Lords of Capital Versus The Planet

[Joanne98]

Seven years of Bush-Cheney governance has resulted in a seven-fold increase in oil prices, as "speculators" - actually, the Lords of Finance Capital that rule the U.S. imperium - pursue the last ounce of unearned profit. The Bush gang's "unceasing wars and threats of war in oil producing regions" have made oil "futures" as volatile and terrifying as the future prospects of a planet in the grip of warmongers and mad profiteers. The U.S. Congress plays at seeking out the cheaters in the Great Energy Game, while making the situation "much worse by pressing for a naval blockade of Iran" - an act of war that is like playing Russian Roulette with the world economy.

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=675&Itemid=1

[fascisthunter]

1. It Truly Looks Like These Lunatics Do Want the End Times

They sure work hard in destroying us all, yet we did nothing wrong to them.

[tom_paine]

2. They see us as existing to serve them, as it has been for 10,000 years.

(with brief exceptions, like the one we lived in until 12/12/2000, and one could make the argument it was going that way long before that infamous date)

And they don't have a long-term vision, except for finishing the job they started and fully closing this society down, that they and their descendants may live a pre-1776 existance over us.

For them, the aristocracy and their servants, a pre-1776 existance is heaven. For the other 90% of us it is hell.

[blindpig]

3. It's Capitalism or a habitable planet, you can't have both.

There is no meaningful response to climate change without massive social change. A cap on this and a quota on the other won't do it. Tinker at the edges as we may, we cannot sustain earth's life-support systems within the present economic system.

Capitalism is not sustainable by its very nature. It is predicated on infinitely expanding markets, faster consumption and bigger production in a finite planet. And yet this ideological model remains the central organising principle of our lives, and as long as it continues to be so it will automatically undo (with its invisible hand) every single green initiative anybody cares to come up with.

Much discussion of energy, with never a word about power, leads to the fallacy of a low-impact, green capitalism somehow put at the service of environmentalism. In reality, power concentrates around wealth. Private ownership of trade and industry means that the decisive political force in the world is private power. The corporation will outflank every puny law and regulation that seeks to constrain its profitability. It therefore stands in the way of the functioning democracy needed to tackle climate change. Only by breaking up corporate power and bringing it under social control will we be able to overcome the global environmental crisis.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2006/feb/02/energy.comment

[Demeter]

4. It's Capitalism or Democracy--You can't have both

One must be in charge of the other.

[GliderGuider]

5. "It's human growth or a habitable planet, you can't have both"

It's erroneous to point the finger just at capitalism, though that ideology does appear to be more efficient at ecological destruction than most. I can't name one economic ideology that has operated in the last few hundred years that didn't have growth as its core assumption. Communism, socialism, capitalism (free market and regulated), even feudalism -- all bow to the god of growth.

The real problem that has wrecked the world is our underlying paradigm of infinite growth in a finite world. While capitalism is very, very good at maximizing the negative consequences of that misunderstanding of reality, there is no evidence that other systems are much better at recognizing and living within limits either. Communism of all stripes ran into The Tragedy of the Commons in a big way, and even moderate mixed-market socialist countries like Sweden still look forward to growing their GDP every year.

Socialism might give us a chance, because to adopt it requires the fundamental realization of the interdependence of all human beings, and maybe by extension the interdependence of all living beings. However, the core dualism (man's conviction that the world consists solely of humans and resources) that has backed us into this box isn't directly addressed by political or economic socialism. Unless we could correct that dualist mis-perception in a sufficiently large number of people, there isn't an organizing principle yet invented that couldn't and wouldn't be perverted in the interests of power and status. The drive to reproduce, consume, compete and acquire status are human characteristics that are, if not actually genetic, at least deeply embedded by biological and cultural evolution. As a result they are very hard to thwart.

A reduction in human numbers and human activity (whether voluntary or, more likely, involuntary) will save more of the planet's ecosphere for other species and our own descendants. Unfortunately, the organizing principle that will be in play when that happens is far more likely to be tribal than socialist.

Our problems are well past the point where voluntary changes in human activity could prevent large-scale, traumatic changes to our industrial civilization and the people who depend on it to live. The crisis goes far beyond climate change and oil dependency, to encompass all manner of ecological degradation (the death of the oceans, soil fertility depletion, fresh water depletion etc.) and economic destabilization.

Here's my view of the situation we're in:

• There are no technical "solutions" to the converging crisis;
  
• The roots of the crisis are in human behaviour as mediated by our global culture and our biological makeup;
  
• Our behaviour will not change radically until our culture supports the change;
  
• Our culture will not support or even permit such change until the economic, political, educational and communications institutions that guard the central principle of eternal growth have lost their power;
  
• Those institutions will not lose power until their ability to function is compromised;
  
• Their ability to function is already being compromised by the growing crisis in energy, ecology and economics, and the increasing problems will ultimately cause failure avalanches within those institutions;
  
• Once the guardian institutions lose their grip, new patterns of understanding, belief and behaviour will emerge that are in line with the changing circumstances;
  
• These new patterns will tend towards one of two primary forms depending on the circumstances: either long term sustainability based on expanded consciousness of the web of life, or "Mad Max";
  
• The global movement of millions of independent, local environmental and social justice groups means that it's possible we will see enough changes toward sustainability to enable the eventual regrowth of a more humane civilization;
  
• Like all else in human history no particular outcome is guaranteed.

For a more thorough explanation of this perspective, see the article Cultural Change at the Limits to Growth.

[blindpig]

6. gotta look at the whole package

It would be foolish to sweep the environmental errors of 20th century socialist states under the rug. However, this must be understood in the context of history, Russia's backwardness at the time of the revolution, civil war, two world wars, the relentless animosity of the capitalist nations. The state of understanding at the time and the miserable environmental record of capitalism in the same period should also be noted. Things are different now, and what's going on in Cuba shows what can be done by socialism, it is the best current model for sustainable survival.

Population is the stickiest of problems. As far as how to apportion the percentages of blame for our pickle, beyond me. I think it's fair to say that capitalism greatly aggravates the population problem by keeping billions of people poor and thus more likely to have higher rates of reproduction. I don't believe that population can be addressed in anything like a just manner under the current system, racism and classism is implicit. The thought of 'population reduction' being implemented by the folks who give Cheney his marching orders is the stuff of nightmares. Socialism first, then we'll talk about it, with all of the people.

One of the purposes of socialism is to prevent the slide into tribalism(barbarism) that is the end result of capitalism. Those 'drives' which you enumerate, some of which are obviously biological, are perverted by the circumstance of being subsumed in capitalism. Like the man said:

It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. -Karl Marx's 1859 Preface to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

Let us change people's social existance, their consciousness will follow.

[tama]

7. Benefit of doubt

I'm more than willing to give benefit of doubt to socialism as practiced by Cuba - the only country in the world fullfilling the criteria for sustainable development - and wish Cubans and their acolytes best of luck.

But not more than that. The ecological footprint criterion used does not add up to real sustainability and in many ways Cuba is hierarchic technocratic society. So the logical conclusion: anarcho-primitivism.

[blindpig]

8. We can quibble later

Internecine strife between commies and anarchists has not been good for socialism. Getting rid of capitalism is job #1, then the people decide.

Cuba is a work in progress. Commies and anarchist agree on the final destination, how to get there is in dispute. While it is my predilection to take up the black banner, observation and history have got me leaning towards the red one.

[tama]

9. Better idea

Let's become two camps of most orthodox trotters, start bashing each other on whose a trotter and who's not and forget about capitalism. ;)