we have the world to win

So I was thinking today, with all of our technological innovations and productive capabilities, why don't we live in a world of material security for all? What's stopping us?

The obstacle, in my opinion, is an increasingly outdated mode of production. Our productive capacities are such that we no longer have a material necessity for capitalist wage labour and artificial scarcity, but the demand for profit creates an economic system that consistently depresses our productive capabilities and produces artificial scarcity, limiting the production and consumption of commodities to only that which can realize profit. We have reached an epoch of material abundance via the technological advancements and innovations of the past, but the old masters are refusing to let go of their death grip on wealth and power, their ownership of the means of production, finance, etc., stalling our transition to a post-capitalist society.

I think this attitude partially has its roots in the early days of capitalism, being influenced by a combination of factors including the emergence of the 'Protestant work ethic' in conjunction with the enclosure of English commons, anti-idleness and poverty legislation, poorhouses, and the transition of people (often forced) from serfdom into wage-labor. In this process, the idea of making money, and especially the idea of capital accumulations ("The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas" and all that Marxist jazz), took on a moral framework in which being idle (i.e., not making money) was seen as something immoral and sinful. In essence, wage labour became something almost sacred. And this attitude wasn't just limited to the growth of capitalism in Europe, but made its way to the New World as well. For example, the ethics of hard work and accumulation can be found in the writings of Benjamin Franklin, who coined the phrase "time is money":

Remember, that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labor, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, or rather thrown away, five shillings besides. [...] Remember, that money is the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on. Five shillings turned is six, turned again is seven and threepence, and so on, till it becomes a hundred pounds. The more there is of it, the more it produces every turning, so that the profits rise quicker and quicker. He that kills a breeding sow, destroys all her offspring to the thousandth generation. He that murders a crown, destroys all that it might have produced, even scores of pounds.

It may seem like there's no alternative, that we've reached the 'end of history' and the final phase of our socio-cultural evolution; but I honestly believe we have the capacity to create a world characterized by equality and material abundance in which things like distinctions of rich and poor and oppression truly become superfluous. I think this is precisely what Marx meant when he wrote, "The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win." The world he foresaw is a world of material abundance and social equality that no longer revolves around the realization of profit, with production primarily benefiting one class of owners, but the needs of all.

dalai lama environmental summit panel

I had an awesome time at the Environmental Summit Panel today. The discussion was interesting, the Dalai Lama was funny and inspiring, and the Red Hot Chili Pepper's set was pretty rad. And the best part was, I got to share the experience with a few of my really good friends.

One of the things that I think would've made the panel better, though, was including a Marxist ecologist to help connect some of the dots for them. (Speaking of 'Marxist,' it was great to see the audience, who applauded just about everything the Dalai Lama said, squirm and the silence that followed when he said, "Perhaps I am socialist. As far as social economy is concerned, I am Marxist.")

Most of the panelists, not including the Dalai Lama who openly stated that he's Marxist when it comes to social-economic theory, agreed that we need to rethink our economic structure in some way, but they never really touched upon how doing so within the context of capitalism is problematic to say the least. For one thing, they all seemed to agree that an economic system that depends on continued and uninterrupted expansion (i.e., indefinite growth) isn't an environmentally sustainable system, particularly when the drive for profit is the bottom line.

However, nobody really dealt with the problem that capital only functions when it grows and reproduces itself (i.e., creates surplus value and profit) in a process that arguably requires amplifying consumption, particularly to overcome the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and a shrinkage in the absolute mass of profit created via commodity production. And further exacerbating the problem, which was briefly mentioned, is the fact that, within the context of this system, negative externalities can actually contribute to economic growth.

Another thing that wasn't really touched upon was that if we truly want to change our collective behaviour in more environmentally sound ways, on an individual level as well as on the broader level of global production and distribution, we need to critically assess and rethink the current system that underlies our material reproduction and coerces our economic and consumptive behaviour.

Simply recycling and reusing clothes on an individual level isn't going to reduce our CO2 admissions from 400ppm to 350ppm since most of the pollution is produced by large industries, industrial farming, the military, the harvesting and processing of fossil fuels, etc., not to mention the fact that less consumption by consumers means a slowing and even collapsing capitalist economy (especially in the US, where consumption accounts for about 70% of GDP).

This, I think, also ties into the problem of conflicts between various industries and public interest when it comes to combating things like pollution and environmental degradation. For one, more environmentally sound policies would potentially make things more expensive, and could also cut into profits and restrict growth; and the companies we're trying to 'persuade' to further limit pollution have powerful lobbying power and put pressure on politicians (if they don't just outright buy them), and attempting to regulate them via legislation often results in inadequate compromises (e.g., weak cap and trade laws).

