Socialist Resistance

Roy Wilkes reports from this year’s climate camp.

Over 1500 people attended this year’s climate camp on the Medway peninsula. The camp focused on resisting government plans to allow E.ON to build at Kingsnorth the first coal fired power station in over thirty years, a proposal which makes a mockery of Brown’s professed concern about climate change. Government assurances that the new station will be carbon capture and storage (CCS) ready were exposed as utter drivel. ‘CCS ready’ means not that there will be a functioning CCS plant in place, but merely that there is space in a field somewhere nearby in which such a plant could be built at some stage in the future (if, that is, it ever becomes technically and economically feasible.)

Arthur Scargill visited the camp on the Monday to promote ‘clean’ coal. Despite making some good points about the horrific conditions under which much imported coal is mined, he failed to make a convincing case for going ahead with new coal fired power. And as George Monbiot pointed out, why would trade unionists want to condemn workers to the horrendous health and safety hazards of deep coal mining when many more hazard free jobs could be created in building and installing wind turbines. But the most important thing is that Arthur came to the camp, engaged in a dialogue, and defended the protesters in their confrontations with the police. This dialogue, on the future of coal and of coal miners, and on the need for a just transition to a low carbon economy, needs to be continued and deepened.

Monbiot for his part enraged many campers by apparently vacillating on the nuclear question. Although he was keen to emphasise the stringent safety conditions that he would apply to any future nuclear plants, Monbiot’s approach appeared to offer a green cover to the nuclear lobby, in what seemed like an unnecessary and indeed a panicked response to the impending threat from new coal.

The camp provided many opportunities for participants to debate not only climate change but also radical politics in general. Workshops were held throughout the week on a wide range of topics, including vegan cake baking, neo-liberalism in the education system, the role of trade unions in fighting climate change, developing sustainable transport policies and why men should oppose the oppression of women. Several workshops and training sessions were also held on the methodology and techniques of non violent direct action.

The mass actions took place on the Saturday, with the campers divided into 4 groups: green, silver, blue and red. Several hundred direct actionists of the ‘green group’ – which was sub-divided further into small ‘affinity groups’ - converged on different sections of the Kingsnorth perimeter. Some dismantled police fencing and used it to build ladders with which to breach the inner fences of the power station. Others climbed a nearby pylon to hang a banner reading ‘Shut Down Kingsnorth’. Those that made it into the grounds were all arrested, but to get that far in the face of such a huge police presence was an impressive achievement in itself. The fence was also breached by a flying pink pig (labeled “CCS”) which had been launched by members of the ‘silver group.’

The Rebel Raft Regatta of the ‘blue group’ took to the river in a range of boats and makeshift rafts (many of which had been built and hidden weeks before the event). One of these crews managed to hang a banner reading “COAL: Starter Gun For Climate Chaos” from an island fort opposite the station, while the crew members of another craft were subsequently arrested and charged with aggravated trespass. According to their charge sheets, “they did an act, namely disrupting the running of the power station by causing the water inlet cooling system to be shut down.” So much for E.ON’s claim that they had kept the power station running normally all weekend!

The largest and most visible protest was that carried out by the ‘orange group’. Around 1000 protesters marched from the camp to the front gate of the power station in a colourful, loud and joyous demonstration, which included all the children of the camp, plus a carnival dragon, several cyclists, a jazz band and a samba band. On two occasions sections of the march were attacked by police snatch squads, backed up by riot police and horses. The first attack happened when one of the jazz drummers was mistakenly identified as someone who had broken bail conditions by attending the camp, and in the second case as a response to the heinous crime of breaking a length of police tape. On both occasions protesters dived in to protect the police targets and then loudly remonstrated against police brutality.

The march culminated in a rally at the power station gate. Speakers included Liberal MEP Chris Davies, who claimed that CCS was both possible and necessary, and Dr Derek Wall (Principal Male Speaker of the Green Party), who lambasted establishment politicians of all parties for cowtowing to the anti-ecological imperatives of neo-liberalism. Derek urged the protesters to look to Venezuela for inspiration. A low flying police helicopter disrupted the rally for a short while, but only until protesters drowned out its buzzing with unified chants of “go away,” after which the helicopter did indeed go away, to much applause. Banners were hung from the gate and from all adjacent fencing.

The climate camp was not only an expression of radical education and mass protest, but also a practical example of non-hierarchical and sustainable living. Power for the p.a. systems, and for the music, cinemas and computers, was generated by wind turbines, photovoltaic cells and even cycle power. Composting toilets were provided throughout the camp - and they are incidentally far cleaner and less smelly than the chemical toilets and plastic portaloos used at rock festivals – with the waste donated to an organic farmer after the event. All the work - including cooking the vegan food, washing up, composting the waste and defending the gates - was organized collectively, with decisions taken in participatory ‘neighborhood’ meetings.

The methodology of consensus meetings, with all its associated hand signals, seems strange at first to those of us from a labour movement tradition. But it is well established among the radical greens, and seems to provide a useful addition to the arsenal of resistance. And as a means of reasserting the principals of participatory democracy, it could well prove invaluable.

Many campers who had come simply to protest new coal were visibly shaken (and indeed radicalized) by the massive police presence. 1500 cops from 26 police forces descended on the camp during the week. Anyone approaching or leaving was thoroughly searched under Section 60 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. An early raid on the camp resulted in truck loads of stuff being confiscated – the booty included such offensive objects as bike locks, crayons and oranges. A cock and bull story was released to the media about a cache of weapons found in a nearby wood, probably in order to justify these excesses. We were videoed and photographed repeatedly. Riot police were massed at the gates at 5am every morning, resulting in campers being woken up early in order to defend the gates. And a police helicopter flew low overhead at all hours of the night, in a blatant attempt at sleep deprivation, and also at key times during the day, in order to disrupt meetings. By Friday, food for the camp was held up at a roundabout half a mile away so that we had to carry it on foot (with searches in both directions.) Over 100 people were arrested during the week, usually for ‘obstruction’.

But the protesters held firm in resisting police efforts to invade and occupy the camp. An early attempt at police occupation was repulsed when around 50 cops were overwhelmed by campers and pushed back through the gate. The gates were barricaded and rapid responses to every attempt at massing riot police outside the gates ensured that they never gained access. Every morning the police would issue a printed sheet requesting the right to patrol the camp and even to set up an on-site police station. And every day, following discussion in the neighborhood meetings, their request was denied, so that throughout the week the site was maintained as a cop-free zone. This in itself boosted the confidence and determination of the campers.

One of the most striking features of the climate camp movement is the predominance of young people. This is certainly a cause for optimism. There is already a strong anti-capitalist consciousness among these youngsters, and this is starting to engender an understanding that the working class is the key agency of change. The camp has embraced the notion of ‘just transition’, and actively seeks out links with the unions. Despite many of its participants expressing sympathy with ‘anarchism’, this growing movement should nevertheless provide fertile soil for the ideas of eco-socialism.

It has been suggested that Kingsnorth might be the last climate camp. This is partly to avoid the camp becoming routinised as an annual jamboree, and partly in order to concentrate resources on the rolling blockade of Kingsnorth (which will begin as soon as a decision to build the new power station is announced.) The message from Kingsnorth is clear. This movement is not going away, and any attempt to go ahead with the plans for a new coal fired power station will be firmly resisted. And with the confidence of these young protesters running as high as it is, this is definitely a battle we can win.

The next meeting of the Camp for Climate Action will be in Manchester on the weekend of 26^th to 28^th September.

See website for details of the climate action group in your area: http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/

Reviewed by Roy Wilkes

Two years ago George Monbiot published Heat, a ground-breaking book which armed a generation of activists with the technical and scientific know how to fight climate change. Jonathan Neale’s new book starts in a similar vein, by explaining the science of climate change and by showing that the technology already exists to prevent it (or at least to prevent catastrophic abrupt climate change. Climate change as such is already with us, and hitting the world’s poor first and hardest.)

But whereas Monbiot concluded that the battle against climate change is ‘a campaign against ourselves’, Neale takes the opposite tack. Ordinary people should not be prevailed upon to make sacrifices, an approach which tries to tackle the problem ‘at the wrong end of the pipe.’ Instead we must build a global mass movement to force through the changes that are needed, particularly in energy production, transport, housing and industry. And whereas Monbiot tried to develop a utopian scheme of tradable individual carbon rations, Neale explains why such market mechanisms (and others such as green taxation and carbon trading) are incapable of solving the problem.

