Sustainability vs standard of living ... ?

[Bernie Gunther]

Nigel came up with this interesting article.

http://www.socialistworld.net/eng/2002/08/19environment.html

Here's a sample of the conclusions.

Since the issues of environmental sustainability involve virtually all aspects of production of goods and services, an integrated energy plan must be part of an overall plan, which can only be based on taking over the commanding heights of the economy, meaning in practice nationalising the top 150 monopolies. If this is done the anarchy and waste built into the capitalist system can be eliminated and a rational socialist alternative can begin the task of saving the planet from its present path towards devastation.

I'm going to give it a proper read and see if I can pull some discussion points out of it.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Hmmm, OK. No problems whatsoever with his analysis of why it's effectively impossible to achieve sustainability in a capitalist system.

The position he calls "eco-socialism" is probably the closest to mine, in terms of advocating a transition to a steady-state economy based on solar flows. I think he's characaturing that position though, or mixing it up with that of the deep greens by describing it thus.

The most positive aspect of the development of the eco-socialist movement is that planning is now being seriously debated as a tool to organise production, as is the possible danger of the degeneration of a future planned socialist society into a totalitarian state such as happened in the Soviet Union. This serious discussion of planning in environmental circles is a harbinger of a wider debate that will develop in the anti-capitalist movement in the next few years. However, it is important to understand the implications for future society of what many eco-socialists are saying about the requirement for massive cuts in consumption.

Some supporters of eco-socialism advocate a cut in consumption of 10 times, including massive cuts in the Third World. The political form such a society would take, which would have a material basis at a feudal or pre-feudal level, would be eco-Stalinist, a totalitarian police state that would make Stalin’s Russia seem benign. To talk about such a society being based on fairness and equality is a mockery, although to be fair some of its advocates are frank enough to concede that repressive measures may be necessary. (Ironically, this nightmare regime would probably not even have sufficient resources to operate the apparatus of a police state necessary to maintain itself in power).

Do you know how to contact the author Nigel? I'd really like to know whether he's done his sums properly. It doesn't look to me as though he has. He's also claiming that proponents of the steady state are only interested in reducing consumption, which is simply not true at all. This is right on the money in terms of what I think the fundamental division between greens and the tradtional left is though. A lot of the traditional left criticism I've seen of the radical end of the green movement makes such assumptions.

It's pretty clear where he's coming from though from this bit in the appendix.

I=P.C.T. In this formula, I is the environmental impact, P is population, C is consumption per head and T is the environmental impact per unit of consumption. The implication of this formula, taken at face value, is that increases in personal consumption and population will increase the (negative) environmental impact. However, if T (also known as the Environmental Impact Coefficient, EIC, or environmental intensity) is reduced at the same time as P and C are going up, the negative effects of these increases can be mitigated.

Calculations using the Commoner-Erlich Equation. (Source: Ekins 2000)

I'd argue that it makes most sense to tackle all three terms, however you can, pragmatically. Consumption of furbies, to use Hermans nice example is incredibly pointless when our old people are freezing to death in large numbers each winter. The impact coefficent can be addressed by the sort of measures we've been discussing on this very thread and the final and potentially most controversial term, population, can be addressed by some well established measures, ie making sure women have equal rights, access to education and to contraception and making sure that everybody has food, home, economic and political security.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding him though, because I think I agree with this bit, except perhaps for the "most greens" part.

Engels wrote in Anti-Dühring that the realm of freedom begins where necessity ends, which means that it is necessary to satisfy all material needs in order to achieve both individual freedom and it could be added now, the freedom to effectively intervene to avoid ecological breakdown. Marxists consider that plenty is a necessary condition for the coming of a fully developed socialist society. Removing want will eliminate the causes of inequality, exploitation and conflict, and thus lay the basis for the co-operation needed for environmental regeneration, but to do this will require growth and investment.

Most greens argue that any growth is unsustainable, never mind the amount needed to completely remove scarcity and want throughout the world. Marxists put the argument round the other way, that it is impossible to tackle environmental problems without effective international planning, a prerequisite for which is eliminating the conflict that results from scarcity.

I would argue though, that the macro level planning stuff should be minimised. The Greens and greens like me tend to be fans of the principle of subsidiarity. Which says that nothing should be controlled or run on a less local level than strictly necessary. So macro level resource planning is only necessary for high-ticket but indispensible items like PV cells or the internet.

The reason I think this is twofold. I don't think democracy works well when the group is much bigger than about 5000. Ideally decisions are taken at an even lower level if you want to have a real voice in affairs that affect you. It also appears to me that this is especially true of environmental issues. Ecologies are very complex systems and are unpredicatable. If you're working on a micro level and observing closely, the way I do in my garden say, then you have some chance of getting a feel for them. Central government planning isn't going to work well in this context. In the Cuban model, they very intelligently left all the details to the locals and the state focussed on providing resouces like land, finance and scientific laboratory back-up.

The second reason is that if you seriously consider how to lower the impact coefficient, you keep ending up with a community size in the range of high hundreds to low thousands, with it's own local food, waste recycling, light industry and energy systems. That allows for the sustainable provision of most but not all basic material needs without reference to any larger grouping.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Do you know how to contact the author Nigel?

