Capitalism as if the world matters

[Bernie Gunther]

There's a very interesting footnote in ch25 of Capital.

[17] Malthus, "Principles of Political Economy," pp. 215, 319, 320. In this work, Malthus finally discovers, with the help of Sismondi, the beautiful Trinity of capitalistic production: over-production, over-population, over-consumption — three very delicate monsters, indeed.

In this footnote and above in the main body of the chapter where he's talking about the reserve army of surplus labour, Marx seems to be saying that there is an inherent tendency in capitalism that produces most of the fundamental qualities we'd recognise as being unsustainable. I'm sure there are plenty of people here better qualified than I to expand on this point.

edited to add: I've just been reading Capital ch 25 over again, to make sure that it says what I think it does. It seems pretty clear to me that Marx is making a very strong case that over-production, over-population and over-consumption are inherently part of capitalism. Does anyone know of a convincing argument against his position? Or an alternative interpretation of what he's saying about accumulation that doesn't have these consequences?

 

[newbie]

The hunter-gatherer lifestyle is by no means required for sustainability. Are you maybe mixing sustainability up with primitivism or something like that?

sorry, I was being pressured to go out and native Americans were an immediate shorthand for a low/negligable impact society, not a prescription for how we should live. I'm certainly not a primitivist.

Maybe we need some sort of agreement as to what constitutes 'sustainability'?

No generation which depletes resources or alters the balance of nature can really be called sustainable. Whatever cultures may have done in the innocent past, we're now in an age which expects regular and adequate food, warmth, clean water and healthcare. Individually this is all perfectly reasonable: cumulatively it's unsustainable.

Species of birds, mammals etc live pretty much sustainably, but if something goes wrong (hard winter, flood, earthquake) individuals just die, there's no attempt to helicopter aid to them. A fanciful example in its way, but we humans have this notion that we're all individuals with some sort of expectation of a decent life. Indeed ordinary people now have aspirations far beyond anything even the wealthiest could have imagined only decades ago: levels of comfort, communication, mobility, entertainment... everything we do has an impact, perhaps small in isolation, but huge when cumulated together with all the millions of others.

Individual environmental impact can be reduced (perhaps) to levels which consume the natural resources far more slowly than currently. It cannot- IMO- be reduced so that there is no impact, simply because such an adjustment would necessitate a completely different attitude to life & death. You mentioned infanticide for population control, I could equally point to the crematorium industry- we simply don't have the space to bury everyone, so the fundamental compost value is lost- unsustainability in action!

 

[newbie]

It seems pretty clear to me that Marx is making a very strong case that over-production, over-population and over-consumption are inherently part of capitalism.

I agree entirely.

Could some other form of economic arrangement be found which didn't inherently lead to over-population and over-consumption (& thus over-production) and yet satisfies the population? To believe it could is an act of faith- unless you know of evidence?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Ah, OK. I think you can approach this in a quantitative way though. For example, sustainable energy basically comes down to the amount of existing solar flows that we can exploit. With other resources, for example soil nutrients, the limit within which we're sustainable is our capability to recycle them and support a given population at a given standard of living with available stocks. One key question is how much land you've got available to grow food and other useful sorts of biomass. Another is whether your processes for using these resources damage crucial ecosystem services.

I think you can get a grip on these numbers, at least to the point where you can do some reasonable feasibility calculations. That's why I think that a global population of say 2 billion is unquestionably technically sustainable in reasonable comfort (if you do it right) and that while we've got lots of oil and other non-renewable resources, we could in principle manage the transition out of our present untenable situation, over the course of a generation or two, without looking to the four horsemen for assistance.

I think capitalism is what stands in the way of that though, and for that matter any other centralising, totalising system that accumulates resources in a manner analogous to capital and so concentrates power in a way that makes resistance to further accumulation and unsustainable growth futile.

 

[newbie]

How?

How do you persuade the 20-something generation to have no children? Because short of some authoritarian nonsense neither you nor I want any part of, the only way to reduce the population from 6bn to 2bn is for everyone reading this, and all their contemporaries across the world, to not have chldren.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I agree entirely.

Could some other form of economic arrangement be found which didn't inherently lead to over-population and over-consumption (& thus over-production) and yet satisfies the population? To believe it could is an act of faith- unless you know of evidence?

Well, I'm fairly sure it could be done. Something like the set-up proposed in Kropotkin's Fields, Factories and Workshops with suitable modifications based on what we know that he didn't looks to me like a reasonable starting point.