To fight climate change effectively will necessitate rational planning and extensive government intervention. However, the rich and powerful will fight tooth and nail to prevent this happening, since they will perceive any retreat from neoliberalism, which has brought pain, hardship and fear to so many people, as a threat to their wealth and power.

Neale suggests demands that are eminently achievable and realistic, yet sufficiently inspiring to motivate people to act. These include 5 million solar roofs in 5 years; a 20 fold increase in wind power in 5 years (Germany already has ten times the wind power of Britain); 10 million fully insulated homes in 10 years; car free cities; free public transport; public ownership of the railways; an end to airport expansion; union environment reps in every workplace; and policies to guarantee alternative work (with no loss of pay) for all those currently employed in unsustainable industries. If every union fights hard for these demands, we would not only have a real chance of preventing climate chaos, we would also ensure a better quality of life for all.

Among the most illuminating chapters are those dealing with the history of climate politics. The scientists and environmental NGOs performed an invaluable service to the world by warning us about global warming. Now everyone knows. But their political strategy, which is based entirely on trying to persuade the rich and powerful to act, was fatally flawed. What is needed now is for the social movements, and in particular the unions, to pick up the baton and run with it.

Neale imagines four possible outcomes to this crisis. The first is that abrupt climate change will overwhelm us. This is all too possible. The second, and least likely outcome, is that the ruling class will see sense and do what needs to be done. The third possible outcome is that a huge mass movement will force the rulers to act, and that the rulers will make a compromise. And the fourth is global social revolution. We don’t yet know which outcome will prevail.

I would take issue with Neale’s analysis of the former Soviet Union, which in my opinion leads him to grossly underestimate the global impact of its collapse. And some economists might argue that Neale underestimates the extent to which the rate of profit has been restored under neoliberalism. These are issues for ongoing debate within the movement, as are the precise details of the demands we should be raising. But overall this is a wonderful book, a positive and optimistic addition to the armoury of socialists and climate activists alike. It is written with genuine warmth and humour, and filled with boundless faith in the humanity and decency of ordinary people.

Everyone should read this book and read it soon. Order a copy now from your local bookshop as a way of encouraging them to put it on their shelves: ISBN 9781905192373. And when you have read it, pass it on to your friends, family and workmates, and get them involved in the movement. We have a planet to save, and in the process of saving it, we have a world to win.

Joseph Healey is the Green Party’s International Co-ordinator and the co-convenor of the Green Left. In this talk to the Socialist Resistance seminar on broad parties he surveys the European Greens.

The protest against the proposed third runway at Heathrow Airport on 31^st May sent a powerful message to Gordon Brown’s government: we will not sit idly by and watch while the future of our planet is put at risk. Current plans to expand our airports are cynically irresponsible and fly in the face of the government’s professed concerns about climate change.

Of course, carbon emissions do not respect national boundaries. With atmospheric CO2 concentrations already over 387ppmv, the need for serious global action to radically reduce emissions is more urgent than ever. The Campaign against Climate Change is right to campaign for an effective international treaty. However, the changes we need to make will not be achieved in UN conference rooms and treaty negotiations alone. They will only be achieved by global mass struggle, by a global mass movement. Building this movement is an urgent task for all ecosocialists, because without it we are destined for a terminal decline into barbarism.

We have already seen the birth of this movement, and its first tentative steps, in the struggles of the indigenous people of the Amazon, in the protests against the refusal of the Bush government to ratify Kyoto, in the demonstrations called around the world to coincide with the UN climate talks, and in thousands of other climate marches, protests, rallies and direct actions.

The Global Climate Campaign was launched by activists in Britain in 2001 in response to Bush’s refusal to ratify Kyoto. By 2005, demonstrations were held in 34 countries to coincide with the Montreal climate talks, including a march by 10 000 people in Montreal itself. By the time of the Bali talks in 2007 there were 84 countries taking part. 2007 also saw around 2000 climate demonstrations in all 50 US states as part of the Step it Up campaign.

The task facing ecosocialists now is three-fold – to immerse ourselves in the emerging social movement on climate in order to actively build each and every protest; to weld together the diverse and multifaceted strands of this movement into a single powerful force; and to develop, through a wide ranging process of discussion and debate, the strategies that are needed to win. And there are three social forces that will be decisive in all of these tasks: the indigenous peoples of the South; the organized working class of all countries; and the youth.

Youth and students have already shown their militancy in direct actions against airport expansions and against coal fired power stations. Not only do the young have the biggest stake in protecting the future of the planet, they are also unbowed by the defeats of the past, and are therefore capable of bringing innovative methods of struggle and new waves of radicalism into the movement.

North America’s largest manufacturing union, The United Steelworkers, have joined with the Sierra Club, the largest US environmental organization, to launch a strategic Blue-Green alliance under the banner of Good Jobs, A Clean Environment, and A Safer World. This is a clear indication of what is both possible and necessary.

The unions in Britain are also starting to pick up on this issue. In February of this year, three hundred trade unionists met in London for the first ever Campaign against Climate Change Trade Union Conference. Ecosocialists now need to take the climate debate forward at every level within every union, and to win union members in their millions to taking decisive action on climate. Such action may include participation in the mass demonstrations, boycotting bio-fuels, and preparing and fighting for alternative plans of sustainable and socially useful production.

But at the forefront of this struggle are the indigenous people of the Global South, fighting as they are against incursions into the rainforests by logging companies and agri-business, and against the biofuels that put corn into car tanks instead of into the mouths of hungry people. As Bolivian President Evo Morales put it during his speech at the UN General Assembly last September: "The indigenous peoples of Latin America and the world have been called upon by history to convert ourselves into the vanguard of the struggle to defend nature and life."

The indigenous peoples are at the cutting edge of this struggle. Ecosocialists must now follow their lead.

A range of international speakers have now been confirmed for Socialist Resistance’s day school on broad left parties on Saturday 28 June. Recent developments in the Workers Party (PT) Brazi, the Italian Rifondazione Comunista and Respect in England and Wales have once again sparked debate about the strategy of building broad anti-capitalist parties and their relationship to the tactics of revolutionaries.

Speakers confirmed include Miguel Reis from the Left Bloc in Portugal as well as speakers from Die Linke in Germany, the Dutch Socialist Party and the LCR in France, currently in the middle of a highly successful campaign to found a new, broad socialist party. Speakers from Britain will include Joseph Healy, from Green Left, and Alan Thornett from Socialist Resistance. The conference starts 10.30am, June 28 at ULU, Malet Street, London.

Norman Traub

Africa has the lowest per capita fossil energy use of any major world region. Yet the continent is suffering considerably as a result of climate change caused by global warming and is the least equipped to deal with the crisis because of the poverty of its people.

The ice cap is receding on Africa’s highest peak, Mount Kilimanjaro. Desertification is spreading in the north western Sahel region. Droughts, flooding and other extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and severe. Numerous plant and animal species are in decline. Tropical diseases like malaria are spreading. The ecological problems that the capitalist countries of Africa face are aggravated by the deliberate policy of pollution export practised by the advanced capitalist countries.

Africa’s history, from its devastation by the slave trade from the 16th to the 19th centuries, its colonisation and subjection to imperialism, is intimately tied up with the development of capitalism. Political economist Patrick Bond at the beginning of his book Looting Africa (1) summarises the reasons for poverty in Africa. “Africa is poor, ultimately, because its economy and society have been ravaged by international capital as well as by local elites who are often propped up by foreign powers. The public and private sectors have worked together to drain the continent of resources which otherwise-if harnessed and shared fairly- should meet the needs of the peoples of Africa.”

The impoverishment of Africa is compounded by the damage to the ecology of the continent caused by climate change as well as the pollution exported there by the rich capitalist countries.

In November 2004 a coalition of 18 aid agencies and green organisations including Oxfam and Greenpeace reported that global warming was now the most serious problem facing the poor of the earth. Unless it was checked, the coalition argued, it threatened any progress they might make. The report called upon the rich capitalist countries, which have produced, and continue to produce, most of the greenhouse gas emissions, to cut them drastically.

