The Socialist Ecotopia
"For the first time in human history, food production
will be limited on a global scale by the availability of land, water and
energy," Fred Davies, senior science advisor for the US Agency for
International Development's bureau of food security, said in a statement from
Texas A&M University's AgriLife division, where he is a professor of
horticultural science. "Food issues could become as politically
destabilizing by 2050 as energy issues are today." (1)
The problems of food safety are well-known. In China the
baby formula scandal of 2008 hundreds of infants died or fell seriously ill.
There have been several seizures of fake meat by police, the most notorious of
which, in September 2013, involved the discovery of more than 20,000 kg of
chemically treated pork which had been made to look like beef. Other scares
have ranged from so-called 'gutter oil' (recycled waste oil used for cooking)
through tainted dumplings to soy sauce made from human hair. In the UK, during
the 1990s, hundreds of thousands of cattle had to be slaughtered after it
emerged that their brains had been affected by being fed diseased animal parts
rather than grass. In 2011 there was an E-coli outbreak in Germany from
contaminated vegetables. This followed hard on the heels of the discovery of
high levels of the toxic chemical dioxin in eggs from some German farms. We
could go on about the horse-meat sold as beef scandal. But well-meaning
individuals will say these faults can all be rectified by improved government
inspection.
Probably a more serious issue than short-term scares is the
question of the long-term health effects of eating industrially-produced food
over a lifetime. The US obesity epidemic largely caused by over-consumption of
unsaturated fats, sugar, fructose syrup and salt, which occur in excessive
quantities in American food. According to the American Heart Association, 178.6
million people in the US were overweight or obese in 2013, largely due to bad
diet. Rare before the 1940s, Type 2 diabetes has become increasingly common.
The cause is the profit-driven market economic system rather
than some imagined moral shortcoming in character. Food is terribly addictive.
Our brains are hardwired for sugar, fat and salt which is supported by
carefully crafted advertising specifically aimed at them. Human beings, no
matter how rich or poor, always need a reason to buy something and food
marketers have tapped into this, tweaking and tailoring the message slightly
for each consumer. People have, however, begun to recognize the hidden costs of
factory food production, more antibiotic-resistant disease, low-nutrient food,
pesticide-poisoned rivers and lakes, wasteful irrigation methods and
destruction of soil fertility. Our current food system is unsustainable.
Current projections forecast that about half of Earth's
plants and animals will go extinct over the next century because of human
activities, mostly due to our agricultural methods. "Until the next asteroid
slams into Earth, the future of all known life hinges on people, more than on
any other force," said Gretchen Daily, a Professor in Environmental
Science at Stanford. "The extinction under way threatens to weaken and
even destroy key parts of Earth's life-support systems, upon which economic
prosperity and all other aspects of human well-being depend." (2)
It is time to challenge the prevailing doom and gloom
apocalyptic world view. A hopeful future is both possible. We have all the
tools and th knowledge we need to turn things around starting right now.
Industrialised farming and high-tech applications, such GMO products, dominate
our current food system, and for sure, they may still continue to exist but
other models of farming are available.
Of course, many genuine environmentalists will argue that a
world of abundance is not possible to sustain. That we are over-populated, that
we consume too much, that technology cannot produce what we require but will be
actually counter-productive by contributing to the pollution and depletion of
natural resources. All sincerely held criticisms but all come from a logic
embedded in seeing the world through capitalist eyes and not of a socialist
vision of a completely different type of economics. Most scientists are
politically myoptic and blinkered about socialism. They may well recognise that
a socialist world is not the same as the present capitalist system but decline
to put the revolutionary transformation of the profit system on the agenda. The
scientific community insist that they should work within todays parameters of
capitalism, and persuade the business leaders and their political retainers to
implement far-reaching reforms which will impact upon profit margins. The
scientists are setting out to impose on capitalism something that is
incompatible with its nature. Such a strategy is exactly the route towards
catastrophe!
The Post Scarcity Socialist Solution
Socialists are seeking to establish a “steady-state economy”
or “zero-growth” society, a situation where human needs are in balance with the
resources needed to satisfy them. The modern world is a society of scarcity,
but with a difference. Today’s shortages are unnecessary; today’s scarcity is
artificial. More than that: scarcity achieved at the expense of strenuous
effort, ingenious organisation and the most sophisticated planning. The world
is haunted by a spectre – the spectre of abundance.