There are any number of proposed schemes along those lines, which integrate agriculture, light industry and settlements around a mostly self-regulating community, with any stuff that doesn't make sense at the scale of a few hundred or a few thousand people being done by some sort of federation, which look promising to me. At that sort of scale, self-regulation appears to work in enough cases to convince me it's feasible.

There are also enough benefits in that way of life, and historical indications that many people would value those benefits highly if they had experience of them and/or thought they were achievable, to make me think it'd work.

The problem of course, is that the vast majority of resources are locked up by grow-or-die capitalism and hence nothing of the sort is likely to happen on a mass scale in the absence of some kind of very severe crisis. Given that capitalism looks like producing just such crises though, it seems to me sensible to try to figure this stuff out thoroughly, promote awareness of it and increase the number of people thinking along those lines in anticipation of the historical conditions that would make them feasible on a mass scale.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

How?

How do you persuade the 20-something generation to have no children? Because short of some authoritarian nonsense neither you nor I want any part of, the only way to reduce the population from 6bn to 2bn is for everyone reading this, and all their contemporaries across the world, to not have chldren.

It depends on the transition period. It's pretty well proven I think that given security and educated women with access to contraception, you don't get population growth on the present scale. As Marx shows pretty convincingly in Ch25 of Capital v1, that kind of population growth is a result of the needs of capitalism for a reserve army of surplus labour. You can see it in the stuff he quotes from various early political economists about the need to keep the poor numerous and healthy but serviceable and you can see it in action in the policies that we've been seeing in the developing world for the last half-century. see e.g. this

edited to add: population growth on the present global scale. Most of it is in the countries that are currently providing most of the industrial labour.

 

[catch]

How?

How do you persuade the 20-something generation to have no children? Because short of some authoritarian nonsense neither you nor I want any part of, the only way to reduce the population from 6bn to 2bn is for everyone reading this, and all their contemporaries across the world, to not have chldren.

You're looking at it the wrong way 'round. High standards of living in the west already lead to negative population replacement, so more egalitarian distribution of resources worldwide would reduce birth rates considerably. High birth rates are usually down to the need for lots of manual labour in farming, lack of security/provision for the elderly etc. etc. Fertility rates are declining in most places around the world now (although life expectancy is increasing in most places except the US).

The world value for r peaked around 1990 and has declined since. This is a reflection of the decline in total fertility rates (TFRs) in undeveloped countries, presumably as the various factors involved in the demographic transition take hold, e.g.,

* improved standard of living
* increased confidence that your children will survive to maturity
* improved status of women
* increased use of birth control measures

http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html

edit: or what Bernie said.

 

[newbie]

@ bernie

I'll take your word for that. I rather thought high birthrates were about parents hedging their bets: ensuring sufficient survival through childhood that there would be someone to provide for them in old age.

Either way population growth on any scale is incompatible with a 2/3 reduction in world population in a couple of generations.

 

[citydreams]

On birth rates:

The average age of giving birth in Australia has been increasing and is now 30. This will continue to increase and by 2010, 60% of newborn children will have a mother over 30 – compared with 20% in 1975. If current trends persist, 25% of women will remain childless – up from less than 10% a couple of generations ago.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I'll take your word for that. I rather thought high birthrates were about parents hedging their bets: ensuring sufficient survival through childhood that there would be someone to provide for them in old age.

Either way population growth on any scale is incompatible with a 2/3 reduction in world population in a couple of generations.

High birthrates are generally driven by the factor you mention, which is what I meant about security, but also by the inability of women in a given culture to make their own reproductive decisions.

As to feasibility, here's a graph of 20th century population growth.

http://www.prb.org/Content/Navigati...ation/Population_Growth/Population_Growth.htm

We started the 20th century with 1.6 billion and finished it with 6 billion. I think you're probably right that managing it down by civilised means would take more than a couple of generations, but it certainly isn't impossible to do over a century or so. In addition, the grim reality is that the damage we can already see in progress is very likely to reduce those numbers by non-civilised means over the course of this century, whether we like it or not.

 

[newbie]

You're looking at it the wrong way 'round.

I know, but Bernie is predicating his notion of sustainability on a huge population reduction. I'm trying to get my head round how he sees that happening. A reduction in the rate of increase of population, or even a stabilisation of population, isn't beyond imagination.

 

[catch]

I'll take your word for that. I rather thought high birthrates were about parents hedging their bets: ensuring sufficient survival through childhood that there would be someone to provide for them in old age.

