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Hannes, Professor of Geography at the University of West Georgia. “Taking Back the Internet.” From Capital to Commons: Exploring the Promise of a World Beyond Capitalism. University of Bristol. Pp 68-69. /LJS

Following from this, a strong compeerist case can thus be made for any commons-derived aggregated, open-sourced data to be placed under more proactive peer-property licensing regimes that limit how and by whom the data may be used. Enforcing such regimes for aggregated data, however, is even more challenging than what is involved with specific, added-value intellectual property. Not only is it difficult to contain and control access to this data once it has been made available to a large number of in-group entities, but proving that it has been utilized by an out-group actor in a specific way is often problematic. Nevertheless, in certain situations, where the misuse of protected data is believed to be especially egregious, targeted legal challenges could be pursued on the basis of the relevant peer-property stipulations in place. In the longer term, of course, as part of a broader economic shift to the commons, the compeerist aim will be to increasingly diminish the power of capital in all aspects of the economy, including in the area of data collection and use. Still, it is important to acknowledge that such a decapitalization will not automatically deliver us from the ills linked to the use of agglomerated data today. This is because the underlying technology, developed to assist in the functioning of capital-focused assemblages/apparatuses, could still be present, retaining a latent agency that runs counter to compeerist aims. Such agency is particularly evident in capital-sourced AI and algorithms, whose code is full of profit-seeking and class-based/racial biases. Hence, in line with abstract hacktivist principles, this code must be systematically expunged through meticulous rethinking and rewriting. Yet even then, we must ultimately accept that algorithms can never be fully objective or foolproof; being human constructions they will always be reflective of the prejudices and assumptions inherent in humans and society more broadly (Ntoutsi et al, 2020). Following from this, the enlightened use of digital networks and their trove of endless data will require nothing less than continuous critical, democratically informed oversight and engagement. Couldry and Mejias’s (2019) answer to this call is to involve the populace in an ongoing, citizen-based research endeavour that seeks to keep tabs on how digital data-capturing technology works in the real world. To execute such a project, an open database could be maintained that tracks a wide range of important algorithms and their functions, based on people’s submitted personal experiences. Ideally, then, where problems are identified, collaborative solutions could be found to restructure the hardware, programming, and the overall governance arrangements overseeing this technology to ensure that any bias or other forms of unfair targeting are purged (Stewart, 2020).

Hannes, Professor of Geography at the University of West Georgia. “Contending With the Limits of Our Natural World.” From Capital to Commons: Exploring the Promise of a World Beyond Capitalism. University of Bristol. Pp 121-124. /LJS

In this section we will limit ourselves to what is undoubtedly the most critical amalgamation of renewable resources: agriculture. Today agricultural systems, especially in the Minority World but increasingly in the Majority World as well, are firmly in the grip of profit-oriented big-capital in pursuit of ever-greater efficiencies, that is, the drive to achieve the biggest bang for your buck. In practical terms this equates to the industrialization of agriculture, where economies of scale are pursued to create ever-larger, more mechanized farms with an emphasis on expansive monocrops and concentrated animal feeding operations. It is these strategies that also lead to the unsustainable, damaging impacts on the undergirding ecosystems due to the heavy and often indiscriminate reliance on limited ground water, fossil fuels, artificial fertilizers, pesticides/herbicides, and genetically modified organisms (GMOs). An alternative, compeerist-aligned form of agriculture, therefore, has two interrelated aims. One is to achieve a more equitable, community-centred, and, ultimately, use-value oriented governance arrangement for our agricultural means of production. The other, and seen as a direct consequence of the former, is the establishment of a more generative (and hence symbiotic) relationship to the land and its natural systems (Piques and Rizos, 2017; Giotitsas, 2019). Relevant techniques employed to achieve this second imperative include the use of organic fertilizer, integrated pest management, limited soil tillage, intercropping, and concerted soil maintenance and recovery. As such it is a form of agriculture that participates in the circular economies in nature via the nutrient, energy, and water cycles already in place. At the same time, and supplementing the focus on localized commons governance and stewardship, there remains an emphasis on the power of the digitized general intellect to assist in the execution of such agriculture. Given the obvious similarities here with the basic impetus of the DG-ML model, then, we can denote this approach ‘design global, farm local’ (DG-FL). Feeding the world The first issue to be resolved in the pursuit of a DG-FL arrangement is whether it could actually provide enough food to meet the needs of a global population expected to reach over 10 billion people in this century. The biggest focus when considering this question tends to fall on analyses of yields and productivity. Those in support of the current industrial agricultural system argue that it produces the highest possible yields with ever-diminishing labour needs; any shift from these gains, it is argued, would cause a serious reduction in food supply, rising prices, and hence hunger. The pushback to such arguments, however, emphasizes the fact that smallholder, non-industrialized agriculture is, in fact, a major source of our current food supply and that there remains much still untapped potential in this more sustainable farming approach. Homing in on the question of potential, the first point to be made here is that feeding humanity is not just about yields, but about creating broad socio-economic arrangements that support and foster much more efficient agricultural production and consumption, measured in terms of overall resource and ecosystem use and impact. A widely circulated and esteemed study by the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture, for instance, found that organic forms of food production, which are often performed at smaller scales, could meet the needs of the world with the caveat that food waste, meat consumption, and non-food crop commitments would need to be significantly reduced (Muller et al, 2017). In essence, existing agricultural land needs to be reorganized to achieve use-value, that is, the aim should be feeding people, not animals or combustion engines (via bio-fuels). A DG-FL approach to agriculture could go a long way in bringing about such a needed shift. Most obviously, growing food within a reasonable distance to where it is consumed would significantly help in reducing food waste, most of which is linked to getting agricultural goods to distant users/ consumers. Indeed, it is estimated that about a third of the world’s produced food ends up as waste, representing a massive squandering of energy and land (Hawken, 2021). Additionally, a localization and democratization of agriculture could re-establish a connection between farmer/farm and user (challenging deeply entrenched alienation), which, in turn, could foster a greater demand for more resilient and humane forms of production and consumption, even if they are more labour intensive, and hence pricier. Relatedly, rediscovering