Ecosocialism

And for the record, Cuba is a working example of sustainable ecosocialism today as M. Spector and other babblers have pointed out to us on so many threads, and as notable World Bankers have recently given Cuba credit for. I think that if those less serious want to discuss sustainable eco-capitalism, they should start a thread more or less focused on backyard composting near industrial smokestacks, or how to plunder the world's resources and while avoiding the inevitable.

[ 16 September 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:Originally posted by N.Beltov:
The author, Ian Angus, makes 5 key points that are worth re-iterating. They are:

1. Get Out of the Ivory Tower.

2. Get Involved in Action.

3. Defend Workers Rights.

4. Ally With Indigenous Movements.

5. Promote Global Justice.

Generic and vague but basically sound advice I'd agree, especially number one. The left quite frankly has become way too inward looking and bookish and forgotten in some cases how to appeal to the masses we all say we represent. That I think is a fair comment. Allying with indigeneous movements is more important than ever too I believe. Many FN and other Aboriginal peoples retain knowledge most of us forgot a long time ago.

quote:Originally posted by Bubbles:

Undoing our past ignorance and abuse of the environment will have to be based on environmental dictates, not political one's

But that's the point, melding socialism with environmentalism. That's what the thread is about. Socialism isn't about excess or exploiting the earth for personal profit and gain. It's about providing basic necessities of life without contaminating food and drinking water with toxic waste, or having to resort to metering fresh water to people because capitalists need a thousand gallons of it to make a plastic shower curtain liner, or four litres to make a litre of Coca Cola. Socialism is about equality not much-will-have-more capitalism at the expense of every other living thing.

[ 16 September 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

quote:“Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations.” Marx, Kapital III

quote:In recent years John Bellamy Foster has emerged as a leading theorist of the Marxist perspective on ecology. His seminal book Marx’s Ecology (Monthly Review Press, 2000) discusses the place of ecological issues within the intellectual history of Marxism and on the philosophical foundations of a Marxist ecology, and has become a major point of reference in ecological debates.

Foster rescued Marx's term and idea of a "metabolic rift" to describe the relation between humans and nature under capitalist relations of production. This is a good starting point to understand Ecosocialism. The Wikipedia entry on Ecosocialism also notes the name of Paul Burkett in using the classical terminology of Marx. As I noted in an older thread on migrant labour, the food that keeps us alive us must be produced, transported and distributed in a sustainable way that restores the social metabolic rift which a few centuries of capitalism has unbalanced.

Migrant Labour and Metabolic Rift

http://www.rabble.ca/babble/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=next_topic&f=12&t=001676&go=newer

Here is babbler yiya's summary of Foster's key arguments from an older thread about the relevance of Marxism:

quote:yiya: Marxist ecological thought is priceless. Marx developed an understanding of the nature-society dialectic without which we would lack understanding of the ecological crisis of capitalist society. We ignore him at the peril of being ineffective environmentalists.

Here is how Marx put it(as written by John Bellamy Foster):

1) capitalism has created an 'irreparable rift' in the 'metabolic interaction' between human beings and the earth, the everlasting nature-imposed conditions of production;
(2) this demanded the 'systematic restoration' of that necessary metabolic relation as 'a regulative law of social production';
(3) nevertheless the growth under capitalism of large-scale agriculture and long distance trade only intensifies and extends the metabolic rift;
(4) the wastage of soil nutrients is mirrored in the pollution and waste in the towns--'In London,' he wrote, 'they can find no better use for the excretion of four and a half million human beings than to contaminate the Thames with it at heavy expense';
(5) large-scale industry and large-scale mechanised agriculture work together in this destructive process, with 'industry and commerce supplying agriculture with the means of exhausting the soil';
(6) all of this is an expression of the antagonistic relation between town and country under capitalism;
(7) a rational agriculture, which needs either small independent farmers producing on their own, or the action of the associated producers, is impossible under modern capitalist conditions; and
(8) existing conditions demand a rational regulation of the metabolic relation between human beings and the earth, pointing beyond capitalist society to socialism and communism.

Incidently, although the Cubans are, out of necessity perhaps, carrying out some innovative approaches in agriculture that could be called Ecosocialist, there doesn't seem to be anything about that in the Wikipedia entry. Maybe the CIA was doing some editing again. Heh.