Not directly. You can probably get hold of him quite easily through the Socialist Party website through. Or if you want I can ask somebody in the SP office.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Not directly. You can probably get hold of him quite easily through the Socialist Party website through. Or if you want I can ask somebody in the SP office.

I'll try sending them something. It's actually a pretty solid and thought provoking article and thanks for posting it.

Fisher_Gate just came up with another interesting one, which I'm working through right now.

http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/article.php3?id_article=178

It's got some really interesting things to say about the Southern countries and the immediate relevance of ecological concerns to the masses in countries that are being raped of their resources and used as a toxic dump.

 

[herman]

So going back to your question about potentially sharable goals Herman, I think a good start would be to agree to fight for: low-energy housing, local food security and effective public transport for all, irrespective of wealth.

That'd cost a fuck of a lot of money to do properly, but would be well worth doing, both in terms of sustainability, and also quality of life. It would also piss off: agribusiness, property developers, supermarkets, the construction industry, the nuclear lobby, the oil lobby, the car lobby and the CBI just for starters. Are these goals that the traditional left could get behind however?

The amount of investment, according to the models in the stuff I quoted at the head of this thread, would be such that it'd tend to reduce economic growth and might even increase unemployment, at least during transition.

I suspect you're not exactly "traditional left" but I'm very keen to hear from those who are, and who seem so happy to take pot-shots at the various green parties on these issues.

Do they have anything to contribute besides snotty remarks about middle-class hippies?

Out of interest does the costing of these models work on the current taxation or would you have in mind raising taxation by increasing the bands/scope of income tax and windfall tax etc?

In terms of cost/planning I am fond of the idea of nationalisation with compensation via issue of bonds to transfer the private share ownership to public. By returning key sectors to public ownership (in various forms local, national and where applicable co operative) industry can be geared towards goals that are in the general public interest and be implemented in such a way that address your concerns.

For example your point relating to housing- while regulatory frameworks such as planning can compel the private sector to address the issues regarding new buildings more efficient would of course be for the government to undertake programmes of social house building addressing both homelessness while the same time creating model modern homes for the 21stC. Of course current government thinking is taking us in the opposite direction with almost no social housing projects and stock transfers.

It is through such projects that such concerns as energy conservation can truly be addressed imaginatively.

In terms of business resistence, even without public ownership, a package could conceivably be sold to business in terms of benefits to business. Companies have now taken on board arguments regarding recycling not because they love the environment but that it makes commercial sense to make money from scrap instead of binning it. Energy efficiency could be packaged in the same way- as a benefit rather than a cost. Even given incentives of the favourable cost/benefit balance may not be enough and this would need to be backed in terms of legislation and possibly some punitive taxation to emphasise the point.

Where you say "I suspect you're not exactly traditional left" just to clarify- I am a member of the communist party. I do not feel it constructive to take potshots at the Green Party nor any of the other parties of the Left. I may question or challenge ideas but have no desire to refight cold war era battles.

 

[parallelepipete]

Re. the article Nigel found, if I don't get my head bitten off, I'd like to put this quote up for discussion:

Marx correctly argued that there were no naturally ordained barriers to plenty and abundance, in answer to Malthus’ idea that generalised poverty was an inevitable and permanent feature of the human condition.

In light of the author's coverage of the idea of finite resources earlier in the article, and his acceptance that Marx was not aware of environmental limits when formulating his theories, I'm puzzled as to how Marx 'correctly argued' this. You'll have to forgive me if I don't nip downstairs to read the whole bookshelf of his writings in my neighbour's flat just now!

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I guess I'm eliding the details a bit above. There are quite a few things you can do relatively cheaply that are very effective, but they do conflict with the development priorities of neo-liberal governments. Take this for example, an article I would very highly recommend to see the details of what sustainability, lowering the impact coefficient, might mean in practice.

http://www.feasta.org/documents/wells/contents.html?six/guenther.html

Nutrient circulation becomes increasingly expensive with increasing spatial distribution ranges (Günther, 1998). The energy requirements for distribution of food also tend to increase in quantum leaps when the distribution pathways require extensive packaging and preservation of the products. As pointed out earlier, solving these energy requirements by means of fossil fuels, increases the vulnerability of the society above the level required for human and environmental security. The only solution left compatible with such security would be to maintain basic energy flows from renewable sources, i.e. solar-derived, and to reduce the external energy requirements for all sectors to the lowest level possible.

The means of providing agriculture with its ultimate raw material, phosphorus, would also need to change. A system of linear flux of phosphorus through society over a prolonged time is both wasteful and insecure. Therefore, to attain nutrient circulation and at the same time reduce energy support requirements in large societies, a different societal structure should be chosen: the current trend towards increasing agricultural specialisation combined with urbanisation should be replaced by a closer integration of farms and settlements.

A name for such a strategy could be ruralisation, as opposed to urbanisation. This development strategy implies a successive replacement of houses in need of extensive restoration or rebuilding. Instead of building new houses in existing urban areas, small settlements integrated with agriculture as outlined above would be created in the hinterland of the urban areas. Many of the problems discussed above could be alleviated by such a strategy.

In other words, the details matter a lot, and that's what's missing in the two articles from Nigel and Fisher_Gate quoted above. You need to get down to the level of source-separating toilets to fully understand sustainability IMO

Even apparently simple changes like this are going to be very difficult though.

