Green Socialism

According to the Kyoto Protocol, the ratifying countries committed themselves to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions between 8 percent and 20 percent by 1990. The target consistently sought today is a 40 percent greenhouse gas reduction by 2020 - a target that the scientists insist is the only one capable of averting a cataclysmic warming of the planet.

 The media recently acclaimed Obama’s pledge during talks with China to cut carbon emissions by  26% by 2025, lower United States emissions to 5.368 gigatonnes (Gt). According to the Kyoto Protocol, the United States should have reduced his emissions by 8 percent by 2012, relative to 1990. That means that the emissions should have dropped from 6.233 Gt (1990 figure) to 5.734 Gt - instead of which, they increased 0.2 percent per year, on average, to reach 6.526 Gt. In other words, Obama has committed the United States to reaching, by 2025, a target that is almost no better than the one that the United States was supposed to have reached two years ago.

For China, it is similar. Xi Jinping stipulated that China would begin to reduce its absolute emissions at the latest in 2030 and that 'zero-carbon' sources would then cover 20 percent of its energy needs. To take the full measure of this promise, one must bear in mind that these 'zero-carbon' energy sources . . . already are 9 percent of the primary consumption of energy represented in China and that the 12th five-year plan has set a target of 15 percent for 2020. Given the current amounts being invested, an increase of a further 5 percent in more than 10 years is anything but a "performance": $65 billion has already been invested in "non-fossil" energy.

When climatologists make candid public assessments they have been decried as "doom-and-gloom" people. They, however, more and more appear to be the lucid voices of reality in a fantasy world. Capitalism attempts to prevail, against the reality of our situation, and it will take down much of the Earth's eco-systems. Some say capitalists don't understand the problem but we say that they couldn't do anything about it even if they did; but what’s more, we add, they wouldn't do anything about it if they even could. Our masters are as much chained to the economic system as we so humble wage-slaves.

The problem can no longer be shunted off to governments and various international bodies to solve. If we wanted to actually do anything it would not require new technologies or geo-engineering projects, more toothless international treaties, more talking-shop summits meetings. The fact is that we do not want to do anything because it we would need to make a revolution. Why not tell the truth? If we wanted to do something we could have, would have, but we are too scared of what it means – a fundamental change to our society – something we dread more than we fear the future human extinction from the face of the planet.  

Capitalism can’t avert environmental catastrophe because capitalists are compelled by competition to look after their own interests first. Today, all the solutions to climate change are already technologically feasible, and we have the means to implement them on a global scale, as well as the knowledge of what will happen if we don’t. We are being held back not because solutions don’t exist but because current social relations will not allow for them. Capitalism is an economic system profoundly and irrevocably at odds with a sustainable planet, as it requires ever-greater material and energy throughput to keep expanding. Capitalism simultaneously and of necessity exploits the land and the people and sacrifices the interests of both on the altar of profit. To end the contradiction between humanity and nature requires something more than mere knowledge that the scientists are increasingly providing for us. It requires a complete revolution in our existing mode of production, and simultaneously a revolution in our whole contemporary social order. To truly end the exploitation of nature in the service of profit requires that capitalism itself be excised from society. Only by holding land, along with the means of production and distribution, in common and producing to meet social need will the simultaneous exploitation of nature and humanity cease.

Capitalism cannot deal with the environment in a sustainable and economically rational way for three basic reasons:

First, its logic is “expand-or-die”: to cheapen cost and to expand in order to wage the competitive battle and gain market share. And unplanned, large-scale, globally-interconnected production poses grave threats to the environment.

Second, the horizons of capitalism tend to be short term. They seek to maximize returns quickly. They don’t think about the consequences in 10, 20, 30 years. We see that they build a nuclear power station because it looks profitable and then, ten years later, they realize, uh-oh, their investment isn’t paying off. And so then they spend more money to try to undo it, and then go in for another big short-term gain somewhere else.

