I’m a capitalist. No, that’s an understatement. Let me tell you a secret: as an individual who entertains no nonsense on the inseparability of capitalism from the tenets of Islam and the Abrahamic tradition, and as an intellectually responsible scholar of the social sciences, I would in my heart of hearts feel pretty cheated if there was ever a ranking prepared of the most resolute proponents of the free-market in history - Adam Smith, Ayn Rand, Margaret Thatcher, Charles Murray - and they left me out.
No room, I expect, for the research guy. The religious guy.
That doesn’t discourage me though, from picking a bone of contention with people when they attribute the (very real) evils of today to the handiwork of the free-market. Let me warn you though! - you can’t imagine the sophisticaton of thought one must possess to nail down the most colossal blunder of modern-day capitalism: as it is, even a once struggling college student can do it.
Types of political frameworks
[Type: magnitude of personal freedom; magnitude of economic freedom]
Left-wing: High; Low
Populist (Totalitarian): Low; Low
Right-wing: Low; High
Libertarian: High; High
The above is a transcription of something called the Nolan Chart, a political-view assessment tool developed by the American politician David Nolan in 1969. Widely accepted and cited, Nolan’s chart came at a time when people like Nolan were frustrated at the conventional, monochromatic view of Left and Right. Nolan however, a libertarian, made an ostensibly small (rather self-serving) mistake; a mistake the profundity of which was widely overlooked. That’s probably because this mistake is only slave to one of the greatest ideological blunders of recent history. The honor is too great for myself, so I’m going to bestow it on a legitimate scholar:
“the ‘libertarians’ are tying capitalism to the whim-worshipping subjectivism and chaos of anarchy. To cooperate.. is to betray capitalism, reason, and one’s own future.” (Ayn Rand, Philosophy: Who Needs It)
In other words, when you combine great economic freedoms with great (read: unprecedented) personal freedoms, the social order that results from the pairing is much less what classical liberals spoke of when they advocated ‘free-market’, and much more, increasingly a state that, beneath its sugar-coated facade, is essentially anarchy.
One more time:
“the ‘libertarian’ hippies, who subordinate reason to whims, and substitute anarchism for capitalism.” (Ayn Rand, The Objectivist.)
But that’s just the half of it. The aforementioned ‘sugar-coated’ facade has in fact, in a not insignificant way, pervaded, and is persisting, in our own Third-World abode. It even has a name. It is called post-modern leisure.
In the mid-1990s, a number of British sociologists finally attended to what was being recognized as a new pattern of leisure in ‘advanced capitalist societies.’ (Alert!)
At the forefront was Chris Rojek from City University London, and his book Decentering Leisure. Here’s an overview of his and the others’ fundamental contributions:
First, Rojek reminds us that we must not forget to view leisure in the context of the other key developments - ideas or experiences - that are shaping a society.
Now, originally, leisure was a product of modernity - the ethic premised on rational thought and progress. As such, leisure pursuits were essentially purposeful and directed towards the goal of self-improvement. Sheila Scraton and Peter Bramham of Leeds Metropolitan University supplement this notion with modern leisure having been ‘rational and recuperative’ - a ‘healthy, useful and culturally acceptable’ counterbalance to working life. An example is the formation of youth clubs, which would help provide an outlet for working class males to redirect a competitive (and potentially delinquent) nature towards sport, keeping them out of trouble. Modern leisure, thus, was an organized institution; it was a mutually-concerned joint project of the state and voluntary sector.
After World War II however, Scraton and Bramham identify that things changed. In came “rock and roll, teenage subcultures, the women’s movement and distinctive minority ethnic groups”, which all undermined the trust in a “unidirectional nature of rational leisure,” in other words, the latter’s grand narrative. Modernity was losing its charm, and the era of postmodernity was coming. More simply, the First-World was going to move from being guided by grandpa and grandma’s notion of what ‘the good, the true and the beautiful’ was, to an environment of extreme philosophical and creative freedoms.
Thus, enter a society where individuals are granted the liberty to pursue their livelihoods through enterprise, in a setting where the latter is neither subject to the traditional constraints of religious doctrine nor to those of scientific or rational thought. If you concur by now that the afore is a recipe for disaster, the actual result, I warn you, is not for the faint of heart.
With the rise of post-modern leisure, Rojek identifies that people begin to abandon the contingency of self-improvement and adopt an approach where leisure is pursued for its own sake – it becomes an end in itself. Soon, leisure is no longer restricted to ‘authentic experience.’ ‘Simulation and hyper reality‘, epitomized by theme parks, begin to flourish. Disneyland’s opening in 1955 is often viewed as the epoch of post-modern leisure, followed by the golden age of arcade video games and then video gaming consoles. Another aspect Rojek identifies is that of the diffusion of ‘an integrated self’: older people, for example, no longer shackled to notions of ‘personal development,’ may now be found in discos, rock concerts, or watching horror flicks. You do what you want to do, not what is conventionally deemed suited for you. Indeed, leisure is now a matter of ‘identity politics’: you increasingly choose to create your identity through your leisure - not the least because, with a wealthy adult population looking to pay for whatever tickles their fancy, if your identity is sensational enough, you’ll make a fortune out of it. If you’re a grown adult and can’t quite grow out of playing the undead, don’t fret, you can become a superstar known as The Undertaker. If you don’t quite have the look, you become Stephen King.
We are witnessing an era where leisure is no longer constrained even by the limits of reality.
Rojeck, who may just as well have based his identity on a character from Malcolm Bradbury’s The History Man, actually welcomes post-modern leisure, citing that we enjoy ‘great choice and freedom’, and are left much more satisfied. Scraton and Bramham on the other hand are more critical of the idea, only conceding that it allows you to indulge yourself and can be “compared to a shopping mall where you are spoilt for choice.“
And I don’t dispute the alluring power of post-modern leisure at all. Certainly one is spoilt for choice at the mall today, but not so much when backed by the knowledge that most of the items present in the grocery section are made from ingredients unfit for human consumption, something which the acne scars on our faces would attest to. Post-modern leisure is the ‘junk-food’ of leisure, only the scars do not line our faces, they line our broken lives.
I mentioned earlier that capitalism/economic freedoms are inextricably tied with the Abrahamic tradition. Well, let me remind you of another central and recurring theme.. the shepherd.
But we spurned the shepherd, didn’t we? We wanted to be hip; we wanted to ‘learn from our own mistakes.’
Well, enter post-modern leisure. Enter Disneyworld. Enter the Marylin Mansons of the world. Enter The Matrix. Enter The Floodgates of Anarchy.
Enter, ladies and gentlemen, the decline of humanity.
Oh. Wait. Oh God.
I almost- like when you awaken from a disorientingly vivid nightmare?
Thank God. I’m still in my humble third-world abode in Pakistan..
Where, if we tried hard enough, we could still fight back and rescue ourselves.

n    The writer is the head of Scholars by Profession, a local research-initiative. Scholars by Profession is a research workshop that initially came together as a research club on the eve of 2011.