A mate of mine is a Labour council leader down south and he's found it completely impossible to get anywhere with simple stuff like social housing because of market constraints. They tried buying back council houses and it ended up putting prices up locally and making it harder for low-income workers to find a home.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Re. the article Nigel found, if I don't get my head bitten off, I'd like to put this quote up for discussion:
In light of the author's coverage of the idea of finite resources earlier in the article, and his acceptance that Marx was not aware of environmental limits when formulating his theories, I'm puzzled as to how Marx 'correctly argued' this. You'll have to forgive me if I don't nip downstairs to read the whole bookshelf of his writings in my neighbour's flat just now!

Yep, this is kind of what I meant when I wondered if the author had done his sums ...

 

[parallelepipete]

@ Nigel et al.: I'm not trying to slag this article off; it's making thoroughly interesting reading and I agree with the majority of what he says. There are some points though where I don't see how Dickenson arrives at his conclusions. This one, for instance:

Some supporters of eco-socialism advocate a cut in consumption of 10 times, including massive cuts in the Third World . The political form such a society would take, which would have a material basis at a feudal or pre-feudal level, would be eco-Stalinist, a totalitarian police state that would make Stalin’s Russia seem benign. Eco-socialism, para.4, ll.1-5

This paragraph assumes that a cut in consumption = a decrease in living standards to those of a feudal society.

However this is only true if energy intensity (mainly fossil fuel-derived energy) of production cannot decreased, and society continues to manufacture all the unnecessary and socially useless artefacts that are currently made and conduct the many pointless activites currently engaged in. In other words, a cut in consumption does not necessarily mean a cut in quality of life, or even standard of living.

There is plenty of scope for reduction in energy intensity. e.g. Small local biomass (e.g. willow coppice) fuelled power plants could provide both electricity and heat to well-insulated homes, with solar panels boosting output during summer when heat from the power plant would go to waste. Unnecessary and environmentally damaging activities could be tackled by measures such as stopping the shipping of NZ apples for sale in UK during our apple harvest season, and ensuring that heating and air-con turn off automatically when ambient conditions are pleasant or when windows are open.

I can see the argument that eco-taxes can be regressive, and that protectionism would lead to rivalry rather than co-operation between states. However, given that socialism would aim to manufacture artefacts or carry out activities on the basis of need not of markets, why is this not in principle achievable?

And how does the author decide that a society which actively cut its consumption would be Stalinist? In my limited knowledge of the history of the Soviet Union, Stalin was responsible for huge increases in production and energy consumption through forced industrial development.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

<snip> In terms of cost/planning I am fond of the idea of nationalisation with compensation via issue of bonds to transfer the private share ownership to public. By returning key sectors to public ownership (in various forms local, national and where applicable co operative) industry can be geared towards goals that are in the general public interest and be implemented in such a way that address your concerns. <snip>

This makes a lot of sense to me, but there are severe challenges. Since Thatcher and Reagan, the leverage of strikes in industrial concerns has been largely lost. That took away the traditional weapon of the working class. That programme has also bound and gagged most of the developing world, where, as Fisher_Gate's article makes clear, ecological and social justice issues are much more obviously linked than they are here (yet) A systematic programme of Rollback has been implemented by people who have lots of money and resources to tell lies and institute repression with.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Out of interest does the costing of these models work on the current taxation or would you have in mind raising taxation by increasing the bands/scope of income tax and windfall tax etc? <snip>

Taxation within a globalised capitalist economy is very tricky, as gurrier's excellent analysis made clear. Everybody has been conditioned to talk as though the only possibility is taxing workers, when in the UK corporation taxes are pathetically low, in order to "maintain a favourable climate for investment" this means for example, that North Sea oil is now available for zero royalty, plus a range of financial incentives. The only thing payable is a miserably small amount of corporation tax, which is avoidable in many cases.

 

[herman]

This makes a lot of sense to me, but there are severe challenges. Since Thatcher and Reagan, the leverage of strikes in industrial concerns has been largely lost. That took away the traditional weapon of the working class. That programme has also bound and gagged most of the developing world, where, as Fisher_Gate's article makes clear, ecological and social justice issues are much more obviously linked than they are here (yet) A systematic programme of Rollback has been implemented by people who have lots of money and resources to tell lies and institute repression with.

There are indeed severe challanges but if there is one constant it is change. Balances of power change as do circumstances. Under the right conditions even the right is compelled to shift leftwards. While the new right may believe that they have an idea who's time has come the picture for them is more patchy than they may believe or at least admit.

In South America for example, one of the regions at the sharp end of neo liberalism, the tide has definately turned.

As for "the leverage of strikes in industrial concerns has been largely lost" in terms of the bigger picture it has not. If we look at the 20thC in isolation it is apparently the case but if we look throughout the history of the working class as a whole then the working class is in a stronger position now in terms of ability to win political representation and in terms of trade union representation than say 150 years ago. While (as the link you posted suggests) there was "rollback" we have to question whether this assault is continued at the pace it was in the 80s or is it slowing? Has a corner already been turned?

The ruling class is fundamentally split as it lacks the cohesion provided by the common enemy during the cold war. There are divisions between finance and manufacturing, between europhiles and Atlanticists.