Climate change has been called an act of aggression by the rich against the poor and this is borne out repeatedly as disastrous floods and droughts kill thousands of people in the capitalist countries of Sub Saharan Africa and Asia.

The coalition’s report went on to point out that Africa is uniquely vulnerable to climate shifts with 70% of its people being immediately dependent on rain-fed, small scale agriculture. It said that 14 African countries were already subject to water stress and that they would be joined by a further 11 nations in the next 25 years.

Rainfall is predicted to decline in the Horn of Africa and some parts of the south of the continent by as much as 10% by 2050, while the land may warm by as much as 1.6C. The crop harvests for hundreds of millions of people are likely to be affected. The sea level around the coast of Africa is projected to rise by 25cm by 2050 and both the west and east coast are likely to suffer from erosion. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that Africa will suffer more than the rest of the world from global warming.

In the face of the foreseeable affects of climate change and with 850 million people living on less than $1 a day, how can Africa raise living standards and grow enough food to feed its hungry people? Millions of poor farmers and peasants in Africa are barely able to subsist on the land or are made landless and swell the huge slums and shanty towns in the big cities.

The problems that they face have to be seen within an international framework In the 1970s and 1980s African countries were caught in the debt trap. Debt has become a new permanent mechanism for the transfer of wealth from the peripheral capitalist countries to the capitalist classes in the metropolitan countries and the local elites of the South.

During the 1980s and 1990s Africa repaid US$255 billion of foreign credit, a factor of four times the original 1980 debt. Yet between 1980 and 2002 Sub Saharan Africa’s total foreign debt rose from $61 billion to $206 billion.

There is a world wide demand for cancellation of the debts of peripheral capitalist countries, which in any case are unrepayable. Tied to the loans offered by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) to the African countries were onerous conditions embodied in structural adjustment programmes. These obliged governments to liberalise trade, reduce tariffs and among other measures, dismantle domestic support for farmers.

To ensure repayment of the debt, the international financial institutions encouraged Africa to export its natural resources, which accounted for 80% of African exports in 2000. A dozen African countries were dependent on a single commodity for exports. The long term decline in prices for primary products such as coffee, tea and cotton, upon which the export of many African countries depend, is extremely damaging to their economies.

The World Bank in a report in 2005, considering the depletion of natural resources - petroleum, other subsoil mineral assets, timber, cropland and pastureland - associated with trade, had to admit that Africa is much poorer than it would have been if it had not concentrated on export of primary products.

While the IMF and World Bank demand that state support for farmers in Africa is removed, no such bans on aid apply to the farmers in the advanced capitalist countries, who receive massive agricultural subsidies. The US, European and Japanese agricultural industry are thus able to dump grains and foodstuffs in African markets.

It is not only the depletion of natural resources but pollution damage sustained in the extraction of primary products that is contributing to the impoverishment of Africa. A decade ago when Larry Summers (later the Clinton Administration’s treasury secretary) was the World Bank’s chief economist he publicly advocated the export of pollution to Africa. He said ‘I’ve always thought that under populated countries in Africa are vastly under-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low…I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest-wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that’.

As countless examples of the dumping of toxic waste in African countries show, this pollution policy is still being pursued today. In 2007 a Dutch company with revenues of US$ 28 billion dumped 500 tons of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, West Africa because it did not want to pay the $250,000 disposal fee in the Netherlands. At least 10 people died from the fumes, 69 were hospitalised and more than 40,000 people needed medical attention. Earlier this year a container with toxic cargo was dumped at the roadside near Mombassa, Kenya after it had been offloaded at the port. Two Mombassa residents suffered serious injuries and several others were treated for pulmonary ailments.

In their unending quest for fossil fuels for energy and for raw materials, the multinational companies will go to any lengths, including seriously damaging the ecology. One of the most notorious examples is the damage to the Niger Delta in Nigeria where the multinational oil companies, in particular Shell, have their operations.

In a report to the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, the people of the Niger Delta said “Apart from air pollution from the oil industry’s emissions… we have widespread water, soil and land pollution.” The pollution of the land and water has since made farming and fishing in large areas of the Niger Delta impossible. With no means of livelihood whole communities have become destitute.

If multinational capital in Africa is to be replaced by policies beneficial to the continent’s communities and ecology, poor farmers and urban workers will have to unite against imperialist exploitation and ally themselves with radical forces internationally which share their objectives.

Some of these forces, in the burgeoning movement of ecosocialism, have come up with the idea of an ecosocialist manifesto, a work still in progress (2). The manifesto states: ‘the generalisation of ecological production under socialist conditions can provide the ground for the overcoming of the present crises. A society of freely associated producers does not stop at its own democratisation. It must, rather, insist on the freeing of all beings as its ground and goal. It overcomes thereby the imperialist impulse both subjectively and objectively. In realising such a goal, it struggles to overcome all forms of domination, including, especially those of gender and race…Ecosocialism will be international, and universal, or it will be nothing. The crises of our time can and must be seen as revolutionary opportunities, which it is our obligation to affirm and bring into existence’.

(1) Looting Africa: the economics of exploitation by Patrick Bond. Published by Zed Books 2006.

(2) Ecosocialism or Barbarism p119. Published by Socialist Resistance Books 2007.

(Separate box or editorial?)

Capitalism cannot solve the ecological crisis

That climate change is due to human activity is no longer seriously disputed. The view of the world scientists as embodied in the 4^th assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) backed this conclusion.

The source of the ecological breakdown we are facing is capitalism and in particular its deadlier neoliberal phase occurring in the last thirty years. Humans have increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by more than a third since the industrial revolution and the rate of increase is becoming more rapid. Capitalism, based as it is on providing profits for the owners of capital and not for human need, devotes large parts of the production process to turning out socially useless and often harmful products which pollute the atmosphere and destabilise ecosystems.

Capitalism cannot solve the ecological crisis because to do so would set limits to its insatiable drive for profits. It has become increasingly recognised worldwide that the only way to stop ecological destruction is the socialist transformation of society in an ecological framework. This is advocated by ecosocialist who recognise the need for ‘limits on growth’ of production imposed for sustaining the environment. This goes hand in hand with the transformation of needs for use value rather than exchange value.

Climate change is a working class issue. Try to get this resolution through your union branch. Amend it as appropriate.

This Association notes:
1) The contradiction between the Government’s stated aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and its practice of expanding roads and airports.

2) The devastating impact a proposed third runway at Heathrow Airport would have on local communities as a consequence of raised air and noise pollution, and on the world’s climate as a result of increased emissions of greenhouse gases.

This Association therefore demands that the UK government immediately abandons all plans to build a third runway at Heathrow airport.

This Association also agrees to:

1) Send a delegation and banner to the National Demonstration against the third runway at Heathrow at 12 noon on Saturday 31^st May 2008. (Assemble at Hatton Cross Tube Station.)

2) Affiliate to the Campaign against Climate Change (Affiliation fees: National Unions £250 per annum; Districts and Regions £100 per annum; local branches £25 per annum), and help its work with a further donation of £… (cheques payable to Campaign against Climate Change should be sent to Campaign against Climate Change , Top Floor, 5 Caledonian Road, London N1 9DX)

By blaming individuals, the ruling class aims to greenwash their intrinsically environmentally destructive economic and social system. We have borrowed this article from the indispensable Climate and Capitalism site.

(A talk to the Climate Change Social Change Conference held in Sydney from April 11 to 13. Thanks to Inhabitable Earth for the text. The subheads were added by Climate and Capitalism.)

by Terry Townsend,
Managing Editor, Links

I’m sure everybody here is aware of the basic facts of global warming and the likely consequences if rapid and serious action is not taken. There is virtually unanimous agreement among scientists and activists, and increasingly among millions of ordinary people, about the degree of the problem and the time frame we have to make fundamental changes to address it.

The main “solutions” being offered by the capitalist class, its politicians and the corporate-dominated mass media — and endorsed by some key peak environmental organizations — are consciously designed to shift the responsibility for, and the major costs of, addressing global warming away from the most polluting corporations and to preserve the basic structure and mechanisms of Western capitalist economies. They are also designed to delay the necessary political, economic and social changes for as long as possible, and to keep them to the minimum that are compatible (in their assessment) with both the survival of capitalist society and ameliorating the worst of climate change.

This is why major-party politicians and the corporate media — and again unfortunately some peak environment groups – do not place serious demands on big business, but endorse — even celebrate — big business’ preferred measures of emissions trading, “green” taxes, carbon offsetting projects in the Third World and capitalism-friendly publicly subsidized techno-fixes such as so-called clean coal and agro-fuels.

These false “solutions” are not only inadequate, they are counterproductive. However, since other speakers and workshops will be focusing on those, I’ll concentrate on another of the establishment’s favoured — and ultimately also counterproductive — “solution” — one that is intertwined with the others. The push for all individuals to voluntarily consume a little less, and “buy green” whenever they can. That the answer to global warming is for all of “us” — consumers, workers, residents, pensioners — to voluntarily change our wasteful behaviour.

Despite its benign aura of commonsense advice, this is a massive ideological campaign to drive home to “us” that it is ordinary working people who are ultimately to blame for climate change, and that it is “us who must pay for its solution. It is part of the ruling class’ overall offensive to shift the blame and cost of addressing global warming away from itself and its intrinsically environmentally destructive economic and social system.

As one commentator aptly noted in the usually system-friendly Grist e-zine “every time an activist or politician hectors the public to voluntarily reach for a new [fluro] bulb or spend extra on a Prius, Exxon Mobil heaves a big sigh of relief,” because it diverts people’s attention from what is really necessary to address the crisis, and from who is really responsible.

Death by a thousand tips

Another radical commentator, George Marshall, has described this ideological offensive as “death [by] a thousand tips.” He is referring to the literally tens of thousands of newspaper articles and web pages that, after having outlined the severe crisis we face and the sharply diminishing time society has to respond, direct the reader to a snappy, upbeat sidebar or list entitled “10 easy tips to save the planet” or some variation thereof. The same sort of lists have been the core of government-sponsored campaigns across the globe, including Australia.

Standard items include “change your light globes,” “turn off unnecessary lights,” “don’t leave your appliances on stand-by,” “adjust your thermostats,” recycle, compost, drive a fuel-efficient car, or drive less. Yet extremely rarely do these helpful hints mention political action, let alone make concrete demands on governments or business. On the odd occasion they do, it is vague and tokenistic – and tacked onto the end of the list.

Of course, there is a place for action by individuals, and it should not be discouraged. It does make sense in terms of saving energy and water, reducing waste and saving money. Educating and facilitating such behaviour on a mass scale is a significant part of what is needed to halt global warming. But such suggestions should not be counterposed to, or used to drown out calls for, the urgent need for mass political action to force the necessary cuts to emission demanded by the science. And they should not be cynically presented, as they are by the corporate media and capitalist politicians, as the way to save the planet.

In Britain, the government spent £22 million on a “Do your bit” campaign and had to admit that it produced no measurable change in personal habits. A poll in 2007 indicated that this campaign had miseducated people, with more than 40% saying that recycling household waste — which would result in a relatively small reduction of emissions — was the most important thing they could do. Only 10% nominated the far more effective regular use of public transport.

That £22 million would have been better spent to organize a movement to demand an end to the massive and wasteful packaging and advertising industries, or the mass expansion of public transport.

In Ireland, faced with greenhouse gas emissions that have increased 25% since 1990, the government’s response was to launch a multimillion euro “The Power on One” campaign, which provides — yes, you guessed it — “10 top tips” to “make a difference.” Among the revolutionary actions suggested were: don’t overfill your kettle, but fill your dishwasher before use, and unplug your mobile phone charger.

As George Marshall quips, all “that sounds much nicer than curtailing road building or industrial growth. They are not called `easy tips’ for nothing.”

On October 15, the UN Environment Program organised a “Blog Action Day” in which some 15,000 blog sites offered more “tips” to web surfers, from the inevitable changing light globes to one of Copyblogger.com’s “tiny actions [that] can save the world”: quit your job requiring a long commute and start up a home-based business! Copyblogger’s not alone in making “tips” that are simply beyond the means of most debt-strapped working people in these days of widespread “mortgage stress” and rising interest rates. Common “tips” include buying more expensive hybrid cars and building architect-designed “carbon neutral” houses.

Blaming working people

All such campaigns are premised on blaming working people for global warming. But as Dave Holmes, a veteran Australian socialist, points out in the latest Green Left Weekly, what real choice to do the mass of ordinary people have:

“the source of our current crisis is quite specific: it is the operations of modern capitalism. The drive for profits by the giant corporations has been relentless and has been pursued in complete disregard of any impact on the environment.

“The fundamental conditions under which we live — how we generate our power, how we get around, how our food is grown, etc. — are not decided by us but rather by the big corporations that control society’s means of production. Without the rule of corporate capital we could set in place radically different and ecologically sustainable arrangements.

“For example, the cars which most of us use are a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions…The favouring of private motor vehicles over public transport hasn’t come about because we are innately a society of petrol-heads but is a consequence of the deliberate policies of a succession of capitalist governments loyally protecting the interests of their big business masters. The auto industry and its associated sectors make up a very large part of each national capitalist economy.”

However well intentioned, appeals to people to change their individual habits bring trivial results when measured against the problem, and if not coupled to the much more urgent task of politically mobilizing to demand serious government action to immediately reduce and rapidly halt greenhouse gas emissions, it derails mass concern about global warming from taking a political road.

The Earth Hour Greenwash

It also sells the damaging lie that “clean,” “green,” “natural” and “organic” commodities are the answer, when they are fundamentally no better for the planet than any other over-produced commodities under capitalism. It plays into the hands of the mega-financed “Greenwashing” by corporations and governments of an unsustainable economic system.

If anything sums up this sort of operation, it was the massively publicized “Earth Hour” on March 29. The brainchild in 2007 of the World Wildlife Fund, Fairfax newspapers and the Leo Burnett advertising agency, Earth Hour declares on its website: “Created to take a stand against the greatest threat our planet has ever faced, Earth Hour uses the simple action of turning off the lights for one hour to deliver a powerful message about the need for action on global warming.” But you will search in vain for any demands for political action, just boilerplate “tips.” It states:

“Earth Hour is the highlight of a major campaign to encourage businesses, communities and individuals to take the simple steps needed to cut their emissions on an ongoing basis. It is about simple changes that will collectively make a difference — from businesses turning off their lights when their offices are empty to households turning off appliances rather than leaving them on standby.”

There was more of the same in the 40-page, full-colour Earth Hour Magazine that was distributed “free” (free that is if you don’t consider the small forest and who knows how many tonnes of CO2 that were expended in its production and distribution) with the approximate 211,000 copies of the Sydney Morning Herald on March 17. Only one article, by Tim Flannery, made any serious attempt to point out the vested interests that need to be tackled and raised the issues of inadequate public transport, stopping new coal plants and setting adequate emission-reduction targets by 2050.

But his contribution was buried under an avalanche of yet more regurgitated “tips,” feel-good stories and gumph such as this:

“Many governments and communities have already made big changes to reduce emissions. The use of solar and wind power is on the increase. Other renewable energy sources are being investigated. Millions of dollars are being spent exploring ways to bury carbon dioxide or to produce cleaner coal. But more needs to be done and politicians need to be brave enough to make tough decisions. If those politicians know that a couple of million people in their homeland have joined Earth Hour, they can be confident that the people will support the hard decisions and will applaud leaders who have the will to act.”

Don’t expect Fairfax to support “hard decisions” that impact on the big end of town, though. “Hard decisions” is code for making you and me pay higher bills.

The supplement was festooned with full-page ads by electricity suppliers such as EnergyAustralia, Integral Energy and Country Energy — the ones that hawk all that coal power — car companies such as Toyota, Fiat and Hyundai (Volvo waited for 8-page post-Earth Hour “Souvenir edition” Sydney Morning Herald), and even Cascade beer (100% Carbon Offset!).

Corporate and government “greenwashing” was the central goal of the pre-hour hullabaloo. For all the talk of millions of Australians taking part, almost the sole yardstick of the night’s success was on corporate office blocks and huge neon advertising signs in the CBD switching off. The participation of major publicly owned landmarks is really what made the impact. Which begs the question, why aren’t all these lights and signs switched off every night?

