Ecosocialism and/or Degrowth?

8 October 2020 — Climate & Capitalism

Should the ecological left aim to reduce all consumption, or to radically transform the prevalent type of consumption?


Michael Löwy is the author of Ecosocialism: A Radical Alternative to Capitalist Catastrophe (Haymarket 2015), and emeritus research director in social sciences at the CNRS (National Center of Scientific Research)  in Paris.


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Video: The Economic Crisis & Crisis Theory II

13 June 2014 — Michael Hudson

This panel explored causes of the Great Recession and the continuing economic sluggishness since the recession’s ended, as well as how the left can respond to this situation. In keeping with the conference theme, panelists addressed what different analyses and theories imply about the kind of socioeconomic change that is called for.

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US: Retail Death Rattle Grows Louder

27 May 2014 — WashingtonsBlog

The definition of death rattle is a sound often produced by someone who is near death when fluids such as saliva and bronchial secretions accumulate in the throat and upper chest. The person can’t swallow and emits a deepening wheezing sound as they gasp for breath. This can go on for two or three days before death relieves them of their misery. The American retail industry is emitting an unmistakable wheezing sound as a long slow painful death approaches. Continue reading

Can the Top 10% Prop Up the Whole Economy? By Charles Hugh Smith

15 May 2014 — Washington’sBlog

Is the top 10% up to the task of borrowing and blowing enough money to prop up a debt and bubble-dependent economy?

Since the entire economy depends on consumption for its “growth,” and discretionary consumption is financed with either cash or debt, that leads to two questions: 1) who has cash to spend on non-essentials and 2) who is credit-worthy enough to borrow money for non-essentials?

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Video: Monsanto Baseball: Escaping Accountability in Corporate America

6 August 2013 — grtv 

deceptionsusa.com presents “Monsanto Baseball.” If you are Monsanto, you can commit the most egregious crimes against humanity but you are never guilty of any safety violations. In fact the EPA, FDA and USDA approve your products for public consumption.

Monsanto is a glaring example of everything that is wrong with Congress, the White House, the FDA, the EPA, the USDA, Media and Corporate America.

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Today’s World Environment Reflects Crisis Of Capitalist Civilization By Farooque Chowdhury

4 June, 2013 — Countercurrents

Today’s state of the world environment is the tribune of the crisis of capitalist civilization that carries all the contradictions the global economy creates; and the economy is owned by a handful of owners dispossessing the humanity, billions of the poor and the starved. Continue reading

Sequesters To Trim Government Debt; Malls Raise Consumer Debt for The “Sheeple” By Danny Schechter

4 March 2013 — Media Channel

Durban, South Africa: Back in 2002, South Africa hosted a UN environmental Summit on sustainability. It drew a rag tag army of green activists from all over the world, many excited to visit the now free South Africa that they fought for through the apartheid years, and hoping to meet members of the liberation movement led by Nelson Mandela.

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Technological Servitude By Joel S. Hirschhorn

5 January 2013

Everywhere I look outside my home I see people busy on their high tech devices, while driving, while walking, while shopping, while in groups of friends, while in restaurants, while waiting in doctor offices and hospitals, while sitting in toilets – everywhere.  While connected electronically, they are inattentive to and disconnected in physical reality.

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Marx, Keynes and China Today

10 Feb 2012 — Solidarity Economy

deng-keynes.jpg

Deng Xiaoping and John Maynard Keynes

Introduction

The international importance of China’s economy is twofold. The first is practical – the scale of China’s economic growth, its global impact, and the consequences for the improvement of the social conditions of China and the world’s population. The second is theoretical, including the potential international applicability of conclusions drawn from China’s economic policies.

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Argentina: Why President Fernandez Wins and Obama Loses By James Petras

31 October 2011 — Dissident Voice: Argentina: Why President Fernandez Wins and Obama Loses

On October 23rd of this year, President Cristina Fernandez won re-election receiving 54% of the vote, 37 percentage points higher than her nearest opponent.  The President’s coalition also swept the Congressional, Senatorial, Gubernatorial elections as well as 135 of the 136 municipal councils of Greater Buenos Aires.  In sharp contrast President Obama, according to recent polls, is trailing leading Republican Presidential candidates and is likely to lose control of both houses of Congress in the upcoming 2012 election.  What accounts for the monumental difference in voter preferences of incumbent presidents?  A comparative historical discussion of socio-economic and foreign policies as well as responses to profound economic crises is at the center of any explanation of the divergent results.