the rewards of local food, such as eating fruits and vegetables that actually taste like something, could boost overall supply through the expansion of personal and prosumer food production in yards, rooftops, and community gardens. Turning to yields, there is ample research indicating that organic agriculture is not only more productive than assumed, but that it could still significantly increase its productive capacity with the right technologically enabled interventions (Badgley et al, 2007; Rodale 2018). It is here that the design global component of the DG-FL model also becomes relevant, as a vibrant digital commons could become an invaluable source of agriculturally focused knowledge/data/design/code that could boost sustainable production while reducing labour demands. We will consider this potential in more detail shortly when we delve into the directly related challenge of making commons-oriented farms more economically viable. Yet before moving on, we must briefly also address what is undoubtedly the most controversial of all yield boosting technologies: GMOs. To begin, it is important to note that a 100 per cent adoption of organic or even small-scale production is not always required within a generative, compeerist-aligned farming arrangement. In some cases, as in the production of grains, non-organic inputs and monocropping may be justified if these are holistically monitored and supplemented with restorative techniques to ensure any affected ecological systems are not overly stressed. The same logic then applies to the use of genetically modified organisms, which are generally rejected in organic production. While there is much disagreement on the risks associated with this technology, there is mounting evidence that GMOs could significantly boost the yields of smaller farms engaging in otherwise generative agricultural methods (Rotman, 2020). The fundamental constraint on this potential today is that GMO technology is primarily controlled by capital, which has focused on the development of seeds intended to play a particular function within a broader industrial agricultural system geared towards profit. As such, plants are designed for their compatibility with synthetic inputs, their ability to be transported long distances, their outer appearance, and their infertility (a classic case of imposed scarcity that makes the purchase of seeds necessary). However, in the spirit of abstract hacktivism, GMO research could very well be turned towards other aims instead, for instance making plants more resilient, productive, and nutritious without the need of additional, non-organic inputs. Importantly, many of these benefits can be achieved without using genetic material from non-related species, that is, cisgenic as opposed to transgenic modification, thus posing a much smaller chance of unwanted mutations and other risks. Proponents of cisgenic GMOs argue, therefore, that less regulation in this form of modification is called for. In their view, a loosening of government restrictions could boost a much broader range of collaborative, commonsbased research, leading to much bigger yields in regions currently suffering from paltry agricultural production (Benkler, 2006b; Rotman, 2020). Further bolstering this potential is the development of gene editing techniques, such as CRISPR, that are becoming more precise, easy to use, and cheap. Still, despite the latent promise here, compeerism refrains from prescribing the degree to which any technology should be adopted. In the end, compeerists pursuing a post-capitalist path to food security will need to weigh the pros and cons of GMOs for themselves, based on their respective contexts and priorities.

Jocelyn, Lecturer in Intellectual Property Law at Queen’s University Belfast, United Kingdom; Johanna, Senior Lecturer in Culture and Society at Linköping University, Sweden 12-1-2023, "Spectres of Intellectual Property in the Soviet Union: The Development and Recognition of the Inventor’s Certificate", De Gruyter, https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/pol-2023-2022/html // QUEERAMID

After the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks aimed for a total transformation of society. Having chosen revolution, and not reform, the task was monumental. Although there were voices following the revolution that argued for the necessity of abolishing both law and property, the Bolsheviks did not do away with private property altogether, and instead sought full state ownership of the means of production.[17] Among the institutions to be transformed was the patent system: at the time of the revolution, the 1896 Decree of Privileges for Inventions and Improvements was in force.[18] These capitalist patent laws were repealed and the Bolsheviks issued a decree in 1917 which nationalised authors’ rights and patent rights “in the interest of government.”[19] On 30 June 1919, Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) issued the Decree on Inventing which again nationalised all inventions, or to be more precise, declared that all inventions that had been pronounced useful by the Committee for Inventing could be declared state property.[20] This could be done by means of an agreement with the inventor, or, if necessary, against the inventor’s will. The Decree on Inventing recognised the inventor’s avtorskoe pravo (author’s right) by the granting of certificates that recognised the usefulness of their technical contributions, called avtorskoye svidetel’stvo, which literally translates as “author’s certificate,” but over time the term “inventor’s certificate” became the Anglophone norm to avoid confusion with copyright. The Decree on Inventing reflected socialist ideological opposition to patents, which saw recognition of intellectual property as going against the teachings of Marxism. One aspect of the critique was that the patent system was inherently capitalist and thereby inherently flawed. Soviet writers emphasised that it was not inventors who became rich, but large entrepreneurs, echoing the Marxist view that intellectual labour and talents were extracted to enrich the capitalists in a “vampire-like” manner.[21] Boris Mamlyuk also points out, in the context of copyright, that the relation between an individual and society was at the heart of the issue: for a true communist, “the state had rights to the given work because the actual creator of the work was not merely the individual author, but also the social medium in which he or she worked.”[22] Soviet scholar, Sergey Raevich, called this the problem of “the public nature of production, and the private nature of value extraction.”[23] Finally, the ideological criticism also targeted how the capitalist patent system promoted industrial secrecy. Although the principle of the patent bargain made the grant conditional on disclosure of the invention, market competition actually choked the flow of technical information as applicants strove to limit disclosure to withhold useful information from their competitors.[24] A socialist state should therefore “design systems to facilitate technical information exchanges that would allow the Soviet economy to achieve a level of technological growth far superior to that of the most developed capitalist countries.”[25] However, throughout the Soviet period (but particularly its first twenty years), there were many substantial changes to the legal protections for inventions. The revolution was immediately followed by a devastating Civil War (1918–1922), which ultimately consolidated Bolshevik power, but also made the 1920s into a time of pragmatic recovery necessitating ideological compromises. Thus, while many Bolsheviks considered individual proprietary rights to inventions as entirely out of place in a socialist state, the Soviet Union was haunted by intellectual property and eventually resurrected patent law to achieve its political and economic goals. 