---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Great Transition Network <[email protected]> Date: Sat, Nov 3, 2018 at 4:33 PM Subject: Why Ecosocialism: For a Red-Green Future (GTN Discussion) To: <[email protected]>
From Victor Wallis <[email protected]>
------------------------------------------------------- Dear colleagues and friends, Michael Löwy's voice has long been an important one in these discussions. I agree entirely with his basic statement here, and am glad that he specifically recognizes the capitalist roots of productivism and the condemnation of productivism by Marx. In terms of Paul's question as to whether the concept of ecosocialism is sufficiently all-encompassing, this is a topic that I take up at length in my book Red-Green Revolution: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism ( www.politicalanimalmagazine.com/political-animal-press/). My discussion includes a chapter on potential pro-ecological constituencies, in which I focus on the links between ecological demands and the interests of the various sectors that have suffered from -- or whose suffering has been amplified and/or institutionalized by -- the workings of capital. Another chapter (originally written for a collection on intersectionality that appeared in December 2015 in New Political Science) discusses the history and theoretical considerations behind efforts to bring together all these constituencies. My basic argument is that if we want to build a political force that can implement our vision, it's not enough to add more and more prefixes to our core concept. We must instead seek to understand how our central concept fully valorizes and honors all the specific concerns that may motivate people's activism. So far as the term ecosocialism is concerned, I argue that the basic principles of ecology and of socialism converge, in that both reject the structure in which decisions about production are made on the basis of profit calculations. In this sense, the prefix "eco-" might be considered redundant. However, I accept the term partly in recognition of the separate intellectual histories of its two strands and partly because the ecological dimension uniquely underscores the urgency of a socialist transformation. (See my recent remarks on this point here: www.mronline.org/2018/11/01/a-sound-ecological-policy-cannot-be-achieved-within-a-capitalist-framework/ ). Returning to Michael Löwy's essay, I also fully share his emphasis on the participatory nature of the necessary planning processes. This is of course an aspect that needs to be spelled out in greater detail. Michael advocates what he calls "Internet-enabled direct democracy" (p. 4), but this seems to apply mainly to the expression of broad preferences. It leaves open the actual process by which specific measures will be hammered out. Here the long-standing limitations of plebiscitary rule will need to be overcome. Structures for informed discussion will need to be put in place, so that the merits of a given approach will be tested not simply by the percentage of the population that finds it appealing, but will rather emerge from a deliberative process in which all the relevant considerations -- both social and technological -- are taken into account. In this connection, Michael speaks of free time as "a condition for the participation of working people in the democratic discussion and management of economy and of society" (p. 3). This has long been recognized as a problematic matter, given the common tendency of people to recoil at the idea of having to attend an endless succession of meetings. Admittedly, this tendency reflects in part the negative conditioning they have experienced under capitalism, but the point is that the problem needs to be confronted directly, and the conditions created in which such reactions will no longer stand in the way of necessary participation. An initial step in this direction would be to define the participation as being in part an aspect of people's work-responsibilities and therefore as an activity for which they would be compensated under the heading of work-time. Additional requirements for facilitating the necessary quality of participation will readily come to mind, but they need to be integral to the vision we put forward. One of the biggest tasks will be to establish guidelines for distinguishing between the wasteful and the necessary lines of production that Michael refers to (p. 5) (and which I address in Chapter 1 of my book). Discussion on this point can readily raise fundamental philosophical questions about what is of value in human existence. Weaning people away from certain tastes/addictions fostered by capitalist society will not be easy. One can hope that the "eco-" framework -- i.e., recognition of the emergency faced by our entire species -- will help spur the necessary collective introspection. I would also like to respond to a few points from Herman Daly’s comment as well: 1. I think that Daly’s allusions to the complexity of the necessary planning process are on target. The difficulties he evokes are what I have in mind when I refer (above) to the need to go beyond merely plebiscitary expressions of preference and to instead establish clearly defined structures for discussion and accountability at every level. 2. I believe that Marxists have learned from the negative aspects of the 20th-century experiences of socialism. Efforts at delineating democratic approaches to planning are an indication of this (see Richard Wolff, Democracy at Work, 2012), and there is indeed widespread agreement on the need to redefine the objectives of economic policy away from an emphasis on growth (see continuing coverage of ecological issues in Monthly Review). It is certainly possible to criticize existing models of planning while retaining a socialist framework (see Michael Lebowitz, The Contradictions of Real Socialism, 2012). The politically important point, though, is that the supposed “Marxist” pursuit of growth, to the extent that it has prevailed, is in fact a reflection of the persistent impact of capitalism, whether in the form of competitive or military pressure from imperialist powers or in the form of an internalization of capitalist values, as currently embodied in the Chinese case. (The Chinese government’s allegiance to Marxism may be fruitfully compared with the US government’s allegiance to democracy.) 