Pollution: no solution within capitalism (1987)

From the Winter 1987-88 issue of the World Socialist 

Opponents of socialism will sometimes admit that it would be a mighty fine thing and would certainly solve the major social problems. But first, they say, we need various reforms of capitalism now to deal with immediate problems.

Reforms solve nothing and in some cases leave things worse off than before because they leave untouched the basic fundamentals of capitalism: ownership of the tools of production by a small minority, with the consequence that the majority must hire themselves out for wages or salaries, and production with a view to profit. Therefore, all decisions to try to solve problems will be made with due regard to the profit motive, without which capitalism can't function. This explains why reforms fail and why parties which said at the outset that they stood for socialism, but first attempted to deal with immediate demands, ended up total reformist parties with a pretty crummy track record of not delivering the goods.

In the greater sense, socialists are the greatest reformers of all because the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism will solve mankind's social problems. Therefore, it will be one whacking big reform to end all reforms. It ought to be socialism that should be mankind's immediate demand, particularly in view of the fact that capitalism, through the operation of its profit motive, is fast destroying this planet.

Screwing up the earth

Let's look at some of the ways capitalism is doing such an excellent job of screwing up this earth. The people of Kiev and Bhopal know all too well that the environment can be ruinously affected by events beyond their control, such as a disaster at a nuclear plant or a chemical plant leak. Still, a recent opinion survey showed that 83 per cent of the public in Canada believe that protecting the environment is an individual responsibility. This argument is being foisted on the public by the Canadian government, with the assistance of the United Nations, which proclaimed June 5 last year "National Environment Day" to make people aware of the part they allegedly play as individuals in the dismal picture of pollution in Canada. In other words, the Canadian government is saying: don't blame us, the powers that be, blame your silly irresponsible selves.

In Canada various forests which are far from industrial areas are dying. Scientists say air pollution is the only plausible explanation for the deaths of a variety of forests which cover a wide area. Air pollution spews from hundreds of big coal-burning power plants and smelters and millions of industrial chimneys and motor vehicle exhaust pipes across North America. More than 50 million tonnes a year of sulphur and nitrogen oxides are released into the air over Canada and the United States each year, with the bulk in the eastern sector. Prevailing winds carry much of that to Quebec and the New England States and finally to the Atlantic Provinces before the residue blows out to sea. The fallout of sulphates from sulphur dioxide in the St Lawrence River area is twice the level set by federal and provincial governments (big joke) as the maximum acceptable for protecting most, though not all the lakes from acidification.

In much of Europe woodlands such as the Black Forest are withering, rotting and dying under the assault of air pollution, including acid rain. In West Germany they call the result waldsterben—forest death. Along the Appalachian Mountain range of the eastern United States the same type of forest destruction is underway. Trees, particularly Red Spruce on the high western slopes facing the US industrial heartland are dying. One forester said it looks as if someone had gone over the mountains with a blow torch.

Now green forests are turning grey in Canada. South of Quebec City the maple forests that make the area the world's maple syrup capital are dying in huge numbers. Trees that should last as long as two or three centuries are going bare in a few years. Their leaves perforated and necrotic and their branches shedding bark. Across a 25,000/square kilometer area south of Quebec City 82 per cent of the trees are affected.

A major international conference on forest decline was held in the Quebec City suburb of Ste Foy in 1983 at which Peter Schutt, Dean of Forestry at Munich University, said "in our country we are in a serious dilemma". Old forests are dying across nearly one-third of central Europe; it came so quickly that "the decline starts almost with the ringing of a bell".

It gives one an idea of how quickly these things develop to note that at the conference Canadian officials said that the wide-spread damage already in Europe was not seen in Canada. At most, there were scattered reports of maple trees dying unexpectedly, they said. Now the decline in the area only 50 kilometers south of Quebec City is a site for scientists and politicians from many countries to study and try to regulate air pollution, especially acid rain.

The pollution begins as colourless gases spewed from millions of chimneys, smoke stacks and exhaust pipes, which form invisible rivers of air pollution travelling hundreds, even thousands of kilometers. These corrosive gases, and the acids they form in the rain arid snow, can eat away the surface of leaves. They also percolate into the soil, destroying the food system of trees and attacking the roots.

Added to the acidic destruction of life in thousands of lakes in Canada and northern Europe, a major forest decline is like the second shoe dropping. Already 15,000 to 20,000 lakes in eastern Canada are considered to be acidic and 180,000 are considered to be at risk in the next decade or so. Most of the tree decline has been down wind of major pollution sources. In Quebec the most numerous deaths are in an area that is soaked with acid rain from US, Ontario and Quebec industries.

While Quebec is the worst area in Canada, it's not the only one. Ontario has small but sometimes severe areas of tree decline from the east shore of Lake Superior to the Quebec border. "Now you can go into any wood lot in Ontario and find tree decline", David McLaughlin of Ontario's Ministry of Environment said in an interview. He stated that a survey of three hundred maple syrup producers found reports of a decline in one-third of forests. Studies have found that tree growth in a number of areas declined about thirty years ago, "it just went into a tailspin" (Toronto Globe and Mail, September 26, 1986).

Paul Addison of the Canadian Forestry Service said the other area of forest decline is a band along the Fundy shoreline of New Brunswick. In addition there are scattered reports of abnormal tree deaths in other parts of the province. From Quebec the forest decline reaches south across the US border into the Sugar Bushes of Vermont and New Hampshire. Further south, in the Appalachians, tree decline is already so bad that it is being described as an ecological catastrophe in the making.

The Washington-based Conservation Foundation issued a report last spring saying high altitude Appalachian forests "are dead or dying on a massive scale and it is impossible to estimate how far this process may go" (Toronto Star, September 18,1986). Conrad Von Moltke of the Foundation said that the top of Mount Mitchell, the highest peak in the eastern United States, is now a wasteland. Forest decline has been reported as far south as Florida's eastern coastal plain and west into the heavily-polluted Ohio Valley. It is also found on the western and southern slopes of California mountains which are bathed in air pollution from the Los Angeles area. The trees in the mountains are commonly referred to as the "everbrowns".

In Canada the toll could be very high. The Maple Forests are not only a national symbol and part of a culture, but also part of a forest industry that directly or indirectly employs one Canadian in ten.

Ignorance about chemical toxicity

In a booklet called The Acid Rain Story Environment Canada says that "many forestry scientists in Canada and the United States are expecting serious, possibly irreversible soil and forest effects by the next twenty-five to one hundred years if acid levels being deposited remain constant or increase".

It was not until the fall of 1985 that the Canadian Forestry Service released a major study on forest decline, but even then it hedged its comments on the role of air pollution. But the study did say that "there is a danger involved in awaiting the completion of scientific studies before making policy decisions regarding pollution control. If long-range air pollution causes serious irreversible damage to forests, then the evidence comes too late".

Even if the governments of the various countries affected were capable of preventing this from happening, which given the profit-oriented nature of capitalism is highly unlikely, they would have to act and act fast The fact that none have shown any signs of acting fast is all the more reason why socialism should be mankind's most immediate demand. It must not be thought that politicians just don't care; many public officials are well-meaning. The plain fact is that they don't know how to deal with the problems, and there is in fact no way to deal with them within capitalism.

It is a complex problem because as yet we don't know everything about the effects of all the various chemicals in the atmosphere and water. First is the number of chemicals involved. Of the more than 7 million chemicals known some 50,000 are produced commercially and find their way into the environment Of these about 2,000 are sufficiently nasty to reach priority lists. The problem is thus vast and it is difficult to know where to start. Ironically, getting on the priority lists is as much a matter of news media attention as of the chemical's toxicity.

Second, to conduct a thorough assessment of the hazard requires extensive and expensive data on chemical properties and toxicity. Only a few hundred chemicals have been studied adequately and even for them there is doubt about their toxic effects at concentration levels which are, say, one-hundredth of that necessary to cause observable injury. We face an immense lack of knowledge.