Fossil fuel giant AGL loaned the giant WWF-logoed hot air balloon, which sailed over several capital cities beforehand, producing an estimated 378 kilograms of CO2 an hour. That’s the same AGL that is a shareholder in Victoria’s largest brown coal mine. Richard Branson gave his grin of approval, ever keen to “offset” the impact of his fleet of 38 747s. BP — the world’s third largest global energy company — also promised to turn off all its “non-essential lighting.” Let’s not mention that BP was named one of the “ten worst corporations” in both 2001 and 2005 based on its environmental and human rights records. Or that it is busy trying to mine the ultra-polluting tar sands oil in Canada.

McDonald’s turned off it Golden Arches for an hour nationally! So the literally millions on tonnes of useless packaging produced by this lot, not to mention the clearing of Amazonian rainforest for beef for Maccas, is forgiven. Not surprisingly, Channel Nine’s support did not extend to urging people to switch of the tellie or to refusing to air the ads of CO2 polluters. Behind the scenes, advertising industry magazine Campaign Brief in league with the SMH offered an incentive to copywriters who “demonstrate the most effective and/or inspirational way to leverage Earth Hour 2008” — two return trips to Cannes in France!

And last but certainly not least, the eco-friendly Department of Defence signed up to participate in Earth Hour. Federal Labor defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon announced: “Defence takes its obligations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions seriously and will have over 1330 buildings across Australia participating in Earth Hour.” The minister of war also reported that the department had launched the Combat Climate Change initiative (clever pun) to provide information and “tips” to defence staff in the “workplace” and home to reduce energy use. Here’s a “tip” Joel: get all troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and end all support for those wars for US imperialist control of energy sources.

In the end, despite the hype and PR, the results were hardly impressive. In the hour, electricity consumption across whole city and the Illawarra dropped just 2-3%, while in the CBD it was just over 8%. Nationwide figures put the drop at 3.6%. Based on a survey of 3000, WWF claimed 59% of Sydneysiders took part — a figure that doesn’t gel with the marginal power drop, if simply turning off lights is the way forward.

Anyway, it seems that the WWF and Fairfax were not going to let their advertisers down and were going to declare the night a success whatever the result. The Online Fairfax-owned Brisbane Times reported that “Brisbane made history this evening with the city’s first official Earth Hour going off without a hitch. Kellie Caught, of Earth Hour organiser World Wildlife Fund, said she was thrilled with the response.” Only problem was, this was published on March 28, 26 hours before Earth Hour had even taken place!

The last word on Earth Hour should go to Jimmy Yan, a member of the Glen Waverley Secondary College Eco-Committee, whose excellent critique was carried on the committee’s blog:

“Earth Hour rests on the assumption that the environmental movement can make any real progress without looking at the deeper social and political institutions and systems within our society that cause our environmental problems, one of them being a system that seeks to accumulate as much profit as possible for the sake of more accumulation and more competition irrespective of the human, environmental and social cost. Our environmental problems become another commodity that is bought and sold on the market …

“Ultimately, events like Earth Hour … rest on the idea that we can trust and work with those responsible for environmental destruction without holding them accountable for their crimes and the assumption that ordinary people are too stupid and naive to go beyond just turning off their lights for one hour.”

Mass movement needed

We have to convince millions of people and build a mass movement for emission-reductions that genuinely address the real problem. For Australia, that’s at least 90% by 2030 — not Labor’s anaemic 60% by 2050. A movement that demands that governments impose far-reaching measures that force giant industrial polluters to rapidly and massively slash their emissions, at the risk of massive fines. And if they refuse, they should be nationalized and run in the interests of the workers and consumers.

All public subsidies and tax concessions for the giant fossil fuel industries and resource corporations — which amount to billions — should be redirected to research the development of publicly owned renewable energy sources. We could help ordinary people implement individual actions, by supplying free or at a massive subsidy to all households solar waters heaters and water tanks. There should be a massive reorganization of society to move away from private-car-based transportation to free and frequent mass public transport, and, redesign our cities to put people’s homes close to work and shops.

We need to think about ways of linking these wider demands with our more immediate campaigns, for example as we fight to stop the Tasmanian pulp mill, oppose power privatization, end coal and uranium mining, and to stop the building of new freeways and toll roads, we have to also convince people that the workings of capitalism itself is both responsible for the crisis and also the main obstacle to its solution.

The real source of the problem

Through struggles for immediate and broader demands, masses of people can come to understand that the source of the problem lies with capitalism itself.

The scientific analysis of capitalism first made by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, illustrates how, despite the assertions of many environmental movement theorists over the years, Marxism not only provides essential insights into the fundamental cause of the environmental crisis ,but also offers a political guide to its solution.

Capitalism’s fundamentally anti-ecological trait is captured by Marx’s analysis of the working of capitalism. Capitalists buy or produce commodities only in order to sell them for a profit, and then buy or produce yet more to sell more again. There is no end to the process. Competition between capitalists ensures that each one must continue to increase their production of commodities and continue to expand in order to survive. Production tends to expand exponentially until interrupted by crises (depressions and wars) and it is this dynamic at the very core of capitalism that places enormous, unsustainable pressure on the environment.

Capitalism is a system that pursues growth for its own sake, whatever the consequences. This is why all schemes based on the hope of a no-growth, slow-growth or a sustainable-growth forms of capitalism are pipe dreams. As too are strategies based on a critical mass of individual consumers deciding to go “green” in order to reform the system.

People are not “consumers” by nature. A multi-billion-dollar capitalist industry called advertising constantly plays with our minds to convince us that happiness comes only through buying more and more “stuff,” to keep up with endless wasteful fads, fashions, upgrades, new models and built-in obsolescence. The desire for destructive and/or pointless goods is manufactured along with them. In 2008, an estimated $750 billion will be spent on corporate advertising and public relations in the US alone. In Australia, such spending is now well in excess of $12 billion a year.

Many in the environmental movement argue that with the right mix of taxes, incentives and regulations, everybody could be winners. Big business would have cheaper, more efficient production techniques, and therefore be more profitable, and consumers would have more environment-friendly products and energy sources.

In a rational society, such innovations would lower the overall environmental impact of production. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a rational society. Any energy and money savings made through efficiency are used to make and sell more commodities, cheaper than their competitors.

Capitalism approaches technology — in the production process or in the final product — in the same way as it does everything else. What will generate the most profits? Whether it is efficient, clean, safe, environmentally benign or rational has little to do with it. The technologies that could tackle global warming have long existed. Even though research into them has been massively underfunded, renewable energy sources are today competitive with coal and nuclear power (if the negative social and environmental costs are factored in). Public transport systems have been around since the late 1800s.

Fundamental to capitalism’s development has been its power to shift the cost of its ecological and social vandalism onto society as whole. More profits can accrue if the big capitalists don’t have to bother themselves with the elimination, neutralization or recycling of industrial wastes. It’s much cheaper to pour toxic waste into the air or the nearest river. Rather than pay for the real costs of production, society as a whole subsidizes corporate profit-making by cleaning up some of the mess or suffering the environmental and/or health costs. Or the whole messy business can simply be exported to the Third World.

It is becoming abundantly clear that the Earth cannot sustain this system’s plundering and poisoning without the humanity sooner or later experiencing a complete ecological catastrophe.

To have any chance of preventing this, within the 10- to 30-year window that we have in relation to global warming, humanity must take conscious, rational control of its interactions with the planet and its ecological processes, in ways that capitalism is inherently incapable of doing.

April 17, 2008

Michael Lowy

The exponential growth of attacks on the environment and the increasing threat of the breakdown of the ecological balance point towards a catastrophic scenario that puts in danger the survival itself of the human species. We are facing a crisis of civilization that demands radical change.

If capitalism can¹t be reformed to subordinate profit to human survival, what alternative is there but to move to some sort of nationally and globally planed economy? Problems like climate change require the “visible hand” of direct planning…

Our corporate capitalist leaders can¹t help themselves, have no choice but systematically make wrong, irrational and ultimately - given the technology they command - globally suicidal decisions about the economy and the environment. So then, what other choice do we have than to consider a true socialist alternative? Richard Smith Ecosocialism is an attempt to provide a radical civilizational alternative, based on the basic arguments of the ecological movement, and of the Marxist critique of political economy. It opposes what Marx called the capitalist destructive progress [1] an economic policy founded on non-monetary and extra-economic criteria : the social needs and the ecological equilibrium.

This dialectical synthesis, attempted by a broad spectrum of authors, from James O¹Connor to Joel Kovel and John Bellamy Foster, and from André Gorz (in his early writings) to Elmar Altvater, is at the same time a critique of “market ecology”, which does not challenge the capitalist system, and of “productivist socialism”, which ignores the issue of natural limits. According to James O’Connor, the aim of ecological socialism is a new society based on ecological rationality, democratic control, social equality, and the predominance of use-value over exchange-value. [2] I would add that this aims require: a) collective ownership of the means of production, - “collective” here meaning public, cooperative or communitarian property; b) democratic planning that makes it possible for society to define the goals of investment and production, and c) a new technological structure of the productive forces. In other terms : a revolutionary social and economic transformation. [3]

For ecosocialists, the problem with the main currents of political ecology, represented by most Green Parties, is that they do not seem to take into account the intrinsic contradiction between the capitalist dynamics of unlimited expansion of capital and accumulation of profits, and the preservation of the environment. Hence a critique of productivism, which is often relevant, but does not lead beyond an ecologically-reformed “market economy”.

The result has been that many Green Parties have become the ecological alibi of center-of-left social-liberal governments. [4] As Richard Smith recently observed : “the logic of insatiable growth is built into the nature of the system, the requirements of capitalist production. Each corporation, acting rationally from the standpoint of the owners and employees seeking to maximize their own self-interest, makes individually rational capitalist decisions. But the result is that in the aggregate, these individual rational decisions are massively irrational, indeed ultimately catastrophic, and they are driving us down the road to collective suicide”. [5]

On the other hand, the problem with the dominant trends of the left during the 20th century - social-democracy and the Soviet-inspired communist movement - is their acceptance of the really existing pattern of productive forces. While the first limited themselves to a reformed - at best keynesian­ version of the capitalist system, the second ones developed a collectivist - or state-capitalist form of productivism. In both cases, environmental issues remained out of sight, or were marginalised.

Marx and Engels themselves were not unaware of the environmental-destructive consequences of the capitalist mode of production : there are several passages in Capital and other writings that point to this understanding. [6] Moreover, they believed that the aim of socialism is not to produce more and more commodities, but to give human beings free time to fully develop their potentialities. In so far, they have little in common with “productivism”, i.e. with the idea that the unlimited expansion of production is an aim in itself.

However, there are some passages in their writings who seem to suggest that socialism will permit the development of productive forces beyond the limits imposed on them by the capitalist system. According to this approach, the socialist transformation concerns only the capitalist relations of production, which have become an obstacle - “chains” is the term often used - to the free development of the existing productive forces; socialism would mean above all the social appropriation of these productive capacities, putting them at the service of the workers.

To quote a passage from Anti-Dühring, a canonical work for many generations of Marxists : in socialism “society takes possession openly and without detours of the productive forces that have become too large” for the existing system. [7] The experience of the Soviet Union illustrates the problems that result from a collectivist appropriation of the capitalist productive apparatus : since the beginning, the thesis of the socialization of the existing productive forces predominated. It is true that during the first years after the October Revolution an ecological current was able to develop, and certain (limited) protectionist measures were taken by the Soviet authorities. However, with the process of Stalinist bureaucratization, the productivist tendencies, both in industry and agriculture, were imposed with totalitarian methods, while the ecologists were marginalised or eliminated.

The catastrophe of Chernobyl is an extreme example of the disastrous consequences of this imitation the Western productive technologies. A change in the forms of property which is not followed by democratic management and a reorganization of the productive system can only lead to a dead end. A critique of the productivist ideology of “progress” and of the idea of a “socialist” exploitation of Nature appeared already in the writings of some dissident marxists of the 1930¹s, such as Walter Benjamin. But it is mainly ecosocialism which has developed, during the last few decades, a challenge to the thesis of the neutrality of productive forces, which was predominant in the main tendencies of the left during the 20th century : social-democracy and the Soviet communism.

Marxists could take their inspiration from Marx¹ remarks on the Paris Commune : workers cannot take possession of the capitalist state apparatus and put it to function at their service. They have to “break it” and replace it by a radically different, democratic and non-statist form of political power.

The same applies, mutatis mutandis, to the productive apparatus : by its nature, its structure, it is not neutral, but at the service of capital accumulation and the unlimited expansion of the market. It is in contradiction with the needs of environment-protection and with the health of the population. One must therefore “revolutionize” it, in a process of radical transformation.

This may mean, for certain branches of production, to discontinue them : for instance, nuclear plants, certain methods of mass/industrial fishing (responsible for the extermination of several species in the seas), the destructive logging of tropical forests, etc (the list is very long !). In any case, the productive forces, and not only the relations of production, have to be deeply changed - to begin with, by a revolution in the energy-system, with the replacement of the present sources -essentially fossil - responsible for the pollution and poisoning of the environment, by renewable ones : water, wind, sun. Of course, many scientific and technological achievements of modernity are precious, but the whole productive system must be transformed, and this can be done only by ecosocialist methods, i.e. through a democratic planning of the economy which takes into account the preservation of the ecological equilibrium.

The issue of energy is decisive for this process of civilizational change. Fossil energies (oil, coal) are responsible for much of the planet¹s pollution, as well as for the disastrous climate change; nuclear energy is a false alternative, not only because of the danger of new Chernobyl, but also because nobody knows what to do with the thousands of tons of radioactive waist - toxic for hundreds, thousands and in some case millions of years - and the gigantic masses of contaminated obsolete plants. Solar energy, which did never arise much interest in capitalist societies, not being “profitable” nor “competitive”, would become the object of intensive research and development, and play a key role in the building of an alternative energetic system.

Entire sectors of the productive system are to be suppressed, or restructured, new ones have to be developed, under the necessary condition of full employment for all the labour force, in equal conditions of work and wage. This condition is essential, not only because it is a requirement of social justice, but in order to assure the workers support for the process of structural transformation of the productive forces. This process is impossible without public control over the means of production, and planning, i.e. public decisions on investment and technological change, which must be taken away from the banks and capitalist enterprises in order to serve society¹s common good. To quote again Richard Smith : “If capitalism can¹t be reformed to subordinate profit to human survival, what alternative is there but to move to some sort of nationally and globally planned economy ? Problems like climate change require the ‘visible hand’ of direct planning.

Our capitalist corporate leaders can¹t help themselves, have no choice but to systematically make wrong, irrational and ultimately - given the technology they command - globally suicidal decisions about the economy and the environment. So then, what other choice do we have than to consider a true ecosocialist alternative?” [8] In Capital vol. III Marx defined socialism as a society where “the associated producers rationally organize their exchange (Stoffwechsel) with nature”. Only the producers? In Capital vol. I, there is a broader approach: socialism is conceived as “an association of free human beings (Menschen) which works with common (gemeinschaftlichen) means of production “. [9]

This second reading is much more appropriate: the rational organization of production and consumption has to be the work not only of the “producers”, but also of the consumers; in fact, of the whole society, with its productive and “non-productive” population, which includes students, youth, housewives, pensioned people, etc.

The whole society in this sense, and not a small oligarchy of property-owners - nor an elite of techno-bureaucrats - will be able to choose, democratically, which productive lines are to be privileged, and how much resources are to be invested in education, health or culture. [10]

The prices of goods themselves would not be left to the “laws of offer and demand” but, to some extent, determined according to social and political options, as well as ecological criteria, leading to taxes on certain products, and subsidized prices for others. Ideally, as the transition to socialism moves forward, more and more products and services would be distributed free of charge, according to the will of the citizens.

Far from being “despotic” in itself, planning is the exercise, by a whole society, of its freedom: freedom of decision, and liberation from the alienated and reified “economic laws” of the capitalist system, which determined the individuals¹ life and death, and enclosed them in an economic “iron cage” (Max Weber). Planning and the reduction of labour time are the two decisive steps of humanity towards what Marx called “the kingdom of freedom”.

A significant increase of free time is in fact a condition for the democratic participation of the working people in the democratic discussion and management of economy and of society. Partisans of the free market point to the failure of Soviet Planning to reject, out of hand, any idea of an organized economy. Without entering the discussion on the achievements and miseries of the Soviet experience, it was obviously a form of dictatorship over the needs - to use the expression of György Markus and his friends from the Budapest School a non-democratic and authoritarian system that monopolized all decisions in the hands of a small oligarchy of techno-bureaucrats.

