Ecosocialism II

An important new article by Belgian ecosocialist Daniel Tanuro:

[url=http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1577][u]Capitalism, "decreasing," and ecosocialism[/u][/url]

[IMG]http://i38.tinypic.com/1r9lpy.gif[/IMG]

[url=http://rabble.ca/news/will-capitalism-survive-climate-change] Can Capitalism Survive Climate Change?[/url]
by Walden Bello

Quote:

The prevailing assumption is that the affluent societies can take on commitments to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions but still grow and enjoy their high standards of living if they shift to non-fossil fuel energy sources. This assumption extends to the method of reduction, namely that the mandatory cuts agreed to multilaterally by governments will be implemented within the country according to a market-based system, that is, the trading of emission permits. The subtext is: techno-fixes and the carbon market will make the transition relatively painless and – why not? – profitable, too.

But many of these technologies are decades away from viable use. In the short and medium term, relying on a shift in energy dependence to non-fossil fuel alternatives will not be able to support current rates of economic growth. Also, the trade-off for more crop land devoted to biofuel production means less land on which to grow food and therefore greater food insecurity globally.

[b]Clearly, the dominant paradigm of economic growth is one of the most significant obstacles to a serious global effort to deal with climate change.[/b] But this destabilizing, fundamentalist growth-consumption paradigm is itself more effect rather than cause.

[b]The central problem is a mode of production whose main dynamic is the transformation of living nature into dead commodities, creating tremendous waste in the process. The driver of this process is consumption – or more appropriately overconsumption – and the motivation is profit or capital accumulation: capitalism, in short.[/b]

It has been the generalization of this mode of production in the North and its spread from the North to the South over the last 300 years that has caused the accelerated burning of fossil fuels and rapid deforestation, two of the key man-made processes behind global warming.
….

The goal must be the adoption of a low-consumption, low-growth, high-equity development model that results in an improvement in people's welfare, a better quality of life for all, and greater democratic control of production.

The elites of the North and the South will not likely agree to such a comprehensive response. The farthest they are likely to go is for techno-fixes and a market-based cap-and-trade system. Growth will be sacrosanct, as will the system of global capitalism.

Yet, confronted with apocalypse, humanity cannot self-destruct. It may be a difficult road, but the vast majority will not commit social and ecological suicide to enable the minority to preserve its privileges.

[url=http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/784/40374][color=mediumblue][u]Karl Marx the Ecologist[/u][/color][/url]

Quote:

As the world economy spirals down into its deepest crisis since the great depression, the writings of Karl Marx have made a return to the top seller lists in bookstores. In his native Germany, the sales of Marx's works have trebled.

His theories have been treated with contempt by conservative economists and historians. Yet, in the context of the latest economic downturn, even a few mainstream economists have been compelled to ask whether Marx was right after all.

Marx argued that capitalism is inherently unstable, fraught with contradictions and prone to deep crises.

Exploitation, war, hunger and poverty were not problems that could be solved by the market system, he said. Rather, they were inescapable outcomes of the system itself. This is because capitalism is dominated by the wealthiest corporations and devoted to profit above all else.

Only a move to a democratic socialist society, where ordinary people are empowered to make the key decisions about the economy and society themselves, can open the path to genuine freedom and liberation.

Famous for their critique of capitalism and for advocating social revolution, Marx and his co-thinker Frederick Engels are far less known for their concern for the destruction of the environment and the need for sustainability.

[b]Taken together, their views on the relationship between human society and the environment rank them among the most advanced environmentalists of their day.

According to Marx, capitalism is an economic system profoundly at odds with a sustainable planet. The exploitation of nature is as fundamental to the profit system, he argued, as the exploitation of working people.

One of the key goals of socialism is to liberate the natural world from the anti-environmental impacts of corporate greed.[/b] "From the standpoint of a higher economic formation, the private property of particular individuals in the earth will appear just as absurd as the private property of one man in other men", Marx wrote.

He was scathing of the capitalist economic notion that the air, rivers, seas and soil can be treated as a "free gift of nature" to business.

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

[b]The market system is incapable of preserving the environment for future generations because it cannot take into account the long-term requirements of people and planet. The competition between individual enterprises and industries to make a profitable return on their investment tends to exclude rational and sustainable planning.[/b]

Engels explained this destructive dynamic: "As individual capitalists are engaged in production and exchange for the sake of the immediate profit, only the nearest, most immediate results must first be taken into account.