True the media is a potent force and with its "money and resources to tell lies". But the ruling class that "institute repression" tell a different story- the ideal for capitalists is a world where we all buy into the programme, and accept the end of history notion. The capitalist under such an ideal would welcome democracy as it is less costly than the oppressive police state. It is of course a capitalist pipedream. The increased oppression and rolling back of liberties (to take a solitary Uk example the right to hold static protest in the area of parliament) combined with the ratcheting up of racist and populist language re asylum seekers does not suggest a unified and confident ruling class but one moving onto the defensive.

If the labour movement and the left in general manages to get their act together then we may find ourselves pushing at an open door.

To return to the core of the topic of the thread. We are in a situation where unity in action and effective campaigning could at the very least win modest concessions and possibly far more substantial gains.

As for the march of history and the will of the people, if it is not too crude an analogy given the circumstances- The New Orleans levies broke again yesterday, they were of course already weakened and the pressure was too great for them to hold out. There is still a world to win.

In another thread you raised the issue of scientific socialism and the green movement has been reasonably successful in establishing what would have been seen as crankery during the 70s as established science. This has not translated into policy as yet with treaties such as Kyoto being signed but not delivered. But for scientific socialists, as materialists, this body of scientific work can and must inform policy, not at the expense of industrialisation leaving the third world as a quaint folk museum, but in tandem with industialisation and technological advancement. Aside from changes in consumption patterns and production priorities (eg furbies example) technology offers much to answer these questions- the solar panel being one such example from recent history of technological advance.

 

[herman]

Taxation within a globalised capitalist economy is very tricky, as gurrier's excellent analysis made clear. Everybody has been conditioned to talk as though the only possibility is taxing workers, when in the UK corporation taxes are pathetically low, in order to "maintain a favourable climate for investment" this means for example, that North Sea oil is now available for zero royalty, plus a range of financial incentives. The only thing payable is a miserably small amount of corporation tax, which is avoidable in many cases.

Since there is a tendency to try to avoid taxation I have been taking an interest in the tobin tax. If this can act as both detterent to sticking money offshore and raise revenue for those projects that require a global response (since we have already mentioned national and community levels).

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Still waking up here, but I'll get back into the details shortly.

Here's something that might be relevant: a rather abstract checklist of possible levers of change from an eminent systems theorist.

9. Numbers (subsidies, taxes, standards).

8. Material stocks and flows.

7. Regulating negative feedback loops.

6. Driving positive feedback loops.

5. Information flows.

4. The rules of the system (incentives, punishment, constraints).

3. The power of self-organization.

2. The goals of the system.

1. The mindset or paradigm out of which the goals, rules, feedback structure arise.

Ways to Intervene in a System

 

[Bernie Gunther]

OK. One of the reasons why I linked that Meadows thing above, is that it's got some interesting stuff to say about central vs local planning.

I actually experienced one of those once, in an old hotel in London. It wasn't even a bathtub with buffering capacity; it was a shower. The water temperature took at least a minute to respond to my faucet twists. Guess what my shower was like. Right, oscillations from hot to cold and back to hot, punctuated with expletives. Delays in negative feedback loops cause oscillations. If you're trying to adjust a system state to your goal, but you only receive delayed information about what the system state is, you will overshoot and undershoot.

Same if your information is timely, but your response isn't. For example, it takes several years to build an electric power plant, and then that plant lasts, say, thirty years. Those delays make it impossible to build exactly the right number of plants to supply a rapidly changing demand. Even with immense effort at forecasting, almost every electricity industry in the world experiences long oscillations between overcapacity and undercapacity. A system just can't respond to short-term changes when it has long-term delays. That's why a massive central-planning system, such as the Soviet Union or General Motors, necessarily functions poorly.

Now, by this I don't mean to say that all central planning is bad. What I would say is that despite the limitations of central planning, once you have a bureacracy whose job it is to do central planning, it will try to plan anything it can get its hands on centrally, whether that's a sensible way to proceed or not. Furthermore, because it represents a concentration of power, it will get its way more often than not, often while the people on the spot are going "No, no, for god's sake don't do that you fucking lunatics!!!" and not being listened to at all, despite often having far more detailed and up to date information.

So while I acknowledge the need for central planning, especially in high investment projects, I want to find ways to make central planning subject to local planning and to make it the last resort, rather than what we have now, which is the other way round.

This is part of the problem I have with the approach which I think is being proposed in Nigel's article above.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Here's another little gem, relating to the problems of global markets

A complex system usually has numerous negative feedback loops it can bring into play, so it can self-correct under different conditions and impacts. Some of those loops may be inactive much of the time—like the emergency cooling system in a nuclear power plant, or your ability to sweat or shiver to maintain your body temperature. One of the big mistakes we make is to strip away these emergency response mechanisms because they aren't often used and they appear to be costly. In the short term we see no effect from doing this. In the long term, we narrow the range of conditions over which the system can survive. <snip>

A thermostat system may work fine on a cold winter day—but open all the windows and its corrective power will fail. Democracy worked better before the advent of the brainwashing power of centralized mass communications. Traditional controls on fishing were sufficient until radar spotting and drift nets and other technologies made it possible for a few actors to wipe out the fish. The power of big industry calls for the power of big government to hold it in check; a global economy makes necessary a global government.

I would argue that one feature of what tends to be called "globalisation" and all the roll-back stuff that has been going on since Thatcher and Reagan is that it does exactly what that first paragraph is describing. Strips away the emergency control mechanisms in favour of a single measure, market price.

