schekn_itrch
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There is an unfortunate phenomenon when otherwise intelligent people cannot accept arguments that contradict their beliefs simply because these beliefs are packaged into a system. This is how democrats can never agree on almost anything with republicans in the US, even though both their platforms are so similar. I sense that the same thing is happening here. As a person with education in both hard sciences and humanities, I personally believe in what evidence and logic, our best friends in the path towards socialism, tell me to believe. Here is an example.
Alan, you were writing “We have been adapted our environments to be more productive to serve human needs for tens of millennia.” The idea of the whole paragraph, and indeed the whole “packaged ideological system”, is that our human ingenuity has always provided enough food (resources) for people. When I pointed out that we only just started doing this 10,000 years ago, you accepted, and yet insist that we “the hunter-gatherer societies did have an environmental impact on their eco-systems”. Now, how does this support your argument? That we had an effect? Oh yes, aborigines in Australia probably had a great effect very early on, by slaughtering all their big mammals very quickly so that there were none left to domesticate, and this is why they are still struggling with stone tools, while others work with computers. In other words, yes, you are right, we had an impact for longer than ten thousand years. But did we have an intelligent impact that would benefit our societies? No, we didn’t. This was a simple logical mistake, yet I believe you are a very intelligent person. Why did you make it? Because you think that with letting go of this particular belief you would also have to start questioning the rest of the package. But you really don’t have to. Like I said, I also strongly believe that we need all the high-tech solutions we have in order to successfully build socialism. I also believe that local farming is “not always the most eco efficient”, as you put it. I just happen to be a little better informed about the limits of agriculture.
There were fervent believers in communism in the Soviet Union. They would say, “No, it is not possible that our nuclear power generators may have technical problems. We have the best scientists and the best nuclear technology in the world!” – and then Chernobyl happened.
What I propose is to unwrap the packaged belief system of some fellow comrades and leave all the wonderful bits that actually are based on fact and proper logic, and let go of those that are erroneous. In our particular case of dealing with the eco-movement, I would suggest several things.
First of all, let’s look at the new wave of people joining XR. Maybe the movement was started by eco-maniacs, I do not know, but what I do know (because I visited their meetings) is that a lot of new people are joining who do not yet have any stiff beliefs about what causes climate destruction. Moreover, I was expecting to hear someone talk about this, but they didn’t. They seem to entirely avoid this topic. I heard recently a reporter on the news ask the director of the Bank of England if it was actually capitalism itself that was responsible for climate change. Of course, the director immediately started to say a lot of baloney about “great investment potentials”, but that is beside the point. The point is, let’s open our eyes and stop fighting imaginary enemies. It could actually be the time right now that people (aside from some few hardcore “back-to-the-caves” eco-warriors) are ready to hear the message of socialism.
Second, about your questions whether we should argue with “them” about the population and resource scarcity. No, I do not think we should argue with them, because the outcomes of these arguments are irrelevant. If we can agree that capitalism is what is driving environmental collapse (this we should argue about, but gently, through persuasion), then we can bring about education for women all over the world, and then overpopulation problem will be solved all on its own. The same is about resources. It is difficult right now to correctly estimate how much we have because those who sell them would have us believe they will never run out. To properly manage resource-based economy in socialism we would need to make better estimates of real quantities and to plan very carefully about how to benefit the society in the sustainable way, not just for those who live on this planet right now. So, again, there is no need to argue with eco-people, we can just drop the issue and concentrate on capitalism.
Thank you for bringing up the links / message boards / forunms where we can reach out. I am also not aware of those at the moment, but I will try to find out, this is important. Right now it looks like they are “unstructured” in the way that the structure is opaque, unfortunately.
Yes, this is exactly what I am arguing for: “Raising political consciousness among the majority of the working class”. It hasn’t been done, and it needs to be done ASAP.
” There are no magic formulas, no shortcuts” – exactly what gives you the qualification to make such sweeping statement? “They’ve all been tried” – you cannot possibly try ALL possible solutions, it is impossible by definition.
ALB – I completely agree with everything you said there.
What I am proposing here (the first thing) is that we should approach the already most mobilized and interested people out there, namely XR and other climate change activists and educate them about capitalism’s role in the destruction of environment. But it is important to be flexible and not too conservative, so we can find the common denominator. I believe we all want the same thing in the end – a just society living in a sustainable way in a healthy environment.
