In the current context of global economic, financial, social and military dystopia it is not surprising that every few months there are some groups in the world trying to make sense of what is happening to the planet it’s people and its environment. I have previously drawn attention to a number of such proposals in earlier articles on this blog. This months selection is no different in this regard and I present examples published this month (May 2024) emanating from Sweden, Malasia and Argentina. In a short article I am not able to delve deeply into these three positions concerning the current and future crises they seek to address, so I have selected extracts which I consider represent the essence of these positions

Extracts from a Swedish Democratic Left Political Party Campaign.

“There are three key priorities for this campaign: the climate transition, securing good and safe jobs, and the cost of living crisis. In some respects, the EU is more progressive on climate than the right-wing Swedish government, which is now dismantling years of climate policies, but the neoliberal dogma that prevails at the EU level prevents state aid measures to deliver the large investments needed for the green transition. EU member states must be allowed to make huge investments for a just transition, creating jobs and a better life for many people, and the EU must stop subsidising the fossil industry.” (Hanna Gedin (Left Party, Sweden.)

And:

“As the left we’re still looking for a better strategy, and we need to prioritise better than we have ever done before. People must be able to better understand what we stand for. So, we are trying to focus on very concrete things in people’s lives, like pensions, like the fact the government is cutting the public sector and health, those kinds of things. We are also seeing growing inequalities in Sweden, with more and more people no longer covered by social security and standing in line for food. The lines keep growing, as people can’t afford to buy food. This is not a new thing in Sweden, but it’s been aggravated a lot.” (Ibid)

I have highlighted in italics those sentences which to my assessment indicate the level of thinking and understanding of the person heading up the initiative they are promoting. This first example indicates a membership of an established political (Parliamentary) section of the modern European Bourgeois democratic order. In the first extract there is a wish for the individual bourgeois state elites to deliver huge investments for a green transition of production to create a better life for many people. In the second extract the author reveals they are focussing on concrete things such as pensions, maintaining the public sector whilst extending social security and are concerned that the traditional food poverty in Sweden is getting worse. To my mind it is a step backward and wishful thinking to imagine that a bourgeois system which, in a very rich country like Sweden still has food poverty, is going to make great, let alone huge investments for a just transition from what is (and has been) occuring for the last five or six decades.

Extracts from an article by the Socialist Party of Malaysia.

“But we have come to see that Gramsci’s analysis of society speaks to our predicament. Gramsci said that the ideology of the ruling class becomes dominant ideology of the entire society. He termed it the hegemonic ideology of society. People make decision based on the ideology perpetuated by the ruling class.” ((Dana) Langaswaran, from the Socialist Party of Malaysia)  

And;

“This is because of the model of development adopted in Malaysia. Malaysia relies on foreign direct investments to create jobs. We compete with Thailand, Vietnam and Philippines. All these countries try to be as business friendly as possible. And all of us are keeping the cost of labour as low as possible to attract investments. That is why real median wage of factory workers only went up 1.4 times over 50 years in a country whose GDP increased 24 fold.” (ibid)

And;

“Another way of sharing the wealth of society is by subsidizing public services like transport and health care as well as implementing social protection schemes like universal old age pension. But our government says that they cannot expand the social safety net because the government deficit is too big. (ibid)

Now it is a long time since I sat down and gave the works of Gramsci a good examination, but I do not remember reading anything about the specific ecological, climate and pollution crises which we now face and require solutions for. However, the extract which follows from that Gramsci perspective, suggests that re-examining his ideas would be a waste of my time. The second extract reveals that the authors political Party is part of a collective system which competes with other countries to keep wages low and workers in relative – if not absolute poverty. The third extract reveals that in the midst of a multiple symptom crisis, the ambition for the future of Malasia by the Malasian Socialist Party is for the state to subsidise public transport and health and implement a pension scheme.

To me, this is a further example of a step back to outdated thinking whilst reality is being carried forward into a radically new set of circumstances. These ‘aims’ were once all laudible (but failed) 20th century reformist ambitions concerned with improving working class lives in the ex colonies. However, those socialist authors formulating them then had no knowledge that it is the life of multiple key species and lives of working humanity – as a whole – which is now being negatively impacted by capitalism. Consequently, it is no longer a reform of the worst aspects of the current capitalist system in each country which is needed but a revolutionary transition of the whole international system of mass society human living. We now have an increasingly fragile, climate, ecological and environmental situation – everywhere! Local solutions need to be globally and ecologically capable of being integrated.