2.2 Building Socialism Through Compromise with Capitalism, 1924–1931 The NEP was announced in 1921. Sometimes dubbed a compromise with capitalism, it allowed for some market principles and private enterprises as a means to recover from wartime devastation and strengthen the state. This was justified by the Marxist view that a direct transition to communism was impossible, but necessitated socialism as a transitional stage in which elements of capitalism would survive.[26] In this package, patents were seen as instrumental in attracting foreign investment and improving foreign relations to foster recovery and industrialisation after the Civil War.[27] As part of the NEP, the government promulgated the Soviet Patent Law on 12 September 1924.[28] The new law organised the Committee for Inventions, which operated along the lines of the patent offices in other countries.[29] It afforded equal rights for Soviet citizens and foreign inventors to obtain patents and provided an exclusive right for patent-holders to exploit and licence their inventions for a period of 15 years. The reinstatement of proprietary rights and private enterprise was controversial but was deemed necessary to gain access to foreign technological know-how that could be useful during reconstruction. However, since most industries remained under government control in the Soviet Union, there was very little scope for inventors to pursue private business activities with their patented inventions.[30] If the 1919 decree was firmly rooted in Marxist-Leninist principles, these were absent from the new law. The reasons for this were purely pragmatic; even among many leading communists, it was believed that patent protection was necessary to attract foreign technology-intensive investments: “protecting intellectual property rights was indispensable to attract trade, and trade was indispensable to strengthening the Soviet state.”[31] During the 1920s, the Soviet Union entered into a number of bilateral agreements with European states in order to normalise trade relations, and in each of these agreements the Soviet Union promised to secure the property rights of foreign investors, contradicting the nationalisation decrees issued a few years earlier.[32] The treaties also gave the Soviet Union something else it desired: international legitimacy and legal personality, as these agreements demonstrated recognition of the Soviet state under a constitutive theory of recognition under international law.[33] 2.3 Encouraging the Worker-Inventor, 1931–1961 The reintroduction of patents soon came under ideological attack, with increasing intensity as the Soviet Union prepared to launch the first Five Year Plan in the late 1920s. By the end of 1927, new draft laws for inventing had already been developed. Not only was there ongoing criticism of the patent system being at odds with Marxist-Leninist principles, but also of the workings of the Committee for Inventions (including espionage allegations, which, in what can be seen as a preview of the purges, resulted in two people being shot and another nine sentenced to up to 10 years of hard labour). The ideological atmosphere that had allowed for a Western-style patent law was gone.[34] The first Five Year Plan was launched in 1928 under the leadership of Joseph Stalin (1878–1953) and aimed to achieve rapid industrialisation of the Soviet Union. Technological optimism and utopianism were rife in the early Soviet state, as reflected in the slogan Tekhnika reshaet vse (“technology decides/solves everything”).[35] A new approach to invention law was also devised to support the aims of rapid industrialisation, culminating in the Decree on Inventions and Technical Improvements, passed on 9 April 1931. Its preamble noted the widespread dissatisfaction with the outcomes of the NEP patent system: In spite of the enormous importance of mass inventions to the cause of the struggle for the speed-up of industrialization, the exploitation of inventions and the exchange of technical experience are most unsatisfactory. The work of the bodies set up to assist inventions is inadequate. The creative initiative of the worker-inventors is not sufficiently encouraged.[36] The above preamble and the first Five Year Plan reflected the campaigns to foster inventions, where “mass inventing” or “worker inventing” were desirable outcomes. To resolve the shortcomings of patents and ensure the timely exploitation of inventions in the Soviet Union, the new law sought to bring about closer relations between the worker-inventor and the state.[37] However, this was not a complete return to the post-revolutionary abolition of patents. Instead, the decree reintroduced the inventor’s certificates while keeping patents as a parallel option. In practice, the dual system distinguished between inventions by Soviet citizens and foreigners. Patents, primarily intended for foreigners, were issued for a term of 15 years and required the invention to be worked in the Soviet Union during the first three years of its term or be subject to a compulsory licence.[38] Despite increased ideological vigilance, pragmatism prevailed in this compromise: it allowed Soviet inventors to patent abroad via reciprocity, and likely facilitated contract negotiations between Soviet industries and international companies. Another aspect that favoured patents was that their annual fees were a source of hard currency, which was always in short supply in the Soviet Union.[39] Inventor’s certificates, in contrast, required assignment of ownership to the state. The worker-inventor could not exclude others from using the invention, but received monetary remuneration for such use on a fixed scale calculated according to the annual savings that the invention brought to the industrial field. Inventions that did not bring savings but rather improvements in quality, work conditions, or safety measures were also rewarded on the fixed scale.[40] Esteem was also an important incentive,[41] and inventor’s certificates further secured for the inventor certain exemptions and social privileges, such as improved housing, vacations, higher education, and promotion to research positions.[42] Thus, as several American commentators have noted, the system was designed to provide incentives for employed inventors.[43] Both patents and inventor’s certificates had novelty and industrial application requirements. Although, in principle, a Soviet inventor was free to choose to apply for either a patent or an inventor’s certificate, the only reasonable option was the latter. The government favoured them for ideological reasons, and discouraged royalty-based systems even if the beneficiaries were Soviet citizens.[44] Patent applications carried high fees, while inventor’s certificates had none. Whereas a patent holder had to bear the costs of commercialising their invention, the ownership of inventions by the state came with the responsibility for exploitation of the invention: the law stated that “each useful invention shall be implemented in all enterprises of the industry, where it can be applied with the benefit.”[45] The new 1931 law was to work in tandem with the mass inventing campaign mentioned earlier. During these campaigns, there was emphasis on Stakhanovism and over-fulfilment (such as reaching the goals of the Five Year Plan early), and in this atmosphere, minor rationalisation proposals that could increase short-term productivity was favoured over truly innovative inventions that carried a greater risk and where the potential benefits were long-term. Following the 1959 legislation, usefulness became the key criterion for inventor’s certificates, which paradoxically can be seen as an obstacle to innovation. As more pathbreaking inventions were perhaps more difficult to put to immediate use, some inventions with great potential were in fact deemed “useless” as the responsible organ could not see any immediate application.