I am very glad this discussion has become so avid 🙂 But I am afraid we are drifting towards the straw man side here, if you know what I mean. You just assumed I was with the green “let’s all go back to the stone age” people, and started convincing me of the folly of such opinion. I am happy to announce that I am all pro-technology, so let’s leave the straw man aside and concentrate on what I did say. I wrote originally that given the population increase and the participation of this population in capitalist economical system (the current reality), the world is quickly going towards destruction. This can be and has been quantified within certain limits of precision. What would happen in times of socialism is beyond the scope of science because it would require too much speculation, we have too little data. I said that I personally would be doubtful current levels of population can be sustained, but I am not going to argue about this, again, as we do not have enough data.
Some things we do have data on, however, and I will comment on this.
“We have been adapted our environments to be more productive to serve human needs for tens of millennia. ” – no, this is incorrect. Agriculture only existed for 1 ten thousand years, not tens. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture) Therefore, changing environment to serve human needs is a relatively new development.
“It is many orders of magnitude greater than it was when we began our journey on this planet.” – no, it is not. It only grew several times due to selection, and then another several times due to use of fossil fuels (machines and fertilizers). Now that fossil fuels are coming to an end, even this modest improvement is in jeopardy.
“There is no particular reason to think that we will not be able to continue to raise carrying capacity further.” – yes there are reasons to believe that. When you look at the curves of yield improvements, you see that most cultivars have already reached their limits, only corn and a few others are still growing.
“The idea that humans must live within the natural environmental limits of our planet denies the realities of our entire history.” – I am sorry, but this is pure hubris and folly. There is nothing else except the natural environmental limits on this planet.
“Humans transform ecosystems to sustain ourselves. This is what we do and have always done.” – Please do read the book <i>Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed</i>, by Jared Diamond.
“The conditions that sustain humanity are not natural and never have been.” – Please do read the book “<i>Guns, Germs, and Steel</i>Â “, it is very hard to discuss this topic without proper background. In short, natural conditions are the only thing that ever sustained humans.
To summarize, I am happy that you are so hopeful about our technological capacity, I would also like to finally see socialism happen and robots automatically do all our dirty work. The reality however is a lot more somber: it is 2019, we have capitalism all around us, there are very few people who realize that socialism could solve their problems, and we are very rapidly moving towards societal and environmental collapse. The gist of my previous posts that you have completely ignored is that our increasing population is increasingly consuming finite resources of the planet. Most of the miracle developments of the last 3 centuries happened thanks to our use of fossil fuels which will not last forever. We desperately need whatever precious little is left in order to rapidly shift from capitalist system towards “luxurious” communism, until it is too late. We cannot afford another hundred years of the Socialist party, there will be a lot less to build socialism from if we fail to act now.
I wouldn’t be so sure about this. “..almost half the world’s population — 3.4 billion people — still struggles to meet basic needs, the World Bank said.” (https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2018/10/17/nearly-half-the-world-lives-on-less-than-550-a-day). Which means that in socialism at least 3 and a half billion people would consume more if we are serious about eradicating poverty. One more time, I am not suggesting that people are to blame, or that we should murder them. Please do not misunderstand. My original post’s point was that we are currently rapidly moving towards disaster, and incremental changes in policy are definitely not going to solve this problem. We need socialism urgently, so planning to sit back and slowly get more party members is not quick enough, we may be too late. XR movement people understand this. In my opinion, we should try to unite with as many other movements as possible while still maintaining our values and educating people about socialism, in order to avert disaster.
Allow me explain my position. I come from a scientific background, and therefore do not write anything that is not backed by the current scientific position. When I write my own opinion I specifically state so. I respect everyone writing here (we wouldn’t even be here if we were not concerned about the future of our society), and I would ask everyone to respect me, in the way that if you disagree, please provide some references, otherwise this is nothing more than demagoguery.
No, I do not suggest we need to murder anyone, nor do I say that we need to discriminate based on race or nationality, and there is nothing in my text that would even hint at that.
I do however insist that current understanding of ecological state of our planet in the scientific community clearly is that overpopulation is at the center of the climate crisis, along with the growth model of our economic system. (https://www.ecologicalcitizen.net/pdfs/v01n2-11.pdf ; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3987379/ ;Pachauri RK, Mayer L and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2015)).