"As long as the individual manufacturer or merchant sells a manufactured or purchased commodity with the usual coveted profit, he is satisfied and does not concern himself with what afterwards becomes of the commodity and its purchasers.

"The same thing applies to the natural effects of the same actions."

Continued in the next post...

"Class-strugglist"?

What is "class-strugglism"?

Like I said before, my objection is to this thesis, put forward by It's Me D:

Quote:

[b]The NDP cannot, and should not call for this but this is what needs to be done to save the world...[/b]

That's completely incompatible with what Michael Löwy is saying.

I still haven't seen you disagree with It's Me D on that point.

[url=http://links.org.au/node/654]Climate change -- the case for public ownership[/url]

Quote:

The reality is that no fossil fuel corporation can be convinced to stop expanding and making profits and instead invest its wealth in a wholesale conversion of its operations to a renewable energy-powered, sustainable industry. At the same time no capitalist government is going to be either willing or able to constrain corporations’ rights to make profits in order to drastically reduce emissions.

In other words, the only way we can make use of the massive corporate wealth that isn’t in the hands of the people is with a revolutionary struggle that institutes a government which acts in the interests of people and the planet and puts control of all sectors of the economy in the hands of ordinary working people.

The real question is what needs to be done to achieve this? There does not need to be a contradiction between what we call for today in terms of immediate measures to combat global warming and building the movement for revolutionary change. Arguing for the nationalisation of polluting industries, to be placed under the democratic control of ordinary people, is essential to constructing a movement capable of halting climate change.

Frustrated Mess wrote:

[b]What does that mean? How would I know a "high-equity development model" if I saw one?[/b]

I think he's talking about social equity, rather than equity in its financial sense, if that's what's bothering you.

[url=http://www.socialistvoice.ca/?p=330]Canada’s Election and the Climate Crisis: Five Parties, No Solutions[/url]
by Ian Angus.

Quote:

For the environment, there’s good news and bad news in Canada’s current federal election campaign. Good news: for the first time ever, climate change is a central issue in the political debates. Bad news: despite much sound and fury, none of the major political parties is proposing effective measures for dealing with the climate change crisis....

Now, with a recession looming, the Conservatives are fighting this election as the “party of free enterprise, free markets and free trade” — which means returning to their previous anti-environmental positions. Harper demagogically promises to defend economic growth, while charging that the Liberals “jeopardize our economic growth with new taxes and threaten to impose new trade barriers in their Green Shift Plan.”...

The opposition

Polls show that the environment and climate change still rank very high as voter concerns, so the Tory policy shift offers an opportunity for the opposition parties to mobilize that concern in support of a strong pro-environment program. Unfortunately, none of them proposes effective measures for dealing with the crisis....

[b]All four mainstream opposition parties[/b] — Liberals, New Democrats, Bloc Quйbйcois and Greens — [b]have embraced the currently trendy economic theory that the way to fight global warming is to “put a price on carbon.”[/b] Corporations and consumers emit greenhouse gases, the theory says, because doing so doesn’t cost them anything. If government imposes a cost, companies and individuals will seek alternatives — they will try to reduce or eliminate their emissions in order to reduce their costs.

The Liberal Party is the prime defender of this approach. The cornerstone of its election program is the “Green Shift Plan,” which they say will “shift Canada’s tax system away from income and towards pollution.” They promise to phase in a $40 per tonne tax on greenhouse gas emissions over four years, and to reduce corporate and personal income taxes by an equivalent amount. As a result, businesses will be “encouraged to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they emit into the atmosphere,” while consumers will be motivated to insulate their homes and find other ways to make less use of fossil fuels.

The Liberals say they will begin the tax shift immediately. They also promise an emissions trading scheme for corporations, including caps on emissions — but say it “will take several years to build.”

The New Democratic Party argues, correctly, that the main effect of the Liberal tax plan will be higher prices for working people. Instead, the NDP wants to launch a cap-and-trade program quickly. They have provided few details about their program, but they have made positive statements about the Western Climate Initiative, under which several provinces and U.S. states propose to regulate emissions while allowing corporations to continue polluting by purchasing emissions credits from the government, other corporations or Third World countries.