[46] In the decades that followed, the key changes were not to the regulatory framework but to the organisational form of the administration and processing of applications. The entire Soviet Union was affected by the terror and purges in the 1930s and the Committee for Inventions was no exception. The mass inventing campaign had faced difficulties reaching targets, resistance from state enterprise directors who did not use suggested inventions, and struggles to promote exchange of technical information between state enterprises. The Committee for Inventions was abolished in 1936 and its former head was arrested and shot in 1937. The administration of inventions became decentralised and fragmented, there were changes to the framework and procedures several times, including attempts at recentralisation, in the the coming decades, which were shaped by the terror, World War II, and new rounds of repressions.[47] Following Stalin’s death, there was a return to a centralised invention system: the Committee for Inventions and Discoveries was established in 1955 and “quickly rose in prominence and received generous state support.”[48] This prefigured a revision of the law on inventions. Inventor’s certificates were part of broader government efforts to increase inventive activity, such as invention campaigns and changing institutional infrastructure. The new Statute on Discoveries, Inventions and Rationalization Proposals, enacted on 24 April 1959, added scientific discoveries as a category for protection and established a new certificate for discoveries, with both inventions and discoveries handled by the Committee for Inventions and Discoveries.[49] The new law kept patents alongside certificates, although patents could not be obtained for chemical products, medical compositions, foodstuffs and articles of refreshment and pure scientific discoveries.[50] As with previous statutes, patents were valid for a period of 15 years from the filing date, whereas inventor’s certificates had an indefinite duration. Although the rights to the invention were exclusively assigned to the state, this meant that Soviet inventors could “receive remuneration from the user of his invention indefinitely.”[51] The State also “assumes the responsibility for exploiting the invention, having regard to the expediency of its introduction.”[52] The legal requirements and rewards from inventor’s certificates were deliberately geared towards benefitting Soviet citizens as “worker-inventors.” As before, Soviet inventors tended to seek protection through the inventor’s certificate system, and rarely obtained patent protection.[53] 2.4 Encouraging the Circulation of Knowledge The inventor’s certificate system was designed to promote the free flow of knowledge. Lifting legal restrictions on knowledge flows was seen as pivotal in the Soviet aim of rapid industrialisation and catching up with the West,[54] and this is an area where Soviet commentators emphasise the difference with patents. However, perhaps paradoxically, Peter Maggs and James Jerz suggest that the goal of promoting flows of information may also help explain developments in the 1960s and the Soviet decision to accede to the Paris Convention “after having remained aloof from it for so many years.”[55] As in earlier decades when retaining patents were seen as instrumental in relation to foreign trade, there was a general desire to conform to international business practice and attract more foreign investments, but the need to obtain patent information also played a role. In line with this focus on knowledge flows, the Soviet Union had in the post-war decades built up a great capacity for organising and distributing patent information. E. Artemiev, the Deputy Chairman of the Committee for Inventions and Discoveries, outlined this centralised system of patent information and patent services in Industrial Property for the benefit of the international reader. He emphasised that the legal principle of invention’s belonging to society prevails in the Soviet Union and provides the basis for unimpeded circulation of patent information. Artemiev suggested that this centralised patent information system was unique, not to be found anywhere else in the world. He also pronounced it a success, having “rapidly resulted in an increase in the number of inventions.”[56] This outline of the work of the All-Union Technical Patent Library (and other, regional, parts of the system) is both idealised and self-congratulatory. However, the monumentality of it is striking: the information system covered both domestic and international inventions, aiming for a near totality of inventions worldwide.[57] However, Maggs and Jerz suggest that the efforts to organise, disseminate and use patent information in the Soviet Union were not paying off. Given the significant delay between filing and publication, not least in the US, the “disclosure” part of the patent bargain was too slow, and: Soviet scientists may work for years on a problem, the solution to which has already been filed at the United States Patent Office. Given the present rapid expansion of the Soviet economy, the royalties involved would be a small price to pay for the contributions these inventions could make to Soviet economic development […] Payment of substantial royalties would of course involve a drain on limited Soviet foreign exchange resources. To some extent this drain might be compensated by royalties received by Soviet patents abroad.[58] Artemiev’s letter was published in 1969, several years after the Soviet Union joined the Paris Convention. The potential difficulty in obtaining timely information from the published patent specifications thus did not immediately diminish the faith in disseminating technical information. The Soviet effort at increasing the circulation of technical knowledge did not altogether fail; Svitlana Lebedenko even suggests “the Soviet period was a peak moment of Russian innovation.”[59] Inventing activity was indeed larger than patent activity in other industrialised countries, and with 10 million members in the Soviet inventor’s society, mass inventing can be said to have been achieved. Patent services were available to inventors at most enterprises and research institutes (although, as mentioned, it was firmly the inventor’s certificate that attracted Soviet inventors).[60] The emphasis on making knowledge accessible and freely circulating is in stark contrast to many accounts of Soviet society which emphasise how secrecy was endemic.[61] Although there was no trade secrets law in the Soviet Union, the law on inventor’s certificates explicitly provided for secrecy in certain circumstances, under which many military inventions were made secret.[62] Loren Graham has also famously characterised innovation in Russia as plagued by “lonely ideas” – the absence of a social environment where great ideas can be turned into economic development. Graham takes a much more negative view on the inventor’s certificate system and argues that the absence of a proper patent system was a main source for these shortcomings. However, as shown above, inventing activity flourished during the inventor’s certificate regime and the focus on organisation and dissemination of patent information may be seen as ways to combat loneliness. Nevertheless, Graham’s argument can also be interpreted to mean that the main asset of patents is not incentivising invention, but going from invention to innovation.[63] Following the Second World War, inventor’s certificates as a legal form of protection spread to many other of the new socialist states, and the Soviet Union also took a more active role on the international stage. Intellectual property and international trade were seen as essential for the free flow of technical information, which would help to build the economic and political power of the Soviet state. The pursuit of international recognition raised questions about whether the inventor’s certificate was the same as a patent, or not. This issue was a matter that BIRPI and later WIPO gave attention to from the late 1950s and onwards, and as we will see, the socialist countries in these discussions generally stressed the similarities between the two forms of protection.