I understand that it may be difficult to accept it, but you may as well say that you do not accept the law of gravity. This is too bad, but if we want to succeed we need to base our discussion on evidence, not on what we want there to be. Alan, of course I generally agree with you, there can be no doubt about it. Let me therefore explain my statements one more time, based on the best available scientific evidence to date. No, carrying capacity is not a flexible elastic definition. First of all, definitions shouldn’t be flexible to begin with, then they become useless. But if you mean that it’s a flexible notion, then I would still say: no, it is not, it is calculated based on physiological needs of human beings and availability of particular resources. Biology in this sense is not fuzzy at all, it clearly states how much of what we need to consume to survive, and the scientific consensus at the moment is that we are consuming more than is sustainable. What is elastic is how long we can abuse the planet this way, how much the use of resources will go up/down with the change from capitalism to socialism (and it’s not a given that it will go down, as we still have billions of people starving in failing states “thanks” to capitalism). For example, consumption of meat and water is increasing more rapidly than the population at the moment (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3987379/), so yes, in this sense it is flexible and elastic, but this argues rather not in our favor.
One more time, when I say peak “this and that” I am not just lightly throwing into the discussion random catchy phrases. I have spent the last several years reading scientific literature on this topic. So, if you are interested in learning more, please write to me, and I will give you titles of books and articles (e.g. these are good to start with: https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319478142 ; https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319263731 ; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800910005021)
If however you disagree, please be kind enough to point me in the right direction of literature supporting your points of view.
Just to briefly comment on Alan’s “Liebig’s Law of the Minimum”: I am not sure how exactly it is relevant to the point, it may actually prove the opposite of what you said, as the law states that “The availability of the most abundant nutrient in the soil is only as good as the availability of the least abundant nutrient in the soil.” in its application to biology. Therefore, the weakest link will determine the growth of the whole system. If we need phosphorus for plants to grow (and we do), we cannot replace this nutrient with absolutely anything else, and price has nothing to do with it, pure physical availability. At the moment world agriculture heavily relies on mined phosphorus (and mining currently is impossible without fossil fuels), and this is a finite resource. Feeding 8+ billion people without external source of phosphorus indefinitely is impossible. Replacing it is impossible, you need to make DNA and ATP from something. Once again, I am not suggesting murder here, the current scientific consensus on the best course of action is to stop population increase asap and slow but steady decrease until at least 4 billion (decrease due to natural causes, of course). The best known way to do this is providing education to women.
Anyone who thinks that predictions of future collapse of our society is “doom and gloom thinking” is simply uninformed. This is not a matter of opinion or faith. This is the direct and only conclusion one can intelligently make based on the data we currently have. A brief summary is as follows:
- Â world population is well beyond carrying capacity of the planet. We are using about twice as much resources as can be sustainable. The population is rapidly increasing, and, albeit at a slowing pace, will keep increasing until a collapse point.
- several “peak X” (oil, soil, water, uranium, phosphates, etc) are projected to happen in the very near future. This shortage of resources is bound to have a strong sudden affect on the most vulnerable populations of the planet.
- climate catastrophe / global heating / mass extinction of wildlife are predicted to exacerbate this process.
- with all the recent hype and publicity of “green revolution”/clean technologies, the fact is that greenhouse gas emissions and the use of fossil fuels, deforestation, intensive farming, unsustainable use of water reservoirs are still increasing, which means we haven’t even started to deal with the problem.
- the logic of profit making (capitalism) is in direct contradiction to trying to solve this problem, hence any attempts to tackle it through reforms within the current economic/political system are doomed to fail.
This kind of thinking: “People do have choices to make and if they don’t choose the right ones … then so be it…” is not very helpful. Most people are motivated by what is best for them, and if they choose to not follow the advice of scientific consensus, it is not because they choose badly, it is because they do not understand all of the implications of their choices, and because they feel that they do not have the power to change the situation.
We must critically review the strategy of XR, but this criticism should come with positive propositions. In my opinion, it is may be counterproductive to simply block roads, as increased publicity on the one hand will come at a price of people’s frustration. If, however, blocking roads were to be combined with a large-scale campaign to educate the population about the details of the dire situation we are in, this may turn out to be a more successful strategy.