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The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard

4 February, 2008 — Yes Magazine

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

stuff-1.jpgCHAPTER 1:
INTRODUCTION
stuff-2.jpgCHAPTER 2:
EXTRACTION
stuff-3.jpgCHAPTER 3:
PRODUCTION
stuff-4.jpgCHAPTER 4:
DISTRIBUTION
stuff-5.jpgCHAPTER 5:
CONSUMPTION
stuff-6.jpgCHAPTER 6:
DISPOSAL
stuff-7.jpgCHAPTER 7:
ANOTHER WAY

READ:  Our Review of the Film, by Cecile Andrews

UNDERSTAND:  The Bigger Picture  gain a deeper understanding of consumption with these YES! Articles

TAKE ACTION:  10 Little and Big Things You Can Do  and YES! Stories of real people making changes

The Story of Stuff website
has many more resources, including an annotated script of the movie, a detailed glossary, facts, tips for holding a screening in your classroom or community, and more.

Sink or Swim in the capitalist ocean? By William Bowles

9 April 2008

When a group of so-called Aboriginals from I believe Borneo (or maybe it was Papua New Guinea) visited the UK recently they were gob-smacked to find homeless people on the streets of London. The concept ‘homelessness’ simply didn’t exist in their vocabulary and reinforced by the vast wealth that surrounded them (the ‘Aboriginal and the homeless). So too was the idea of the ‘nuclear family’. The concept of ‘living apart’ is totally alien to them.

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Media Lens: Advertising Climate Disaster – The Guardian’s Readers’ Editor Responds

MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media

November 1, 2007

The Guardian this week published an article by the readers’ editor, Siobhain Butterworth, discussing “the contradiction between what the Guardian has to say about environmental issues and what it advertises”. (Butterworth, ‘Open door – The readers’ editor on… the contradiction between what we say and the ads we run,’ The Guardian, October 29, 2007; www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2200887,00.html)

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Completely Carbonated by William Bowles

5 July 2007 — InvestigatingImperialism

garbage.jpgWell it’s started, in fact it’s more than started and it’s driving me mad. You know what I’m talking about, my fucking ‘carbon footprint’! Every time I hear the phrase, which is every damn day, it really pisses me off.

‘Carbon footprint’ is the new Osama, the new bogie man with which to frighten the kids. And as the campaign gathers speed, awful things happen to your mind; the ‘green virus’ infects you, there is no escape.

So last night I was in the kitchen getting a meal together and I had to open a new packet of spices and as I poured it into a container and then dumped the empty carton into the garbage can a strange feeling came over me; I was thinking about the fate of the empty carton.

Then I realised that it wasn’t the first time I’d been ‘possessed’ by the feeling whenever I threw out the crap my food comes packaged in. Bottles, wrapping, cans, every piece of junk mail, evokes the feeling that I’m fucking up the planet, even the stuff that goes into the orange recycling bag (who knows what really happens to it?).

But this is how it works isn’t it, once the media gets its hands on ‘my carbon footprint’, I’m buggered. Slowly but surely it worms its way into my consciousness. It’s not just the dedicated programming on ‘greening’ my life, every damn news broadcast has at least one piece on ‘what I can do’ to save the planet.

And it works, no matter how insulated you think you are from the predations of the media, engineered guilt worms its way into your mind. Every piece of garbage on the street; every time you see someone drop something, you want to tackle them (and get whacked for the privilege of ‘doing my bit’? Not likely).

The thing is this, it’s no bad thing to having our streets clean (people tell me that London is one of the dirtiest capital cities in the world) and it’s also true that the sheer volume of packaging our food and such comes packed in is ridiculous. This is what makes the ‘green’ propaganda campaign almost impossible to resist.

The point is however, that all of it entirely misses the target and deliberately so, for the objective is to shift the responsibility away from the economics of capitalism onto our shoulders whilst we stay loyal consumers, we’ll just consume ‘green’ crapola instead the usual crapola. And as predicted awhile back by yours truly, every damn product is now selling itself as ‘green’, even car insurance.

It’s one, giant con job and one of the major culprits is the BBC with its endless series of programmes on how ‘we’ can save the planet but not a one of them will actually raise the issue of the economics of capitalism being intrinsic to the problem, that unless this is dealt with, we’re buggered.

Earnest men with handlebar moustaches, invade our homes armed with meters to measure our electricity consumption, dig holes in the backyard to put our crap in, and all of it without mentioning the ‘c’ word.

Look they mean well these ‘green crusaders’, that’s part of the problem, for them it’s fun being green and it pays well too. Books and DVDs follow in rapid succession, in fact an entirely new industry is born and all the ‘new’ products that go with it.

Every year tens of thousands, if not millions of ‘new’ products hit the market, most don’t make it beyond one year before being consigned to the dustbin of market failures for one reason or another. And no matter whether the product is made of’ sustainable’ materials and processes or not, the sheer volume of raw materials consumed is absolutely necessary to the continuance of capitalism. Capital must reproduce itself and every market has a limit to what it can consume before it becomes saturated and a ‘new’ product has to be produced and a new market created for it.