THE WORLD DOESN’T WORK THAT WAY ANYMORE; Popular Resistance; https://popularresistance.org/the-world-doesnt-work-that-way-anymore/

The Fixation With Ukraine Essentially Is But A Gloss Pasted Over The Realities Of A Global Order In Decomposition.¶ The First World War signaled the end to a mercantilist order that had evolved under the aegis of European powers. One hundred years later, a very different economic order was in place (neoliberal cosmopolitanism). Believed by its architects to be universal and everlasting, globalization transfixed the world for an extended moment, but then started the subsidence from its zenith – precisely at the moment the West was giving vent to its triumphalism at the fall of the Berlin Wall. NATO – as the order’s regulatory system – addressed its attendant ‘identity crisis’ by pushing for eastward expansion toward Russia’s western borders, disregarding the guarantees it had given, and Moscow’s virulent objections.¶ This radical alienation of Russia triggered its pivot to China. Europe and the U.S. however, declined to consider issues of due ‘balance’ within global structures, and simply glossed over the realities of a world order in momentous metamorphosis: with the steady decline of the U.S. already apparent; with a European faux ‘unity’ that masked its own inherent imbalances; and in the context of a hyper-financialized economic structure which lethally sucked out the juice from the real economy.¶ The present war in Ukraine therefore simply is an adjunct – the accelerant to this existing process of ‘liberal order’ decomposition. It is not its center. Fundamentally geo-strategic in their origin, the explosive dynamics to today’s disintegration can be seen as blowback from the mismatch from diverse peoples’ looking now to solutions tailored to suit their non-western civilizations, and from the western insistence on its ‘one size fits all’ Order. Ukraine thus is a symptom, but is not per se, the deeper disorder itself.¶ Tom Luongo has remarked – in connection with the ‘messy’, confusing events of today – that that which he fears most, is so many people analyzing the intersection of geopolitics, markets and ideology, and doing so with such striking complacency. “There is a stunning amount of normalcy bias in the punditocracy, too much ‘cooler heads will prevail’ and not enough ‘everyone’s got a plan until they’re punched in the mouth’”.¶ What Luongo’s retort doesn’t fully explain is the shrillness, the outrage, with which any doubting of the accredited ‘punditocracy’ of the moment is met. Plainly, there is a deeper fear stalking the lower depths of western psyche that is not being made fully explicit.¶ Wolfgang Münchau, formerly at the Financial Times, now authoring EuroIntelligence, describes how such a canonized Zeitgeist implicitly has imprisoned Europe in a cage of adverse dynamics which threaten its economy, its autonomy, its globalism and its being.¶ Münchau relates how both the pandemic and Ukraine had taught him that it was one thing to proclaim an interconnected globalism ‘as cliché’, but¶ “It is quite another to observe what actually happens on the ground when those connections get torn apart … Western sanctions were based on a formally correct, but misleading premise – one that I believed myself – at least up to a point: That Russia is more dependent on us than we are on Russia … Russia however is a provider of primary and secondary commodities, on which the world has become dependent. But when the largest exporter of those commodities disappears, the rest of the world experiences physical shortages and rising prices”.¶ He continues:¶ “Did we think this through? Did the foreign ministries that drew up the sanctions discuss at any point what we would do if Russia were to blockade the Black Sea and not allow Ukrainian wheat to leave the ports?… Or, did we think we can adequately address a global starvation crisis by pointing the finger at Putin?”¶ “The lockdown taught us a lot about our vulnerability to supply chain shocks. It has reminded Europeans that there have only two routes to ship goods en masse to Asia and back: either by container, or by rail through Russia. We had no plan for a pandemic, no plan for a war, and no plan for when both are happening at the same time. The containers are stuck in Shanghai. The railways closed because of the war …¶ “I am not sure the west is ready to confront the consequences of its actions: persistent inflation, reduced industrial output, lower growth, and higher unemployment. To me, economic sanctions look like the last hurrah of a dysfunctional concept known as The West. The Ukraine war is a catalyst of massive de-globalization.”¶ Münchau’s response is that unless we cut a deal with Putin, with the removal of sanctions as a component, he sees “a danger of the world becoming subject to two trading blocs: the west and the rest. Supply chains will be reorganized to stay within them. Russia’s energy, wheat, metals, and rare earths will still be consumed, but not here – We [just] keep with the Big Macs”.¶ So again, ‘one’ searches for an answer: Why are the Euro-élites so shrill, so passionate in their support for Ukraine? And risk heart-attack from the sheer vehemence of their hatred for Putin? After all, most Europeans and Americans until this year knew next-to-naught about Ukraine.¶ We know the answer: the deeper fear is that all the landmarks to liberal life – for reasons they do not understand – are about to be forever swept away. And that Putin is doing it. How will ‘we’ navigate life, bereft of landmarks? What will become of us? We thought the liberal way-of-being was ineluctable. Another value-system? Impossible!¶ So, for Europeans, the endgame in Ukraine crucially must reaffirm European self-identity (even at the cost of its citizens’ economic well-being). Such wars historically, mostly have ended with a dirty diplomatic settlement. That ‘end’ probably would be enough for the EU leadership to spin a ‘win’.¶ And there was a big EU diplomatic drive to persuade Putin to do a deal, only last week.¶ But (paraphrasing and elaborating Münchau), it is one thing to proclaim the desirability of a negotiated ceasefire ‘as cliché’. “It is quite another to observe what actually happens on the ground when blood is being spilled to put facts on the ground …”.¶ Western diplomatic initiatives are premised on Russia needing a ‘way out’, more than does Europe need one. But is that true?¶ Paraphrasing Münchau again:¶ “Did we think this through? Did the foreign ministries that drew up the plans to train and arm a Ukrainian insurgency in Donbas in the hope of weakening Russia – discuss at any point what effect their war and their expressed contempt for Russia might have on Russian public opinion? Or what ‘we’ would do if Russia simply opted instead to put facts on the ground until it finished its project … Or did we even address the possibility of Kiev losing, and what that would mean for a Europe loaded to the gills with sanctions that then would never end?”