Not even climate change will kill off Capitalism.

[Ozymandias]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/06/not-even-climate-change-will-kill-off-capitalism

 

I don't know if this link will work. Has anyone read this article?

[ALB]

Just read it. Good stuff, even the Party case, as put for instance by Brian Gardner in the course of this videoed debate (incidentally, the other speaker, who put the "catastrophist" viewpoint, has since joined  the Socialist Party). People on our facebook page like it too.Does anyone know who the bloke who wrote the Guardian article is? Sounds as if we should get in touch with him.

[Ozymandias]

I've never heard of this guy. I mean would we even have found such an article in a mainstream newspaper 5 years ago? I find it astonishing.

[robbo203]

It is a good article, for sure, but I wouldn't rush to the conclusion that it merits wholesale endorsement.  There are bits of it which to me sound somewhat iffy.   In particular this:"Capitalism might well be capable not only of adapting to climate change but of profiting from it. One hears that the capitalist system is confronted with a double crisis: an economic one that started in 2008, and an ecological one, rendering the situation doubly perilous. But one crisis can sometimes serve to solve another." (my bold)Keucheyan talks of capitalism responding to the challenge of the ecological crisis with two of its favourite weapons: financialisation and militarisation.As far as the latter is concerned, when I heard that I was reminded of the underconsumptionist type argument put forward by people like Tony Cliff  years ago , that capitalism in the post war era was able to stave off economic crisis by, amongst other things, increased spending on weapons.  This notwithstanding the fact that military expenditures by the state comes at a cost, the burden of which is  born by the capitalist class in the form of taxation through which the state acquires its revenue.  Tax the profit making sector of the economy too heavily and you will kill the goose that lays your golden revenue eggs. That is the basis of the argument behinbd the so called Laffer Curve (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve). Of course, increased military spending in the post war era fueled by the cold war did not prevent the return of economic recessions. Similarly with the ecological crisis.  The fact that "environmental parameters" greatly matter to the military does not translate into an  argument for saying that the military has a vested interest in joining with Friends of the  Earth to save the earth.  One only has to mention that the military itself has been directly instrumental in the wanton destruction of much of the ecosphere to see the absurdity of this claimThen  there's that other weapon that Keucheyan refers to:  financialisation.  There has been a lot written lately about the increasing "financialisation of capitalism" – see for example John Bellamy's article in Monthly Review on the subject  – http://monthlyreview.org/2007/04/01/the-financialization-of-capitalism – and perhaps the Socialist Standard  might one day get round to devoting a special issue to the subject. But again I fail to see the force of the argument that Keucheyan is making.  Financialisation does not avert the prospect of crises that is built into the very fabric of capitalism.  If anything it increases the vulnerabluty of the system to crises through the mechanism  of speculative bubbles . Indeed, he himself admits that financialisation is no solution to the problem of financial crisises: In times of crisis, for instance, markets will require simultaneously that wages be cut and that people keep consuming. Opening the flow of credit allows the reconciliation of these two contradictory injunctions – at least until the next financial crisis. (my bold)What Keucheyan seems to be doing is , quite correctly , making the case that capitalism will not collapse of its accord – by toying with, if not exactly embracing the argument that the system can indeed come up with solutions to the problems it faces that at least mitigate if not altogether eliminate those problems – the reformist position,  So he argues Like financialisation, militarisation is about reducing risk and creating a physical and social environment favourable to capitalist accumulation. They are a kind of "antibody" that the system secretes when a menace looms This sounds plausible in theory but what it overlooks is that, in capitalism, competing actors are locked into a kind of logic in which each by pursuing their own separate interests bring about their collective ruin.  The "tragedy of the commons" is the inevitable outcome of a system of market competition.  It is the system itself that creates the very menace against which it purportedly secretes its "antibodies"and this is the point that does not really come through in the article itself. I do agree with his closing remark, though:Because, if the system can survive, it doesn't mean that lives worth living will.

[Anonymous]

ALB wrote:

Does anyone know who the bloke who wrote the Guardian article is? Sounds as if we should get in touch with him.

Here's something for French speakers…http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razmig_KeucheyanRazmig Keucheyan is an assistant professor in sociology at the University of Paris-Sorbonne and the author of 'The Left Hemisphere'.

[ALB]

Merci. It says he comes from Switzerland where he was a member of a Trotskyist group and that in France he is a member of the Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste which is the current embodiment of the Ernst Mandel Trotskyists (whose equivalent in Britain would be, I suppose, "Socialist Resistance", the old IMG).Robbo, I don't think he is advocating either "militarisation" or "financialization" but merely saying that these are ways capitalism can get out of a crisis. This analysis may well be wrong but to accuse him of advocating these would be like accusing us of advocating lower real wages, devaluation of capital, etc for making the point that these are the ways that capitalism gets out of a slump.What I got out of his article was that capitalism will not collapse from some ecological crisis any more than it will from some economic crisis. As he says (using an analogy we have often used ourselves) capitalism will not commit suicide but has to be murdered. It won't die of its own accord, but has to be done to death.