Socialise that provision internationally and you have way less incentive to produce kids. If you look at the way pensions are going in the UK, we're moving towards the opposite of that - where increasing numbers of elderly people will be dependent on their children.

This stuff can't be done on an individual "I'm not going to have kids" or quota basis either, there are structural causes for population growth which can be dealt with. I think wastage and overconsumption of resources is much more of a problem though - much of our consumption has little to do with standard of living and is solely to do with servicing capital accumulation.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I know, but Bernie is predicating his notion of sustainability on a huge population reduction. I'm trying to get my head round how he sees that happening. A reduction in the rate of increase of population, or even a stabilisation of population, isn't beyond imagination.

No, I'm not. I've convinced myself that sustainability is barely possible with the numbers we have now, but it's likely to be pretty grim. Particularly in view of the rates of soil erosion and the likely impacts of climate change nearer the equator.

edited to add: Sustainability with our present EU levels of consumption looks like it's only feasible on a global scale with a population of about 2 billion, and assuming we don't mess things up any further than we already have. Sorry, I should have been clearer about the two different cases. The goal case is a decent life for however many people, but we have to manage the transition case to get there.

 

[newbie]

Socialise that provision internationally and you have way less incentive to produce kids. If you look at the way pensions are going in the UK, we're moving towards the opposite of that - where increasing numbers of elderly people will be dependent on their children.

This stuff can't be done on an individual "I'm not going to have kids" or quota basis either, there are structural causes for population growth which can be dealt with.

can be dealt with.... how? personally I reject all authoritarian ways of 'dealing with' such problems, so persuasion is the only tool available.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

can be dealt with.... how? personally I reject all authoritarian ways of 'dealing with' such problems, so persuasion is the only tool available.

Well, I think changing the structural factors is more important. For example, in the EU, we have educated women with access to contraception and mostly, despite the efforts of the right, we have barely functioning social security provisions. The elderly mostly don't starve or freeze to death for example, although I'm sure efforts will be made to change that. Our population growth is very low compared to say Rwanda or Malaysia.

 

[catch]

can be dealt with.... how? personally I reject all authoritarian ways of 'dealing with' such problems, so persuasion is the only tool available.

You don't need to persuade. People have less kids if they've got a certain level of material security, education etc. Areas with the highest population growth don't have these things. It's a matter of changing economic and social structures so there's no economic incentive to have loads of kids. And also trying to reorganise society so existing numbers of people (at least in the west) have a decent quality of life using less resources - get rid of commuting, decrease food miles, which can only be done effectively long term if production is socialised and self-managed by communities.

 

[newbie]

Well, I think changing the structural factors is more important. For example, in the EU, we have educated women with access to contraception and mostly, despite the efforts of the right, we have barely functioning social security provisions. The elderly mostly don't starve or freeze to death for example, although I'm sure efforts will be made to change that. Our population growth is very low compared to say Rwanda or Malaysia.

And our environmental impact is (I presume) massively greater than Rwanda. The value of human life is higher here- it shouldn't be, but it is. We can and do throw highly technological medical intervention at, eg, premature babies. They can't. For any attempt to move towards the goal case you mentioned we have to accept that there are aspects of what we have that are not justifiable, that the resources involved are better used in Rwanda.

Even if the population can be persuaded to give up capital accumulation because of the overconsumption catch mentioned, can they simultaneously be persuaded to have fewer children and not intervene in premature births? In the name of sustainability.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Well, the 2 billion figure I mentioned for the global goal case assumes that everybody has a standard of living about equal to what we have now. That includes medical intervention of an equivalent standard to the NHS etc.

One of the key features of present day capitalism is that the industrial workers in the developing world (as opposed to most of the people in the EU who have pretend service industry jobs to make them suitably affluent and compliant consumers) are in the position of industrial workers in say victorian England. Therefore they have every incentive to have lots of kids, because there are fuck all social security provisions for them and in all too many cases the women don't have access to either education or contraception.

If you look at the main drivers for global population growth, that's where you'll find them. If you look for the main drivers for global consumption, you'll find them in the developed world. If everybody in the world had a US level of consumption, the figure for the global sustainable population drops to around half a billion. (see e.g. Will the limits of the Earth's resources control human numbers? the site hosting this paper is a bit bonkers, but the paper itself was originally published in a peer-reviewed journal)

 

[newbie]

You don't need to persuade. People have less kids if they've got a certain level of material security, education etc. Areas with the highest population growth don't have these things. It's a matter of changing economic and social structures so there's no economic incentive to have loads of kids. And also trying to reorganise society so existing numbers of people (at least in the west) have a decent quality of life using less resources - get rid of commuting, decrease food miles, which can only be done effectively long term if production is socialised and self-managed by communities.

