Is Socialism Environmentally possible?
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This is a thought provoking peice:
Quote:Imagine a country that met the basic needs of its citizens – one where everyone could expect to live a long, healthy, happy and prosperous life. Now imagine that same country was able to do this while using natural resources at a level that would be sustainable even if every other country in the world did the same.Such a country does not exist. Nowhere in the world even comes close. In fact, if everyone on Earth were to lead a good life within our planet’s sustainability limits, the level of resources used to meet basic needs would have to be reduced by a factor of two to six times.
These are the levels they were looking at:
https://goodlife.leeds.ac.uk/About/
So, the question is, can humanity sustain socialist abundance and stay within those ecological boundaries?
Or, as another thought, are such boundaries and limits a useful guide to how socialist planning could be done, much better than abstract labour time: such targets would make a useful start for global planning…
I also read this article and took it as a warning that capitalist expansion will be unsustainable. Another gloomy confirmation for Private Fraser that the world is doomed.How it applies to a socialist society is moot, for the study authors' did not include such a system in their remit.
Indeed it didn't, except that it posed physical barriers such as a 76.2 tonne material footprint per capita: based apparently on this article:https://www.nature.com/articles/461472aNow, to say that socialism will involve living less well than contemporary Vietnam will not enthrall the masses.Private Frasier is too optimistic…
"All seven indicators are consumption-based measures that account for international trade."So it isn't actual consumption needs. As someone said…if it can't be quantified it isn't counted. They are conting import/export totals. Their figures includes all the waste built into the operation of capitalism.For instance, the US armed forces alone consumes the same energy as Nigeria. That is an easy figure to get. But what about the energy, the extraction and delivery of ores to the smelters to get the steel for the tanks and armoured vehicles etc etc and that's before their manufacturing of them.But we aren't just talking about the military but the whole buying and selling system with its duplication of products and duplication of effort.What happens if all those numbers are taken out their sums. I'd guess that sustainability is redefined at a higher level of living standard than Vietnam. Private Fraser is only an optimist if he thinks we can achieve socialism before the whole capitalist edifice takes us to the abyss…
Alan,you're right, except that even with Vietnam and it's poor standards of living is busting those enviornmental limits, if we stopped wasteful capitalist production, we'd still be at risk of busting the enviornmental boundaries. So, looking at the UK, under wasteful cap[italism it is busting through those boundaries, and getting down to them would be a serious chore.https://goodlife.leeds.ac.uk/countries/#UnitedKingdom
Young Master Smeet wrote:Or, as another thought, are such boundaries and limits a useful guide to how socialist planning could be done, much better than abstract labour time: such targets would make a useful start for global planning…I expect that people in the rural areas of countries like Vietnam live 'better' than the average person in the West, especially if they are distant from the mechanisms of the state. The simpler life is always better. Of course, this is a matter of opinion and taste. But my expectations lead me to question why migration happens. It is surely important to ask how the mass human migrations that happen under capitalism – not just immigration, but even popular tourism – are affecting the environment and what are the driving forces behind this. If you accept that these phenomena are a result of capitalism, does this then demand a teological view that imposed diversity will bring about true class cohesion and the ultimate end of capitalism, or should these impositions be opposed on the basis that they harm workers and other defenceless peoples, just as you would oppose profit, wages and employment? I had always thought that the SPGB position is that socialism can happen now, and so anything that harms the working class is not bringing us closer to capitalism's apocalypse, since there is no teleology, only the empiricism of cause and effect, and capitalism could continue forever. Rather what is required is the education of workers as to how they are manipulated by capitalism in all its aspects, since only workers themselves can overthrow capitalism.Returning to the point in hand, while I'm sceptical about the existence and (if it does exist) causes of global warming, I broadly agree with people here that capitalism is causing us to damage our environment and is environmentally-unsustainable. If socialism happens, I would hope that it is a system more aligned with Nature, and preferably it should position Man as part of Nature, not above it. Personally I think socialism, if it works, would impose its own natural limitations, due to the realities of socialist production. An analogy would be with the way that people live now in small rural villages that practice an eco-sustainable philosophy. I believe socialism as a practical way of living would have to be inherently sustainable, as it couldn't work politically as a 'mass democracy' with large-scale central planning – but you may disagree. This is where we come to the borderline, and synthesis, of politics, economics, sociology and ecology.
Quote:I expect that people in the rural areas of countries like Vietnam live 'better' than the average person in the West, especially if they are distant from the mechanisms of the state. The simpler life is always better. Of course, this is a matter of opinion and taste. But my expectations lead me to question why migration happens.I happen to live in a country which is very much like Vietnam, and live in one of its rural backwaters.While there exists more a community – as indeed there exists in the countryside of Britain and other developed countries – i find it difficult to imagine them being any distance from the mechanisms of the State. Out of the top of my head, i think the dweller in an urban slum probably lives a more independent life from the State than those in rural areas dependent on government subsidies.The simpler life hopefully does not mean being deprived of the necessities of life – access to healthcare, transport and education etc etc – all the things that rural people complain about lacking in the UK.As for why immigration takes place – from my own anecdotal experience of those i know – to find employment, to escape poverty, to send back remittances to the less fortunate family-member are the primary drivers and, yes, for a few younger folk…travel and adventure to explore the bright lights of the Big City. I agree with you – if under socialism people demand and expect too much, it won't work.But i think the fact that people would have had to struggle and strive and sacrificed for socialism to be built in the first place, means they won't so easily sabotage it.
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