Third, the chemicals come from many sources: industry, consumer products, leaky land-fills, incinerators, drifting in with air and water from abroad. In the early days of fighting pollution it was easy to point an accusing finger at the smoke stack or sewer. Now we have a multitude of sources.

The toxics migrate from soil to air to water to fish to gulls and cross-currents, and involve numerous government departments (which usually have difficulty co-operating). An excellent excuse for inaction is that any one specific move can affect only a few percent of the sources. The only hope for de-contamination is to stop the sources. The toxins that are unleashed in the environment are leaves in the wind tumbling out of control. Their recovery is impossible.

Improvements in analytical chemistry reveal new chemicals in new places as the frontiers of detection are pushed from parts per million to parts per billion, trillion and quadrillion. We now live not only in a chemical society but in a chemical ecosystem in which all toxic chemicals are present everywhere — in air, drinking water, food, and human tissues. Finding dioxins in drinking water should not make the headlines. If they are not found it is generally because the analysis was not sensitive (or expensive) enough. It is the absence that would be surprising, not the presence. The key quality is the magnitude of the concentration compared to toxic concentrations. Zero concentrations are simply not obtainable today.

Environmental science has realized only recently that water is the critical medium of contamination. Soil contamination is usually local, but water acts as a vehicle to transport toxins along the rivers that flow into the lakes to the cities beyond. It serves as a source for food chain transfer from water to fish to humans. Fish, and creatures like gulls who eat them, are the key signals of contamination — the modern coal-mine canaries. And the signals are disturbing. It has been suggested that one of the best sensors is the domestic "watch cat" fed continuously with local fish. When the cat goes crazy, the humans may be next. At Grassy Narrows cats were among the first to show symptoms of mercury poisoning.

Fundamental change necessary

As bleak as the above may seem, the technology exists to solve this problem. In some areas some measure of success has been attained. Various rivers and estuaries in Britain (including the Thames) and the United States are being restored by stopping sources of pollution. The St John River in New Brunswick was cleaned up by thoughtful, co-ordinated effort.

But will this technology be used on a wide scale within capitalism to solve these problems? No, because to do so the various governments concerned would have to work in harmony, which is impossible given the basic functioning of governments, which exist to run the affairs of capitalism in general and capitalism in their area in particular.

The US and Canadian governments, as well as the various state and provincial governments, are constantly at loggerheads over pollution of the Great Lakes and acid rain. For the US to stop pumping acid rain into Canada, it would have to shut down half the heavy industry in the north-east states. Some likelihood!

Politicians may argue all they wish on these matters, but on one thing they all agree: that these affairs are subsidiary ones to the all-important aspect of running businesses at a profit. Nor is there much long-term planning for these matters within capitalism — profits must be acquired and quickly for businesses to survive, regardless of what long-term disasters may do to these businesses in the future. From a down-to-earth common sense point of view, it all sounds nuts but nevertheless it is all logical within the context of capitalism, which is based on competition and profits. When proposals are made to tackle these problems the response of capitalists and their political joe-boys is: "What'll it cost, man, what'll it cost?" And if the cost is too high: "We'll never make a profit, forget it".

This is not because they are a bunch of creeps or morons. They are circumstanced and circumscribed by the general economic situation just as much (but in a different way) as the working class are. The capitalist class has to do whatever is deemed necessary to make a profit, regardless of whether they are or are not nasty people. It's a waste of time moralizing, bitching and indulging in political slander. The only thing which is not a waste of time in this connexion is to make socialism the immediate objective and organize for it now.

The establishment of a society democratically administered with production for use is the only cure for the world's ills, because once it is established the economic conditions which created these problems will have ceased to exist. We can then set about building a society where poverty will give way to plenty and all can live a full and happy life, each individual being free to develop their personality to the fullest possible extent.

Ray Rawlings (Canada)

Energy supply: a world issue (1986)

From the Winter 1986-7 issue of the World Socialist

In any consideration of existing social problems the question of energy supply is of prime importance. It is self-evident that the task of providing decent conditions of life for the whole human population must include providing an adequate supply of energy. To solve the world's housing problem, including provision for heating, cooking and lighting, to expand world transport services, to increase world food production, to provide a sufficient supply of durable goods .for all people, plus the expansion of the means of production which these would require, will arguably involve a greatly increased supply of world energy.

But the problem is not simply one of supplying energy using any means available in an indiscriminate manner. The production of energy makes a great impact on the environment so it is important that the methods used should take this factor into account. What is required is an integrated world strategy of productive development which is aimed directly at the satisfaction of human needs and which can be socially controlled so as to avoid any destructive effects on the environment How does world capitalism deal with this problem? The short and obvious answer is that it does not deal with it nor can it do so.

From a practical point of view society has available a wide range of technical options and there are large reserves of skill, labour and materials yet at the same time we suffer from a chronic inability to take these up in a free and consciously regulated manner. It is not simply that under world capitalism there are economic barriers to producing enough energy for needs, but what does become available on the energy markets is produced by methods which in themselves generate further social problems. The present structure of world energy supply involves an unnecessary waste of useful resources; it is destructive of the environment; it produces severe secondary problems and it is fraught with dangers. This is the position that we are in now and world capitalism provides no foreseeable means for getting out of it. What has been the background to the problems associated with energy supply, which at the present time are worsening?

The existing structure of energy supply and the particular production methods which are currently in use has come into being within a definite framework of economic forces and a military development which has resulted from them. It is simply impossible to freely deploy the technical options which now exist in response to human needs within this existing economic and military framework.

So constraining have been these economic forces that in the more industrialised countries the most used energy source is still coal, the source on which the industrial revolution was based over two hundred years ago (see table). The relatively primitive method of burning non-renewable fossil fuels remains the cheapest energy source available to capitalist production. Despite the wide range of technical possibilities which now exist, it is still the case that hundreds of millions of people throughout the world either gather or buy firewood as their main energy source. Hydro-electric power is generated and since the end of World War II there has been the development of nuclear power but this was never selected as a desirable energy source in its own right. Nuclear power arose on the basis of arms development. It is still a marginal energy source (3 percent of world primary energy production in 1983) though its use is increasing. The use of solar-based techniques is even more marginal.

Nuclear Power: The Military Option

Yet over fifty years ago, in the 1930's, two simultaneous developments occurred which involved wide potentialities for the future of energy supply. One was the theoretical work on the splitting of the atom and the other was the discovery of the photo-voltaic mechanism which enabled sunlight to be converted into electricity. From a purely technical point of view, research and development could have gone in the direction either of nuclear power or solar cells. Notwithstanding the merits, technical or otherwise, of either option the reasons why solar technology was pushed into a backwater of research and development were both economic and military.

It was the implications for arms development which gave impetus to the nuclear programme. It was the Manhattan Project which developed the atomic bomb. This crash military project which in a perverse way indicates how quickly society can move when it becomes committed, involved tens of thousands of workers including the cream of scientific talent in the field of applied physics. By 1945 it had cost 2 billion dollars. The enormity of this effort can be understood in the context that in 1944 in America the value of the Gross National Product was 98 billion dollars.

After World War II this military application of nuclear technology did not diminish so that between 1945 and 1956 the Atomic Energy Weapons Programme had cost 15 billion dollars. This included the development of the Hydrogen Bomb and resulted in a huge scientific and industrial establishment committed to the nuclear arms programme. At this time companies such as Westinghouse and General Electric were manufacturing nuclear reactors mainly for the US Navy.

These developments in America were paralleled in other countries for the same military reasons so that in Russia, Britain and later France the same scientific/technical/industrial basis came into existence. It was on this basis that President Eisenhower introduced his so-called Atoms for Peace campaign in the 1950s. Essentially, the nuclear energy programme resulted from an attempt to capitalise on the immense cash resources which had been poured into the military use of nuclear technology.