3. Regarding the issue of social equality, the point is not to prescribe multiples of difference between top and bottom incomes, but rather to assure that there is no dominant *class*. The size of individual incomes becomes less vital to the extent that an increasing share of necessary goods and services is provided independently of the market. The irrationality of market indicators for such necessities as healthcare is widely recognized. In light of ecological considerations, it should be clear that this also applies to the use of land and energy resources, among other things. One should not let the shortcomings of previous attempts at socialism get in the way of seeing that a socialist framework is necessary to addressing ecological issues on the scale that they require. Whatever residual role markets may play for allocating items of immediate personal consumption, they have no legitimate role in determining the overall utilization of space. The prerogative of an individual or a corporation to “own” land and thereby have a “right” to have all the trees on it cut down can have no place in an ecological vision. But it remains a possibility in the context of capitalism. Victor Wallis www.victorwallis.com *************************************************************************************** Friday, November 2, 2018
From Herman Daly <[email protected]>
----- Those of us old enough to remember the Cold War know that it was basically a contest between Socialism and Capitalism to see who could grow faster, and thereby accumulate more wealth and military power. The audience was the uncommitted countries of the world who would supposedly adopt the economic system of the winner of the growth race. What happened? Basically, Socialism collapsed, and Capitalism won by default. The losers (Russia, China, Eastern Europe) got back in the growth race by adopting State Capitalism, and China has become the growth champion. The present system of world growthism, in the broadly capitalist mode, is triumphant. But growthism itself has turned out to be a false god because growth in our finite and entropic world now increases ecological and social costs faster than production benefits, making us poorer, not richer (except for the top few percent). Recognition of this reversal is obscured by the fact that our national accounts (GDP), do not subtract the costs of growth, but effectively add them by counting the expenditures incurred to defend ourselves from the un-subtracted costs of growth. Even more egregiously, GDP counts the consumption of natural capital as income. Growthism is consuming the life support capacity of the ecosystem for the benefit of a small minority of the present generation, while shifting the real but uncounted costs on to the poor, future generations, and other species. (see www.greattransition.org/publication/economics-for-a-full-world ) Ecosocialists, ably represented by the distinguished scholar Michael Lowy, seem to recognize this disaster, so environmentalists and ecological economists are inclined to be glad of their help in opposing rampant growthist capitalism. We certainly need help. But how much help in developing a workable green economy are red ecosocialists likely to be? Maybe not much, for reasons suggested below. Marx himself was overwhelmingly a perceptive critic of capitalism, and hardly at all an architect of socialism, which remained for him a vague prophetic vision. Marxist socialist states have an impressive historical record of economic failure, political oppression, and abuse of human rights and religious freedom. The net flow of refugees was decidedly away from, not toward, socialist countries. How does Lowy deal with this well-documented and very negative historical experience? First by frankly recognizing it, and then by asking us to simply ignore the "*actually existing socialisms of the twentieth century*" and focus on Marxist *theory* instead. This reminds me of the growth economists who ask us to focus on the elegance of neoclassical optimization theory and downplay the massive external costs and monopoly concentration of wealth and power of actual corporate capitalism. Theory is always neater than reality---for both capitalism and socialism. While Scandinavian socialism is an example we can benefit from, Marxist socialist economies no longer exist (except for North Korea). Our given starting point for reform is rampant growthist capitalism. If socialism had won the disastrous growth Race, then we would be starting our reforms from socialist initial conditions, and Marxist theory would have been more relevant. But that did not happen, however much Marxists may regret the fact. If one believes that Marxist theory is nevertheless true, then it would be worth starting over on that basis. But it contains basic errors that would likely lead to a repeated failure. Marxists have been very slow to recognize the reality of limits to growth, in spite of Marx's now oft-quoted prescient paragraph about "metabolic rift"---a paragraph certainly worth building on. Furthermore, there are some basic reasons for Marxists' unwillingness to identify growth as the core problem. Marx dismissed any appeal to morality or sharing as "utopian socialism.” The "new socialist man" would emerge from his bourgeois greed only on the basis of