I hope you're right but this is a bit speculative. The population stats Bernie posted show that in the developed world population is still growing, though they predict this is in the process of levelling off. Places less well served by capitalism are expected to show massive population growth in the next few decades. If you don't intervene using force, as China and India have done, or at least persuade, that growth will continue to overwhealm any changes in social structures or improvements in economic wellbeing.

 

[catch]

can they simultaneously be persuaded to have fewer children and not intervene in premature births? In the name of sustainability.

Why would you do that? Why descend into barbarism to avoid barbarism? I'd rather deal with the effects of ecological crisis as and when they happen than manufacture them (eugenics, culls) as a preventative measure. Same as I'd hope that we'll see a resurgence in self-organisation and mutual aid in the working class as a response seeing what has happened in New Orleans after Katrina and other "natural" disasters whose effects are anything but natural. I for one don't want to get stuck in Walthamstow dogs stadium with armed police blocking the M11 when the Lea Valley reservoirs flood or whatever.

If premature births are more likely to survive, you'll have a lower birth rate overall because people will be confident that their offspring will make it to adulthood.

Obviously you'd want to make sure contraception is freely available and easily accessible - but that's something that should be done for social reasons, not just sustainability. Rather than focusing on premature babies (which are statistically not that relevant), how about redistributing medical care and research away from cosmetic surgery (for example) towards birth control. I think you're personalising this stuff - looking at it on an individual rather than social level, and that only leads to distopian scenarios.

 

[citydreams]

Even if the population can be persuaded to give up capital accumulation because of the overconsumption catch mentioned, can they simultaneously be persuaded to have fewer children and not intervene in premature births? In the name of sustainability.

I would strongly argue that they can. Firstly, I support the view that education allows us to make reasonable choices in the face of the population crisis. And secondly, I believe that necessity will dictate that a share of the world's resourses can only be based on aggregated units - for example, if energy were to become the dominant means of exchange then splitting the available energy up amongst communities seems the only fair means of allocation, thereby placing the burden of birth control as a communal value.

 

[rich!]

Ah OK. But sustainability doesn't require a hunter gatherer lifestyle. I dug some figures out on this for another thread and a hunter gatherer in our sort of climate needs hundreds of hectares per capita. That's obviously a non-starter without massive depopulation.

Well, I'm prepared to start on the depopulation if the rest of you are with me.

I suggest we begin with people who can't spell when posting, work out through random irritating drivers, and end up with top-posting conspiraloons.

By then, we should have hundreds of hectares each across these boards alone...

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Why would you do that? Why descend into barbarism to avoid barbarism? I'd rather deal with the effects of ecological crisis as and when they happen than manufacture them (eugenics, culls) as a preventative measure. Same as I'd hope that we'll see a resurgence in self-organisation and mutual aid in the working class as a response seeing what has happened in New Orleans after Katrina and other "natural" disasters whose effects are anything but natural. I for one don't want to get stuck in Walthamstow dogs stadium with armed police blocking the M11 when the Lea Valley reservoirs flood or whatever.<snip> looking at it on an individual rather than social level, and that only leads to distopian scenarios.

I tend to agree. That's why I think it's really important to propagate the alternative patterns as widely as possible and realise them as far as the present conditions allow.

One look at the civil contingencies act makes me very certain that I'd much rather trust my neighbours in a serious environmental crisis than Tony Blair.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

http://www.ukresilience.info/ccact/ here's the Civil Contingencies Act.

 

[totaladdict]

...I'd hope that we'll see a resurgence in self-organisation and mutual aid in the working class as a response seeing what has happened in New Orleans after Katrina and other "natural" disasters whose effects are anything but natural. I for one don't want to get stuck in Walthamstow dogs stadium with armed police blocking the M11 when the Lea Valley reservoirs flood or whatever.

This is probably a bit too hippy-like to be seen as gritty working class action, but in terms of self-organisation and mutual aid it sounds pretty interesting: http://www.welcomehome.org/rema/

"The idea was to setup a self-sufficient camp with food, medical, and security much like a small Rainbow gathering would be. This way there was no dependency on anyone else. This was felt to be the best way to truly help.

Well, it worked pretty good. The newly titled "Waveland Cafe" has been serving upwards of 5,000 people, 3 fresh hot meals a day now for weeks by working with the Bastrop Christian Outreach Center folks that had arrived early on the scene as well."