From the the organisers of an Eco-Socialist Meeting in Argentina.

“The global ecological and geomorphological system has been altered for the first time in history. The main geomorphological force behind this is the current capitalist mode of production, distribution, and consumption, which is based on “endless” growth and accumulation. This affects not only the features and characteristics of the Earth’s rivers, seas, and oceans, but also the scale, diversity, and complexity of the planet’s biodiversity.” (Maria Elena Saludas. On 2024 International Eco-Socialist Meeting.)

“Creating these alternative worlds that prioritise social, ecological, and climate justice is a challenge that inspires and motivates us as we observe anti-capitalist movements taking place globally. To revolutionise every aspect, dissidents, workers, youth, women, indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, peasants, and scientists are resisting and battling. They denounce the obscene accumulation of capital and the defence of the rights of a small minority that appropriates and destroys our common goods.” (ibid)

“The context is becoming more complex by the day, with the advance of an extreme right that aims to destroy the rights won over years of struggle by workers, trade unions, and feminist, social, environmental, and human rights organizations that have fought—and continue to fight—for more democracy and popular sovereignty in the face of dictatorships and neoliberal projects. However, this whole scenario also invites us to build possible horizons based on socio-political and ecological struggles from below and to the left.” (ibid)

The first extract has clearly identified the problem facing the bio-diversity of life on earth in general as well as humanity in particular, but it does not identify the type of alternative worlds they hope to create. And the type and content of future human social forms is crucially important given that the vanguardist left statists (admirers of Lenin, Stalin and Mao) are once again promoting the idea that another alternative world to a neo-liberal capitalist one is possible and preferable. In these latter cases it would be some form of vanguard party-led, state-capitalist one, which would also be a step backward. The second extract suggests the alternative worlds should prioritise the ‘just’ concerns of the human species. No other species in the inter-connected and inter-dependent web of life on earth are referenced to be prioritised in this particular ‘eco-socialist’ perspective.

In the third extract the exclusively anthropocentric human focus continues. Moreover, the rights won by years of struggle by workers, trade unionists and others, where not necessarily ecologically sound ones. I know that from experience! As a shop steward and activist in industry and on numerous social issues for 40 years I was for much of it (in the UK and elsewhere) campaigning for the right of working people to democratically enjoy an ever increasing share of the annual surplus-value we created by the industrial and mechanized appropriation of organic and inorganic nature.

As an aircraft engineer, trade union and social activist I was for a long time largely unaware that the product of our mass producing working lives (civilian aircraft) for tourism and long-distant trade were seriously undermining, global air quality and ruining indigenous peoples occupation of pristine examples of nature when their coastal villages were being converted to holiday destinations. Even a marginal level of ignorance can be a form of relative bliss, but eventually overcoming ecological and climate ignorance became a choice we could make and it remains so. A lack of ecological and limited economic knowledge in the mid-twentieth century was understandable and perhaps forgivable, but that is no longer the case. This ommision also represents a step back to earlier paradigms of thinking.

It may seem disrespectful to bluntly point out such shortcomings in other peoples good intended proposals for social improvement, and I take no pleasure in doing so. I wish it were not necessary. However, as the saying goes; the way to hell is paved with good intentions’ and climate change and pollution are currently making life a modern hell for many humans and many other species. If we do not critically appraise every suggestion for change from the basis of the most comprehensive understanding we have concerning life on earth, then in a sense we become part of the problem, not part of the solution. So with this in mind, there is also a common but mistaken myth that also needs confronting. It is one promoted and sustained by all those in the 21st century who have not understood the way that hierarchical mass society systems have always functioned economically. 

The myth of Consumer Demand.

The elite classes currently in control  of the latest capital dominated mass societies also promote the same convenient and self-serving myth-driven assumption. It is an assumption that consumer demand is what ultimately triggers and motivates commodity production. This myth conveniently serves to obscure the real dynamic behind the motive for ever greater production and consumption. It does so whilst implying that the problem of resource extraction is mainly the consumers fault for demanding more.  Based on this self-serving narrative, capitalist producers are just innocently following and dutifully fulfilling consumer demand. This narrative effects the way the current climate and ecological crises are framed. Based upon that assumption, therefore, if people wish to save the planet from climate change and ecological destruction then the solution is to reduce consumer demand, by voluntary or compulsory restrictions on consumption.