[b]The NDP website says its plan is “in line with” a similar scheme implemented in Europe. It is silent on the fact that the European system has produced windfall profits for energy companies while having no effect at all on emissions.[/b]

The Green Party and Bloc Quйbйcois propose variants on the two main themes. The Greens want a cap-and-trade program for large corporations, combined with a shift from income taxes to carbon taxes for consumers. The Bloc favours cap-and-trade, organized on a province-by-province basis.

Will market solutions work?

There is much more than this to each party’s program, and each party promises a different set of reforms and subsidies. But underneath those variations in style and detail, [b]the opposition parties are united in seeking to use capitalist methods to solve a problem that is inherent in capitalism. “Putting a price on carbon” — directly through taxes or indirectly through a cap-and-trade scheme — means depending on the magic of the market to reduce emissions.[/b]

At best, that’s wishful thinking.

Consumers can only make significant emissions cuts if affordable low-emission alternatives are actually available, which they are not. [b]In practice, the main effect of pricing carbon[/b] (directly through a tax or indirectly through emissions trading and regulations) [b]will be to increase the prices of essential products for which there are no alternatives — especially food, transportation and housing. Workers and farmers, already hit by declining real incomes, will have to tighten their belts until those magical new products arrive, if they ever do.[/b]

As for corporate polluters, it’s hard to believe that anyone who follows the business news can still claim that markets and “price signals” are an efficient way to get good results....

The plans proposed by Canadian political parties all rely on self-reporting by the polluters, for whom lying is often the lowest-cost option. Even if they are caught, investigations, trials and appeals can win them years of delays....

Cutting wages. The tried and tested corporate method of dealing with higher costs is to shift the burden onto workers, directly through pay cuts and longer hours, or indirectly by outsourcing work to countries where wages are lower.

Gaming the system. Every corporation employs teams of lawyers and accountants to figure out how to get around regulations and avoid paying taxes. These scam artists are undoubtedly already working on legal ways to minimize the impact of any emissions policy — without actually reducing emissions, of course.

Passing the costs on to consumers. If the increased costs imposed by carbon taxes or trading can’t be evaded, corporations will increase prices. The only barrier to such increases is competition, and the biggest polluters have very few competitors.

Shifting investments elsewhere. Capitalists don’t just need profits — they need a rate of profit that matches or exceeds the rate they can make elsewhere. If the carbon rules cut into their profits, they will move their money elsewhere, to other industries or other countries. If that happens, just watch how fast the politicians back down!

In short, big industry will do everything in its power to block or minimize any restrictions on business-as-usual — and they will do their utmost to avoid or delay complying with laws that do get passed. Pro-capitalist economic models never take those factors into account.

But that isn’t the biggest problem with the programs of the opposition parties.

[b]Even if their programs are implemented exactly as proposed, and even if there is 100% compliance, and even if the regulations and “price signals” produce the promised results, emissions will not come down fast enough to head off dangerous climate changes....[/b]

Declare a climate emergency!

...A government that really wanted to deal with climate change would declare a Climate Emergency. It would learn from the experience of World War II, when Ottawa forced through a radical transformation of the entire economy in a few months, with no lost jobs or pay cuts.

Internationally, it would campaign for a tough global climate treaty with teeth, focusing on cutting rich industrial nations’ emissions and transferring clean technology to the Global South.

Regardless of what happens in international negotiations, [b]Canada must unilaterally adopt a goal of a 60% overall emissions reduction by 2020, and a 90% reduction by 2030.[/b] Those reductions can be achieved through government measures such as these:

• Set hard, rapidly declining ceilings on emissions produced by the largest companies. Expropriate any company that doesn’t comply.

• Put all power industries under public ownership and democratic control. Begin phasing out coal-fired plants immediately and stop building new ones. Invest heavily in non-fossil fuel sources such as solar, wind, tidal and geothermal.

• Stop all new development in the Tar Sands and rapidly phase out existing operations, including restoring of the land as closely as possible to its previous condition.

• Redirect all military spending and the federal budget surplus into public energy-saving projects such as expanding mass transit and retrofitting homes and office buildings. Former tar sands workers and redeployed soldiers can play key roles in this effort.

• Retool auto plants to focus on building mass transit, wind turbines and other green technologies.

• Expand and upgrade transit systems so that all urban residents can use them easily. Make all public transit free.