Socialism means plenty for all. Socialism does not preach a
gospel of want and scarcity, but of abundance. If the assumption of abundance
is not regarded as far-fetched (which, we say it is not) then there is a
"better method of ensuring individual consumer choice than voting with
money or labour time vouchers, both unnecessary complication and the exchange economy
remains intact. The more viable option is free access, “from each according to
ability to each according to need”. Continuing artifical rationing and
restricting access and offering privileged groups extra remuneration as in
"to each according to work" is repeating the capitalist mantra of the
capitalist work ethic. Why project into socialism capitalism which relies on
monetary accounting, whereas socialism relies on calculation in kind. This is
one reason why socialism holds a decisive productive advantage over capitalism
because of the elimination for the need to tie up vast quantities of resources
and labour implicated in a system of monetary/pricing accounting. In socialism
calculations will be done directly in physical quantities of real things, in use-values,
without any general unit of calculation. Needs will be communicated to
productive units as requests for specific useful things, while productive units
will communicate their requirements to their suppliers as requests for other
useful things
Conventional economics declare that the true state of the
world is scarcity - limited supply - versus- boundless demand, denying the
potential for a state of abundance can exist. Let us define scarcity and
abundance. Our wants are essentially “infinite” and the resources to meet them
"limited" is the usual claim. According to this argument, scarcity is
an unavoidable fact of life. It applies to any goods where the decision to use
a unit of that good entails giving up some other potential use. In other words,
whatever one decides to do has an "opportunity cost" — that is the
opportunity to do something else which one thereby forgoes; economics is
concerned with the allocation of scarce resources.
However, abundance is not a situation where an infinite
amount of every good could be produced. Similarly, scarcity is not the
situation which exists in the absence of this impossible total or sheer
abundance. Abundance is a situation where productive resources are sufficient
to produce enough wealth to satisfy human needs, while scarcity is a situation
where productive resources are insufficient for this purpose. Abundance is a
relationship between supply and demand, where the former exceeds the latter. In
socialism a buffer of surplus stock for any particular item, whether a consumer
or a producer good, can be produced, to allow for future fluctuations in the
demand for that item, and to provide an adequate response time for any
necessary adjustments. Thus achieving abundance can be understood as the
maintenance of an adequate buffer of stock in the light of extrapolated trends
in demand. The relative abundance or scarcity of a good would be indicated by
how easy or difficult it was to maintain such an adequate buffer stock in the
face of a demand trend (upward, static, or downward). It will thus be possible
to choose how to combine different factors for production, and whether to use
one rather than another, on the basis of their relative abundance/scarcity. It
makes sense from an economic point of view to economise most on those things
that are less available and to make greatest use of those things that are
abundant. Factors lying in between these two poles can be treated accordingly
in relative terms. Effective economisation of resources requires discrimination
and selection; you cannot treat every factor equally – that is, as equally
scarce – or, if you do, this will result in gross misallocation of resources
and economic inefficiency.
Humans behave differently depending upon the conditions that
they live in. Human behaviour reflects society. In a society such as
capitalism, people’s needs are not met and reasonable people feel insecure.
People tend to acquire and hoard goods because possession provides some
security. People have a tendency to distrust others because the world is
organized in such a dog-eat-dog manner. If people didn’t work society would
obviously fall apart. To establish socialism the vast majority must consciously
decide that they want socialism and that they are prepared to work in socialist
society. If people want too much? In a socialist society “too much” can only
mean “more than is sustainably produced.” For socialism to be established the
productive potential of society must have been developed to the point where,
generally speaking, we can produce enough for all. This is not now a problem as
we have long since reached this point. However, this does require that we
appreciate what is meant by “enough” and that we do not project on to socialism
the insatiable consumerism of capitalism.
