>Well, there is much more to be said but this missive is already too long.
>Let me just conclude by saying that we will succumb to either petroleum
>shortage or global warming, that the minimal proposals to offset this will
>not work, that population growth will doom the species if we don’t do
>something about it, and that much of the environmentalist work is
>misdirected and counterproductive. Now that should set off a good
>debate.
>
>Paul Phillips,
>Economics,
>University of Manitoba
I've noticed a tendency in these discussions to view these problems from
the point of view of the nation-state. But clearly that's the wrong
perspective if we are socialists. If Canada bans immigrants, even in the
name of preserving ecological values, the political precedent will unleash
further reactionary tendencies that undercut our long-term goals of
changing society.
In reality these questions are insoluble within the context of the
capitalist system. The capitalist system requires a profitable return on
investments. Its very dynamism, which leads some PEN-L'ers to admire it
albeit ambivalently, is exactly what is causing the environmental crisis.
For example, Eugene Coyle described the really awe-inspiring advances in
technology that make deep-water drilling possible, but these advances will
conspire to extract costs which do not show up in a corporate balance
sheet. Dead marine life and polluted beaches do not reflect themselves as
debits on Exxon's accounting reports. The only force capable of reflecting
the public interest is the federal government, but reports in the press
describe two presidential candidates who can be described as pimps of the
petroleum industry.
When Marx spoke about socialism, he had a world system in mind. So did
Lenin. Because socialist revolution occurred historically in backward
countries, the tasks confronting our movement revolved around the
problematic of underdevelopment. This led to desperate measures to improve
the economy against imperialist pressure. In nearly every instance,
sacrifices were made that go against the grain of socialist morality. For
example, Cuba is forced to grow tobacco, an addictive carcinogen. It is
also forced to rely on nuclear power.
The socialist model of the 20th century reflected a particular time and a
particular place. It is entirely possible that in the 21st century, the
primary contradictions that appeared resolved in the advanced industrial
countries will once again rear their ugly head, but in a new guise. To an
extent, these contradictions will have the character described by Samir
Amin in the latest MR, one he describes as that of multipolar globalization
which will pit one bloc of nuclear-armed powers against the other.
Last night I watched "Dr. Strangelove" for the first time since I
originally saw the film in the early 60s. One thing struck me. In the war
room, the Russian ambassador is explaining the doomsday machine which will
destroy the planet, including the host country. If this appears mad, he
explains, this is the best deterrent. Other nations must view the possessor
of a doomsday machine as capable of anything. This seemed laughable in the
early 60s, but in reality this was and remains an essential element of
American imperialist warmaking strategies. Just before the invasion of
Cambodia, Marshall Green, a Nixon aide said that Nixon believed that "you
couldn't be completely predictable, you couldn't let the other fellow take
you for granted, you had to strike out savagely from time to time." Nixon
also proposed the use of nuclear weapons against the Vietminh in 1954
during the siege of the French at Dien Bien Phu.
The United States just anted up more than a billion dollars to defeat the
guerrillas in Colombia, a sum that is ten times as great as that allocated
to the Nicaraguan contras. The two parties are united in defense of
capitalism in Colombia and no section of the Democratic Party has a kind
word for the FARC or the ELN, the powerful groups that control more than
half the country. Adjacent to Colombia is Venezuela, where Hugo Chavez has
proclaimed a Bolivarist renewal, while working to make sure that OPEC
adopts a less accommodating stance. Falling dominoes anybody?
In addition to wars and rumors of war, you have declining resources,
including water itself. I plan to post a report on the water crisis in a
few days. When you read it, you'll start hoarding the stuff in your
basement. Frankly, I don't think its useful to come up with timetables when
water, oil, arable land or other resources will run out. All we can do as
Marxists or progressive economists is identify the underlying dynamic,
which most folks seem unwilling to do. If we have used 10 times as much
energy in the 20th century as in the preceding thousand years, it doesn't
take a genius to figure out that something is going to give. I can
understand the ostrich like tendency to bury one's head in the sand, but
that won't save the planet. (By the way, ostriches do not do this. It was a
vicious rumor started by their detractors.)
The other day Mark Jones alluded to the similarity between this period and
the one preceding WWI. I can't agree more. I am now working my way through
"Marxism and Social Democracy: The Revisionist Debate 1896-1898", edited by
H. Tudor. It is a record of the debate between "revisionists" led by Eduard
Bernstein and classical Marxists led by Belfort Bax, Rosa Luxemburg and
Parvus (Alexander Helphand). It is amazing how many analogies there were
between this debate and much of the debate taking place on the left today.
Back then European capitalism seemed to have resolved its basic
contradictions and Bernstein argued in favor of wresting concessions from
the ruling class through electoral politics. His opponents argued that
prosperity and social calm were illusory. A feature of this debate, not
well-known today, is of major interest to me. Bernstein argued that the
introduction of capitalism into peripheral societies, even under the barrel
of imperialist guns, was progressive. He equated capitalism with
civilization. His opponents, especially Bax, argued that even when the
social features of a peripheral society were regressive, socialists must
oppose imperialism. This led to the accusation that Bax was some kind of
"romantic" who believed in the "noble savage", a charge that has been
leveled at me from time to time.
It turned out that Bax, Luxemburg and Parvus were right. World War One was
the greatest crime in capitalism's history. Millions of soldiers were
condemned to death in trench warfare. This mass murder led to the creation
of the world's first socialist republic and a powerful movement that sank
roots in every country in the world. Today, a hundred years after the
original 'revisionism' debate, the left is trying to thrash out the very
same issues. People like Mark Jones are viewed as "catastrophist" because
they insist that capitalism is fraught with insoluble contradictions that
lead to war, famine and environmental destruction. Against a backdrop not
dissimilar to that of 1900 Europe, he seems strident and annoying. This is
probably the way that the Bernstein wing of the social democracy viewed
Rosa Luxemburg who was writing things like this in 1898 during a time of
peace:
"Nowadays armed confrontation, whether in Europe or elsewhere, is a matter,
not of capitalist countries confronting barter-economy countries, but of
states driven into conflict precisely because they are equally advanced in
terms of capitalist development. In these circumstances, the conflict,
should it come to a head, can have nothing but dire consequences for the
development of capitalism, because this time it will cause the most
profound disruption and upheaval in the economic life of every capitalist
country, and it will do so to no purpose whatsoever. However, from the
standpoint of the capitalist class, things look very different. For the
capitalist class, militarism has become indispensable on three counts:
firstly, as a means of maintaining "national" interests against other
national groups; secondly, as a most important form of investment for both
finance capital and industrial capital; and thirdly, as an instrument for
maintaining class dominance over the working population at home. All these
interests have nothing in common with the development of the capitalist
world economy as such. What is more, the specific character of present-day
militarism is best demonstrated, firstly, by its general growth throughout
the world in a competition that is, so to speak, driven by its own internal
mechanism, a phenomenon completely unknown only a few decades ago; and,
secondly, by the fatal inevitability of the impending explosion coupled
with complete uncertainty as to its cause, the states involved, the objects
of contention or any other details. From being a motor of capitalist
development, militarism too has become a capitalist disease."
Louis Proyect
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