 

[newbie]

Why would you do that? Why descend into barbarism to avoid barbarism? I'd rather deal with the effects of ecological crisis as and when they happen than manufacture them (eugenics, culls) as a preventative measure.

Funnily enough I don't particularly wish to encourage barbarism. My underlying argument is that sustainability is inherently unattainable. The paper Bernie quotes can be read as supporting that view. I should say it pains me to reach that conclusion, but it seems inescapable, and I see no profit in pretending otherwise.

I also reject any authoritarian imposition to force change on people because it's good for them. So I guess I'm with you that waiting for the crisis to reach crescendo is preferable to attempting to pre-empt it.

That's a very tentative statement. I'd much prefer to come to some other conclusion, but I don't know how to without indulging in acts of faith.

I think you're personalising this stuff - looking at it on an individual rather than social level, and that only leads to distopian scenarios.

probably. I'm no academic, able to disentangle nuanced strands of argument or manipulate statistics in pursuit of a preferred conclusion.

 

[totaladdict]

On population, amartya sen has written some pretty sensible sounding things. This is from a few years ago, but the solutions are pretty similar to those bernie and catch have been suggesting:

"There are reasons for worry about the long-term effects of population growth on the environment; and there are strong reasons for concern about the adverse effects of high birth rates on the quality of life, especially of women. With greater opportunities for education (especially female education), reduction of mortality rates (especially of children), improvement in economic security (especially in old age), and greater participation of women in employment and in political action, fast reductions in birth rates can be expected to result through the decisions and actions of those whose lives depend on them."

And on overconsumption, this, from John Bellamy Foster:

"What is all too often overlooked in such calls for moral transformation is the central institutional fact of our society: what might be called the global "treadmill of production." The logic of this treadmill can be broken down into six elements.

First, built into this global system, and constituting its central rationale, is the increasing accumulation of wealth by a relatively small section of the population at the top of the social pyramid.

Second, there is a long-term movement of workers away from self-employment and into wage jobs that are contingent on the continual expansion of production.

Third, the competitive struggle between businesses necessitates on pain of extinction of the allocation of accumulated wealth to new, revolutionary technologies that serve to expand production.

Fourth, wants are manufactured in a manner that creates an insatiable hunger for more.

Fifth, government becomes increasingly responsible for promoting national economic development, while ensuring some degree of "social security" for a least a portion of its citizens.

Sixth, the dominant means of communication and education are part of the treadmill, serving to reinforce its priorities and values."

 

[Bernie Gunther]

If you want to avoid acts of faith, then the trick is to get quantitative. The best sustainable yields/hectare I know of are from John Jeavons/Alan Chadwick's bunch, who've been doing this stuff for about 40 yrs now. They get about 10,000 sq ft per capita to feed one human sustainably, given pessimistic but reasonable assumptions about irrigation etc. We've got about twice that per capita right now globally, not all of it good land, but their method improves land very effectively over a relatively short period.

Their method is more like gardening than farming though, so you could assume about 10hrs per capita per week in food production activities.

 

[catch]

Funnily enough I don't particularly wish to encourage barbarism.

Yeah I know that. But I get a bit worried when I see statements like "can they simultaneously be persuaded to have fewer children and not intervene in premature births? In the name of sustainability." Not intervening in premature births - assuming the technology and skills are available, seems like a step in that direction.

My underlying argument is that sustainability is inherently unattainable.... So I guess I'm with you that waiting for the crisis to reach crescendo is preferable to attempting to pre-empt it.

I'm not convinced that it's inherently unattainable. In my view, massive social change is a prerequisite to a sustainable society and has benefits to the majority of people in and of itself. If we get hit by a major crisis, I'd rather it was in a libertarian, democratic egalitarian society than the one we have now - or failing that at least one with strong mutual support networks between people in workplaces in communities that'll act as a buffer to the worst effects and leave people less vulnerable to the worst reactions by the state or criminals.

That's a very tentative statement. I'd much prefer to come to some other conclusion, but I don't know how to without indulging in acts of faith.

It's impossible to predict the future, however we can look at the latent potential in current society towards using resources more carefully and maintaining a high quality of life at the same time - things like having good mass transportation, reduced working hours, decent education across the board, improved energy efficiency of housing stock, some level of localised food and energy production - all have serious benefits whilst reducing consumption of different resourcesin most cases. Most of them are pretty much incompatible with capitalism though if applied on any scale. They may not avert a serious international ecological crisis, but they'll ensure people are better equipped to deal with its effects.