking about solutions being things like AI taking jobs so we won't have to work anymore, or universal basic income coming in to make us completely dependent on centralized governments and their controlling whims. That is all still essentially extractive capitalism designed to keep us endlessly, compliantly consuming. Those quote unquote solutions are designed to create near-total domination by centralized governments and the surveillance-driven tech hegemony. Work is actually a sacred practice, but it has been desecrated under the current status quo. Work, meaningful soul-body nourishing work, gives us purpose and energizes us. When we're using our energy and life force for this sort of work, work that's in alignment with our values and with our body's rhythm, work that includes rest and play, and honoring the body's capacity as integral to the quality of the work that we do, our work becomes our creative practice. It becomes our art. Again, there are already companies and businesses implementing this. The first one that comes to mind is the hugely successful company built by the astrologer Chani Nicholas, who is very well known internationally in the astrology world. Her company is strictly no AI, and she employs people who do a whole host of things from design and marketing, writing, coding, and so on. And I'm just gonna read some of the things that her company is implementing from the careers page on her website, because I think that this is a really great model for relational capitalism. So her company offers a salary floor of $80,000, meaning no one is paid less than that, which is an example of living wages for all. It offers fully covered health, dental, vision insurance, flexible work from home policy, a four-day work week, seven weeks of paid office closure a year, unlimited flexible paid vacation, plus a vacation stipend, gender-based violence, paid and protected leave, unlimited menstrual leave for people with uteruses, an annual tech stipend, a personal and professional growth stipend, and a stipend to help you build wealth. So from that tyrannical, extractive capitalist mindset, this would look like: well, how does anyone get any work done here? This is ridiculous. But clearly it's working because the company that Chani Nicholas has built is thriving and it's doing really well, and it's going from strength to strength. This is a real world in practice example of one of the fundamental touch points of relational capitalism, which is that it places value on quality over quantity. It places value and worth on the inherent creative genius of a human being as opposed to extractive capitalism, which sees the human being as worthless, where we have to quote unquote prove and earn our worth by running ourselves and our bodies ragged, where we have to spend the majority of our lives toiling and working harder and harder, while nature is all about working wiser. Bringing AI and robots to do everything for us is not a solution to endless toiling and hard work. The problem is systemic, which means the system, in this case, extractive capitalism, needs to evolve. The AI and the robot's non-solution is simply a continuation of the same system. We can do better than that, surely. In the consciousness state of relational capitalism, the very definitions of value and worth would evolve. Exploitative, extractive ways would be recognized as having no value, as being worthless. And when money is received and circulated in economies designed around relational capitalism, the current of money becomes a force of evolutionary change. Money itself gets to evolve. So I want to close by saying that we cannot look out there to the current, albeit collapsing, systems of government and leadership to start implementing these changes. They're not going to. And it's no longer a case of fighting the system. It's about refusing to participate in it in the ways that we can. Relational capitalism starts with us as individuals incrementally making different choices where we can. Choices that may at first feel inconvenient or uncomfortable. And then from there, things start to ripple out to our local communities. It starts with advocating on behalf of the body and the land and refusing to allow them to continue to be resources to extract from. Relational capitalism operates like nature's ecosystems and comes from whole systems or holistic thinking. It honors difference and diversity just like ecosystems thrive under biodiversity. As always, I would love your questions and reflections on this. Ways to connect with me are in the show notes. And until next time, remember we all deserve way, way better than the ways of extractive capitalism. It absolutely does not have to be this way.