In any case, here is an interesting article by Rebecca Clauson, Healing the Rift: Metabolic Restoration in Cuban Agriculture

http://www.monthlyreview.org/0507rc.htm

quote:Clauson: Recent developments in Cuban agroecology offer concrete examples of how the rift can be healed, not simply with different techniques but with a transformation of the socio-metabolic relations of food production. Numerous scholars have described the scientific achievements of Cuban organic agriculture. However, the success of Cuban organic agriculture and the potential for it to influence other Latin American and Caribbean nations must be understood not simply as the application of new agricultural technology, but rather as an example of social transformation in its entirety.

A nice slogan quoted in Clauson's article: La tierra es un tesora y el trabajo es su llave. "Land is the treasure, labour is the key."

Since Marx's Ecology, Foster has also written Ecology Against Capitalism. I would also add that a recent publication by the Socialist Register, Coming to Terms with Nature, edited by Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, is a collection of essays that "examines whether capitalism can come to terms with today's ecological challenges and whether socialist thought has developed sufficiently to help us do so." I would recommend this as well.

The Socialist Register

http://socialistregister.com/

According to Ian Angus on his blog, there are plans for an international Eco-Socialist meeting in Paris on October 7 (next month). Says Angus:

quote:Our main goal will be to set a time, place and preliminary agenda for a larger meeting in 2008, at which we hope there will be broad participation from green-left activists around the world.

The Convening Committee for the October 7 meeting is:

* Michael Lowy, co-author of the Ecosocialist Manifesto (France)
* Joel Kovel, author of The Enemy of Nature, co-author of the Ecosocialist Manifesto (USA)
* Derek Wall, Male Principal Speaker of the Green Party of England and Wales (UK)
* Ian Angus, editor of Climate and Capitalism (Canada)

This meeting follows the academic International Marx Congress, October 3-6. The main organizers of the conference are Jacques Bidet and Gйrard Dumйnil.

_____________________________

I see that the professor has, once again, adopted the "but Soviet communism didn't work" as a way to address the horrific planet-destroying qualities of capitalist development. This is, of course, no answer at all. It might be useful to point out that the loudest pro-Soviet apologists in relation to environmental issues in North America were sometimes the industries and businesses that had the same spotty record here in North America. The North American nuclear power industry, for example, fell over itself trivializing public concerns about this industry following the Chernobyl accident in the Ukraine. The secretiveness about the industry here was revealed in a large public way and the opponents of nuclear power in this part of the world were actually helped by the media exposure of the events and the Soviet response to what happened in Chernobyl. Failures in the socialist countries should act as useful pointers towards what not to do in future socialist economies. Such failures should not be impediments to thinking about non capitalist solutions to the problems of present day capitalism. The professor is simply re-gurgitating another version of the Thatcherite 'there is no alternative" mantra when, clearly, there are alternatives and they are worth exploring. Eco-socialist thinking is one such alternative. I would underline the positive contribution of First Nations around the planet towards a new way of thinking as well.

I've managed to dig up another article by John Bellamy Foster related to the topic of this thread. Since the Professor seems unwilling to seriously offer capitalist solutions to its own enviromental problems, and simply parrots the TINA argument, it might be useful to read a critique of some of the typical capitalist remedies to the environmental crisis.

Capitalism’s Environmental Crisis—
Is Technology the Answer?

http://www.monthlyreview.org/1200jbf.htm

quote:Foster: The standard solution offered to the environmental problem in advanced capitalist economies is to shift technology in a more benign direction: more energy-efficient production, cars that get better mileage, replacement of fossil fuels with solar power, and recycling of resources. Other environmental reforms, such as reductions in population growth and even cuts in consumption, are often advocated as well. The magic bullet of technology, however, is by far the favorite ...

Says Foster: "There are two ways in which technological change can lower environmental impact. First, it can reduce the materials and energy used per unit of output and, second, it can substitute less harmful technology."

In this article Foster focuses on the first point: energy efficiency. These sorts of improvements typically involve toxins of the worst imaginable kinds, he says, carcinogens and even teratogenic chemicals. These are closely associated with the petrochemical industry and agribusiness and, short of a revolutionary challenge to these industries, there seems little likelihood that the momemtum of these industries is going to decline any time soon. They're simply too profitable.