overwhelming material abundance, emerging under historically determined scientific socialism, "guided" by the dictatorship of the proletariat. Overwhelming abundance requires growth to the point that scarcity is objectively overcome, and therefore the moral demands for sharing scarce goods, emphasized by the "utopian" socialists, become unnecessary in "scientific" socialism. Lowy has a section on growth, in which he opines that, "*The issue is not excessive consumption in the abstract, but the prevalent type of consumption*" dominated by fashion and advertising. I agree with his criticism of advertising, but the basic problem is the actual, not abstract, level of per capita resource consumption, mainly of the wealthy, not just the frivolous things they consume. And of course the number of consumers. There is no discussion of limiting resource consumption, much less limiting population growth, the latter a topic which Marxists, as well as the capitalist cheap-labor lobby, go far out of their way to avoid. With the exception of post-Maoist China, Marxist regimes have generally thought that more people are better than fewer, a view that environmentalists would actually agree with, as long as the people are not all alive at the same time! Marx's hatred for Malthus and his dismissal of overpopulation are well known, and continue to mute Marxist attention to limits to growth. Lowy, and Marxists in general, take a very dim view of markets and a very rosy view of central planning. There is plenty of need for both markets and planning, depending on the type of good in question. Goods are either physically rival or non-rival, and either legally excludable or non-excludable. My shirt is a rival good--if I am wearing it, you can't wear it at the same time; it is also excludable because I have the right to keep you from wearing it, or to allow you to. Goods that are both rival and excludable are market goods that can be, and usually are, allocated by markets. Goods that are non-rival and non-excludable are pure public goods, like a just legal and ethical code or the Pythagorean Theorem, for which there can be no market. Goods that are rival but non-excludable, like fish caught on the high seas or water pumped from an aquifer, are subject to the tragedy of the open-access commons and require collective action to avoid overexploitation. Goods that are non-rival but excludable, like patented knowledge or information, are inefficiently allocated and the revenue from their artificial price is unjustly distributed by markets. For the last three categories, markets work poorly or not at all, and consequently, collective planning is necessary. That should provide plenty of opportunity for ecosocialists' contributions! For market goods, a large category including the basics of food, clothing, and shelter, market allocation usually works better than planning, if governments can limit or regulate monopoly. Since three of the four categories require government planning, it is doubly important to avoid overloading government capacity for needed collective planning by unnecessarily imposing it on the large first category as well. However, Lowy, and Marxists generally, have an ideological antipathy to markets---to supply and demand, and prices, and especially to profit. They prefer central planning, or as Lowy calls it robust "*democratic ecological planning*." How did *economic* planning become *ecological* planning? Do ecosocialists really intend to centrally plan the ecosystem as well as the economy? Perhaps they mean economic planning in the light of ecological limits---but then we would need more discussion of limits. The historical failure of War Communism with its direct physical requisitioning of goods was corrected by Lenin's New Economic Policy, which reinstated considerable reliance on markets. That socialist lesson seems to be ignored. Likewise ignored are the theoretical criticisms of even socialist economists, such as Oskar Lange, who in his On the Economic Theory of Socialism demonstrates how markets can efficiently serve socialism as well as capitalism. Lowy dismisses criticism of central planning as "conservative fearmongering". Instead he tells us that "*the core of ecosocialism is the concept of democratic ecological planning, wherein the population itself, not “the market” or a Politburo, make the main decisions about the economy*." Imagine the consequences of market goods (food, clothing, and shelter plus a whole lot more) being "*freely distributed, according to the will of the citizens*." The democratic will of the citizens is to be expressed by voting. How much steel shall we produce? Citizens vote. How much of that steel will go to the production of, say, wood screws, for example? The citizens vote again. Of the wood screws how many will be round head, how many flat head countersunk, slot head, or Phillips head? How many cadmium-plated; how many chrome-plated? And some screws are made of brass or aluminum, not steel. And how many of each length and diameter, etc.? And who shall receive how many of each type? The citizens robustly and democratically vote again and again as conditions change, although most have no idea of the myriad special uses of different types of screw, and may not even know which end of a screwdriver to hold. Meanwhile those people who actually use screws and know their uses are not able to "vote" with their money in markets and thereby convey reliable information to producers about what mix of the nearly infinitely many types of screw is most needed, and would be most profitable to produce. Instead we have all citizens spending absurd amounts of their time "democratically" voting, mostly about things they don't understand, while those with the most information about actual use-values of screws are "disenfranchised" by the absence of markets. Yet Lowy claims that in a