In the globalised system of hierarchical mass societies the combined global input of raw materials and the combined global output of production and waste materials – issuing from all countries – are staggering in their volume and frequency. The results of this 24/7/365 economic activity constitute the primary factors which have led to the global pollution of air, land, sea and fresh water. The combined raw material extraction, commodity production, transportation, consumption and waste deposition, is a direct result of the current industrialised and now automated method and mode of production.

It is this mode of production in general which is also resulting in climate change, polar ice cap melting, sea level rises, high and low temperature fluctuations, vast areas of ecological destruction and escalating cases of species loss. Crucially, some of the species losses are those essential to life in general but which are routinely taken for granted such as microorganisms, plants, algae and insects. It is these species which form the basis of all organic food chains and which are also the transformers and providers of the inorganic gases all other species need to breathe. The ecological balances that over millions of years all life forms on earth have evolved to be healthy within, are provided by the inorganic and organic material available on this one finite planet. This is why the type and purpose of global production and consumption currently practiced by humanity needs to be drastically reduced.

With this reduction of production in mind, the four hierarchical mass society blocs, Russia, China, EU and USA, are by far the biggest global producers and consumers of essential and non-essential planetary material. Consequently, these blocs are also the largest contributers to the above noted continuous degredation and destabilisation of the bio-chemical and ecological balances of life on earth. The same four blocs of hierarchical mass societies also contain the 21st centuries most powerful and powerfully entrenched and protected elites who are supported and defended by their political and legal systems in general and their specially trained and armed forces in particular. These elites can therefore initiate change or effectively prevent it whenever they decide to.

In this latter regard, it is important to understand that the elites in control of these 20th and 21st century hierarchical mass societies are dedicated to maintaining and conserving the existing mode and method of production – in all the attributes of it that are essential to them. Therefore, what is really seen as essential and therefore ‘important’ by such powerful elites is a crucial determinant in what happens to global production and consumption (and thus to the health of people and the planet) in the coming decades. The last dozen decades in general and the last year in particular have revealed some clear pointers as to what is considered important and essential to the global elites and in particular to those in the above named big four.

In the last 12 months, we have witnessed that what is considered important – above all else – to the elites in at least two of the above blocs, (Russia and the USA) has not been the well being of humanity in general nor their own citizens in particular. They have ramped up production across every main economic sector and particularly in the production of weapons of mass destruction. Russia has done so in order to use them to invade parts of Ukraine and the USA has done so to supply weapons of mass destruction to Israel in support of its campaign of genocide within Gaza.

It has been clear for some time that the elites in China have not only increased military production for land, sea and air based military combat but have also focussed on increases in non-military production by implementing the Belt and Road Initiative. The latter is planned to create improved trade links between 75% of the world’s populations by creating a high tech and more extensive version of the ancient Silk Road commercial links between countries in the East and West. 140 countries have already signed up to it, revealing that these too are anxious to increase production and consumption by the methods of mass production, extraction, transportation and waste disposal. Furthermore, the EU countries have agreed to increase military expenditure, which is of course, like all forms of production, is based on the extraction of inorganic and organic materials by industrial methods. In addition the elites of each EU member state have all tabled plans for increased general production. These elites are an obvious part of the problem and not part of the solution to climate or ecological extinction events.

If the big four polluters and producers are not prepared to even plan to significantly reduce extraction, production, transport, consumption and waste accumulation and instead are intending to increase it, then the ‘hopes’ of the ‘green’ campaigners and other wishful thinkers for sustainable production to be embraced by the worlds elites are more than likely to be dashed yet again. In fact it seems from the planned increase in military expenditure by the elites in the countries of the big bloc economies that these elites are anticipating future wars over the planets shrinking resources of inorganic and organic materials and also further wars over free access to markets for their planned increase in levels of commodity production. This is logical for them because for the capitalist mode of hierarchical mass society to function, whatever is produced must be sold, otherwise the investors in economic production cease to invest in it and production grinds to halt – and with it the social fabric built upon it begins to unwind.

What has yet to dawn on most people is that the hierarchical mass society system is locked into a system of production and governance of it by anthropocentric pro-capitalist, patriarchal elites who have no intention of reforming their mode of production or their way of governing. This is vividly illustrated – even in the cases when this way of governing leads to mass murder in the form of aerial warfare and systematic genocide. Consequently, the elite perspectives on the future are very different than the rest of their populations. They reason that they will be able, by their wealth or ‘official’ position, to escape the worst effects of what will visit the rest of us and they will be able to protect themselves from any adverse climatic conditions or potential disasters.

This historic pattern of elites looking after their own welfare before all else was repeated during the fears over a Nuclear War in the post- second world war decades. At public expense in time, labour, materials and money the elite ordered deep bomb and contamination proof isolated bunkers to be built into which at the outbreak of war they could descend while their populations were being incinerated by thermal blasts, or tortured by food and clean water starvation or by being frozen to death during nuclear winters. Given this relatively recent track record, it would be naive of the rest of us to think that if plans have not already been made and implemented by the elites for their protection against any future climate associated disasters, then they will be made and implemented when the possibility of a dire straits situation becomes imminent.

Having boozy parties, while their vulnerable citizens were dying during Covid pandemics were only a tip of the iceberg example of the mental difference between privileged elites and the majority of ordinary working citizens. Elites have a different perspective on life and radically different assumptions about what is fair or right. Consequently appealing to them by petitions, demonstrations and campaigns involving pleas to protect or benefit the masses has proven a complete waste of time in the past and continues to be demonstrably futile in the present.

Over many decades, it has become obvious that the elites in most of the hierarchical mass societies harnessed to the capitalist mode of production, have become split over the increased use of multicultural labour within the economic system of capitalism. One section of the elite in the advanced capitalist countries forming the left wing liberal and social democratic sections of their countries, want to increase the internal and external use of less expensive labour of whatever skin colour, ethnicity or religious ideology it may be part of. These particular elite sections pretend to be champions of internationalism, humanism and equal rights, however, beneath their political correctness rhetoric they represent the rights of national elites to exploit and make profits from wherever they think appropriate within a global network by employing any kind of human labour either in their home countries or abroad.

Another section forming the right wing populist and Republican elite sections of their countries currently wish to exploit low cost labour in their foreign bases but wish to restrict the use of foreign low-cost labour within their own particular countries. So these particular sections pretend to be champions of local indigenous labour and advocates of preserving national cultures. However, beneath their populist policies and anti – woke rhetoric they also represent the rights of national elites to exploit and make profits from wherever they think is appropriate. The only difference between the two elite sections is over when and where they think exploitation and oppression should take place.

Neither section is really concerned (and never have been) with the human rights or welfare of the working and unemployed classes. Both are united in wishing to preserve their class right to exploit and oppress whoever they can and in forcibly maintaining the hierarchical mass society system which allows them to do so. Sadly, many on the left have seen this split between the elite sections superficially in conventional political terms and have failed to grasp what is occuring at the socio-economic level. This superficial grasp of contemporary reality  even extends to parts of the seemingly radical left and  has led to a false dualistic paradigm in which one section of the elite is viewed as Fascist and the other section as Liberal democratic. Therefore, in political elections which decide which section of the elite shall continue to govern hierarchical mass societies, they simplistically advise working people to choose what they personally judge to be the lesser of two evils.

Of course choosing the lesser of two evils is still inviting an inhuman level of ‘evil’ (!) upon ones self and ones contemporaries but worse than this they condemn those workers whose alternative viewpoint sees the greater evil as the so-called left-liberal, social democratic section of the hierarchical elite and then claim these non-establishment workers also as Fascist or fascist dupes. In doing so they introduce deep socio-economic splits among the working classes, based not upon any underlying socio-economic analysis but upon their own inhuman personal and often politically sectarian opinions. Sadly, sectarian inhumanity, is frequently demonstrated on the left as well as the right. In fact in historical and contemporary terms these two sections of the elite are extremely authoritarian and both of their authoritarian tendencies will sooner or later morph into fascistic levels and even combine in order to protect their system from the efforts of workers to defend their living standards.

A further interesting and crucial litmus test of elite humanity in general comes with the issue of protecting children. Even most animals will do their utmost to protect the offspring of their own species, from danger and death. Even predatory animals do not mass kill their own or any other life form.  Furthermore,  within the human species the desire to protect children (not just our own but others also), is normally even greater than that of other species. But look at the callous indifference and disregard to the fate of thousands of the children of Gaza by the US, UK and EU elites. They could have stopped supplying the means to bomb the bodies of children into unidentifiable shreds of skin and bone by nothing more difficult or demanding than a simple phone call or by issuing an order paper to the manufacturer or supplier to cease munitions deliveries. Internationally the genocide support group of elites did nothing except find reasons not to suspend their political agreements to supply the means for systematic genocide of civilian men, women and children. This and the obvious fact that by increasing non-war production they are nevertheless also effectively continuing to maim and kill parts of the global eco-system which keeps us and them alive, is the strongest possible indictment of the social effects of their hierarchical mass society system.

Incidentally, the hierarchical mass society economic system has been unfit for the purpose of an intelligent homo sapien species for multiple generations and has frequently been rebelled against. It has also collapsed from it’s internal and external contradictions on a number of occasions but it keeps on managing to be revived. However, this system has reached it’s most unfit levels in the 20th and 21st centuries. In its western liberal form it has become such an obviously destructive and inhuman socio-economic system that in a mood of desperation some individuals are currently suggesting that the ideas behind the hierarchical state capitalist mass society systems created in 20th century Russia and China, as bad as they were, are worth copying or replicating elsewhere. This suggestion demonstrates a complete absence of a thorough evaluation of these particular hierarchical mass society systems which were then, and now, partially camouflaged by describing them as benign systems and calling them socialist.

The reality, however, was completely different and a substantial amount of detailed evidence and evaluation of the practices and ideas of its early leadership in the Soviet Union which substantiate this negative assertion is available in three parts. They can be download for free by clicking on the ‘Free Downloads’ tab along the banner under this blogs picture above and following the links. But I shall also produce further short sections of this article in order to update some relevant evidence concerning the current 2024 situation of Russia and China.

Roy Ratcliffe (June 2024.)