Threat to vested interests

But this was not the only reason why research and development into the practical application of the photo-voltaic mechanism was not taken up. Solar technology was subject to attack by the powerful utilities in America whose industries were based on the use of fossil fuels. It is little known that in some places of climatic advantage, simple solar installations had been in use for some time. For example by 1897, of all the homes in Southern California 30 percent had solar water heaters. By 1940 in Southern Florida 80 percent of all new homes utilised solar water heaters. Once these installations, which were simply metal boilers under glass, were fixed in place, all they required was a cheap water supply plus the abundant southern sunshine over which no capitalist enterprise could hold a monopoly. These installations gave householders a degree of independence from the large capitalist utilities which were in the business of selling gas and also electricity generated from the burning of coal and oil.

The use of solar boilers for heating water was one thing but the possible practical application of the photo-voltaic cell for converting sunlight into electricity was a far more serious threat to the capitalist interests which were vested in the control and marketing of fossil fuels. Centralised power stations generating electricity from fossil fuels or nuclear sources enable capitalist enterprises or governments to maintain complete control of the energy source and the marketing of the products. With solar devices, once installed, the energy source is freely available. This is why particularly in America the public utilities launched an organised attack on research and development of solar energy, ranging from political lobbying to massive advertising campaigns.

In the face of the development of the nuclear arms programme and its spill-over into nuclear power and the pressure exerted by the heavily capitalised coal, oil and gas interests, the development of the highly adaptable and environmentally safe solar sources has been largely neglected. For example in the late 1970's, when the British government was spending upwards of £230 million per year on nuclear energy research it was spending only £11 million per year on renewable, solar-based technologies. During the seventies the Carter administration in America did express interest in solar techniques following a sharp increase in the price of oil and problems which nuclear power stations had encountered. This was set aside by the Reagan administration and funding for this kind of research was again reduced.

It is true that some research is being done by oil companies and other capitalist enterprises but this is inevitably suspect The bias arising from their profit-based interest in the subject will at best direct this research into channels determined by their economic interest

This interest is explicit in the following text from an advertisement:

The Arizona sun shines 296 days a year. APS solar engineers are working at the Sky Harbor Photo-Voltaic Solar Project to capture that remarkable energy source. We are proud to be the leaders in the development of solar energy.

22,000 solar cells in 80 arrays provides enough electricity for about 40 average sized homes. But Arizona has more than a million homes - plus factories - offices - plus farms - that need electricity.

Solar may supply a reasonable amount of electricity some time in the next century but it is simply not practical nor economical to meet Arizona's electrical needs to-day. This is why we are using coal and nuclear for large scale use now to meet Arizona's electrical needs.

Nuclear and coal now to meet Arizona's electrical needs.

Problems of present energy system

The factors which have determined the existing structure of the world's energy system have been the economic factors of the profit system in association with the military strategies adopted by the world's most powerful industrialised capitalist nations including state capitalist Russia.

There is now widespread concern about the problems arising from this system. Inevitably, the continued increase in the number of nuclear power stations results in a steady build-up of radioactivity in the environment, with an ever greater problem of how to deal with high level radioactive waste. Accidents like Chernobyl with their horrendous results are part of the existing nuclear energy programme.

Sections of the scientific community and environmentalists are also extremely concerned over the effects of the continuous release of carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere as a result of burning fossil fuels such as gas, oil and coal. Accurate records of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere show that concentrations have increased from 315 parts per million in 1958 to 340 parts per million in 1982. Burning fossil fuels also releases into the atmosphere sulphur which is associated now with the destructive effects of acid rain including the destruction of forests in the northern hemisphere, the killing off of life in lakes and rivers, and general soil deterioration.

Together with this, a report issued by the National Science Foundation, Washington, produced calculations which show that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide would lead to a heating of the surface of the oceans and the land by an average of about 4 watts per square metre, which in practice would mean a change from about 1.6 degrees to 4.5 degrees on different parts of the planet's surface. It is argued that the climatic consequences would be catastrophic, with fertile arid zones becoming arid deserts. This refers to what is now described as "the greenhouse effect". Even allowing that there is disagreement over the possible consequences of this greenhouse effect it would be foolish to ignore even the most pessimistic forecasts which are being issued by some sections of the scientific community.

Merits of renewable energy sources

Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University, California, as well as others have argued strongly that the buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide resulting from the burning of fossil fuels should be urgently averted. They have emphasised the need to replace the use of fossil fuels with the use of renewable sources of energy such as wind power, wave power and photo-voltaic devices. The need for global consensus as a basis for carrying this through is also stressed by these scientists, though they are pessimistic about achieving this.

The advantages of these renewable sources have been summed up in a Ford Foundation Report as follows:-

Direct Solar Energy. Unlike all other forms of energy available to humans in large quantities, solar radiation is pure energy which is not associated with any material. As a result some types of solar energy systems, once constructed,can maintain a constant inventory of facilities and materials, releasing nothing but useful and waste energy at the same rate as the absorbed solar radiation. For example, operating solar electric cells convert some of the incident solar radiation directly into electrical energy and reradiate, reflect or discharge the rest. The process produces no waste materials that must be accumulated or released to the environment... In contrast use of fossil fuels or any type of nuclear energy requires the addition of mass (fuel) to an energy supply system and either the accumulation of increasing stockpiles of waste products (such as ashes, sulphur, carbon dioxide, or radioactive isotopes) within the system or their release to the environment.

The merits of solar-based technologies and the need for world cooperation in dealing with the problems of energy supply have also been stressed by Janet Ramage in her book Energy—A Guide Book. In her view, the challenge of solar techniques is one of utilising the energy which the sun delivers to the earth at a rate equal to nearly 20,000 times its primary energy consumption and that this challenge presents itself as a technique for collection and conversion. Postulating such a technical solution as a result of co-operation on a world scale she states:

How about a world-wide electric grid? It could use underground and ocean floor super conducting cables, and the power would come from solar farms in the world's major deserts, Ocean Thermal Electric Conversion plants in tropical waters, and wave power stations and wind turbine arrays in remote regions. No atmospheric pollution, no radioactive wastes, no use of valuable agricultural land or precious water. There are probably no insuperable technical problems. There is just one question. How do we get there from here?

Urgent need for world co-operation

This vital question is essentially about the reasons why the existing world capitalist system cannot take up the technical possibilities which now exist for the setting up of a safe and adequate world energy system. This question also takes us out of the sphere of applied science and technology and inevitably into the sphere of world economics and politics. The urgent need for world co-operation in dealing with the problems of world energy supply cannot be realised within the social productive relations and the existing economic and military framework through which these operate. Continued world capitalist society means inevitably that the world will remain staked out as an armed camp and the divisions will remain those of competing national economic interests. The organisation of world society will remain subject to the national economic and military strategies which express the prevailing national capitalist class interests. In the field of energy supply, as in every other field, such resources, skills and production methods which are taken up will be determined by the economic imperatives of the market system or consistent with the existing national economic or military strategies. It is completely impossible under capitalism for humanity to use the earth's resources for the benefit of all people, and it is equally impossible for it to deploy the accumulated knowledge, the skills and the techniques of production which now exist in a direct relationship with human needs on a basis of worldwide co-operation.

Yet there is in fact no barrier presented by any alleged inability of people to co-operate in their mutual interests. On the contrary, this ability to cooperate is universal. What is required is for this inherent ability to co-operate to be mobilised politically as a world movement acting independently of the existing economic, political and military power structures.

This movement already exists as the movement for world socialism, and it is vital that those who see the need for world co-operation in dealing with problems in the interests of all humanity should join its ranks to swell its voice of sanity and contribute to the work of preparing practical programmes of action which could be implemented once its political objective is achieved. This political objective is one of gaining political control with a view to taking the means of production and the earth's resources out of the hands of the world's capitalist class and placing them at the free disposal of the whole world's community.