The climate crisis will not respond to modest goals and incremental tinkering — [b]what’s needed are emergency measures[/b] to drive current greenhouse gas emissions towards zero as rapidly as possible. Unfortunately, in this election, modest goals and incremental tinkering are the best that Canadian politicians are offering. [b]There is no sign that any party recognizes how serious the problem actually is, let alone that emergency action is needed.[/b]

Quote:

It’s hard to see what evidence there is to support this new found enthusiasm for emissions trading. The biggest experiment in the field so far, the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), has yet to show any evidence of seriously tackling the problem of climate change. With the second phase due to start in 2008, carbon emissions aren’t going down, industries aren’t switching to clean energy technology and, so far, the scheme’s guiding principles seem to have been “polluter profits” rather than “polluter pays”.

The lack of discernible results to date lead to the conclusion that the ETS has been designed on the basis of its ideological compatibility with the free market rather than for its effectiveness in achieving urgently needed cuts in carbon emissions….

The first phase has been a disaster. One of the main problems of the scheme is that every stage of its design and implementation has been subjected to intensive industry lobbying….

Under sustained corporate lobbying, almost all EU governments made huge over allocations of permits to industry in the first phase. In 2005, the first year of trading, the relevant industries across Europe emitted 66 million tonnes less than the cap that had been allocated. This meant that the cap was effectively meaningless as it had not forced any net reductions. A preliminary analysis of the 2006 data shows that 93% of the 10,000 installations covered by the ETS emitted less than their allotted quota — in all, 30 million tonnes less than the total EU-wide allocation.

Successful corporate lobbying also meant that permits were allocated free of charge to industry in the first phase. But companies have been passing on the “cost” to consumers anyway. A study by UPS Investment showed that the first round of the ETS has added 1.3 euro cents to each kilowatt hour of electricity sold. This sounds negligible until you consider that the German minister for the environment estimated that the four biggest power providers in the EU — Eon, RWE, Vattenfall and EnBW — had profited between AU$14.4 billion and $19.2 billion from passing on the imaginary cost of the first phase of the ETS onto consumers….

Yet free allocations to fossil-fuel-intensive industries continue — providing a huge subsidy to the heaviest polluters. In “Implications of announced Phase 2 National Allocation Plans” from the journal Climate Policy, Dr. Karsten Neuhoff (from the Cambridge University faculty of economics) and his co-authors conclude that “the level of such subsidies under proposed second phase NAP is so high that the construction of coal power stations is more profitable under the ETS with such distorted allocation decisions than in the absence of the ETS”….

This enormous sum of money generated by these Kyoto-style trading schemes has not gone to the companies and communities that are taking action on clean energy and energy reduction projects. Rather, it is going to big, industrial polluters, which are then at liberty to reinvest the profits into the expansion of their operations….

As far back as 1991, there were plans proposed for an EU-wide carbon tax, but the lack of political support and the vogue for all things market-related meant that they were stifled. However, in February 2007, a study by economist Robert Shapiro, who was undersecretary of commerce for economic affairs in the Clinton administration, stated that carbon taxes are “much less vulnerable to evasion and market manipulation” than cap-and-trade systems.

Whereas carbon taxes provide “a more stable and transparent system for consumers and industry alike”, cap and trade systems are “much more complex to administer” and “produce much greater volatility in energy and energy-related prices”.

Across the world, other economists and political scientists are coming to similar conclusions….

[[url=http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/709/36812]Kevin Smith[/url] is a researcher with [url=http://www.carbontradewatch.org]Carbon Trade Watch[/url].]

It's Me D wrote:

[b]You have to [sic] choices, to play the old game that you know if [sic] rigged against you so that you cannot win, or to start a new one, with new rules, that you can win.[/b]

False dichotomy.

There is no sign of "a new one, with new rules" coming along any time soon, so unless you are a hopeless sectarian, you have to work with what is there. If a "new one, with new rules" is to be started, who is to say it won't arise out of the "old game"?

What if Hugo Chavez had said "I'm not going to play that electoral game" and instead of running for President on a radical platform he had decided to head for the hills and start a new game with new rules? There would today be no prospect of a Bolivarian revolution, the right wing parties would be in full control of Venezuela, and Chavez would be as isolated as the FARC.

I'm not saying revolution can come to Canada through the ballot box. But I am saying that if you are going to play any kind of political game - new or old - you have to be prepared to tell the truth about what is happening and what is to be done. Anything less is a capitulation to reformism.