ABSTRACT
Human beings can allow themselves to be really monstrously destructive only if they are also lying to themselves. Capitalism obviously does have its own ethical core that it cannot deviate from without becoming something other than capitalism. As a consequence of an illusory understanding of the relationship between capitalism and the people living within it, environmentalists often make very well-meaning and all too generous arguments, insisting that “we” need to recognize the errors of our past and adopt a new way of living. Capitalism can be made to function in terms other than its own sacred language of “market freedom” only by a combination of its own abject failures and the threat of state power acting in the public interest. Capitalism can be counted on to be what it has been because the Barbaric Heart can be counted on to be what it has been.