If people decide that they (individually and as a society)
need to over-consume then socialism cannot possibly work. Under capitalism,
there is a very large industry devoted to creating needs. Capitalism requires
consumption, whether it improves our lives or not, and drives us to consume up
to, and past, our ability to pay for that consumption. In a system of
capitalist competition, there is a built-in tendency to stimulate demand to a
maximum extent. corporations, for example, need to persuade customers to buy
their products or they go out of business. They would not otherwise spend the
vast amounts they do spend on advertising. There is also in capitalist society
a tendency for individuals to seek to validate their sense of worth through the
accumulation of possessions. The prevailing ideas of society are those of its
ruling class so then we can understand why, when the wealth of that class so
preoccupies the minds of its members, such a notion of status should be so
deep-rooted. It is this which helps to underpin the myth of infinite demand. It
does not matter how modest one’s real needs may be or how easily they may be
met; capitalism’s “consumer culture” leads one to want more than one may
materially need since what the individual desires is to enhance his or her
status within this hierarchal culture of consumerism and this is dependent upon
acquiring more than others have got. But since others desire the same thing,
the economic inequality inherent in a system of competitive capitalism must
inevitably generate a pervasive sense of relative deprivation. What this
amounts to is a kind of institutionalised envy and that will be unsustainable
as more peoples are drawn into alienated capitalism.
In socialism, status based upon the material wealth at one’s
command would be a meaningless concept. The notion of status based upon the
conspicuous consumption of wealth would be devoid of meaning because
individuals would stand in equal relation to the means of production and have
free access to the resultant goods and services. Why take more than you need
when you can freely take what you need? In socialism the only way in which
individuals can command the esteem of others is through their contribution to
society, and the stronger the movement for socialism grows the more will it
subvert the prevailing capitalist ethos, in general, and its anachronistic
notion of status, in particular.
The docility of the world population has contributed greatly
to keeping intact the increasingly unequal, barbaric and rapacious society that
is global capitalism. Because people believe there is no alternative to
capitalism, it keeps on existing. Politicians are incompetent to deal with the
problem. The real powers of action are with the great majority of people. This
will be when we decide to create a society in which we will be free to
co-operate and to use all our great reserves of energy and ingenuity for our
needs. If the environmental crisis is to be solved, this system must go. What
is required is political action - political action aimed at replacing this
system by a new and different one. There can be no justification, on any
grounds whatsoever, for wanting to retain an exploitative system which puts
privileged class interests and profit before the needs of the community, which
plunders nature of its resources and destroys the natural systems on which all
our lives depend. The well-intentioned climate scientists fails to realise that
what those who want a clean and safe environment are up against is a
well-entrenched economic and social system based on class privilege and
property and governed by the overriding economic law of profits first. The
framework within which humans can regulate their relationship with the rest of
nature in an ecologically acceptable way has to be a society based on the
common ownership and democratic control of productive resources, freed from the
tyranny of the economic laws that operate wherever there is production for sale
on a market.
Humans are capable of integrating themselves into a stable
ecosystem and there is nothing whatsoever that prevents this being possible
today on the basis of technology and methods of production, all the more so,
that renewable energies exist (wind, solar, tidal, geothermal and whatever)
but, for the capitalists, these are a “cost” which penalises them in face of
international competition. No agreement to limit the activities of the
multinationals in their relentless quest for profits is possible. Measures in
favour of the environment come up against the interests of enterprises and
their shareholders because by increasing costs they decrease profits. No State
is going to implement legislation which would penalise the competitiveness of
its national enterprises in the face of foreign competition. States only take
into account environmental questions if they can find an agreement at
international level which will disadvantage none of them. But that’s the
problem, isn’t it? Competition for the appropriation of world profits is one of
the bases of the present system. So it is not “Humans” but the capitalist
economic system itself which is responsible for ecological problems and the
capitalist class and their representatives, they themselves are subject to the
laws of profit and competition.
The scientists striving against the environmental
destruction of the world have to start with the struggle for socialism. If they
can convince people of the reality of climate change, they must also explain
the economic cause and present the only feasible solution.
“Capitalism can no more be ‘persuaded’ to limit growth than
a human being can be ‘persuaded’ to stop breathing. Attempts to ‘green’
capitalism, to make it ‘ecological’, are doomed by the very nature of the
system as a system of endless growth.” – Murray Bookchin
(1)
http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/6646/20140417/food-shortages-could-become-critical-by-2050-study-says.htm
(2)
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/april/bats-rethink-habitat-041714.html
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