When I'm on about local responses, what I've usually got in mind is putting in place replacement mechanisms on whatever scale seems most feasible and least susceptible to system-breaking global peturbations like economic depressions, soil erosion, runaway climate change, peak oil and so on.

If you want to understand the deepest malfunctions of systems, pay attention to the rules, and to who has power over them.

That's why my systems intuition was sending off alarm bells as the new world trade system was explained to me. It is a system with rules designed by corporations, run by corporations, for the benefit of corporations. Its rules exclude almost any feedback from other sectors of society. Most of its meetings are closed to the press (no information, no feedback). It forces nations into positive loops, competing with each other to weaken environmental and social safeguards in order to attract corporate investment. It's a recipe for unleashing "success to the succesful" loops.

source

 

[Bernie Gunther]

There are indeed severe challanges but if there is one constant it is change. Balances of power change as do circumstances. Under the right conditions even the right is compelled to shift leftwards. While the new right may believe that they have an idea who's time has come the picture for them is more patchy than they may believe or at least admit.

<snip> If the labour movement and the left in general manages to get their act together then we may find ourselves pushing at an open door.

To return to the core of the topic of the thread. We are in a situation where unity in action and effective campaigning could at the very least win modest concessions and possibly far more substantial gains.

As for the march of history and the will of the people, if it is not too crude an analogy given the circumstances- The New Orleans levies broke again yesterday, they were of course already weakened and the pressure was too great for them to hold out. There is still a world to win.<snip>

Yes, it was this bit in your post that made me go dig out that "Places to Intervene in a System" article I was just quoting. Although ecologists and systems theorists generally, often lack anything but the most rudimentary class analysis (you can sort of see a couple of glimmers in that article though, when she's talking about "success to the successful" positive feedback loops) they've got some very powerful new tools that I think could be complementary to a class analysis.

Climate change and even more so peak oil have the potential to create a huge system peturbation which could be exploited to bring about a phase change. A change in the higher-order characteristics of the global system.

Both strongly indicate that the overall throughput of cheap oil energy is going to be radically reduced over a fairly short period (decades) one way or another. Climate change requires corrective (negative) feedback which due to the path-dependence of the global capitalist system seems unlikely. Peak oil however, if it is as close as many qualified persons seem to think, might force those changes. At that point it would seem sensible to me to have mitigations in place that are able to meet the material needs of the people.

What we're seeing now and what you're alluding to above, seems to me to indicate that the managers of the global system know they've got some really serious problems and no effective solutions.

I think you're right that it's an opportunity and that a concerted effort, of the sort that was gathering momentum pre-911 in places like Seattle, might have some genuinely worthwhile effects in both the short and long terms.

 

[Fisher_Gate]

I'll try sending them something. It's actually a pretty solid and thought provoking article and thanks for posting it.

Fisher_Gate just came up with another interesting one, which I'm working through right now.

http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/article.php3?id_article=178

It's got some really interesting things to say about the Southern countries and the immediate relevance of ecological concerns to the masses in countries that are being raped of their resources and used as a toxic dump.

I should make it clear - this isn't an article, it's a resolution passed by a world congress of socialist organisations (the Fourth International). It was circulated to all member parties, preceded by several years of debate, drafted into numerous languages, and amended by the congress. A list of some of the parties in membership is:
http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=19
Most are small but a few, such as the French LCR, have memberships in the thousands and a national profile.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Ah, OK. I'd wondered what that bit at the bottom meant. Makes sense now.

I thought there was a good deal of meat in it whatever it was. The summary of the direct impact of sustainability issues on the lives of people in the developing world was particularly good. Thanks for posting it Fisher_Gate.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Well, I'm off to bed soon and will be away for a few days. Hope this thread doesn't die in the meantime, because I think we're still just getting oriented.

 

[Crispy]

This thread is absolutely fascinating. Bernie, you appear to be reading words off the inside of my head (or you're putting them there)

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I'm glad you find it worthwhile Crispy. I'm sort of hoping for some more input, including critical or even outright hostile input, in order to get it going again, because I'm wary of it turning into a monologue if I try re-starting it myself.

 

[herman]

Yes, it was this bit in your post that made me go dig out that "Places to Intervene in a System" article I was just quoting. Although ecologists and systems theorists generally, often lack anything but the most rudimentary class analysis (you can sort of see a couple of glimmers in that article though, when she's talking about "success to the successful" positive feedback loops) they've got some very powerful new tools that I think could be complementary to a class analysis.

Climate change and even more so peak oil have the potential to create a huge system peturbation which could be exploited to bring about a phase change. A change in the higher-order characteristics of the global system.

Both strongly indicate that the overall throughput of cheap oil energy is going to be radically reduced over a fairly short period (decades) one way or another. Climate change requires corrective (negative) feedback which due to the path-dependence of the global capitalist system seems unlikely. Peak oil however, if it is as close as many qualified persons seem to think, might force those changes. At that point it would seem sensible to me to have mitigations in place that are able to meet the material needs of the people.

What we're seeing now and what you're alluding to above, seems to me to indicate that the managers of the global system know they've got some really serious problems and no effective solutions.

I think you're right that it's an opportunity and that a concerted effort, of the sort that was gathering momentum pre-911 in places like Seattle, might have some genuinely worthwhile effects in both the short and long terms.