The above assumption however, does not reflect the reality of hierarchical mass societies in their Ancient,  Feudal or modern Capitalist forms. Apart from basic survival needs, the masses have never initiated a demand for ever more things to be produced and be consumed. Slaves, Peasants and early Wage Slaves had no means or opportunities to demand anything other than living wages from their owners, controllers or employers. Any serious study of ancient empires and city states, will reveal that the demand for ever more production and consumption has come overwhelmingly from the ruling elites – ancient, medieval  or modern. The process of gaining pillage, conquest, tribute, taxes (and now profits) from the resources of their own or other communities have always been initiated by the wealth and power hungry elites within hierarchical mass societies from ancient to modern times. 

In the modern era, the whole ethos of the owners of capital in capitalist dominated economic systems is  to invest ‘their’ capital in production in order to produce commodities or services for sale which will return the value of the original investment together with a proportion of surplus-value known as profit or delivered in the form of interest on capital. Where such capital investments are successful in this regard, they are continually repeated and where they are not successful new avenues of capital investment for production are frantically sought by the owners or controllers of capital in order to not interrupt the annual profitable investment cycles they desire. It is in this way that capitalism constantly initiates profitable production and then finds ways to create a demand for its finished results so that the production can be sold and the investment strategy become successful.

This is why investors put so much effort and expense into high cost advertisement, influencers and sales promotions.  So in general it is not consumers who constantly demand ever more new products or ever more production, but the owners of  capital that search for ever new forms of production to invest their capital in. This now also includes so-called green investments. The investment logic of the individual and corporate capitalists involves a never ending compulsive stimulation (direct or indirect) of production and consumption of the planets material resources. It is obvious that all private or public investment in any form of production requires new sources of inorganic and organic raw materials and energy to manufacture them. It is equally obvious that new raw materials and energy for new mass production can only come from the one  existing – already exhausted and polluted – planet.  Continual investment = continual extraction = continual pollution, climate change and species loss!

The quantitative and qualitative difference in the modern era is that the elites in control of the capitalist mode of production have in a couple of centuries, vastly increased the number of elites and middle-class high-earning consumers and globalised the capitalist system of exploitation of inorganic material and organic species. Furthermore it is clear from historical evidence that successful hierarchical mass societies are presumed by their elites to be ‘logical’, ‘natural’ or at least ‘preferable’ to other forms of social organisation. Therefore, those elites socialised within them cannot see why they should even question ‘their’ system let alone wish to socially revolutionise it. They therefore focus on attempts to deny, downplay, ignore or if absolutely necessary, marginally tweak any inconvenient symptoms that emerge, until eventually the system  collapses due to its own internal contradictions.

The internal contradictions within hierarchical mass societies are of course class based social contradictions,  which are  unresolvable without changing the hierarchical socio-economic system.   No amount of technical changes or scientific discoveries can remove social contradictions even if some changes may serve to postpone or extend the period of eventual collapse. Capitalist elites are no different to ancient and medieval elites in this regard and as long as they now exist off the above average proceeds of capital investments which produce the necessary surplus-value to convert into interest, profit, rents or super-salaries, they will fiercely defend their ideological narratives and political rationalisations whilst steadfastly  maintaining their system by force – as they are now doing globally – against campus activists, liberation struggles and working class resistance to poverty and unemployment.

This is why it is important not to be drawn into superficially plausible ideas (intellectual cul-de-sacs) that are  based not upon the real causes of  the problems the human species (and other species) face, but which are based upon myths, techno-fantasies or on a culture of ‘entitlement to consume’ whatever the capitalists decide to produce. Once the real world economic system of hierarchical mass societies harnessed to the capitalist mode of production is actually fully understood the focus of the prevention of pollution, climate change, ecological destruction and poverty etc., radically changes.  It becomes clear that it is the system of capitalism and its owners which needs to be permanently restricted from constantly investing in production and consumption. That is the only way to  prevent their preferred economic system from committing a form of socio-economic ecocide and homocide.

Therefore, I suggest that any modern social or ecological proposal, such as those noted above, which does not have as its theoretical and practical goal, the openly stated aim of transcending the capitalist mode of production and overcoming the short-sighted, anthropocentric self-obsession of the human species, has remained stuck in the past. Climate research has taken important steps forward in the 21st century but it seems many on the left are still stuck in the past or due to naive illusions (or listening to elite promoted delusions), have simply retreated to more familiar levels of past understanding.  

Roy Ratcliffe (May 2024)