I'm going to have to read the whole article myself in order to summarize it and that will have to come later. Good reading in any case.

quote:Originally posted by N.Beltov:
In this article Foster focuses on the first point: energy efficiency. These sorts of improvements typically involve toxins of the worst imaginable kinds, he says, carcinogens and even teratogenic chemicals. These are closely associated with the petrochemical industry and agribusiness and, short of a revolutionary challenge to these industries, there seems little likelihood that the momemtum of these industries is going to decline any time soon. They're simply too profitable

In my view, this is the real impediment to what needs to happen. And this country is America's gas tank. Exxon/Imperial Oil, the richest corporation in the world, has basically dictated energy policy to Ottawa since they made hollow promises on Kyoto. Canada is America's energy blanket, a northern colony and vast preserve of energy and raw materials for corporate America to raid at will. I think our politicians are as corrrupt if not moreso than Russian bureaucrats of the 1990's.

quote: it will require a movement of massive proportions.

Unfortunately, I like your method better, but I see no hope for a movement of any proportions so long as there remains re-runs of Love Boat on the television.

quote: Early in December 1952, a cold fog descended upon London. Because of the cold, Londoners began to burn more coal than usual. The resulting air pollution was trapped by the inversion layer formed by the dense mass of cold air. Concentrations of pollutants, coal smoke in particular, built up dramatically. The problem was made worse by use of low-quality high-sulphur coal for home heating in London in order to permit export of higher-quality coal, because of the country's tenuous economic situation [1]. The "fog," or smog, was so thick that driving became difficult or impossible. It entered indoors easily, and concerts and screenings of films were cancelled as the audience could not see the stage or screen.

quote:Originally posted by N.Beltov:
I see that the professor has, once again, adopted the "but Soviet communism didn't work"

quote:The professor is simply re-gurgitating another version of the Thatcherite 'there is no alternative" mantra

quote:Since the Professor seems unwilling to seriously offer capitalist solutions

If you're trying to irritate me, you've succeeded. How be I call you 'jargon-spouting Marxist Drone'?

The problem in planned economies is that planners are given an impossible job, and it's gotten even harder as technology has evolved. Adding environmental considerations doesn't make the problem any easier to solve.

[ 17 September 2007: Message edited by: Stephen Gordon ]

quote: The Soviets did have a problem with industrial pollution. ......But it wasn't Marxism that was to blame.

OMG! For a second there, I thought that we might have an admission that Stalin wasn't perfect, or that the Soviet Union had not solved all problems.

But no.

As it turns out, it was really "aspiring capitalists" who did all the bad stuff.

Probably, then, it was really "aspiring capitalists" who set up all that heavy industry in the 30s, all without pollution controls of any kind! Or who created the Soviet automobile industry with all those polluting cars!

I think we should call a spade a spade! It was really CAPITALIST ROADERS WITHIN the Communist party who created the pollution problems in the Soviet Union!

They shoulda been purged along with everyone else!

Marxism is PURE, it's the adherents who are rotten.

quote: few ecology activists advocate anything more radical than the market-based “solutions” of the Kyoto Accord.

Depends on what you mean by few. Some, like Monbiot, advocate carbon rationing. Others are not merely advocating but practicing aspects of eco-anarchism (e.g. ecovillages) and eco-syndicalism (e.g. green trades).

Foster's flawed critique of one application of I=PAT ignores globalism (i.e. the impact of affluence in industrialized countries on less developed countries). Ecological Footprint is a better measure to compare societies and individuals. Most of China's environmental problems have occurred after they abandoned Marxist principles and increased production to meet global demand for manufactured goods. That said, former Soviet bloc nations caused grave environmental damage because, like in the West during the 1950s, environmental protection was not a priority for economic planners.

In principle, the Federal NDP has been somewhat ecosocialist since 1995 and the inclusion of sustainability as a basic principle, and perhaps some provincial NDP parties since before that. In practice we have had difficulty living up to our principles.

Drive through Sudbury some day and see for yourself how mining and smelting nickel can effect the environment. After 40 years of clean up you can hardly see it from the highway anymore but the degradation still covers large areas of land that are not seen. The environmentally sensitive environmentalist in Sudbury during the 20's and 30's had a great way of smelting. They took the highly sulphated ore and burned off the sulpher in open roasting beds. In effect these were big pits with a layer of timber and then a layer of ore and then another of timber etc. etc. Those environmentally friendly capitalists then lit the bonfire and the sulpher smoke killed everything it came in contact with. This is what you are comparing the Soviets to. Both in my opinion are disgusting.

Port Colburne is an ongoing horror story. Thetford mines Asbetos Quebec Brittania Beach in BC the list of mines that have destroyed the local environments in Canada is large.

Now our great Canadian mining corporations are polluting in third world countries the same way they did in Canada in the past. They merely move to where it is economical or in other words were there are no regulations to hinder their exploitation and runiation of the land and people around it.