It is not planning itself which led to dictatorship, but the other way round: the growing limitations to democracy in the Soviet State, and, after Lenin¹s death, the establishment of a totalitarian bureaucratic power, led to an increasingly undemocratic and authoritarian system of planning. If socialism is defined as the control, by the workers and the population in general, of the process of production, the Soviet Union under Stalin and his successors was a far cry from it.

The failure of the USSR illustrates the limits and contradictions of bureaucratic planning, which is inevitably inefficient and arbitrary: it cannot be used as an argument against democratic planning. [11] The socialist conception of planning is nothing else as the radical democratization of economy: if political decisions are not to be left for a small elite of rulers, why should not the same principle apply to economic ones? I¹m leaving aside the issue of the specific proportion between planning and market mechanisms : during the first stages of a new society, markets will certainly keep an important place, but as the transition to socialism advances, planning would become more and more predominant, as against the laws of exchange-value. [12]

Frederick Engels already insisted that a socialist society “will have to establish a plan of production taking into account the means of production, especially including the labour force. There will be, in last instance, the useful effects of various use-objects, compared between themselves and in relation to the quantity of labour necessary for their production, that will determine the plan”. [13]

While in capitalism the use-value is only a means - often a trick - at the service of exchange-value and profit - which explains, by the way, why so many products in the present society are substantially useless - in a planned socialist economy the use-value is the only criteria for the production of goods and services, with far reaching economic, social and ecological consequences. As Joel Kovel observed: “The enhancement of use-values and the corresponding restructuring of needs becomes now the social regulator of technology rather than, as under capital, the conversion of time into surplus value and money”. [14]

In a rationally organised production, the plan concerns the main economic options, not the administration of local restaurants, groceries and bakeries, small shops, artisan enterprises or services. It is important to emphasize that planning is not contradictory with workers self-management of their productive units: while the decision to transform an auto-plant into one producing buses and trams is taken by society as a whole, through the plan, the internal organization and functioning of the plant is to be democratically managed by its own workers.

There has been much discussion on the “centralised” or “decentralised” character of planning, but it could be argued that the real issue is democratic control of the plan, on all its levels, local, regional, national, continental and, hopefully, international : ecological issues such as global warming are planetary and can be dealt with only on a global scale.

One could call this proposition global democratic planning; it is quite the opposite of what is usually described as “central planning”, since the economic and social decisions are not taken by any “center”, but democratically decided by the concerned population. Of course, there will inevitably be tensions and contradictions between self-managed establishments or local democratic administrations, and broader groups of “concerned people”.

Mechanisms of negotiation can help to solve much of such conflicts, but ultimately those directly concerned, if they are the majority, have the right to impose their views. To give an imaginary example: a self-administered factory decides to evacuate its toxic waste in a river. The population of a whole region is in danger of being polluted: it can therefore, after a democratic debate, decide that production in this unit must be discontinued, until a satisfactory solution is found for the waste control.

Hopefully, in an eco-socialist society, the factory workers themselves will have enough ecological consciousness to avoid taking decisions which are dangerous to the environment and to the health of the local populationŠ This does not mean, however, that the issues concerning the internal management of the factory, or school, or neighbourhood, or hospital, or town, are not to be taken into their hands by the local workers or inhabitants.

Socialist planning is therefore grounded on a democratic and pluralist debate, on all the levels where decisions are to be taken: different propositions are submitted to the concerned people, in the form of parties, platforms, or any other political movements, and delegates are accordingly elected.

However, representative democracy must be completed - and corrected - by direct democracy, where people directly choose - at the local, national and, later, global level - between major options: should public transportation be free? Should the owners of private cars pay special taxes to subsidize public transportation? Should sun-produced energy be subsidized, in order to compete with fossil energy? Should the weekly work hours be reduced to 30, 25 or less, even if this means a reduction of production?

The democratic nature of planning is not contradictory with the existence of experts, but their role is not to decide, but to present their views - often different, if not contradictory - to the population, and let it choose the best solution.

As Ernest Mandel wrote: “Governments, parties, planning boards, scientists, technocrats or whoever can make suggestions, put forward proposals, try to influence people. But under a multi-party system, such proposals will never be unanimous: people will have the choice between coherent alternatives. And the right and power to decide should be in the hands of the majority of producers/consumers/citizens, not of anybody else. What is paternalistic or despotic about that?” [15]

What guarantee is that the people will make the correct ecological choices, even at the price of giving up some of its habits of consumption? There is no such “guarantee”, other than the wager on the rationality of democratic decisions, once the power of commodity fetishism is broken. Of course, errors will be committed by the popular choices, but who believes that the experts do not make errors themselves?

One cannot imagine the establishment of such a new society without the majority of the population having achieved, by their struggles, their self-education, and their social experience, a high level of socialist/ecological consciousness, and this makes it reasonable to suppose that errors - including decisions which are inconsistent with environmental needs - will be corrected. [16]

In any case, are not the proposed alternatives - the blind market or an ecological dictatorship of “experts” - much more dangerous than the democratic process, with all its contradictions? It is true that planning requires the existence of executive/technical bodies, in charge of putting into practice what has been decided, but if they are under permanent democratic control from below, they are not necessarily more authoritarian than, say, the administration of the post-office services.

The experience of participative budgets in Brazil, at a local and even provincial level, is, in spite of its obvious limitations, an interesting example of such direct democratic practices. Of course, one cannot expect the majority of the people to spend all their free time in self-management or participatory meetings; as Ernest Mandel commented, “self-administration does not entail the disappearance of delegation, it combines decision-making by the citizens with stricter control of delegates by their respective electorate”. [17]

There is no room here for a detailed discussion of other conceptions of planning, such as “market socialism”, social ecology (Murray Bookchin), etc. Just a few words about Michael Albert “participatory economy” (parecon), which has been the object of some debate in the Global Justice movement. This conception has some common features with the one here proposed - eco-socialist planning such as: opposition to the capitalist market and to bureaucratic planning, a reliance on worker¹s self organisation, anti-authoritarianism. There are however some serious shortcomings in this proposition, which seems to ignore ecology, and assimilates “socialism” to the bureaucratic/centralized Soviet model.

Michael Albert’s idea of participatory planning is based on a complex institutional construction: “The participants in participatory planning are the workers¹ councils and federations, the consumers¹ councils and federations, and various Iteration Facilitation Boards (IFBs). Conceptually, the planning procedure is quite simple. An IFB announces what we call “indicative prices” for all goods, resources, categories of labour, and capital. Consumers¹ councils and federations respond with consumption proposals taking the indicative prices of final goods and services as estimates of the social cost of providing them. Workers councils and federations respond with production proposals listing the outputs they would make available and the inputs they would need to produce them, again, taking the indicative prices as estimates of the social benefits of outputs and true opportunity costs of inputs.

An IFB then calculates the excess demand or supply for each good and adjusts the indicative price for the good up, or down, in light of the excess demand or supply, and in accord with socially agreed algorithms. Using the new indicative prices, consumers and workers councils and federations revise and resubmit their proposals.

In place of rule over workers by capitalists or by coordinators, parecon is an economy in which workers and consumers together cooperatively determine their economic options and benefit from them in ways fostering equity, solidarity, diversity, and self-management. “[18] The main problem with this conception - which, by the way, is not “quite simple” but extremely elaborate and sometimes quite obscure is that it seems to reduce “planning” to a sort of negotiation between producers and consumers on the issue of prices, inputs and outputs, supply and demand.

For instance, the branch worker’s council of the car producing industry would meet with the council of consumers to discuss prices and to adapt supply to demand. What this leaves out is precisely what constitutes the main issue of ecosocialist planning: a reorganization of the transport system, radically reducing the place of the private car. Since ecosocialism requires entire branches of industry to disappear - nuclear plants, for instance - and the massive investment in small or almost non-existent branches (e.g. solar energy) how can this be dealt by “cooperative negotiations” between the existing units of production and consumer councils on “inputs” and “indicative prices” ?

Albert¹s model mirrors the existing technological and productive structure, and is too “economistic” to take into account global, socio-political, and socio-ecological interests of the population, the interests of the individuals, as citizens and as human beings, which cannot be reduced to their economic interests as producers and consumers. He leaves out not only the State as an institution - a respectable option - but politics as the confrontation, at the level of global societies, of different economic, social, political, ecological, cultural and civilizational options.

