Sustainability vs standard of living ... ?

[rioted]

The free market, is a system, it's a tool, with a purpose, nothing more.

So in the free market what happens to people who can't afford the "market rate"? They die. And people who accept the market must accept that.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I think you're in danger of being dismissed as a lifestylist, Bernie.

(I agree with you)

If that's the price to get a dialogue going ...

It's almost like the issue of sustainability doesn't exist in this forum except in the form of the Green Party and what's up with them.

This seems incredibly strange to me, given the rather obvious political significance of many of the main sustainability issues.

 

[Crispy]

Maybe it's not just mainstream politicians (and their supporters) who have their heads in the sand. Or maybe it's just a numbers game. The number of capitalists thinking properly about sustainability is small (Amery Lovins I guess) but the similarly small fraction of the non-mainstream is even smaller and therefore unheard?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Maybe it's not just mainstream politicians (and their supporters) who have their heads in the sand. Or maybe it's just a numbers game. The number of capitalists thinking properly about sustainability is small (Amery Lovins I guess) but the similarly small fraction of the non-mainstream is even smaller and therefore unheard?

Maybe, or perhaps it's a disinclination to think about politics except in terms of political parties? I notice a fair bit of interest in holding the Green Party to account for various things, but not so much in actually discussing how sustainability and class interact for example, which I think would be much more interesting myself.

 

[catch]

It's pretty explicity in Marx that capital (and individual capitals) must expand - M-C-M' - or cease to be capital any longer. Capital's expansion, M-C-M', is dependent on the expropriation of surplus labour into capital, and therefore on a class system. The problem with any idea of sustainable capitalism is it ignores the internal logic of the system it's trying to manage. I think Greens have worked out pretty well (in some cases) that capitalism means constant expansion, and that constant expansion means inherent waste and ecological damage. What's missing is an analysis of why that expansion is necessary.

Apologies for a bit of GPEW bashing on this thread, but I've done some here.

Loren Goldner's Ficticious Capital and Communism covers some of this to an extent. I'm not convinced by the start of the article, but the conclusions are decent. Similar to Bookchin's post-scarcity/urbanisation writing, along with suggesting an international stock-take along the lines of Kropotkin's suggested one in the conquest of bread.

More articles by Goldner (which I've not read) here, although nothing obviously relevant to the discussion: http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Interesting stuff catch. I'm still chugging through it right now ...

 

[parallelepipete]

Bernie,

Just sticking my head up above the parapet here as a Green type. Excellent thread topic, and I'm reading through the sources linked. (It really chimes with my current confusion over relative merits of political ecology and socialism - I'm SGP, my neighbour's SSP and we end up talking politics every time we bump into each other )

Hopefully back here tomorrow with something constructive to say...

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Interesting. I found another similar paper on that Goldner site. This bit is in reply to some critical comments from Aufheben (which I haven't found yet, anyone know where they are?) presumably about the stuff catch linked above.

All of these forms of looting--the exchange of non-equivalents with petty producers, raw materials and the environment outside the closed system, and with wage-laborers, plant and infrastructure within the closed system--, increase the total surplus value available to prop up capitalists' paper titles to wealth above and beyond the surplus value produced in the closed system through the exchange of equivalents (the assumption of vols. I and II of Capital). These titles to profit, interest and ground rent can continue their valorization process (M-C-M') as long as sufficient surplus value is produced within the closed system, and outside it, to support them. Capital as a whole can expand, for a time, while social reproduction contracts, just as a living organism can go on living, for a while, while it is consumed by cancer. When the total surplus value available on a world scale can no longer adequately sustain the total profit, interest and ground rent claims on it, there is a direct deflationary collapse, such as the one we may be witnessing today (summer 2003). <snip>

We see this looting today in the trillions in debt crushing the economies of the Third World, and such countries being obliged to ravage their resources to merely service the interest on this debt; we see it in massive environmental destruction. We see it in the global warming occasioned by fossil fuel emissions, emissions from technologies and fuels that a healthy society would have long ago scrapped and superceded. We see it in the flood of immigrants from the bankrupted regions of the world ruined by decades of debt service. We see it in the proliferation of U.S. type workfare programs and of the working poor, where millions are employed at starvation wages performing infrastructural work previous done by blue-collar workers paid at reproductive levels.

