Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/247643 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
Research Note
Publisher: 
The Bichler and Nitzan Archives, Toronto
Abstract: 
This note offers some speculative ideas worth considering. One of the key features of all hierarchical civilizations is their rulers’ fear of death. This fear was famously narrated in the ancient myth of Gilgamesh – the Sumerian king who realized that, like all other humans, he too was destined to die and embarked on a desperate quest to annul his mortality. According to Lewis Mumford, this quest for immortality is the main reason why society’s rulers are forever obsessed with building and fortifying power hierarchies – or ‘megamachines’, as he called them. Controlling these megamachines, Mumford argued, is the rulers’ way of playing God, a futile yet all-possessive effort to conquer the future and live forever. In capitalism, the rulers finally figured out how to do it – sort of.
Subjects: 
capital
capitalization
future
immortality
power
JEL: 
P16
G
URL of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc-nd Logo
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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