The passage from capitalist “destructive progress” to socialism is an historical process, a permanent revolutionary transformation of society, culture and mentalities - and politics in the sense just defined cannot be but central to this process. It is important to emphasize that such a process cannot begin without a revolutionary transformation of social and political structures, and the active support, by the vast majority of the population, of an ecosocialist program.

The development of socialist consciousness and ecological awareness is a process, where the decisive factor is peoples own collective experience of struggle, from local and partial confrontations to the radical change of society. This transition would lead not only to a new mode of production and an egalitarian and democratic society, but also to an alternative mode of life, a new ecosocialist civilization, beyond the reign of money, beyond consumption habits artificially produced by advertising, and beyond the unlimited production of commodities that are useless and/or harmful to the environment.

Some ecologists believe that the only alternative to productivism is to stop growth altogether, or to replace it by negative growth - what the French call décroissance - and drastically reduce the excessively high level of consumption of the population by cutting by half the expenditure of energy, by renouncing to individual houses, to central heating, to washing machines, etc. Since these and similar measures of draconian austerity risk being quite unpopular, some of them play with the idea of a sort of “ecological dictatorship”. [19]

Against such pessimistic views, socialist optimists believe that technical progress and the use of renewable sources of energy will permit an unlimited growth and abundance, so that each can receive “according to his needs”. It seems to me that these two schools share a purely quantitative conception of - positive or negative - “growth”, or of the development of productive forces.

There is a third position, which seems to me more appropriate: a qualitative transformation of development. This means putting an end to the monstrous waste of resources by capitalism, based on the production, in a large scale, of useless and/or harmful products: the armaments industry is a good example, but a great part of the “goods” produced in capitalism - with their inbuilt obsolescence - have no other usefulness but to generate profit for the great corporations.

The issue is not “excessive consumption” in abstract, but the prevalent type of consumption, based as it is on conspicuous appropriation, massive waste, mercantile alienation, obsessive accumulation of goods, and the compulsive acquisition of pseudo-novelties imposed by “fashion”. A new society would orient production towards the satisfaction of authentic needs, beginning with those which could be described as “biblical” - water, food, clothing, housing - but including also the basic services: health, education, transport, culture.

Obviously, the countries of the South, were these needs are very far from being satisfied, will need a much higher level of “development” - building railroads, hospitals, sewage systems, and other infra-structures - than the advanced industrial ones. But there is no reason why this cannot be accomplished with a productive system that is environment-friendly and based on renewable energies.

These countries will need to grow great amounts of food to nourish their hungry population, but this can be much better achieved - as the peasant movements organised world-wide in the Via Campesina network have been arguing for years - by a peasant biological agriculture based of family-units, cooperatives or collectivist farms, rather than by the destructive and anti-social methods of industrialised agro-business, based on the intensive use of pesticides, chemicals and GMOs. Instead of the present monstrous debt-system, and the imperialist exploitations of the resources of the South by the industrial/capitalist countries, there would be a flow of technical and economic help from the North to the South, without the need - as some Puritan and ascetic ecologists seem to believe - for the population in Europe or North America to “reduce their standard of living” : they will only get rid of the obsessive consumption, induced by the capitalist system, of useless commodities that do not correspond to any real need, while redefining the meaning of standard of living to connote a way of life that is actually richer, while consuming less.

How to distinguish the authentic from the artificial, false and makeshift needs? The last ones are induced by mental manipulation, i.e. advertisement. The advertisement system has invaded all spheres of human life in modern capitalist societies: not only nourishment and clothing, but sports, culture, religion and politics are shaped according to its rules. It has invaded our streets, mail boxes, TV-screens, newspapers, landscapes, in a permanent, aggressive and insidious way, and it decisively contributes to habits of conspicuous and compulsive consumption.

Moreover, it wastes an astronomic amount of oil, electricity, labour time, paper, chemicals, and other raw materials - all paid by the consumers in a branch of “production” which is not only useless, from a human viewpoint, but directly in contradiction with real social needs.

While advertisement is an indispensable dimension of the capitalist market economy, it would have no place in a society in transition to socialism, where it would be replaced by information on goods and services provided by consumer associations. The criteria for distinguishing an authentic from an artificial need, is its persistence after the suppression of advertisement (Coca Cola!). Of course, during some years, old habits of consumption would persist, and nobody has the right to tell the people what their needs are. The change in the patterns of consumption is a historical process, as well as an educational challenge. Some commodities, such as the individual car, raise more complex problems. Private cars are a public nuisance, killing and maiming hundreds of thousand people yearly on world scale, polluting the air in the great towns - with dire consequences for the health of children and older people - and significantly contributing to the climate change.

However, they correspond to a real need, by transporting people to their work, home or leisure. Local experiences in some European towns with ecologically minded administrations show that it is possible - and approved by the majority of the population - to progressively limit the part of the individual automobile in circulation, to the advantage of buses and trams. In a process of transition to ecosocialism, where public transportation - above or underground - would be vastly extended and free of charge for the users, and where foot-walkers and bicycle-riders will have protected lanes, the private car would have a much smaller role as in bourgeois society, where it has become a fetish commodity - promoted by insistent and aggressive advertisement - a prestige symbol, an identity sign - in the US, the drivers license is the recognized ID and the center of personal, social or erotic life. [20]

It will be much easier, in the transition to a new society, to drastically reduce the transportation of goods by trucks - responsible for terrible accidents, and high levels of pollution - replacing it by the train, or by what the French call ferroutage (trucks transported in trains from one town to the other): only the absurd logic of capitalist “competitiveness” explains the dangerous growth of the truck-system. Yes, will answer the pessimists, but individuals are moved by infinite aspirations and desires, that have to be controlled, checked, contained and if necessary repressed, and this may need some limitations on democracy.

Now, ecosocialism is based on a wager, which was already Marx¹s : the predominance, in a society without classes and liberated of capitalist alienation, of “being” over “having”, i.e. of free time for the personal accomplishment by cultural, sportive, playful, scientific, erotic, artistic and political activities, rather than the desire for an infinite possession of products. Compulsive acquisitiveness is induced by the commodity fetishism inherent in the capitalist system, by the dominant ideology and by advertisement: nothing proves that it is part of an “eternal human nature”, as the reactionary discourse wants us to believe.

As Ernest Mandel emphasized: “The continual accumulation of more and more goods (with declining “marginal utility”) is by no means a universal and even predominant feature of human behaviour. The development of talents and inclinations for their own sake; the protection of health and life; care for children; the development of rich social relations all these become major motivations once basic material needs have been satisfied”. [21]

As we have insisted, this does not mean that conflicts will not arise, particularly during the transitional process, between the requirements of the environment protection and the social needs, between the ecological imperatives and the necessity of developing basic infra-structures, particularly in the poor countries, between popular consumer habits and the scarcity of resources. A classless society is not a society without contradictions and conflicts! These are inevitable: it will be the task of democratic planning, in an ecosocialist perspective, liberated from the imperatives of capital and profit-making, to solve them, by a pluralist and open discussion, leading to decision-making by society itself. Such a grass-roots and participative democracy is the only way, not to avoid errors, but to permit the self-correction, by the social collectivity, of its own mistakes.

Is this Utopia? In its etymological sense - “something that exists nowhere” - certainly. But are not utopias, i.e. visions of an alternative future, wish-images of a different society, a necessary feature of any movement that wants to challenge the established order? As Daniel Singer explained in his literary and political testament, Whose Millennium? , in a powerful chapter entitled “Realistic Utopia”, “if the establishment now looks so solid, despite the circumstances, and if the labour movement or the broader left are so crippled, so paralyzed, it is because of the failure to offer a radical alternative. The basic principle of the game is that you question neither the fundamentals of the argument nor the foundations of society. Only a global alternative, breaking with these rules of resignation and surrender, can give the movement of emancipation genuine scope”. [22]

The socialist and ecological utopia is only an objective possibility, not the inevitable result of the contradictions of capitalism, or of the “iron laws of history”. One cannot predict the future, except in conditional terms: in the absence of an ecosocialist transformation, of a radical change in the civilizational paradigm, the logic of capitalism will lead the planet to dramatic ecological disasters, threatening the health and the life of billions of human beings, and perhaps e