Establishing a safe world energy system

How could world socialism set about the work of establishing a world energy system which would be adequate for the material needs of the world community but which could also work within the natural systems of the environment in a non-destructive way? Two factors have to be accepted. First, the overall amount of energy supply required in socialism as part of its general strategy of productive development would be immense, arguably greater than the amount which capitalism currently produces.

There would of course be great savings and a more efficient use of available energy supplies compared with what happens today under capitalism. Socialism would have no difficulty in adopting the various techniques of conservation which are well known. Moreover, under capitalism, a vast amount of energy fuels the world's military machines and its armaments production, and these amounts would become available for human needs. The anarchic pattern of capitalist trade involves more waste of energy whereas socialism would be to rationalise world distribution on a world, regional and local basis. At the present time there are millions of employments which may be necessary for the market system but which would be unnecessary in a society organised solely for human needs. These employments are serviced partly by the energy industry so this represents further amounts of energy which could become available for useful consumption. But notwithstanding these savings, it can still be argued that the strategy of productive development which would be necessary in socialism to establish a structure of production adequate for needs would initially require a vastly increased energy supply as for example with the need to solve the world's housing problem, even if a stable level would eventually be reached.

Secondly, world socialism would have to begin with the structure of energy supply which it had taken over. It could not scrap this overnight and this means that some production methods which may be considered undesirable would have to be used for a time. We can envisage that world socialism would have to begin the' work of adapting the existing system, phasing out its undesirable features whilst at the same time expanding the structure using methods which have been democratically agreed.

In this work socialism would be able to use the planet as a single resource held in common by all people. This means that socialism would be able to use the various geographical advantages which may exist in any location as part of an integrated world energy system.

Without anticipating any final decisions which would be made as to the particular technologies or combination of technologies which would be adapted and developed in socialism it is worth noting that the various solar-based technologies which at present impress themselves on some sections of the scientific community as being desirable would be well suited to socialism.

Removal of economic barriers

One point to emphasise is that with regard to any technique which might be developed, socialism would not be bound by the economics of market competition to use methods which embodied the least amounts of labour in their production. Nor could arms development play any possible part in determining the technology which is taken up. Though the solar-based technologies do not at the present time present themselves as the most labour efficient methods of energy production in relation to energy output, this would not be a barrier to their development in socialism in the circumstances where they were deemed to be the most socially desirable methods. Also, given the resources which socialism would be able to freely apply to the research and development of the solar-based technologies they do hold the promise of being suitable techniques for one important reason which can be added to the fact that they are environmentally safe. It is self-evident that in its various forms such as wind and wave power and direct sunlight, solar energy is available to the planet in vast quantities as part of a self-perpetuating natural system which requires no material fuel. The problem of solar technologies is one of effective collection and conversion into usable forms of energy such as electricity. What this could mean in practice is that once the social effort necessary for setting up the network of installations required for an integrated solar-based world energy system had been undertaken, this system would be available for permanent collection and conversion requiring only routine maintenance. This looks forward in a very practical way to a position of society whereby the problem of energy supply could be solved on a permanent basis. It could operate with a durable system of world-wide installations requiring no added materials except for those necessary for routine maintenance.

Moreover, the solar-based technologies can be highly adaptable in the scale of their use. They can include what Janet Ramage has envisaged as a single world-wide grid supplied with electricity generated by large and permanent power stations in different world locations. But solar techniques can also be used on a small scale with locally placed devices dedicated to specialised local functions. This can be single installations providing heat or electricity for single homes, factories or workshops.

It should be stressed further that the technical possibilities are wider than those which have been mentioned. There are the immense possibilities presented by geo-thermal techniques. In looking outwards at the solar sources we can forget that beneath our feet there exists a core of molten heat which could be tapped as it already has been in Iceland and other places. In the long run, humanity's greatest productive resource lies in the innovative genius of our species. The essential problem is one of how to establish a society in which this genius can find its fullest expression directly for human needs, and to answer the question of why this genius remains so constrained within the existing national economic, military and political structures.

World Socialism: the necessary precondition

What emerges from the existing structure of world energy supply— the fact that it is totally inadapted to meet the needs of humanity, plus the fact that it is so destructive of the world environment — is that these problems do not present themselves primarily as practical or technical problems. These are essentially economic and political problems which raise from the class relationships of production in present world capitalist society. The existing methods of energy production are not simply practical means of making energy available, they operate as deployed capital with the object of accumulating more capital. The primary object of the existing energy system is not one of generating useful energy but one of generating profits for a privileged minority. Therefore the practical work of setting up an adequate world energy system which would serve all human needs directly must be preceded by the practical work of establishing the only society which would be capable of doing it

Properly defined, the problem of energy supply is the problem of world capitalist society therefore the solution must be defined as the establishment of world socialism.

Pieter Lawrence (Britain)

You can have your veggies and eat them too ! (2006)

From Issue 20 of the World Socialist Review

The practice of vegetarianism — or non-practice of animarianism* — is not new to humanity. However, one could argue that it has never been more important. World hunger, inhumane and filthy methods of meat production, and the spread of livestock diseases both new and old are forcing many who would never consider abandoning sinking their teeth into a steaming hunk of flesh to give the idea a second thought. There are many kinds of vegetarians, ranging from impostors to the almost monastic avoiders of any food product of animal origin. This lifestyle is admittedly difficult; from meat-lover’s restaurant menus to relatives who have to cook me something extra (and have my eternal gratitude), to the usually absurdly high-priced products offered in the supermarkets.

I will try to show how vegetarianism in socialism makes sense and pass along some of the general benefits of the lifestyle, without attempting to convert you. There are people and organizations out there that can help you if you have questions or want more details on the nutritional aspects of meat-free lifestyles.

One of the concerns about meatless diets is protein. Actually, a balanced Western diet includes four times the recommended amount of protein for an average healthy adult, so leaving out the meat isn’t going to kill you. In fact, I don’t track where my protein comes from, and I sort of don’t care, because I know that there are sufficient quantities in many plant-based foods, the chief being the soybean. This is exactly where the herbivores get it and they do just fine.

Incidentally, this introduces an area where I think vegetarianism and socialism cross — at the cessation of the waste of matter and energy involved in transforming plants into meat. A good rule of thumb to estimate this waste is the “ten percent pyramid,” with humans on the top and the little greenies on the bottom. Only ten percent of each pound of “eaten” is successfully converted into “eater.” The rest is waste in the form of uneatable or indigestible matter and heat energy lost during chemical conversion. Therefore, it takes about ten pounds of plants to produce one pound of animal, and ten pounds of animal to produce one pound of human or other carnivore.

A Happy and Livable Planet

A little math tells me that if I was a carnivore, it would take 250 x 10 x 10 = 25,000 pounds of vegetable matter to produce a meat-eating version of me, but only 2,500 pounds to produce me as an herbivore. Abandoning meat as a food source can optimally increase the nutritive capacity of agriculture ten times, thus reducing our dependence on it! When socialism rolls around, the elimination of waste and hunger will surely be both primary goals for the creation of a happy and livable planet.

A socialist future like the one I dream about will also have a lot less pain and suffering than the current offering. I’ve done my homework, and without getting into details, I can say that there is a lot of that going on in the meat industries. Plants, in contrast, don’t feel pain. They cannot for the obvious reason that they do not have brains, or any nervous systems at all. And no, the cows and pigs are not going to reproduce out of control if we stop using them for food.

There are environmental impacts as well, the most serious of which is the pollution caused by the wastes of animals grown for food. This has to go somewhere — and usually, untreated livestock waste is dumped into the nearest body of water, unlike human waste, which is in most cases required by law to be treated before release into the environment. The impacts of farm animal waste are significant — I’m not going to quote statistics, so you can research this if you want.

