I am afraid that this essay would be totally incomprehensible to the average person if it is not clear enough to one with a higher education. I have succeeded in complicating a very simple concept; therefore, I am reviewing and restructuring the essay to make it less confusing.

In a few words, what was meant to be explained in the essay was that the capitalist system has evolved from a particularly empty environment with great potential for expansion. In the course of its evolution it has completely changed the environment and it has created a new one that, contrary to the first, is almost completely saturated and in which the potential for further expansion is fast decreasing.

The natural economic laws of the system, which did function in the old environment, cannot function in the new situation. They can only be kept functioning by artificial and irrational means (consumerism, waste, increasing sacrifices, war...) and with ever increasing sacrifices by the majority of the human race.

It is not so much a question of politics, philosophy or idealism; it is mainly a question of common sense. It is not either a question of malice on the part of the capitalists. They themselves are prisoners of the system and there is not much that they can do about it. Most of them are decent people but they are blinded by their own presumption to the real situation.

People in power, in any system, hate drastic changes because they are afraid to lose their position of privilege. They control the mass media and they keep the public in the dark by putting the blame elsewhere for the troubles of an economy of which they are in command and for which, therefore, they are responsible.

How much will our society have to degenerate before we realize the need for change? It is madness to persist to keep alive at all costs a system that has evolved fully and has become obsolete and obnoxious. It is evident that today, to put it mildly, we are gradually losing our rationality and our sense of perspective. While new technology and new methods of production are increasing the potential for satisfying human needs, more and more people are forced to accept a lower standard of living. We are being conditioned to accept, waste, pollution, the destruction of new generations and even a possible nuclear war as economic necessities or Necessary Evils.

We have put ourselves into an economic strait jacket; we have become slaves to an economic system that literally demands human sacrifices. For example we accept the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people every year all over the world, and the maiming of many more to keep the car and associated industries viable and people employed in our economy. The development of our cities has been influenced more by the car and oil industries than the needs of the people who have to live in them. Any thoughts about alternatives have been discouraged or suppressed. Now it may be too late to correct these mistakes.

Our so called free enterprise system has locked us into this particular direction; the vested interests of a minority has decided for most of the population that it should live in stupefying isolation and loneliness, prisoners of distance in our sprawling dormitory suburbs.

We accept the sacrifice of human lives for the needs of some industries in our economy. There is no great difference from the human sacrifices performed in some of the ancient cultures to propitiate the gods of rain and the harvest. In their superstition and ignorance, the reason for those sacrifices was in essence also an economic necessity. The main difference between then and now is that while they were choosing the victims to be sacrificed, we leave it to chance and we are all candidates when we drive to work or to visit our friends. We even call this sacrifice of human life a payment for progress.

There are more features of our economic system that are outright criminal and surpass in cruelty anything in the past; but these are not the main reason why our economy will be discarded.

Whether we care about social issues or not, the main factor that will determine a change is, in the words of Karl Marx, that "the modern labourer of rising with the progress or industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper. And there it becomes evident that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it can not help letting him sink into such a state that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society."

Today there is a new dimension to our evolution that Marx could not have foreseen, and which never had to be considered before. Compared with this new factor all our past and present problems become insignificant. It is the threat to our survival posed by the development of nuclear technology within an economic system motivated by individual self interest and greed; a system in which selfishness and aggressiveness are essential for success, which depends on the ignorance and shallowness of the society for its continuation and which prospers by war or by the threat of war.

This new problem is not one that we can ignore and sweep under the carpet. From the way it will be resolved it will be decided whether the human race really is, as we believe, superior to all other forms of life, or it was only the result of a strange mutation, an obnoxious and self destructive virus on the face of the Earth.

Looking at what we are doing to ourselves and to our environment we should have very strong doubts about our sanity.

Why is it that we have been led so far on the path of irrationality? The key to this question can be found in Adam Smith's enquiry on the capitalist system of production. Over two hundred years ago he warned that the interest of the capitalists seldom coincides with that of the society as a whole. He also warned that capitalist "merchants and manufacturers" should never be allowed to become the "rulers of mankind".

But the capitalists with their natural merchant cunning are much smarter, if not necessarily more intelligent and educated than the rest of society; therefore over the last three centuries, with their great influence over the media and the power that comes from their control over the means of production, have succeeded in convincing most of the public that the interest of the capitalists, not that of the public, coincides with the interest of society.

This absurd merchant philosophy is the reason why we still persist in serving this absurd economy. While science and technology have been advancing, the standard and quality of living is deteriorating for most of Humanity.
It is because the majority of people have acquired the mentality of the merchant that they have become blind to the obvious connection between our present problems and the obsolescence and degeneration of our economic system.

To expose this connection and stimulate a reaction was the main scope of the essay.