Peak oil could have the opposite effect of course leading to a sharper imperialist conflict and possibly fascism for a number of states.

I will expand my argument a little further-

there is already a wide gulf between the richest and poorest states in terms of resource consumption. As oil increases in price this division will increase as will the division within states, the gulf is already growing wider both within and betwen states in terms of wealth and oil may be another resource that becomes the plaything of the wealthiest. This of course would open new potential for the left but if history teaches us anyhing it is that the wealthiest give up nothing without a fight.

This is clearly happening already with the US where patriotism, nationalism and security overlap with resource war. So it is possibly that peak oil rather than leading to a change in patterns of consumption in general will lead to fewer people in fewer states carrying on as before but with an increasing majority consuming even less. The scarcity of items such as fine art or precious stones as has not dettered the conspicuous consumption of the rich and idle. Nor will I suspect dwindling oil. It may however mean that roads beocme emptier and allowing the richest to drive from A-B with greater ease.

Be prepared then for even bigger, more resource consuming cars as oil consumption becomes another form of conspicuous consumption.

So I guess what I am saying is that Bernies argument may well be right, indeed it should be given the fact that consumption of a finite resource is increasing, but since it is not good to be deterministic about this, rather than leading to a progressive shift in thinking re resources within the ruling class it would more likely lead to wealthy city states being surrounded by squalor as experienced by the lives of the poorest within the third world creeping ever closer. Politically this would not be able to continue ad infinitum but it is definately the way things are more likely to head.

<Brief culture interlude>
Incidentally if you get the chance, pop along to the cinema and watch George A Romeros new zombie movie Land of the Dead. It offers a critical view of a vision of wealthy city states surrounded by a poor underclass faced by a zombie hoard. As with all Romeros work it is a political allegory but you could take the zombies to mean whatever you wish, but they are the external threat.

If you replace zombies with a dwindling resource upon which we base our lives (ie the threat from peak oil) then Romero offers a vision that may be a potent metaphor for future developments.
</Brief culture interlude>

So the dangers of peak oil in causing a shock to society as a whole resulting in completely new way of thinking may be a bit of utopian wishful thinking. It will no doubt lead to increasing hunger and starvation, less mobility for the poorest who will be priced out of cars and even off trains and it may mean burning old shoes to keep warm in the winter, but those who live in the ivory towers and gated communities will not be giving a fuck as they are likely to continue regardless.

Wealthy individuals at present do not at present consume necessarily much more oil than the poor in the wealthiest societies any more than they consume more beans. But the wealthiest do have access to much that defines their conspicuos consumtion that the poor do not eg highest standards of nutrition. Oil I suspect as it becomes more scarce will be another resource that emphasises division.

To conclude:

What I am arguing here (I think) is in placing emphasis on the individual and the consumtion patterns of the individual will not necessarily challenge the status quo nor lead to progressive shift. The less oil we consume will mean all the more for them. Thus it is the challenge is a political one: instead of challenging consumer habits, as important as that may well be, the challenge has to be to the entire political status quo and the existing class structures or we become those stuck between the wealthy city state and the zombies representing external threat in the new Romero pic. We'll eat from bins and the rich will continue to fiddle with their furbies.

Incidentally I was sent this link today:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/4296848.stm

Behind the facade of a prosperous and growing cardiff city and wedged between the retail centre around the city centre and the glittering waterfront development we have Butetown, which is what is left of what was known as Tiger Bay. So in addressing the proplems of consumption do we lecuture the people of Butetown about their consuming patterns or the building corporations and multinationals of the bay and Queen Street?

We know for example that rearing animals uses far more resources than growing crops. So do we tell the poor to drop meat from their diet because we feel we have an oil problem?

Sure consumer habits have to change, but if we were to make that the core of our response to peak oil then we do a great disservice to the poorest and it does little to challenge the status quo. Indeed I can see why the wealthy might back any call for prudence on the part of the poor.

Incidentally it seems from the league published in the link above, the village I grew up in is ranked number 3 in the poverty table. As my brother dryly put it in the email he sent me with the link 'We're only number 3 this year....but we have big hopes for the new season."

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Ace post Herman. You've illustrated exactly *why* it's useful for greens and left to communicate. What you've shown is just how a resource analysis which isn't backed up by a class anaysis can end up saying remarkably dumb things.

More soon, just got up.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

<snip> Thus it is the challenge is a political one: instead of challenging consumer habits, as important as that may well be, the challenge has to be to the entire political status quo and the existing class structures .<snip>

I think we see the division you describe reflected in our current political process. Already we have seriously impoverished communities in the UK, but the party of government is selected, for all practical purposes by a few thousand relatively prosperous people in marginal constituencies.

What I was thinking when I wrote the stuff you quoted though, wasn't that individual consumer action was going to do anything much about this situation. It was more along the lines of thinking that increasing resource pressure was likely to bring about a crisis which affected enough people to break the current political equilibrium, in which a few marginals control everything.

In terms of of the potential for autonomous action, I'm thinking more in terms of our communities fighting to control the means of production for their basic needs and hence taking resources and especially their labour out of that system. The more I think about this stuff though, the more its clear to me that by itself that is not enough. Capital lays claim to almost all of the necessary resources and increasingly, any electable UK government is turning the few resources that it still controls in the name of the public good, over to capital. Right now however, the stranglehold of capital on central government looks pretty much unbreakable and any political challenge at that level is going to be subject to the constraints that gurrier's analysis (linked above) of parliamentary Green Parties describes.