source

 

[sihhi]

Interesting. I found another similar paper on that Goldner site. This bit is in reply to some critical comments from Aufheben (which I haven't found yet, anyone know where they are?) presumably about the stuff catch linked above. source

Aufheben's original review of ch1 of Remaking of the American Working Class:
http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/aufhebencomments.html#_ftnref6

Aufheben's response to the author Goldner's defence is here:
http://www.geocities.com/aufheben2/auf_lg_reply.html

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Star

 

[Bernie Gunther]

"If letting poor people die" is the free market solution, hammers should be banned from sale because they don't feed people either.

The free market, is a system, it's a tool, with a purpose, nothing more. No one is pretending otherwise.

Well, to push your analogy a little bit further, I think there are rather a lot of people who would want us all to eat hammers, and they seem to be in charge most places.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

That was a good thread- where's it gone?

Soil degradation which you mentioned on that thread- good pictures maps here:--
http://lime.isric.nl/index.cfm?contentid=158

For once, people in Turkey were talking seriously about it on radio... govt people saying we're making investments buying new tractors new machinery new everything-- but it's not making any difference like it used to before.
People saying we should stop exporting peaches and watermelons and get back to doing maize.

I'm not sure quite what happened to that thread. I think I was away working for a few weeks and it'd died when I came back.

Soil erosion and loss of ecosystem services in general is an increasingly severe problem. I've found some of Harry Cleaver's stuff quite useful in understanding why an industrial agriculture system which does so much damage was exported so enthusiastically to the developing world (e.g. "Contradictions of the Green Revolution" and later works at the link above)

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I found this one particularly useful Technology as Political Weaponry

Thus the question to be addressed here is how are the technologies embodied in and used to produce such commodities as automobiles, food grains, or Hostess Twinkies "political weapons"?

 

[parallelepipete]

It would appear that the steps required to mitigate disaster are so 'politically unsaleable' to the 'mainstream' political parties that it is left to the likes of the BNP to attend 'Resource Depletion' conferences (see The Politics of Peak Oil and Fascism).

I'm puzzled by that article, because it implies that peak oil is not on the agenda of the green movement. It very much is, judging from e-mails on the green political mailing lists I'm a member of and local groups. Though we do need to wake up to the possibility that peak oil may benefit the far right more than green policies.

As to BG's question of what we should do when sustainability and economic progress (a.k.a. 'standard of living', not 'quality of life', am I correct?) clash:

We need to push hard to convince people to realise that (a) these two objectives will clash, inevitably, (b) without sustainability, economic progress is doomed to collapse anyway, and therefore (c) that the sooner we prioritise sustainability, the softer the landing. The net energy concept correctly states that to get the renewable economy going quickly, we need energy from fossil fuels to help product the infrastructure of renewable generation, and the longer we leave it, the scarcer and more expensive that fuel will be, and the sharper the drop in economic progress due to chronic power shortages.

But the problem appears to be the same for political ecology in its aims of substituting broad 'quality of life' measures for the current 'economic progress/GNP' as it is for socialism: how do you introduce it in one country when the immediate effect of radical environmental policies (e.g. comprehensive resource taxation, end of subsidies or grants for industry sectors like aviation or automotive) will of resource flight? There seems little prospect of an ecological (or socialist) revolution sweeping the world just yet...

(this is more thinking aloud for my own benefit at the mo, but please point out inaccuracies)

PS. What is the socialist stance on which of 'standard of living' or 'quality of life' is the preferred index of progress, and how would they measure it?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

<snip> But the problem appears to be the same for political ecology in its aims of substituting broad 'quality of life' measures for the current 'economic progress/GNP' as it is for socialism: how do you introduce it in one country when the immediate effect of radical environmental policies (e.g. comprehensive resource taxation, end of subsidies or grants for industry sectors like aviation or automotive) will of resource flight? There seems little prospect of an ecological (or socialist) revolution sweeping the world just yet...<snip>

This is a bit of a puzzle to me too. The process you've just described is why no electable national party is going to do anything genuinely effective about sustainability.