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

Merci. It says he comes from Switzerland where he was a member of a Trotskyist group and that in France he is a member of the Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste which is the current embodiment of the Ernst Mandel Trotskyists (whose equivalent in Britain would be, I suppose, "Socialist Resistance", the old IMG).Robbo, I don't think he is advocating either "militarisation" or "financialization" but merely saying that these are ways capitalism can get out of a crisis. This analysis may well be wrong but to accuse him of advocating these would be like accusing us of advocating lower real wages, devaluation of capital, etc for making the point that these are the ways that capitalism gets out of a slump.What I got out of his article was that capitalism will not collapse from some ecological crisis any more than it will from some economic crisis. As he says (using an analogy we have often used ourselves) capitalism will not commit suicide but has to be murdered. It won't die of its own accord, but has to be done to death.

 Well, I didnt want to suggest he was actually "advocating" millitarisation or financialisation and if that was the impression you got from reading what I said then, obviously, I did not express myself clearly enough.  What I was attempting to question was his suggestion, as I read it, that these things are ways in which capitalism can moderate if not exactly eliminate crises, whether of an economic or ecological nature.(Incidentally, I question your comment that "This analysis may well be wrong but to accuse him of advocating these would be like accusing us of advocating lower real wages, devaluation of capital, etc for making the point that these are the ways that capitalism gets out of a slump".  Does militarisation and financialisation play a role analogous to the lowering of real wages etc in the dynamics of specific crises? If so , how?)So, for example, Keucheyan says:Capitalism might well be capable not only of adapting to climate change but of profiting from it. One hears that the capitalist system is confronted with a double crisis: an economic one that started in 2008, and an ecological one, rendering the situation doubly perilous. But one crisis can sometimes serve to solve another.andThe financialisation of catastrophe insurance is supposed to keep budgets balanced. It remains to be seen if this is a sustainable response to the threat. But, from the point of view of the system, it may well be.andLike financialisation, militarisation is about reducing risk and creating a physical and social environment favourable to capitalist accumulation. They are a kind of "antibody" that the system secretes when a menace looms. This doesn't necessarily take the form of shocks of the sort described by Naomi Klein in her book The Shock Doctrine: it is a more gradual process that slowly takes hold of every aspect of social life(my empohasis)Keucheyan seems to be saying, unless I have seriously misread him,  that capitalism can avoid collapse because it is always capable of coming up with effective solutions on its own terms. That is what Im questioning – not his central premiss that capitalism will not collapse. I agree that capitalism will not collapse and has to be got rid of but I dont agree that capitalism is enabled to continue indefinitely and entrench itself indefinitely by the system effectively dealing with the problems that confront it.  Rather, capitalism will continue despite those problems which it will not be able to  solve by sucg means as financialisation and militarisation Which is why I commended his closing remark which seems to be at odds with the whole thrust of his argument – namelyBecause, if the system can survive, it doesn't mean that lives worth living willWhich seems to  imply  that the problems have not been solved even if the system continues

[ALB]

What struck me was the title and subtitle of  the article (which may have been the subeditor's not his)

Quote:

Not even climate change will kill off capitalism.As long as the conditions for investment and profit remain, the system will adapt. Which is why we need a revolution

And also this passage identifying who and what he was arguing against:

Quote:

There is a worryingly widespread belief in leftwing circles that capitalism will not survive the environmental crisis. The system, so the story goes, has reached its absolute limits: without natural resources – oil among them – it can't function, and these resources are fast depleting; the growing number of ecological disasters will increase the cost of maintaining infrastructures to unsustainable levels; and the impact of a changing climate on food prices will induce riots that will make societies ungovernable.The beauty of catastrophism, today as in the past, is that if the system is to crumble under the weight of its own contradictions, the weakness of the left ceases to be a problem. The end of capitalism takes the form of suicide rather than murder. So the absence of a murderer – that is, an organised revolutionary movement – doesn't really matter any more.

This of course is an argument we have heard from leftwing Greens and have had to argue against. He goes on:

Quote:

But the left would be better off learning from its past mistakes. Capitalism might well be capable not only of adapting to climate change but of profiting from it.

I don't think this can be taken as a claim that capitalism could actually solve the climate change crisis, but merely that it can live with it while making a profit from attempts to deal with it. The examples he gives (militarisation and insurance against catastrophes) may not be valid (I would have thought the profitable investment will, or would, be more technologies to alleviate it) but the general point remains, as the subtitle puts it:  As long as the conditions for investment and profit remain, the system will adapt.But instead of arguing about what he meant, why don't be email him? I'll do this. In the meantime here's more on where he's coming from:http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/1430-razmig-keucheyan-s-the-left-hemisphere-a-dizzying-menagerie-of-anti-capitalist-thought

[ALB]

This programme on BBC Radio 4 at 11.00 this morning seems very relevant to this thread. It's being broadcast again next Monday (31 March) at 21.00:

Quote:

The most convincing evidence that someone really believes something is when they are willing to risk their own money on it. Businesses around the world are doing just that; betting that they can profit from the effects of climate change. Justin Rowlatt meets the entrepreneurs who believe there is money to be made from the world's changing climate.

[Author]

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