planned ecosocialist economy, "*use-value would be the only criteria for the production of goods and services*." Use-value as judged mostly by non-users---what could possibly go wrong? With so much effort wasted on attempting to plan the allocation of market goods there will be little capacity left to plan the use of true public goods, to avoid the tragedy of the commons, and the larcenous market enclosure of non-rival goods. Of course, the humble wood screw is only one of millions of market goods that would be grossly misallocated by "democratic ecological planning". If one thinks my example of the wood screw is too trivial, then ask the same questions about a more complex commodity of your choice. Lowy expects that, "*as the ecosocialist transition moves forward, more products and services critical for meeting fundamental human needs would be freely distributed, according to the will of the citizens*." Overwhelming material abundance and the "new socialist man" will apparently have arrived, along with the abolition of scarcity. But with little discussion of growth or its costs. Without markets (supply and demand, prices, and yes, profit), there could be no self-employment. Everyone would be a salaried employee of the state, giving the state monopsony power in the labor market. No one could identify a needed good or service and make a living by providing it. Happily, Lowy at least would allow small shops and artisan enterprises to escape the planner. Ecosocialism aspires to be egalitarian and ecologically sustainable. But nothing is said in this essay about proper limits to the range of inequality in the distribution of income and wealth. Should the richest citizen be four times as wealthy as the poorest, as Plato thought? Ten times? A thousand times? And what do ecosocialists think about macro limits to growth of resource throughput? Many of the ecosocialists' objections to market allocation would disappear if the underlying degree of inequality of wealth and income distribution were more formally and tightly limited, and if the aggregate scale of throughput of energy and materials were restricted to some level of ecological sustainability. Instead of correcting excessive throughput scale, and excessive distributional inequality, which of course are reflected in market prices and allocation, ecosocialists just attack market allocation itself, as if underlying scale and distribution problems could be solved by breaking the mirror that reflects them. What are ecosocialists' policies for directly limiting throughput scale and distributional inequality? Voting is indeed required at this point, but there must be some policy to vote on. And in the three categories where planning has long been recognized as necessary, what policies are recommended for providing and financing public goods, for avoiding overexploitation of the commons, and for protecting non-rival goods from illicit privatization? I realize that not everything could be considered in a brief essay. But I hope that these omitted policy questions, as well as ecosocialist laxity in recognizing both limits to growth and historical failures of socialism, will be explored in the ensuing discussion. Herman Daly ****************************************************************************************** Thursday, November 1, 2018 Ecosocialism: For a Red-Green Future (GTN Discussion)
From Paul Raskin <[email protected]>
----- Dear GTN, Is the Great Transition a post-capitalist project? Yes: its core values and aims—human solidarity, quality of life, ecological resilience—contradict the individualism, consumerism, and abuse of nature fostered by societies that grant primacy to the profit motive. But post-capitalism is mere negation. Can what-we-are-for be boiled down to a single “ism”? Not easily, since a systemic transition invites a pluralistic praxis that weaves a whole cloth from myriad threads. GTN’s November discussion considers the twining of two cardinal “isms”—socialism and environmentalism. In the past, the green and the red have tended to snub or excoriate one another. Now, however, Michael Löwy argues in “Why Ecosocialism: For a Red-Green Future,” environmentalists need to be socialists, and socialists need to be environmentalists. The essay sets the challenge in historic context, makes the case for a red-green synthesis, and sketches the contours of an ecosocialist future. Michael gives us much to chew on and build on. Yet, I’m left wondering: Is ecosocialism the best formulation in the current context? Or should we be stressing a larger synthesis that encircles not only red and green, but all the colors of our rainbow movement? And to build that movement, shouldn’t our vision accommodate plural solutions to post-capitalist societies? For example, my “report from the future” depicts a regionally-diverse global civilization that includes Michael’s ecosocialist vision, but not exclusively.* I hope you’ll read Michael’s essay at www.greattransition.org/publication/why-ecosocialism-red-green-future, and weigh in. Comments are welcome through Friday, NOVEMBER 30. Over to you, Paul GTI Director *See Journey to Earthland, pp. 71-108, www.greattransition.org/publication/journey-to-earthland. ----- Hit reply to post a comment on the GT Network Read all comments (or reply) at www.greattransition.org/forum/gti-discussions/208-why-ecosocialism-for-a-red-green-future/2760 Note: Expect a delay between posting and receiving your comment Need help? Email [email protected] ------------------------------------------------------- Hit reply to post a comment on the GT Network Read all comments (or reply) at https://greattransition.org/forum/gti-discussions/208-why-ecosocialism-for-a... Note: Expect a delay between posting and receiving your comment Need help? Email [email protected] -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens