An introduction to the economics that threaten our
future.
Growth is
how neoliberalism measures its own success. Every government, every bank, every
supermarket and every cafe wants to grow their profits from last year and more
importantly- out grow their competitors. This is Darwinist capitalism; where
the profitable survive and the rest fail. Free market economists argue that
this leads to ‘efficiency’- what it really leads to is low wages,
corner-cutting and the exploitation of natural resources to maximise profits
for the shareholders. As the Indian proverb goes, “Only when
the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish
been caught will we realise we cannot eat money”.
“Let us imagine that in 3030BC the total possessions of the people of Egypt filled one cubic metre. Let us propose that these possessions grew by 4.5% a year. How big would that stash have been by the Battle of Actium in 30BC?
Go on, take a guess. Ten times the size of the pyramids? All the sand in the Sahara? The Atlantic ocean? The volume of the planet? A little more? It's 2.5 billion billion solar systems. It does not take you long, pondering this outcome, to reach the paradoxical position that salvation lies in collapse.” George Monbiot, The Guardian.
Socialists
oppose the very idea of profit, because where there is profit there is deficit.
In our society there is a steady flow of money from the consumers into
corporations who funnel that money to those who own. To survive, those
who are unlucky enough not to own have to beg, borrow or steal to survive. Divided,
we sell our labour for far less than it is worth and are alienated from its
purpose, all to perpetuate the flow of money to the owners in a system that is
set up against us.
Capitalism creates a culture of greed, erodes values and builds an environment where everything is for sale. In their pursuit of profit, our planet is another
resource ready to be exploited by corporations. Marx foresaw what we now call
Globalization in the Communist Manifesto:
“The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere”.
And Globalization is the catalyst; technology makes
the less regulated developing world of Asia, Africa and South America more
accessible than ever and their fertile farms and forests ripe for harvest. This
is where the multi-nationals have turned when the developed world is finally
forced to talk about climate change. Often, South American farmers either do
not understand the consequences of environmental degradation or have no choice
but to diversify forests into cattle ranches for our Big Macs or harvest them
for the palm oil that we use in household products and confectionery. Protecting
the planet is a luxury for them that only developed nations can think about
while they must do anything to compete.
The greatest trick of the multi-nationals was to
become powerful self regulators, using greenwash to keep most public pressure
at bay; whether it’s recycled packaging or adverts that show how responsible
they are. A lack of a single international body means that the only pressure on
corporations to act responsibly comes from the donation funded charities with
no legal mandate and the buying power of consumers, but who’s going to give up
MacDonalds? Meanwhile, the powerful neoliberal institutions of this century,
the IMF and WTO, only insist on austerity- not sustainability. Governments bail out our failed financial institutions but then continue to let them run ragged. As Hugo Chavez said, "if the climate was a bank, it would have been saved by now". The worst is
hidden from the ‘more informed’ developed world, kidding ourselves on that
recycling our plastic bags will stop the ice caps melting, but we are complicit
in the destruction at the end of of the capitalist conveyor belt.
Closer to home,
the Yes campaign in Scotland constantly reminded us that we can compete in the
world because of our wealth of resources, including oil. However the reality is
that in order to reduce carbon emissions to a sustainable level, we will have
to leave 80% of world fossil fuels in the ground. This is incompatible with
even the social democratic capitalists economic plans, never mind the fiscally
conservative. Instead, our government is on the brink of allowing fracking by
private energy firms of which our MPs have fingers in their pies. Promises of
reduced energy costs in areas with a third in fuel poverty are tempting to the
desperate but the long term costs include gargantuan CO2 emissions and
potential damages to our water infrastructure. The only beneficiaries of
fracking would be the already loaded energy tycoons and our paid-off political
class. As long as capitalism forces us to compete against each other, there
will be those desperate enough; be it states, corporations or individuals; who
will make the decision to prioritise growth and profit before our planet.
It’s easy for us
to ignore the environmentalists because climate change isn’t often noticeable
in our day-to-day lives, or the link isn’t always made between the symptoms of
environmental degradation and their true cause. But the truth is that the
working class are often the worst effected. Displaced by natural disasters like
Hurricane Katrina or ever increasing flooding, the poorest can’t afford to
relocate or rebuild. Instead they are left to pay for the irresponsible actions
of others. Low-income families in New Orleans still haven’t fully recovered 10
years on, but the corporations have. Farmers in the developing world are
negatively effected by unpredictable weather patterns that ruin crop cycles and
are ruined when their multinational consumers move the supply chain somewhere
else.
So, what is the
solution?
Socialists often
get called idealists and dreamers, but it’s utopian to think that the radical
solutions that climate change requires will be delivered by capitalism. Milton
Freedman said, “The business of business is business”- It’s not the corporations
job to save the planet and if we are relying on them then we are truly doomed.
Change needs to come from a more powerful source than self regulation and weak
state control. Change needs to come from a passion for people and our planet,
not profit.
Under the current
economic model, as water becomes scarcer and population levels continue to
balloon, capitalism will force those who have to conserve their dwindling
resources as we engage in a primitive survival of the fittest- on a global
scale. The west and corporations will accelerate their accumulation of wealth
and leave those who can’t compete to die in a real life Hunger Games. The
alternative is a managed economy where resources are shared and no one goes
hungry. Sustainability is possible when the priority is people.
By Hugh Cullen.