Learning about the ways of the Aztec today, we all pretty much agree that their ideas around human sacrifices are barbaric. That they have no place in our “modern” civilizations today.

But is this really the case?

In this episode, we explore the ways in which capitalism’s ways of knowing and doing (its epistemologies) perpetuate the same ideas of human sacrifice today. We start with the more direct examples of workers literally dying for profit—the construction workers who die building homes they cannot afford to live, and the many factory workers who die manufacturing products we can use (deaths we have just come to accept as inevitable or as “accidents”). Then, we move to the indirect examples of people lacking food and shelter because these basic needs have come to be understood as commodities those with capital need to make profit from, and not as just things people need to live. In this, we see how capitalism changes what we know to be true; that houses provide shelter (instead we think of houses as investments we are supposed to make profit from), that forests have ecological value (instead we think of more profitable ways to use of this land, whether by turning it into farms to clearing it to put buildings up on it) etc.

We stress how this not normal, exploring how many (non-western) communities in the world recognized the need for lettings things exists as… things. Like the Kikuyu people who despite having a clan-based/individual land ownership system let people farm, and even build on land they didn’t own to ensure everyone’s needs in the community were met. The Wendat who found the French society having many needy beggars against the backdrop of a glamourous nobility class barbaric.

Lastly, we highlight how people have always recognized the absurdity of this idea of the primacy of profit and meeting market needs over their own, like the Maragua women who rejected the idea of growing coffee to make the country foreign currency to pay off its debts while being unable to feed their own families. We hope that by bringing this knowledge to the forefront of people’s minds, especially a time when (in Kenya) we are again seeing market needs supersede the collective population needs most visibly with draft laws (Livestock Bill 2023, Animal Production Professionals and Technicians Bill 2023 etc.) undermining people’s ability to feed themselves tabled in parliament with the intention of forcing them to be dependent on capitalist agribusiness chains (resulting in more profit for them), we are all reminded that none of this is okay. That maybe, just maybe, we need an economic model built to fulfill our needs, instead of a cruel, barbaric system meant to make profits for a select few. And that we have models all throughout history to draw inspiration from as we take on this work!