So the solution can't just be shifting to more individual 'green' activities, nor can it solely be through political reforms and regulations (i.e., laws), although both can be useful tools; it has to include a fundamental shift in the way we approach production, distribution, and even consumption. And one of the ways to achieve this is through better education and honest, open dialogues about what we all agree on and how to move forward in the direction we want to go—which hopefully includes taking care of our collective home.

I think that was one of the main points made by the Dalai Lama, which he returned to again and again. Changing our behaviour begins with becoming more educated, about ourselves and our environment, continually adjusting our worldview based upon the things we learn, strengthening our affection and compassion for others, realizing our potential as human beings, and then going out into the world and acting on that knowledge from a place of concern for the well-being of both ourselves and others.

All in all, it was a great way to spend the day and I'm glad that I was able to go. If nothing else, it inspired me to get back into my meditation practice and motivated me to continue trying to do what I can to make myself and the world a better place using all the tools at my disposal.

a hopeful thought

A bit abstract perhaps, but I think Jehu (@ReThePeople) offers an interesting analysis of ideas presented in chapter 1 of André Gorz's Critique of Economic Reason dealing with the nature of labour and its evolution throughout history, concluding that wage labour itself is incompatible with liberty and social emancipation, which itself suggests that true freedom means, and can only be realized through, liberation from the structural and personal forms of dependence that characterize wage-labour under capitalism, i.e., the end of wage labour itself.

As @ReThePeople puts it on Twitter, "This public sphere — that of markets, the state, and democracy — is not and can never be the realm of freedom" because "what we call the public sphere in society is actually the realm of slavery, of labor, the realm of pressing bodily needs and dependence." But, due to the historical progression of capitalism, a society in which the majority, rather than a minority, is emancipated from labour has been made possible thanks to the socialization of labour and technological advancements that capitalism itself has historically brought about.

The logic of capitalism, however, in combination with the private nature of capital and directly social nature of labour, fights against the very things that'd serve to help reduce, and possibly even eliminate, both crises (those caused by overproduction and those caused by the tendency of the rate of profit to fall) and unemployment, not to mention benefit the working class as a whole: things like minimizing hours of labour, maximizing hours of leisure, supplying workers with more freedom and autonomy in the workplace, and ultimately, even an end to wage labour itself.

At present, capitalism, in its fundamental drive to increase the mass of profits created through commodity production, thrives off of the exact opposite: maximizing hours of labour, minimizing hours of leisure, and workplace coercion, not to mention the 'creative destruction' of superfluous capital. But if people like Jehu are correct ("Wage Labor, Capitalism and Communism"), the material foundation for a future society in which the majority, rather than a minority, can and will be emancipated from labour has already been laid—one in which the very notion of work itself will become freer and more self-developing.

I find it a hopeful thought, at any rate.

treating the symptoms, not the disease

A friend of mine sent me a link to this article from Business Insider:

Two Senators Just Introduced A Bill That Could Neuter Wall Street

Probably too little too late since the damage (particularly to the working class) is already done, but if they can actually get this passed, it could be a good thing in that it'd at least help to temporarily stabilize the financial system, place tighter restricts on 'too-big-to-fail' banks, and protect the working class from having to fund more corporate bailouts.

I do find it interesting, though, that the ruling class, following the market's lead, seems to be finally moving in that direction, which makes me wonder if economic policy in general isn't more often than not just a reactive process of intellectually making sense of and bureaucratically codifying the effects of 'blind' material forces already at work, arising more out of the needs of capital to continuously expand (i.e., reproduce itself) than any kind of conscious planning.

As capitalism develops, and both the mass of superfluous (i.e., unproductive) capital and labour increase in conjunction with efficiencies in production, causing the rate of profit to fall and a shrinkage in the absolute mass of profit created, capitalists must find ways to overcome this, whether through encouraging debt spending, the opening of new markets, the 'creative destruction' of superfluous capital (mostly through state consumption), or creating ways to increase the mass of profit that via evolutions (i.e., innovations) in the means of production and finance that, in turn, set up the conditions for further overaccumulation and crises.

The problem with solutions of this kind, however, is that they can't permanently prevent things like overaccumulation, the rate of profit to fall, or reductions in the mass of profit. The causes of crises (as well imperialism, wealth inequality, etc.) are structural — they're inherent aspects of the way capitalism functions — so all they basically do is treat the symptoms and not the disease.