The impact of fertilizer is even greater; however, this problem does not completely go away if meaty diets eventually disappear. Fertilizer will still be necessary to grow crops, but mindful socialists will not be forced by the pressure of the market to produce the most, the biggest, and the best — only that which is needed. They can take care that the effects of the fertilizer they do use are reduced and monitored by careful farming practices, efforts made easier by a cooperative agricultural model and not a competitive one. Meat processing facilities have environmental impacts as well. Since it seems impossible for capitalism to maintain clean and efficient slaughterhouses, those places remain vectors for disease and contamination. Shockumentaries still pop on the tube every once in awhile, reminding us, however ineffectively, how filthy meat processing actually is.

In sum, the benefits of a vegetarian society can go hand in hand with the desires of a socialist society. A widespread vegetarian lifestyle can play a significant role in reducing energy demands, pain and suffering, and the negative effects of agriculture on the environment. The environmental and medical impacts of a meat-centered culture are well documented even if they are generally ignored; and even though the psychological impacts may be harder to measure, they still contribute, in my opinion, to making the world a little more violent than it needs to be.

Tony Pink

* This is not an actual scientific term, but then neither am I.

Letter: Work and waste (1989)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Work and waste

Dear Editors,

You believe that in a future socialist society work will be shared. Yet no system will be so efficient as to train everyone to master every skill needed to keep a technological society running—it takes a half-lifetime to master only one profession!

Even if it were possible, the laws of the division of labour hold that someone is still going to have to do boring shop floor work and that will mean that they will have a low status. Such inequality can hardly be described as a socialist ideal.

In addition, even you now agree with the opposition to nuclear power. But just as you now believe that it's impossible to have nuclear power without poisonous nuclear waste, so it's impossible to have industry without poisonous industrial waste. De-industrialisation will be an answer to our main solution: the pursuit for human happiness.

J.D. Moreno, 

London SW19

Reply:

The skills necessary for running a highly complex industrial society are collective not individual or personal. It will be for socialist society to choose how far to automate production in order to remove drudgery and danger. If they cannot be eliminated then the danger and drudgery will have to be shared by a society that will understand that the work needs to be done if socialism is to continue functioning effectively. It is in this sense that we say work will be shared. No-one will be expected to do the same repetitive and dangerous work for a lifetime.

We do not envisage socialist society as one in which everyone will have all the skills to do everything ("It's your turn to be the brain surgeon this week, George!"). What we do look forward to is a situation where skills and talents currently trapped and distorted by capitalism are given the opportunity of full and free expression according to personal taste and inclination to do "useful work not useless toil", to use the words of William Morris.

Socialism before anything else will be a society of equals. Status and inequality will be meaningless concepts recalled only as hateful features of class society.

Waste is not inevitable—it is only a by-product of production which cannot be reused profitably and disposed of without incurring a loss.

De-industrialisation is not an option for the human race. Who would wish to do without the means now available to provide comfort and sufficiency for all? At a more prosaic level, would our correspondent wish to have dental treatment in the absence of a pain-killer administered by a hypodermic syringe?

Editors.

New Pamphlet: An Inconvenient Question. Socialism and the Environment (2008)

Party News from the October 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

In recent years the environment has become a major political issue. And rightly so, because a serious environmental crisis really does exist. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat have all become contaminated to a greater or lesser extent. Ecology - the branch of biology that studies the relationships of living organisms to their environment - is important, as it is concerned with explaining exactly what has been happening and what is likely to happen if present trends continue.

Since the publication of our Ecology and Socialism pamphlet in 1990 environmental problems facing the planet have got much worse. We said then that attempts to solve those problems within capitalism would meet with failure, and that is precisely what has happened. Recent research on increasing environmental degradation has painted an alarming picture of the likely future if the profit system continues to hold sway. Voices claiming that the proper use of market forces will solve the problem can still be heard, but as time goes on the emerging facts of what is happening serve only to contradict those voices.

In this pamphlet we begin with a brief review of the development of Earth and of humankind’s progress on it so far. We then examine the mounting evidence that the planet is now under threat of a worsening, dangerous environment for human and other forms of life. The motor of capitalism is profit for the minority capitalist class to add to their capital, or capital accumulation. Environmental concerns, if considered at all, always come a poor second. The waste of human and other resources used in the market system is prodigious, adding to the problems and standing in the way of their solution.

Earth Summits over the last few decades show a consistent record of failure - unjustifiably high hopes and pitifully poor results sum them up. The Green Party and other environmental bodies propose reforms of capitalism that haven’t worked or have made very little real difference in the past. Socialists can see no reason why it should be any different in the future. Finally we discuss the need, with respect to the ecology of the planet, for a revolution that is both based on socialist principles of common ownership and production solely for needs, and environmental principles of conserving — not destroying — the wealth and amenities of the planet.

Contents

Introduction

What is ecology?

Earth under threat

Profit wins, the environment also ran The waste of capitalism

Earth Summits - a record of failure Green reformism

Socialism - an inconvenient question?

To get a copy by post send a cheque or postal order for £2.50 (made out to “The Socialist Party of Great Britain”) to: The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN.

The pamphlet will be launched at a public meeting: Saturday 25 October, 6pm

SOCIALISM AND THE ENVIRONMENT 

Speakers: Brian Morris (guest speaker) and Adam Buick (Socialist Party)

Chair: Gwynn Thomas (Socialist Party)

Forum followed by discussion.

Socialist Party Head Office, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 (nearest tube: Clapham North).

More and Less (2025)

Book Review from the May 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard    

Slow Down: How Degrowth Communism Can Save the Earth. By Kohei Saito (translated by Brian Bergstrom). Weidenfeld & Nicolson £10.99.

It is well known that Karl Marx never completed his major work Capital. Just the first volume was published in his lifetime, and two further volumes, edited by Friedrich Engels, only appeared after his death. Kohei Saito argues here that Marx did not finish Capital because in his later years he became interested in scientific and what would now be called ecological issues. He did not publish much on these topics, but he left a lot of notes and excerpts from other writers, which are only now being put together as part of MEGA (Marx–Engels Complete Works). Saito’s book was discussed in the November 2024 Socialist Standard.

Saito further claims that Marx turned his back on productivism, the view that under capitalism productivity would continue to rise to bring about socialism (a well-known passage from the Communist Manifesto states that the capitalist class had massively expanded the productive forces). Marx argued, for instance, that capitalist agriculture led to depletion of the soil and disruption of the metabolic interaction between nature and humans, and he later praised communes in non-Western societies, such as Russia. This also involved a break with ‘Eurocentrism’, which supposedly involved projecting European history onto the rest of the world.

Saito criticises what he terms Accelerationism, the idea of completely sustainable economic growth. He associates this view with Aaron Bastani, author of Fully Automated Luxury Communism (on which see the June 2019 Socialist Standard). He claims that the improved productivity and replacement of fossil fuels envisaged in FALC would in fact lead to ‘increased plunder of the earth’. His solution is degrowth, which for one thing involves a greater spread of the commons and ‘collective management of productive activity’, thereby reducing the artificial scarcity of capitalism and increasing abundance, while at the same time cutting the hours of work needed. Degrowth is simply not possible under capitalism; rather, a steady-state economy based on sustainability is what is needed.

A chapter entitled ‘Degrowth Communism Will Save the World’ presents the author’s positive proposals, divided into five points. The first of these is the transition to an economy based on use value: fulfilling people’s basic needs would be given priority over increasing GDP. But here we meet the first real problem: it is just not clear whether Saito wishes to do away completely with exchange value and the whole idea of GDP. The second point, already mentioned above, is to reduce work hours, which need not imply increased use of automation. Thirdly, abolish the division of labour, as work will be more attractive if it involves a variety of tasks and activities. Further, the production process must be democratised, which includes the use of open technologies, those which ‘relate to communication and co-operative industry’. Lastly, priority must be given to essential work, labour-intensive activities that cannot be automated, such as care work, in contrast to the meaningless ‘bullshit jobs’ identified by David Graeber. A system built on these lines will be ‘equipped to satisfy people’s needs while also expanding the capacity for society to address environmental issues’.