What seems possible to me as an approach is the sort of thing that Bookchin describes in Libertarian Municipalism because it operates at a level where direct communication can potentially be heard over the noise of the mass media, but at least potentially could have enough mass support to have a clear claim to legitimacy in controlling local resources in the name of the community and to create a base from which to oppose centralised power.

This is kind of provisonal thinking on my part and if you can shoot holes in it, please go ahead because I certainly could use some help thinking it through.

 

[herman]

Edited to add: I composed this the same time as you were posting your post so it may not address any of your points directly....

Incidentally there was a series recently called I believe "What if..." exploring some of the potential pitfalls for society. The one that interested me was the one that dealt with gated communities. These are already common where the well off want the urban life but without the dangers (or at least as what they perceive as dangers) that face others.

These communities are about security and protecting their stuff from crime. So what is the implication of this...

Ok the daily mail readers fear crime but this is no suprise but note there is no big gates and security between the neighbours within the gated community. They do not fear being robbed by one another.

Now without getting all socialogical about crime much of it is caused by poverty. Even where some my point to heroin users in their community as behind a lot of crime on property (sometimes correctly) wealthy heroin users are not breaking into one anothers houses. They can afford not to. But the poor who cannot afford what they need (whether its drugs or a square meal) may be reduced to begging or stealing.

So back to the oil. Scarcity of oil as you have identified frequently impact upon many resources that we need to survive (as in your food example). We need food. But rather than seeing the effects of oil shortage across the board it may be wise to consider how the well off already deal with things of which they have access to plenty which may be more scarce to the rest of us- they shut themselves away and employ private security to guard their stuff. The well off also have the ear of the state who come down heavily on the poor who steal from them, while hardly bothering to investigate property crime at all in working class areas.

Some may argue that this would lead to a inevitably to a revolutionary situation. But this would be a misreading of revolutionary theory (particularly dialectics) which is far from so mechanistic and deterministic.

Middle class lifestyle could be maintained through oil shortage by co opting a section of the working class in the form of police, millitary and private security to protect themselves or even by backing paramilitaries or death squads.

It must be noted that under conditions where oil becomes a rare commodity that there is no way a an education, welfare state or health service could function alongside stark class divisions. If oil becomes scare then products dependent on oil as you have clearly illustrated in another thread also beome scarce. It would be the poorest hit first and the fuctions of the state that act as a safety net would surely be one of the casualties.

One only has to look at countries such as Brazil to see how a state would function where the poor and the wealthy life in relatively close approximation to one another- the conspicuous consumption of the wealthy only streets away from the life of grinding poverty of others.

It is often too easy when looking at issues of resources to conclude that we all consume less but when we look at the nature of wealth distribution, the conclusion should be that it is not that everyone should consume less but that the pointy end of the pyramid is consuming near enough everything in the quest for a return on their capital. Flat tax as proposed by the tories will only make this worse.

Incidentally I was interested to read on the BBC website that the tories propose a flat tax of 22% which would mean that these tax cuts would benefit only the better off. Since as I suggested in my previous post the wealthy on a personal level may not consume much more food or oil on a day to day basis than a working class family ,they will after their weekly grocery trip to harrods (or whereever the fuck they by their grub) be left with more money than before - the only thing they will do with this extra money is convert this money into capital to make even more wealth. So be prapared for viral marketing to force more junk such as plastic luck 8 balls, furbies, pogs and phones with more features than anyone could possibly need.

There does need to be a change in consumtion of oil and other resources and a few more income tax bands could see to it that this happens.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

<snip> So back to the oil. Scarcity of oil as you have identified frequently impact upon many resources that we need to survive (as in your food example). We need food. But rather than seeing the effects of oil shortage across the board it may be wise to consider how the well off already deal with things of which they have access to plenty which may be more scarce to the rest of us- they shut themselves away and employ private security to guard their stuff. The well off also have the ear of the state who come down heavily on the poor who steal from them, while hardly bothering to investigate property crime at all in working class areas.

Some may argue that this would lead to a inevitably to a revolutionary situation. But this would be a misreading of revolutionary theory (particularly dialectics) which is far from so mechanistic and deterministic.

Middle class lifestyle could be maintained through oil shortage by co opting a section of the working class in the form of police, millitary and private security to protect themselves or even by backing paramilitaries or death squads.

It must be noted that under conditions where oil becomes a rare commodity that there is no way a an education, welfare state or health service could function alongside stark class divisions. If oil becomes scare then products dependent on oil as you have clearly illustrated in another thread also beome scarce. It would be the poorest hit first and the fuctions of the state that act as a safety net would surely be one of the casualties.

One only has to look at countries such as Brazil to see how a state would function where the poor and the wealthy life in relatively close approximation to one another- the conspicuous consumption of the wealthy only streets away from the life of grinding poverty of others.<snip>

I think it's pretty clear from the WTO on down to Number 10 that the prevailing tendency is to reject the social functions of the state in favour of corporate welfare and various other forms of corruption and most especially repression.