.¶ The hope for a negotiated settlement has given way to a more somber mood in Europe. Putin was uncompromising in the talks with European leaders. The realization is dawning in Paris and Berlin that a fudged settlement is not something that benefits Putin, nor is one that he can afford. The Russian public mood will not easily accept that its soldiers’ blood was spent in some vain exercise, ending in a ‘dirty’ compromise – only to have the West resuscitate a new Ukraine insurgency against the Donbas again, in a year or two.¶ The EU leaders must be sensing their predicament: They may have ‘missed the boat’ for getting a political ‘fix’. But they have not ‘missed the boat’ in respect to inflation, economic contraction, and of social crisis at home. These ships are heading in their direction, at full steam. Did the EU foreign ministries reflect on this eventuality, or were they carried along by euphoria and the credentialed narrative issuing out from the Baltics and Poland of ‘Bad Man Putin’?¶ Here is the point: The fixation with Ukraine essentially is but a gloss pasted over the realities of a global order in decomposition. The latter is the source of the wider disorder. Ukraine is but one small piece on the chess board, and its outcome will not fundamentally change that ‘reality’. Even a ‘win’ in Ukraine would not grant ‘immortality’ to the neoliberal rules-based order.¶ The noxious fumes emanating from the global financial system are wholly unconnected to Ukraine – but are that much more significant for they go to the heart of the ‘disorder’ within the western ‘liberal order’. Perhaps it is this primordial unspoken fear that accounts for the shrillness and rancor directed at any deviation from sanctioned Ukraine messaging?¶ And Luongo’s normalcy bias in discourse is never more in evidence (Ukraine aside), than when addressing the strange self-selectivity of Anglo-American thinking about their neoliberal economic order.¶ The Anglo-American system of politics and economics, James Fallows a former White House speechwriter has noted, like any system, rests on certain principles and beliefs. “But rather than acting as if these are the best principles, or the ones their societies prefer, Britons and Americans often act as if these were the only possible principles: And that no one, except in error, could choose any others. Political economics becomes an essentially religious question, subject to the standard drawback of any religion—the failure to understand why people outside the faith might act as they do”.

The capital relation, the internationalisation of imperial commodity exchange and the state terrorism in the era of neo-liberalism As already noted, the imperialism of informal empire delimits the scope of state action in the developing world. In the areas of monetary policy, trade relations in the international system and the organisation of productive relations, developing states’ policy options are constrained by the webs of ILs and regulations in which they are enmeshed (Stephen Gill terms this a ‘lock-in’ effect – see Gill 2008, p. 79). More overtly coercive policies are marshalled in the form of structural adjustment programmes (now called ‘poverty reduction strategies’) and ‘conditionality’ agreements that force indebted states, in exchange for help with balance-of-payments problems, to reconfigure the very means of social reproduction (see Peet 2003). Imperialist states may occasionally intervene directly to ensure the imposition of debt-relief programmes that deepen the logic of imperial domination or to deter recalcitrant developing states from following an independent development path (e.g. by supporting specific acts of state terrorism2), but these direct interventions are what David Harvey terms the ‘tip of the imperialist iceberg’ (Harvey 2003, p. 181). They are surface manifestations of deeper structural relations between dominant and dominated states, and it is to the structurally inscribed relations we must look to understand the deeper roots of state terrorism in the developing world. Driven by a capitalist logic that demands deepening commodification worldwide through ‘the pervasive penetration of the private profit motive in all spheres of human existence’, and in all countries (Overbeek 2004, Abstract), state terrorism is motivated from ‘above’ by an imperial logic of power that imposes, through law, a neo-liberal paradigm that (re)produces conditions in which particular acts of state terrorism are embedded. These imperial mechanisms are graphically illustrated in Figure 1. As depicted in Figure 1, imperial law imposes four general policies that tend to intensify social (class) conflict and, in the right circumstances, produce or intensify practices of state terrorism: deregulation, which removes impediments to the functioning of markets; privatisation and commodification, which opens up new areas for capital accumulation; the liberalisation of trade and finance, which opens up dominated social formations to inflows of foreign goods and capital; and decentralisation, which encourages ‘tightly controlled and carefully delimited forms of market-supporting [social] activity as empowerment’ (Cammack 2003, p. 12). In states beset with social conflict, the denationalisation of the state also tends to reinforce the role of para-state actors in (re)producing capital accumulation in what might be termed, to borrow a phrase from Robert Mandel, ‘domestic security substitution’ (Mandel 2002). Together, these policies set the scene for societal ‘creative destruction’; as the World Bank puts it in its World development report 2005: a better investment climate for everyone, this involves instituting in developing countries [l]ow barriers to the diffusion of ideas, including barriers to importing modern equipment and the way work is organized. And an environment that fosters the competitive processes that Joseph Schumpeter called ‘creative destruction’ – an environment in which firms have opportunities and incentives to test their ideas, strive for success, and prosper or fail. (World Bank 2004, pp. 2–3) Couched in terms of ‘diffusion’, ‘competitiveness’, ‘opportunities’ and ‘incentives’, what is missing from the Bank’s eulogistic summary of creative destruction are the challenges it presents to the material organisation of the fabric of society in dominated social formations. As depicted in Figure 1, these challenges are best understood in relation to two areas: (1) those areas where CER dominate; and (2) those areas where CER do not dominate. In the case of the latter, what is promoted are processes that Marx termed ‘primitive accumulation’, which denotes the ‘historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production’ on terms conducive to the development of the capitalist forces of production (Marx 1976, pp. 874–875). I return to this in due course. In the case of the former, attempts to reconfigure commodity relations in ways which structurally favour imperialist interests take place through a process that David Harvey terms ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (see Harvey 2003, 2005, 2010). To this we now turn.