The other route that sort of sounds like it might be worth exploring is to try to build social and economic structures at the micro level that would be resilient in these circumstances. The problem is though, a few eco-villages full of mostly middle class hippies (on the assumption they're self-financing that's the demographic you'd get) is not going to be much use at all.

What you actually need I think is a mass movement aimed at sustainable neighbourhoods or something like that. Now there are economic incentives for that, potentially. Fuel costs right now, and if oil continue high or goes high long term as it may well, food costs. These are problems affecting the working classes that such a strategy of grass-roots sustainability could help to mitigate. Look at urban agriculture in Cuba for example.

Politically, one of the interesting things about that is that (if you did it right) you could end up with something that looks quite a lot like some anarchist and communist forms.

 

[totaladdict]

What you actually need I think is a mass movement aimed at sustainable neighbourhoods or something like that. Now there are economic incentives for that, potentially. Fuel costs right now, and if oil continue high or goes high long term as it may well, food costs. These are problems affecting the working classes that such a strategy of grass-roots sustainability could help to mitigate.

What kind of forms do you see this taking? Are there any projects going on near you for example, things you know of that are happening here in the UK? The cuban example is useful to look at for ideas, and as an example of what can be achieved, but what's happening here?

Lets schemes? Wwoof farms? permaculture centres? local food networks? allotments (increasingly under pressure from developers looking to build houses)? farmers markets? er....?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

There are plenty of small scale things going on, which means the knowledge and the skills are there, but I think the conditions are now only just arriving for that to have any potential to translate into a mass movement. If oil costs continue high, then food costs will start to go up as well as fuel costs. That is a situation with a huge potential to extend all those pilot schemes we've been working on since the last major oil crisis in the 1970's, into something genuinely relevant for almost everybody.

The clever trick is to do this with the end in view of putting food and energy security under local, democratic control. Giant wind farms and nuclear power stations, subsidised by the taxpayer just become another means of capitalist exploitation. Local food and energy security is far more desirable and is a very good goal to aim for.

All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions.

To get the means of production for our most basic needs under our control.

Dig for Victory

 

[sihhi]

Local food and energy security is far more desirable and is a very good goal to aim for. To get the means of production for our most basic needs under our control.

I agree with this- but this is usually the hardest part especially given that initial investment in securing personal food/energy security is sometimes quite high.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I agree with this- but this is usually the hardest part especially given that initial investment in securing personal food/energy security is sometimes quite high.

Yes but it's very powerful. Imagine if the miners in the 1980's had been able to guarantee their basic survival needs using resources they controlled. It seems possible to me, that working class communities could take responsibility for their own food and maybe also energy security needs. There is a real economic motivation.

 

[ska invita]

If oil costs continue high, then food costs will start to go up as well as fuel costs. That is a situation with a huge potential to extend all those pilot schemes we've been working on since the last major oil crisis in the 1970's, into something genuinely relevant for almost everybody.

Yes, this "oil crisis" was so easily brought about, and points to how things always have to get worse before they get better. Ultimately no amount of small scale community projects are going to divert The World from where its heading environmentaly, without action taken from the top.

Sustainablity requires such radical changes that cannot be achieved without radical political overhaul or extreme natural disaster. My money is on natural disaster coming first.

Once disaster gets visited more regularly and on larger scale, only then will the average man and women demand sustainability over their own living standards. That "fear of god" just isnt there yet...but a few more global warming related natural disasters and i reckon that fear will come...Personally, Im scared now!

p.s.
portugal build worlds biggest solar plant: http://www.guardian.co.uk/renewable/Story/0,2763,1570304,00.html
Green energy costs 'extra £1bn' http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/4250982.stm
'Warming link' to big hurricanes http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4249138.stm

 

[clv101]

Humans aren't bacteria on a petri dish though tobyjug.