The author summarises his position as follows: ‘the foundation of communism is the equal, communal management of the means of production as a form of commons – that is, as something distinct from private ownership or ownership by the state’. Socialists would agree with this, but unfortunately, he then goes on to accept the existence of the state as a means of getting things done, such as creating infrastructure. Perhaps he does not mean by this some kind of centralised organisation that enforces the rule and interests of a minority, but he could have been a lot clearer here. In fact, his description of future society is mostly fine as far as it goes, but he does not refer explicitly to three crucial aspects, the abolition of the wages system, the ending of production for sale and the abolition of class divisions. Without these, whatever exists will not be socialism/communism, whether it implements degrowth or not.

Paul Bennett

Saving Earth or Saving Profits? (2007)

From the December 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

The environment is not under threat from industrial production as such, but from this in the service of profit-seeking.

All forms of vegetable and animal life are part of a network of relations called an “ecosystem” in ecology. Normally this system is self-regulating to the extent that, if an imbalance develops, this is rectified spontaneously, either by the restoration of the previous balance or by the establishment of a new balance.

The problem is that there’s been the industrial revolution: the pollution of water and the ground due to the massive disposal of toxic or non-recyclable wastes and to the use in intensive agriculture of chemical fertilisers, nitrates and pesticides; the pollution of the oceans due to the increase of maritime traffic, the flow from polluted rivers, the shipwreck of oil tankers (70 alone in 1996!), the discharge of toxic, chemical and radioactive waste, desludging at sea, etc; overfishing; the pollution of the air due to the massive use of fossil fuels, the development of the individual motor car, and the clearance by fire of forests (despite these being the lungs of the planet!); industrial accidents (Seveso (1996), Bhopal (1984), Chernobyl (1986), Toulouse (2001)); the emission of greenhouse gases (CO2) by petrol vehicles and factories, deforestation, leading to global warming and its consequences (rise in the sea level due to the melting of the icepack and of polar and continental glaciers, floods, desertification, storms); acid rain; extinction of living species; introduction of GM organisms; storage of nuclear waste; expansion of towns (where now more than half the world’s population live).

And for a good reason! No State is going to implement legislation which would penalise the competitiveness of its national enterprises in the face of foreign competition. States only take into account environmental questions if they can find an agreement at international level which will disadvantage none of them. But that’s the snag because competition for the appropriation of world profits is one of the bases of the present system. Attempts at international cooperation have already been made: the League of Nations, then the UN, for example, were set up to “maintain” peace. But the 20th century saw the most devastating and murderous wars in history!

No agreement to limit the activities of the multinationals in their relentless quest for profits is possible. Measures in favour of the environment (and the far-reaching transformation of the productive apparatus and transport system these imply) come up against the interests of enterprises (and their shareholders!) because by increasing costs they decrease profits.

Humans are capable, whatever the form of production, of integrating themselves into a stable ecosystem. That was the case of many “primitive” societies which coexisted in complete harmony with the rest of nature, and there is nothing whatsoever that prevents this being possible today on the basis of industrial technology and methods of production, all the more so that renewable energies exist (wind, solar, tidal, geothermal, waves, biomass, etc) but, for the capitalists, these are a “cost” which penalises them in face of international competition.

So it’s not production as such (i. e., the fashioning of nature to meet human needs) which is incompatible with a stable balance of nature, but the application of certain productive methods which disregard natural balances or which involve changes that are too rapid to allow a natural balance to develop.

The preservation of the environment is a social problem which requires humanity to establish a viable and stable relationship with the rest of nature. In practice this implies a society which uses, as far as possible, renewable energy and raw material resources and which practises the recycling of non-renewable resources; a society which, once an appropriate balance with nature has been formed, will tend towards a stable level of production, indeed towards “zero growth”. This does not mean that changes are to be excluded on principle, but that any change will have to respect the environment by taking place at a pace to which nature can adapt. But the employment by capitalism of destructive methods of production has, over two centuries, upset the balance of nature.

Whether it is called “the market economy”, “economic liberalism”, “free enterprise” or any other euphemism, the social system under which we live is capitalism. Under this system the means of the production and distribution of social wealth – the means of society’s existence – are the exclusive property of a dominant parasitic minority – the holders of capital, or capitalist class – for whose benefit they are inevitably managed.

As a system governed by economic laws which impose themselves as external constraints on human productive activities, and in which enterprises are in competition with each other to obtain short-term economic gains, capitalism pushes economic decision-makers to adopt productive methods which serve profitability rather than concern for the future.

So it is not “Man” but the capitalist economic system itself which is responsible for ecological problems. In fact, not only have workers no influence over the decisions taken by enterprises but those who do have the power to decide – the capitalists – are themselves subject to the laws of profit and competition.

Of course capitalism has sooner or later to face up to the ecological problems caused by the search for profit, but only afterwards, after the damage has been done. But the ecologists, so critical of “liberal” capitalism, accept, like all the other varieties of reformism, the economic dictatorship of the owning minority since they don’t understand the link that exists between the destruction of the environment and the private ownership of the means of production. That is why the Greens were forced to make concessions when, from 1997-2002, they were part of the Jospin government: over the authorisations given by this government of the “plural” Left, in November 1997 and July 1998, for transgenetic maize, over nuclear questions and other matters, not to mention their complicity over “social” questions such as the suppression of 3100 jobs with the closure of the Renault factory at Vilvord or the repression of the occupation of employment offices by the unemployed in 1997, the closure of the naval shipyards in Le Havre in 1998, the calling into question of retirement at age 60 with a full pension, or the suppression of 10,000 hospital beds in the Ile de France in 1999, etc.

Because by definition capitalism can only function in the interest of the capitalists, no palliative, no rearrangement, no measure, no reform can (nor ever will be able to) subordinate capitalist private property to the general interest. For this reason only the threat of a socialist movement setting down as the only realistic and immediate aim the establishment of social property (hence the name socialism) of society’s means of existence so as to ensure their management by (and so in the interest of) the whole community, would be able to force the capitalists to concede reforms favourable to the workers for fear of losing the whole cake.

So it is for building such a movement that we launch an appeal to all workers who understand the opposition and incompatibility of their interests with those of the capitalists, to all those who, concerned about the ceaseless attacks of which we are the victims and of the dangers to which the capitalists are exposing our planet, want not to patch up but to end existing society. Our numerical superiority allows all hope.

It is only after having placed the means of society’s existence under the control of the community that we will be able to at last ensure their management, no longer in the selfish interest of their present owners, but this time really in the general interest.

Only then will we be in a position to achieve a world in which the present system of rival States will be replaced by a world community without frontiers, the rationing of money and the wages system by free access to the wealth produced, competition by cooperation, and class antagonism by social equality.

We can only “cure the planet” by establishing a society without private productive property or profit where humans will be freed from the uncontrollable economic laws of the pursuit of profit and the accumulation of capital. In short, only a world socialist society, based on the common ownership and democratic control of natural resources, is compatible with production that respects the natural environment.

– translated from a leaflet distributed by socialists in France.

Should ‘we’ consume less? (2024)

From the November 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

In his recently published book Slow Down: How Degrowth Communism Can Save the Earth, Kohei Saito contends that:

‘Almost every one of us living in a developed country belongs to the world’s richest 20 percent’ and that our exploitative ‘imperial mode of living’ allows us enjoy an ‘extravagant lifestyle’ at the expense of workers in the Global South – an echo of the discredited Leninist theory of the ‘labour aristocracy’.