🙂 Thank you for the comments, Bijou Drains!
I might have stated my points too vaguely to save time, and they have been misunderstood. Yes, many of the things I say are not exactly long established truth. Please allow me to make my point. First of all, no, I do not think that human nature is in any way preventing us from building socialism. I am aware of the fact and completely agree with you that for most of the human history biologically modern humans lived in very equal small groups and are even biologically hard-wired to have fare and equal treatment, which was in fact also shown in other primates to be true.
What I am talking about is self-organization of very large groups of people in context of modern agriculture and technology. The “natural” way I ascribed to capitalism stems from the way first human groups started forming very similarly looking groups with tribal leaders and division of labor in very culturally different societies of the world (see Guns, Germs, and Steel for detailed description), and then very similar cities with armies. Marx wrote a lot about capitalism “naturally” replacing feudalism because capital-owning forces became de facto more powerful than land-owners. He predicted that workers would replace capitalists but underestimated the power of brainwashing and other technology. For workers to really become more powerful than modern Media-Banking complex it would take a giant leap in education and the ability to self-organize and act together, which is totally lacking at the moment.
Apologies if this is a bit chaotic, I do try to be logical and consistent, and base most of what I write on literature. Please do ask me for references and explanations if you have questions.
I completely agree with you on all points but one:
- yes, criticism of the strategy of XR’s leaders and theorists must be done (but importantly not put forward as the pretext why we shouldn’t work with them);
- yes, capitalism itself is responsible for climate catastrophe, and this is starting to be discussed more broadly in press now, which is amazing and should be taken advantage of;
- yes, only a shift towards a money-less society with resource-based economy can swiftly bring about the necessary change to safe environment;
- having participated in XR meeting, I can say that it’s not even 23% you mentioned, but an astonishing 3.5% (!) of population mobilization they quote as sufficient to prompt change in the society, and yes I agree that this is just plain wrong;
However, I must ask you this question: given all the propaganda success of capitalism in the last 30 years, what is it exactly that makes you think that large scale societal support for socialism is even remotely realistic?
I may write more on the subject later, but for now let me just state the idea briefly. I would argue that capitalism is a more “natural”, and as such more primitive system of social self-organization. When given freedom, society spontaneously self-organizes into wild capitalist structure with its propensity for ever increasing inequality and capital accumulation. Self-preservation mechanisms from time to time install government-induced limits on capitalists’ voracious appetites, but in the absence of crises the system slips again onto the path of deregulation. Socialism is a more advanced form of social self-organization, that can only be stable when the vast majority of the population have sufficient levels of education. At present, wage slavery and ever more sophisticated propaganda machine serving capitalist interests do not allow people to have time and resources necessary to attain such levels of education.
How is this all relevant to XR? Climate crisis and worsening economic conditions lead to the situation when just the right kinds of people start to get together: a little better educated, a little under-financed, with some free time to dedicate to the cause. They come to these XR meetings with questions, and many of those questions remain unanswered (for the reasons you already rightly outlined in your criticism). If we could provide the answers we might be able to give these people direction and in the end have them on our side. It will then be more realistic that the word of mouth will finish the job once a real crisis hits .
XR may be naive or fear using the word “capitalism”, but it doesn’t mean they will necessarily refuse to cooperate if offered viable solutions (such as demanding degrowth, etc). I am sure they will get on board once real crisis hits, but before that it would be wise to get them on our side, to start the conversation. They claim that they are decentralized and evidence-based, and I personally saw a lot of genuinely interested people who agree that something must be done ASAP but they don’t know what. We need to work on the propositions and build bridges to create a network of well-informed people. It’s easy to criticize the XR movement, but IMHO it’s counter-productive, if we really want to achieve something, and not just sit in the “smart” corner and find pretexts why it’s never going to happen.
My impression from an XR meeting was that people genuinely believe the cause but are not sufficiently educated to understand its place in the context of both the economic/political system and the impending crisis (peak oil, food, water, environment, militarization). I think it may be possible to work with them by engaging their ideology leaders (give them ideas on how to more effectively disrupt politicians without disgruntling normal people), by educating XR members, and by gently providing direction, i.e. explaining the limitations of the current system, and offering a concrete plan of an alternative.