Both vicious and virtuous cycles have occurred in various economies at various times and under various economic theories and policy pressures. But, for the last 30 years, the global economy in general and the American economy in particular has witnessed a strange combination pattern in which prosperity is booming for CEOs and Wall Street speculators, while the rest of the economy – particularly workers, the middle class, and small businesses – have undergone a particularly vicious cycle. Productivity has grown massively, but wages have stagnated. Consumption has remained reasonably high because, in an effort to maintain their standard of living, working people have: 1) added hours, becoming two-income families, often with two and even three jobs per person; and 2) increased household debt. Inequality has skyrocketed because effective tax rates on the 1% have dropped (notwithstanding a partial reversal under Obama), while their income and profits have risen steeply. ¶ We should care about this kind of inequality because history shows that too much concentration of wealth at the top, and too much stagnation everywhere else indicate an economy nearing collapse. For example, as Reich shows (Figure 1a & b), both the crashes of 1928 and 2007 followed on the heels of peaks in which the top 1% owned 25% of the country’s total wealth. ¶What accounts for this strange mix of increasing concentration at the top and increasing malaise everywhere else? Putting aside the parallels to 1929 for a moment, most common explanations for today’s situation include: the rise of technology which makes many jobs obsolete; and globalization which puts incredible pressures on companies to lower wages and outsource jobs to compete against low-wage workers around the world.¶ But, while technology and globalization are clearly creating transformative pressures, neither of these factors completely explains our current situation. Yes, technology makes many jobs obsolete, but it also creates many new jobs. Yet, where the German, South Korean and Norwegian governments invest in educating their workforce to fill those new jobs, the American government has been cutting back on education for decades. A similar thought holds for globalization. Yes, high-volume industrialism – that is, head-to-head competition over price of mass-produced, uniform goods – leads to a race to the bottom; that’s been known for a long time. But in The Work of Nations (2010), Robert Reich also points out that the companies that are flourishing through globalization and technology are ones pursuing what he calls high-value capitalism, the high-quality customization of goods and services that can’t be duplicated by mass-produced uniformity at cheap places around the world.¶ So, while the impacts of globalization and technology are profound, the real explanation for inequality lies primarily with an economic belief that, intentionally or not, serves to concentrate wealth at the top by extracting it from everywhere else. This belief system is called variously neoliberalism, Reaganomics, the Chicago School, and trickle-down economics. It is easily recognized by its signature ideas: deregulation; privatization; cut taxes on the rich; roll back environmental protections; eliminate unions; and impose austerity on the public. The idea was that liberating market forces would cause a rising tide that lifted all boats, but the only boat that actually rose was that of the .01%. Meanwhile, instability has grown.¶ The impact this belief system has had on the American economy and its capacities can be seen in American education. Trickle-down theories are all about cutting taxes on the wealthy, which means less money for public education, more young people burdened with huge college debt, and fewer American workers who can fill the new high-tech jobs.¶ To be fair, this process is not just about greed. Most of the people who participate in this economic debacle do not realize its danger because they believed what they were told by the saints and sages of economics, and many are rewarded for following its principles. So, what really causes the kind of inequality that drives economies toward collapse? The basic answer from the science of flow is: economic necrosis. But, let me flesh out the story.¶ Institutional economists talk about two main types of economic strategies: extractive and solution-seeking. (Hopefully, these names are self-explanatory.) Most economies contain both. But, if the extractive forces become too powerful, they begin to use their power to rig the rules of the economic game to favor themselves. This creates what scientists call a positive feedback loop, one in which “the more you have, the more you get.” Seen in many kinds of systems, this loop creates a powerful pull that sucks resources to the top, and drains it away from the rest of the system causing necrosis. For example, chemical runoff into the Gulf of Mexico accelerates algae growth. This creates an escalating, “the more you have, the more you get” process, in which massive algae growth sucks up all the oxygen in the surrounding area, killing all of the nearby sea life (fish, shrimp, etc.) and creating a large “dead zone.” Neoliberal economics set up a parallel situation by allowing the wealthy to use their money to extract ever more money from the overall economy. The uber-wealthy grow wealthier by: Paying for policy favors – big corporate bailouts and subsidies; lobbying; etcRemoving constraints on dangerous behavior – removing environmental protections; not prosecuting financial fraud offenders; ending Glass-Steagall, etc, Increasing the public’s vulnerability – increasing monopolistic power by diminishing antitrust regulations; limiting the public’s ability to sue big corporations; limiting Medicare’s ability to negotiate for lower pharmaceutical rates; limiting bankruptcy for student loans, etc Increasing their own intake – rising CEO salaries and escalating Wall Street gambling; and limiting their own outflows – externalizing costs, cutting worker wages and lowering their own taxes.¶ All of these processes help the already rich concentrate more, and circulate less. In flow terms, therefore, gross inequality indicates a system that has: 1) too much concentration and too little circulation; and 2) an imbalance of wealth and power that is likely to create ever more extraction, concentration, unaccountability, and abuse. This process accelerates until the underlying human network becomes exhausted and/or the ongoing necrosis reaches a point of collapse. When this point is reached, the society will have three choices: learn, regress, or collapse.