Moreover, suggests Saito, it is ‘we’ who are ‘coddled by the invisibility of our lifestyle’s costs’ who inflict far more damage on the environment than do they – our fellow workers on the other side of the planet. ‘We’ will ‘not be able to truly combat climate change if we all fail to participate, as directly interested parties, in the radical transformation of the Imperial Mode of Living’. That means disengaging, starting now under capitalism, from consumer culture ‘while also reducing the volume of everything we consume’. At the end of the day there seems to be little here to distinguish Saito from what the de-growth eco-pessimists have to say, apart from his invocation of ‘communism’.

Matt Huber and Leigh Phillips make a valid point in their review of Saito’s book:

"Saito also sees this primarily not as a battle between classes of workers and capitalists, but global regions: “the injustice of socially vulnerable people in the Global South countries bearing the brunt of climate change although the carbon dioxide was emitted, for the most part, by the Global North, which brought on this disaster.”

When it comes to who in the Global North is responsible, Saito is more liable to point at himself and other workers than capital: “Our rich lifestyles would be impossible without the plundered natural resources and exploited labor power of the Global South”’ (Jacobin, 9 March 2024,).

Was Marx productivist?

Saito also claims that, as far as Marx was concerned, there was an ‘epistemological break’ in the latter´s writings that began sometimes during the 1860s.

This epistemological break has been characterised as representing a move away from a ‘“linear, progressive view” of history, marked by “productivism” and “Eurocentrism”, and towards a new vision of communism’. Saito does at least accept that ‘communism’ means a moneyless, wageless, classless and stateless alternative to capitalism which is based on the twin principles of free access to socially produced wealth and voluntaristic labour as the basis of wealth production.

In short Marx, according to Saito, abandoned historical materialism and the acceptance of capitalist technological progress in favour of ‘de-growth communism’ in which the needs of the population would be catered for within clear limits imposed by nature itself.

Marx did indeed acknowledge the necessity and importance of capitalist technological progress in preparing the ground for a future communist society, but his standpoint cannot plausibly be called a ‘productivist’ one. There are many passages in the early writings of both Marx and Engels that suggest a deep concern with the environmental impact of economic growth and are hardly compatible with the kind of Promethean or productivist outlook sometimes attributed to them. Their assessment of capitalist technological advancement as being ‘progressive’ was contingent inasmuch as it suggests there will come a point when it could no longer be characterised as such. At this point it would become redundant or even reactionary as a mode of production.

Limits to lifestyle changes

You cannot expect capitalism to gradually disappear through the incremental accumulation of minor adjustments to the way we live and do things. The whole system is fundamentally held together and underpinned by the brute fact of minority ownership and control of the means of wealth production and the consequent alienation of the great majority from these means. It is only when the latter take matters in hand and seek to democratically bring about fundamental change from the bottom up that capitalism will finally disappear.

We cannot hope to bring about the fundamental change required through mere lifestyle changes within the framework of existing capitalist society. This is not meant to discourage individuals from wanting to make such changes. These could conceivably help even if only in symbolic, more than practical, terms. But the basic problem we face as a society is not really the result of individuals somehow having made the wrong lifestyle choice.

Saito is not entirely wrong, however. ‘Lifestyle choices’ matter up to a point insofar as they are bound up with the question of social values. After all, a working class, still receptive or responsive to the values that underpin a capitalist consumer ideology, would surely not yet be ready to undertake the transformation of society itself. Their readiness to do that surely presupposes a transformed worldview on their part. In other words, a shift in values.

It is difficult to see how a strategy of, today within capitalism, ‘reducing the volume of everything we consume’ is going to succeed. Reducing consumption means reducing the market demand for the good in question. Normally, the response of businesses in these circumstances would be to reduce the price of this good. In other words, to reboot or stimulate market demand.

You as one individual might indeed have the strength of will and moral resolve to resist the lure of a bargain offer but there is nothing to say that your neighbour will follow suit. This is the problem with the system; it has the uncanny knack of being able to pick us off one by one so long as we confine our thinking to its conceptual parameters.

We cannot buck the market while we live in a market economy. It is this that sets limits on what we can achieve by way of lifestyle changes. Only by eliminating capitalism will we be in a position to adapt how we produce and consume in ways that suit ourselves and our long-term future on this planet.

Robin Cox

New Pamphlet: Socialism as a Practical Alternative (1987)

Party News from the June 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

This new pamphlet, published after wide discussion within The Socialist Party, is an important addition to socialist literature.

Starting from the position that a growing socialist movement will need to prepare programmes of action for transforming society and solving social problems in advance of the actual capture of political power, the pamphlet sets out a number of proposals for this with the proviso of course that it must be left to a greater number of socialists than at present to make a final decision on whether or not to accept them.

After the winning of political control and the formal abolition of all property rights, private or state, over the means of production, the immediate practical problem will be the setting up of a democratic decision-making and administrative structure and the gearing of the productive and distributive system to the direct supplying of goods and services to satisfy people's needs.

In addressing these questions the pamphlet points out that it will not be a question of starting from scratch — socialists are not in the business of constructing ideal systems — but of taking over and suitably adapting existing structures.

Thus, as regards administration, the existing machinery of political government would be converted by lopping off its coercive and class features while at the same time adapting and democratising its administrative ones. The basic unit of the new democratic decision-making structure is envisaged as being the local community which would elect its delegates to a local council having responsibility for local administration. Decisions affecting wider populations could be made by regional councils and global decisions by a world council composed of delegates from the various regions.

The organisation of production under capitalism today is also broadly divided into these three levels of world (raw materials), regional (industry and manufacture) and local (services) and this will continue to be the case after socialism has been established. Hence it would be a case of freeing the existing circuits of production and distribution from their subordination to value, cost and price considerations and of converting them into a system geared towards the direct supply of goods for consumption.

The pamphlet rejects the idea, sometimes

put forward by socialist writers in the past who had not thought through the question, of all production and distribution being planned by some "central directing authority". This is not only impossible how could all the millions and millions of decisions about production be "planned" from a single world centre? — but is also quite unnecessary. The mechanisms of the market and the use of money, says the pamphlet, can be replaced by what it calls "a self-adjusting system of production for use" which would operate on the basis of the communication of needs expressed, not as monetary purchasing power but directly as required quantities of materials and goods:

In practical terms, needs would arise in local communities expressed as required quantities of machinery, equipment, building materials, and the whole range of foods and consumption goods. These grammes, kilos, tonnes, litres, cubic metres of required materials and goods would then be communicated throughout the distributive and productive network. The monitoring and communication of needs, expressed as a demand on stock or required production, would be clear and readily known. The supply of some needs would take place within the local community (. . .) Other needs would be communicated to regional production units (...) Other needs would be communicated throughout the structure of production up to a world scale.

So in response to information about needs flowing from local communities the required goods and materials to satisfy those needs would flow back in the opposite direction. Such a flexible system would obviate the need for any central directing authority; the world level of the administrative structure would be limited to collecting statistics and organising the various world services (supply of certain raw materials, world communications and transportation, protecting the biosphere. space research) leaving the rest to be organised at local and regional levels.

It is true that capitalism will leave socialism with the problem of world hunger and misery. Solving this by ensuring that every person on Earth is adequately fed, clothed and housed will require a certain amount of "central planning", both for the immediate crash programme to stop deaths from starvation and for the development, in the regions of the world where the problem is concentrated, of the means for satisfying these needs (irrigation schemes, houses, roads, bridges).

However once this new infrastructure has been developed in the regions concerned, perhaps within ten to twenty years of the establishment of socialism, world production levels can be expected to platform off and the more decentralised self-adjusting system for supplying current needs described above can come into its own:

It can be envisaged that the centres of organisation. involved initially at the world and regional levels, could give way to more local administration for the work of providing for daily needs, the running of services and maintenance. What is possible here is a self-regulating society with work activity in balance with daily needs and in balance with the environment.