Are we not? Can you suggest any ways in which the behaviour of human civiliation on a macro level differs from that of bacteria on a petri dish?

 

[Crispy]

Are we not? Can you suggest any ways in which the behaviour of human civiliation on a macro level differs from that of bacteria on a petri dish?

We reproduce several orders of magnitude more slowly.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Are we not? Can you suggest any ways in which the behaviour of human civiliation on a macro level differs from that of bacteria on a petri dish?

Yes. Here's the short answer, but I have longer ones. Bacteria are simple creatures with a relatively limited repetroire of responses to their environmental conditions.

We are not. We have all kinds of available strategies for finding a sustainable equilibrium based on solar flows rather than fossil fuel stores. This leads me to conclude that we are potentially much better equipped than bacteria.

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/REQVAR.html

 

[clv101]

Yes. Here's the short answer, but I have longer ones. Bacteria are simple creatures with a relatively limited repetroire of responses to their environmental conditions.

We are not. We have all kinds of available strategies for finding a sustainable equilibrium based on solar flows rather than fossil fuel stores. This leads me to conclude that we are potentially much better equipped than bacteria.

http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/REQVAR.html

I agree humans have potentials that bacteria do not have however I see little if any of this potential for sustainability being actioned. Theoretical models for sustainable existence for billions of people have been constructed(See FEASTA) though I remain unconvinced of the transition to there from here. I'm a big fan of Limits to Growth and remain convinced we are significantly into environmental overshoot now with no alternative to a degree of collapse. I think energy shortage is the most likely trigger, but climate change or agriculture capacity are also candidates. I think many people would agree our current system is already in a state of collapse (are you aware of Richard Douthwaite's negative growth ideas?) which makes any kind of transition to sustainability next to imposable and getting harder day by day as ecological capital continues to be eroded.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

This guy? Good growth, bad growth

I think I might have seen some of his stuff before. Let me get back to you after I've had a look.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

OK, interesting.

On the question of transition, again I start thinking in terms of cybernetics and variety. The problem is that globalised capitalism doesn't have any responses that don't involve what your man Douthwaite might call "bad growth", so the question is where do you get other responses from. I think you have to build the necessary structures a) alongside capitalism right now, by harnessing the momentum provided by real day to day issues like fuel and food costs, b) do this on a variety of scales, so you have resilience in depth.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Here's something I thought might be interesting and relevant in the context of this discussion. I've been talking a bit about grass-roots processes addressing real world environmental concerns and which can work right now.

Here's one that has been used with variations around the world since the mid-70's that might perhaps be useful as a concrete example.

In this proposal we are putting forward an entirely new concept in the field of housing, which covers financing, design, social structure, principles of ownership, and rate of growth. In place of houses that are completed before anyone knows who will live in them and are then sold as complete products, we propose a process in which the owner is intimately involved in the evolutionary design and construction of his own house. In place of high interest rates and ruinous mortgages, we propose a system that, with a very small initial investment, recycles the capital that it generates to begin more and more houses, without bank loans. We believe that this concept will help to solve the most fundamental problems in the housing shortage, in many countries.

Grassroots Housing Process

 

[Bernie Gunther]

A couple of snarky comments on another thread prompted me to bump this one. I would be very happy to discuss the very relevant question of how the traditional left's emphasis on material progress and the very real issues of sustainability, more or less invisible to most 19th and early 20th century thinkers, are to be reconciled.

Any takers?

 

[parallelepipete]

A couple of snarky comments on another thread prompted me to bump this one. I would be very happy to discuss the very relevant question of how the traditional left's emphasis on material progress and the very real issues of sustainability, more or less invisible to most 19th and early 20th century thinkers, are to be reconciled.

Any takers?

I'm around...

Don't suppose it was the by-election thread in UKP was it?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Well, my view is that with a few honourable exceptions, the only time the debate in question is even touched on is in the context of party vs party crap. I'm more interested in fundamental issues, not party vs party crap.