Varieties of Capitalism?

Capitalism is always the same: lay individual claim to some shared natural resource (using violence or the threat of it), exploit the resource for profit until it is exhausted. Move onto them next resource. This model was set in place by the first capitalists in the early 1500s. See

• Moore, Jason W. (2010). "Madeira, Sugar, & the Conquest of Nature in the ‘First’ Sixteenth Century, Part I: From ‘Island of Timber’ to Sugar Revolution, 1420-1506." Review 32(4), 345-390.
• ———. (2011). "Madeira, Sugar, & the Conquest of Nature in the ‘First’ Sixteenth Century, Part II: From Local Crisis to Commodity Frontier, 1506-1530." Review 33(1), 1-24.

“Boom, bust, quit” as George Monbiot calls it in

• Monbiot, G. & Hutchinson, P. (2025). The Invisible Doctrine. Penguin.

Nations have sought to defend themselves against capitalists in a variety of ways. This may be what you are thinking of.

For example, capitalism per se allows for no limits if there are profits to be made. There is literally nothing that a capitalist has not historically done for profit: genocide (even multiple genocides), murder, enslavement, rape, theft, and all forms of corruption. Capitalism is psychopathic.

However, nations have historically tried to impose limits on capitalism to protect themselves from exploitation and corruption. And there are a variety approaches to this.

One of the most obvious forms of self-defence that nations practice against capitalism is regulating commerce. This takes many forms and seems to be what people refer to when they talk about “varieties of capitalism”.

Capitalists constantly seek to use their wealth as leverage to gain political advantage. They use obviously corrupt means such as bribery and kickbacks, but they also employ more subtle means such as threatening to move production to another regime (with mass job losses).

In the wake of the capitalist revolt of the 1980s, many nations have torn down the protections erected last time that capitalism threatened to end civilisation (i.e. the Great Depression and WWII). Via the neoliberal ideology and neofascism, capitalists have mastered the political process. Now, virtually every candidate for public office believes that restraining capitalism is wrong and that businessmen are the natural leaders of the world (not that businessmen are the first to claim this, of course, they are just the latest claimants).

So now we face the usual short-term catastrophes such as the global financial crisis (cycles of boom and bust are inherent in capitalism). But, since he capitalist revolt we also face the degradation of nature on such a large and long scale that nature’s ability to sustain human life is seriously in doubt on several fronts:

• climate change, extreme weather, sea-level rise.
• pollution: poisoning the air, water, and land is already killing millions of humans annually.
• ecosystem collapse and mass extinction.

In the face of real existential threats, capitalists have spent many $billions on

• confusing the issue with misinformation and disinformation
• discrediting climate science they know to be accurate
• lobbying to prevent governments from acting,
• greenwashing propaganda,
• looking for more fossil fuels to burn

Capitalism is singularly concerned with dominating and exploiting nature for profit. Including dominating and exploiting people for profit.

Capitalism is amoral. It has internal no moral discourse and no moral compass. Attempts to impose morality on capitalism have resulted in a series of increasingly severe backlashes and power grabs. Authoritarianism is on the rise. Fascism is out in the open again.

There are no varieties of capitalism. There have been varieties of self-defence against capitalism.