The pamphlet also discusses how the waste of capitalism could be eliminated, productivity increased and resources conserved in a socialist society.

(Socialism as a Practical Alternative, 45p postage paid, from Lit. Dept., The Socialist Party. 52 Clapham High Street. London SW4 7UN.)

Does veganism help? (2024)

From the May 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The term ‘greenwashing’ is often used to describe attempts, often by big companies, to convey the false impression that their goods are produced in an environmentally friendly and sustainable way – and this sometimes with a view to distracting attention from their involvement in other environmentally damaging practices. Some, in fact, see the whole of the current ‘green’ agenda as, under cover of support for the environment, actually extracting from it resources it cannot afford to lose and, no matter how good the intentions of the ‘deep’ or ‘bright’ greens, as no more than a sop to capitalism’s growth. This consists of regarding the Earth only as a target for producing goods for sale on the market and of being unable by its nature to do other than subordinate real care for flora, fauna and climate to the imperatives of growth and production for profit. In the words of one writer: ‘Our way of life doesn’t need to be saved. The planet needs to be saved from our way of life’ .

Plant-based

As part of ‘greenwashing’ in production and consumption via various ‘green’ solutions (eg, solar panels, wind turbines, green energy storage, recycling, LED lights, electric cars, hydropower, biomass, geothermal energy, etc.), some now add a particular lifestyle often presented as a way to reduce climate change and human impact on the environment: plant-based eating or veganism. In a recent article in Monthly Review entitled ‘The Case for Socialist Veganism’ , Benjamin Selwyn and Charis Davies point to the fact that many of the companies and corporations that have embraced the plant-based market use this as ‘cover’ for the damaging environmental impact they cause with their other production (‘meat, dairy and other environmental ruinous activities’). This, they say, represents ‘attempts at corporate brand greenwashing’ and is aimed at continued expansion of their sales and markets. It includes fast-food chains such as McDonald’s and Burger King, whose products are still overwhelmingly meat-based but who have developed plant-based product lines in an attempt to cash in on growing concerns for the environment or animal welfare. A chart the authors have put together demonstrates that plant-based brands not readily associated with big corporations often turn out to be owned by large non-vegan parent companies (e.g. Vivera by JBS, the world’s largest meat company; the Vegetarian Butcher by Unilever; Alpro by Danone, one of the biggest dairy companies in the world). And all these companies continue to have a massively damaging environmental impact in such areas as support for deforestation, mass-scale meat and dairy production, high levels of plastic pollution and damage to natural water sources. So JBS, while promoting Vivera under the flag of promoting ‘the wellbeing of the planet’, slaughters 8.7 million birds, 92,600 hogs and 42,700 head of cattle every day of the year, thus making an appreciable contribution to climate breakdown via deforestation, greenhouse gases from cattle and cultivation of massive quantities of feed crops. Unilever, for its part, was, in 2022, named as one of ‘the top ten global polluters’, and Danone too is a leading plastic polluter and, despite its stated aim to encourage ‘healthy eating trends’, is largely focused on cow’s milk production, which produces three times more greenhouse gas emissions than plant-based milk and, like for like, uses ten times more land.

The charge here is that, however much veganism may have the potential to reduce human impact on the environment, the relative monopoly held by the big food producers makes that impossible. Focused as they are on animal-based production, any positive effect of vegan production is likely to be small and may in fact be negated completely if it simply increases the profits and investment power of the big producers and so aids their continuing focus on producing meat and milk as cheaply as possible, and so paradoxically increasing animal suffering and exploitation.

An ethical marriage?

So what to do? The solution which the authors of this article propose is to move the food system towards what they call ‘socialist veganism’, also described as ‘an ethical marriage between veganism and socialism’. This, they tell us, would involve the hundreds of billions of dollars currently spent on so called ‘green transitioning’ being directed towards what they call ‘an ecosocially transformative political-economic agenda’. This, they maintain, will help to ‘shift the balance of class power away from capital to labor’ and can be achieved, as they see it, via movements ‘from below’, largely, that is, through collective action by unionised workers to ‘alter the balance of class power between capital and labor in favor of the latter’.

The kind of development they see as necessary is an extension of ‘welfare provision’, through which ‘services are provided across an expanding array of social life as part of the transformation and increasing equalization of society’, and what they call a ‘decommodification of food’. This would mean, they say, that ‘food production itself could be increasingly brought under democratic control by workers, their communities, and consumers’. And this would be part of a ‘broader process of managed degrowth’ and ‘a socialist green transition’, which would include, in the words they quote of John Bellamy Foster, ‘growth in such areas as regenerative agriculture, food production, decent housing, clean energy, accessible health care, universal education, community welfare, public transportation, digital connectivity, and other areas related to green production and social needs’.

They also have other indisputably admirable ambitions, such as various alternatives to chemical-intensive farming assisted in part by use of computerisation and robotisation, hydroponics with plants growing without soil in vertical farms, and precision fermentation producing a whole range of tasty foods that mimic meat and milk products but do not come from animals. Precision fermentation could, we are told, ‘produce the same amount of protein as soy production does in the United States on 1,700 times less land’, which in turn ‘could, through reducing cropland, enable large-scale rewilding (to expand the world’s carbon sinks and restore the diversity of plant and animal species), through restoration of grasslands, wetlands, forests, and savannas’. Part of this transformation would, as the authors see it, allow ‘animals to be raised in more compassionate and ecologically sound ways’, and ‘with reductions in the role of meat in the overall Western diet’. So, the authors, while having a soft spot for veganism, do not necessarily advocate its universal adoption. They say, rather, that ‘vegan food production can, through decommodification and democratization of social life, contribute to providing good quality and affordable food for the many, mitigating climate breakdown, and contributing to mending the metabolic rift’.

Powers of government

Overall, an extremely positive and optimistic case is made by these authors for what they term ‘socialist managed degrowth’, even if, with its only ‘partial’ veganism, it is not what many socialist vegans, especially if coming from an ethical standpoint and favouring universal veganism, would want to hear. But it’s also a proposition that needs to be looked at through the lens of the operating procedures of the society we live in and of what it will take to move to the different operating procedures of a socialist society. Two beliefs seem to underlie the picture painted by the authors. The first one is that the shift to a different kind of society can take place bit by bit via a series of struggles by workers who gradually impose on governments their demands for greater fairness and more equality. The second belief is that governments have the power to bend and flex at will the capitalist system they administer and regardless of the profit imperative that underlies it. For all the good intentions of the authors, these beliefs are untenable, since the role of governments is to be the executive committee of the small class of people who own the productive forces, against whom they cannot act in any substantive way. It’s true that governments sometimes can and do intervene in the running of the system in the wider interests of its survival, such as in the case of America’s ‘New Deal’ of the 1930s (referred to in some detail here by these writers) and in the recent Covid crisis. But they do that to keep the system working not to make it fairer or more equal, even if sometimes reforms they bring in may turn out to give some relief to those suffering most from its effects. But they simply cannot regulate to their heart’s content the system of production for profit and buying and selling.

Tweaks or consciousness?

So what needs to happen to establish the kind of society that no doubt the authors of this article would ultimately want to see – a leaderless, stateless, marketless society which will recognise the necessity to produce and distribute sustainably while being sensitive not just to the needs of the human species but to the whole environment of which we are a part, including its geology and its flora and fauna? What needs to happen is not just some tweaks to the way we live and work today brought about by pressure on governments (which would usually be reversible anyway) but the growth of a democratic movement expressing a majority will of the world’s people which will win control of political power, probably via the ballot box, and then collectively organise that new society. This can only happen of course once the necessary spread of consciousness has been achieved and plans to democratically organise that society are in place. It will then be up to that conscious majority to make all sorts of choices about how they live, including whether humans should continue using animals for food and other purposes and, if so, how and to what extent.

Howard Moss