Need to end capitalism (2012)

Book Review from the January 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

What every environmentalist needs to know about capitalism. By Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster. Monthly Review Press. 2011.

Overall the book contains a very good analysis of the causes of the world’s environmental problems which it is claimed are largely attributable to the global economic system of capitalism. Bearing in mind the book is aimed at environmental activists and those concerned with the problems associated with global warming, climate change and the general degradation of the state of the planet, the authors are spot on with this early statement: ‘It’s essential to break with a system based on a single motive – the perpetual accumulation of capital and hence economic growth without end.’  

The chapters unfold neatly revealing the depths of inequality between rich and poor, individually and collectively, including the relative size of their ecological footprints. A clear case is presented as to the illogicality of an expectation that capitalism can be organised a different way to be made ‘green.’  The growth imperative of capitalism is explained and linked to its antagonism to the health of our environment in that what’s good for economic growth is bad for the environment and vice versa. The wide spread of capitalism’s ever expanding reach and resultant damage is comprehensively covered, including the imperialism of land grab, resource wars, water as an urgent resource problem, the exploitation of aquifers adding to annual sea level rise, damage as a result of careless but deliberate exploitation and externalities in their many guises. How appropriately the authors suggest amending the well known phrase, ‘the tragedy of the commons’ to ‘the tragedy of the private exploitation of the commons.’

When it comes to how we should deal with the causes and what is promoted to achieve the break with the system based on the perpetual accumulation of capital and economic growth without end, however, things take a turn for the worse. The final chapter is a disappointing list of rules, regulations, what could, should and must be done to put people and the environment before profit.  It’s disappointing because these demands are all reformist based. Having read this far it must now be plain for readers to see that without first dismantling the very economic system that the authors have so successfully discredited right up to the final chapter there is no way that anything will change for the better, neither for people nor for the environment. Capitalism has been reformed many times and in many different ways and still it continues to progressively worsen the environment. If socialism is to be achieved it has to mean much more than transitional reforms to a democratically planned economy.

Janet Surman