Third, capitalist production is by its nature private. The economy is broken up into competing units of capitalist control and ownership over the means of production. And each unit is fundamentally concerned with itself and its expansion and its profit. The economy, the constructed and natural environment, and society cannot be dealt with as a social whole under capitalism. It’s all fragmented into private parts. And each part looks at what lies outside itself as a “free ride.” An individual capitalist can open a steel mill and be concerned with the cost of that steel mill. But what they do to the air is not “their cost,” because it’s not part of their sphere of ownership. In mainstream economic theory, this is called “externality.”

Because capitalists invest to maximise private profit and no one has ever worked out a way to compel them to invest in areas that they consider unprofitable, real social planning is possible only when the capitalists are deprived of the right to own the means of production, and they are thus transformed into social property. That, of course, means replacing capitalism with an economy based on common ownership of the productive resources. Only in an economy developed to the point that production for need is the norm can disparities in economic and political power be eliminated. This is possible only in a society with an economy advanced enough to produce such a plentiful supply of goods and services that people's material wants can be satisfied, not through the exchange of money on the market, but freely according to their needs. Consumption on the basis of abundance and free access, far from developing without any limit towards irrational caprice and waste, will increasingly assume the form of rational consumption, that is, consumption in accordance with the requirements of physical and mental well-being. This has been demonstrated even in a social context dominated by money, exploitation, inequality and the desire to "succeed" at the expense of one's neighbor. For example, where drinking water is made freely available to everyone irrespective of the amount of money they have, this does not lead people to excessively consume it or to hoard it. The insecurity and instability will vanish thus the basis for the desire for individual enrichment and personal gain will disappear. The task of creating material abundance is not unrealistic. Already in many advanced capitalist countries, productive capacity is capable of satisfying people's basic needs for health care, education, public transport, food, clothing, housing and essential furniture at very low cost or free of charge. When global society is freed from any economic compulsion to expand the productive forces, the question of profitability or of labour productivity (economy of labour time) will vanish as a criterion of wealth. Instead, the criterion of wealth will become people's free, rational, and creative use of leisure, directed towards their own development as rounded personalities in harmony with each other and the natural environment.

But capitalism is incapable of addressing environmental issues outside its framework of private ownership and production for profit, and its blind logic of expansion. And on a world scale, we see the effects. But socialism can address environmental issues in a sustainable, rational, and socially just way: because ownership of the means of production is socialized and this makes it possible to consciously plan development; and because economic calculation is radically different. Economic calculation under socialism is not guided by profit but by social need, achieving rational balances between industry and agriculture, reducing gaps between town and country, factoring in the short-run, medium-term, and long-term, etc. And socialist planning is able to take into account non-economic factors: like health, the environment, alienation that people may experience from jobs.

We need to have a global perspective, understanding the transformation of our world as a planetary process. Ecological issues must fundamentally be dealt with on a world scale. But that can only happen on the basis of a social and economic system—socialism—that does not treat the environment simply as a means by which to accumulate wealth. For the future of humanity and for the planet, we need socialism. It’s as simple as that. The aim of socialist planning is to satisfy the needs of society within the framework of the optimum rational development of all human potentialities. Just as individuals do not require an unlimited supply of food, clothing, housing, etc, society as a whole does not require an unlimited expansion of the productive forces. In a planned economy possessing a stock of automatic machinery that is adequate to satisfy all current needs (including a reserve to cope with any emergency) and able to assure a plentiful supply of goods and services to its citizens, there will cease to be any necessity for economic growth. The question of economic growth will become a matter of free choice for the citizens of a socialist society. Only socialism will make it possible to develop the enormous productive potential of modern science and technology for the satisfaction of rational needs in conditions that assure the blossoming of the creative abilities of all individuals and all peoples without destroying the global ecological system upon which all life depends. The choices being offered to humanity are, quite simply, socialism or extinction.