That creates a problem but I'd argue it also creates an opportunity. If you sit down and work out what sustainability means in practice, as greens are often prone to point out, most of it works at the local level. I'd also point out that it doesn't actually require massive resouces to achieve a basic minimum far superior to the life of a european peasant in the middle ages or pretty much anyone except the elites in the developing world. Enough land to grow stuff, some technology that can almost entirely (the main exceptions are stuff like microprocessors or rare materials that aren't available locally) be produced by local light industry and that's about it. So there is a geographic component which is key. If we are to be sustainable, that almost certainly means being sustainable together with all the other people who live in walking distance from you.

Removing the "safety net" and retaining only the repressive functions of the state is clearly the direction in which the international and national political/economic systems are moving. So I think there is no choice if we want to have decent lives to replace that safety net locally. To me that indicates that the foundation of effective change is local political legitimacy for the necessary actions and the pressure to bring about that change is also local.

Once you have effective local politics, built around the increasingly clear necessity of doing this stuff to secure a decent life, you have a base sufficient to think about opposing the state and the international system.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

<snip> Middle class lifestyle could be maintained through oil shortage by co opting a section of the working class in the form of police, millitary and private security to protect themselves or even by backing paramilitaries or death squads.<snip>

This is going to be a tricky balancing act for the present world order to pull off though. That middle class is eventually going to shrink to the point where parliamentary legitimacy is no longer feasible, due to a variety of mechanisms already starting to kick in.

For me, the clever trick is to start building alternatives and most of all, clarifying the choices ahead in the minds of as many people as possible, before that transition occurs. So the transition is not entirely to some awful third-world repressive shithole, with a tiny elite protected by gunships and death squads from the teeming, suffering, starving, desperate masses.

 

[herman]

I think it's pretty clear from the WTO on down to Number 10 that the prevailing tendency is to reject the social functions of the state in favour of corporate welfare and various other forms of corruption and most especially repression.

That creates a problem but I'd argue it also creates an opportunity. If you sit down and work out what sustainability means in practice, as greens are often prone to point out, most of it works at the local level. I'd also point out that it doesn't actually require massive resouces to achieve a basic minimum far superior to the life of a european peasant in the middle ages or pretty much anyone except the elites in the developing world. Enough land to grow stuff, some technology that can almost entirely (the main exceptions are stuff like microprocessors or rare materials that aren't available locally) be produced by local light industry and that's about it. So there is a geographic component which is key. If we are to be sustainable, that almost certainly means being sustainable together with all the other people who live in walking distance from you.

Removing the "safety net" and retaining only the repressive functions of the state is clearly the direction in which the international and national political/economic systems are moving. So I think there is no choice if we want to have decent lives to replace that safety net locally. To me that indicates that the foundation of effective change is local political legitimacy for the necessary actions and the pressure to bring about that change is also local.

Once you have effective local politics, built around the increasingly clear necessity of doing this stuff to secure a decent life, you have a base sufficient to think about opposing the state and the international system.

While I take on board much of what you say about devolving power structures I would take issue with the proposal that:

"So I think there is no choice if we want to have decent lives to replace that safety net locally."

While it may sound progressive to devolve welfare it is extremely reactionary and it is in step with the developing New Labour thinking when Frank Field and co started talking up communitarianism in the 1990s. While production/consumption can surely be devolved welfare is not production.

The local safety net is also in tune with what Thatcher would have termed Victorian values.

Welfare after all should not be just about safety net but also have a redistributive character. In working class areas local responses to welfare issues would be a case of the redistribution of poverty and not of wealth on the other hand a national progressive income tax or tax on profits to fund would be far more redistributive, more so than NI contribution.

I take this line not as any particular dogmatic opposition to all things local but because the uneven distribution of wealth in geographic terms. Local responses to welfare would allow wealthy people in wealthy areas getting of lightly while the poor would be left in other areas to support the poorer.

But this takes us a little off the topic of the thread so...

There is indeed a nonsense. Part of it due to the fixation of capital with dead capital. Capital is making wealth as long as good are being produced and consumed. However stock in a warehouse does not realise a return until it goes to the shop and is bought. This leads to such practice as JIT and our motorways become rolling warehouses as lorries laden with stock snake up and down the country. This may mean that food produced for supermarkets in Sussex may be transported to a disrtibution centre several hundred miles away only to be placed on a second lorry which takes the food to a supermarket maybe only a few miles from the original production site.

This all of course be addressed through central planning because for me central planning does not negate local solutions but make them possible and practical. In the digital age central solutions that enable local production/consumption become more feasible than ever.

I think it was the conservative economist Ludwig Von Mises that argued socialism could not work because when planning the planners could not know what the market required at a particular time. So of course the right would propose that what should happen is that capitalists would employ people people to make stuff and if it doesn't sell then the business goes under, and this was the most efficent way to sort out what was and was not needed.

Maybe in the age of the paper office and filing cabinets the Soviet Union would have certain inefficiencies in this respect- by the time the paper was pushed around and production sorted it maybe that demand had altered. However IT and the internet opens new possibilities in matching the producers to demand a local shopkeeper could for example be given access to a computer system which while central would be able to match his or her orders with the nearest available producers. The central component for example being essential where some areas may be in surplus while others may not.

Centralising of economic activity does not necessarily have to mean that products have to go hundreds of miles just to come back again.

The model you have cited in Cuba is as an illustration is one that drives home the point I'm sort of getting at.