It’s a self-perpetuating system with millions of jobs at stake, not to mention profits. Everything is interlocked and inter-dependent. Without our increasing consumption returns on investments diminish, the stockholders complain and new ways have to be found to keep the rate of return increasing. This means finding new markets, reducing the cost of production, inventing new products, ad infinitum.

How to counter this avalanche of capitalist ‘green’ propaganda? The latest Medialens piece illustrates to some degree the problem that confronts us. Titled ‘Melting Ice Sheets And Media Contradictions – An Exchange With George Monbiot’ reveals the contradictions inherent in capitalism allegedly trying to heal itself and the planet.

Monbiot is one of the very few anti-capitalist writers with access to the corporate media, principally the Guardian. The problem, as Medialens points out, is that Monbiot’s essays are immersed in advertising; for cars, air travel, booze, etc, aimed mainly at the ‘jet-set’.[1]

“Doesn’t this make a mockery of the Guardian’s claims to be responding to climate change? Is it really credible to expect a newspaper dependent on corporate advertising for 75 per cent of its revenue to seriously challenge the corporate system of which it’s a part and on which it depends? Why don’t you discuss this inherent contradiction in your journalism? — [Monbiot doesn’t] discuss this inherent contradiction in [his] journalism? — [that] the news reports, comment pieces and adverts that surround your work powerfully reinforce a ‘pathology of normalcy’ and prevent people from seeing the pathology for what it is.”

Medialens goes on:

“Isn’t it vitally important that this structural problem of the corporate mass media system be exposed? Doesn’t your silence on this issue indicate the very real limits of free speech in our ‘free press’?”

Monbiot agrees but suggests that ‘alternative’ sources of revenue be found for the corporate media and invites people to send him suggestions. The problem with the idea of’ alternatives’ is that it doesn’t matter what is advertised, whether ‘green’ or not, advertising and the corporate media are one and the same thing, abolish one and effectively you abolish the other. In other words, advertising is intrinsic to the corporate press, there are no alternatives unless one pays for the actual cost of a newspaper, which few would be prepared to do. The very nature of the corporate media is determined in the first place by its reliance on advertising; it defines its choice of what is ‘news’ and how events are covered, to expect anything else is self-delusion.

Medialens notes that the Guardian has an online adverts-free edition, at a cost of course, but fails to point out that the content of this edition has already made a profit from advertising! Effectively, online versions of print media are a license to print money, all that happens is that the content has been repackaged and sold again (and again). One way or the other, corporate media are totally dependent on advertising as the major source of revenue regardless of where it comes from.

Quite correctly, Medialens points out that supporting independent, non-corporate media is one answer but we know the problems that confront such enterprises. And it doesn’t address the issue of our being immersed in an ocean of capitalist propaganda, not only the corporate press and state-run media but local councils, the education system, and of course central government and business, have all jumped on the bandwagon.

‘Fighting global warming’ has become the leitmotiv of New Labour (after the ‘war on terror’) but obviously it excludes the central contradiction of the relationship between climate change and our economic system.

But it goes much further than the issue of climate change, for all climate change has done is reveal the contradictions of capitalist economics which is why for the government and business, it’s vital that there be no exposure of the connection between the two.

To some degree, it can be argued that the issue of climate change actually masks the central problem by diverting attention away from the essential nature of the economics of capitalism which is why the central propaganda message is what you can do about your carbon footprint’. And so far the campaign has been eminently successful in passing the buck. Who amongst us and aware of the issue, hasn’t felt what I feel every time an empty carton is tossed away?

Note

1. ‘Over the last 12 months, the GNM [Guardian News and Media] total audience accounted for: “20% of all champagne drunk. One in six of all city breaks taken. One in five Acorn ‘Urban Prosperity’. £1 in every £7 spent on computer hardware or software. 1/6 of all MP3 player expenditure.” http://www.adinfo-guardian.co.uk/display/research/total-audience/total-audience-facts.shtml

‘Little boxes, little boxes … they’re all made out of ticky-tack’ By William Bowles

3 February 2005

Some years ago, I don’t remember where, I read that entire swathes of Indonesian rain forest were cut down simply to make cardboard boxes for Japanese consumer electronics; tvs, hi-fi’s, fridges and so forth. The stat staggered me, these were after all, just damn cardboard boxes destined to be trashed. Millions of these boxes are manufactured all over the planet every year, consuming who knows how many trees just to transport consumer products. Add in the foam plastic liners made from petroleum products then the oil consumed to transport them all around the planet and you have one, vast consumption machine that uses enough raw material and energy to run an entire country and then some.

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