Ghebreyesus’ remarks, the stagnation of the negotiations on the pandemic agreement, and the corporate interests causing that stagnation all serve as a stinging indictment of the failures of the capitalist system to meet global challenges. The resistance of the IFPMA and the German government exemplify the subordination of public health to private profit. Of course, the entire history of the capitalist system’s response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic calls out in stark terms its massive failures and crimes. Corporations dictated prices, forced the inequitable distribution of supplies including medicines and vaccines, influenced public health policy against scientifically-based measures, demanded the ending of zero-COVID policies in China and other nations, and induced governments to return spending on public health systems to pre-pandemic levels or lower. The end result has been the needless deaths of nearly 30 million people and the debilitation of hundreds of millions more throughout the world. These travesties have been accompanied and compounded by a dramatic increase in social inequality. Oxfam recently released a new report documenting this phenomenon, noting that 5 billion people have become poorer since 2020 while the world’s five richest men have doubled their wealth at a staggering rate of $14 million per hour. Billionaires collectively have gained $3.3 trillion of wealth in the same time period. The richest one percent of individuals globally now control 43 percent of the world’s wealth. Capitalism’s response to the pandemic both in terms of death and illness and this massive rise in social inequality, as documented extensively by the World Socialist Web Site, is a great social crime. Turning to the institutions of capitalism and demanding that they change course is an exercise in folly. They have proven impervious as they stoke the fires of World War III and enable a deadly virus to tear through vulnerable populations ad infinitum. The international working class must assimilate the lessons of the pandemic, above all the inability of capitalism to organize on a global scale to address the current pandemic and prevent future ones. Indeed, these immense global tasks fall to the working class itself, which must reorganize the world economy on its own terms to prioritize social needs, including public health, over corporate profits. This can only be achieved through an international socialist program, with the goal of ending capitalism and its contradictions and building a new society that protects and promotes health, resolves climate change, and ensures social equality.

Aileen, undergraduate at the University of Manchester, 7-7-2022, "Is capitalism causing climate change?", Global Social Challenges, University of Mancester, https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/global-social-challenges/2022/07/07/is-capitalism-causing-climate-change/ /AB

Throughout our time on earth, humans have gradually changed our natural environment through the rise of capitalism and new modes of production, which as Marx describes, “comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.” Capitalism can be claimed as the main cause of global warming and effectively the climate crisis, reducing the life span of many species on earth. Therefore, it is only right to try and reform capitalism or further try and remove it to save the state of the earth for future generations. Capitalism, as defined by Field (2018) is an economic system in which the ultimate goal is to make profit. Companies therefore compete with one another to make more profit, producing and selling more goods in factories, using machines and large amounts of energy and electricity. As a result, there is a huge increase in demand for energy down to capitalist interests, resulting in gases being released into the air and warming up the average temperature of the earth. As fossil fuels are burned to create energy in power plants, significant amounts of carbon dioxide are released increasing the surface temperature, causing climate change, and increasing the likelihood of natural disasters. The mega-rich through private jets and helicopters are merely adding to the collapse of the environment and yet will be the ones who remain safe as the world will eventually collapse through the climate crisis, effectively impacting the lower classes more and protecting capitalist interests once more. Fast fashion is another source of capitalist interests which contributes to climate change, producing a major amount of the world’s emissions. Fast fashion creates lots of air and water pollution, by releasing several greenhouses gases, accounting for 20% of global wastewater whilst contributing to 10% of global carbon emissions. Certain materials used within fast fashion such as polyester are very damaging to the environment, taking hundreds of years to eventually decompose. Further through its carbon footprint, which is around double that of other materials such as cotton, it is a damaging but cheap resource used for mass production within fast fashion. Simply, one of the biggest problems when it comes the impact of fashion on the environment is how much we throw away. It is very common for people to buy outfits just to wear them once, resulting in lots of fashion ending up in the bin. Fast fashion also creates microtrends, leading to overconsumption and overproduction of clothes, and eventually significant waste. Regarding the manufacturing, many western brands often pay for their clothes to be made in factories based in developing countries, where production is cheaper, and regulation is less strict. Fashion is also affecting our oceans and according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 35% of all the non-biodegradable microplastics in the ocean are there because of synthetic fabrics that have been made by the fashion industry. Food waste is another element to climate change as rotting waste can cause the release of greenhouse gases. Within the UK, millions of food products are wasted everyday due to overproduction and overconsumption from the public, with many people throwing food away or leaving it to go out of date. Due to capitalism and competition between companies, food production and waste is at a high with about a third of fruit and vegetables being rejected for being the wrong size or shape before it even reaches the shops. And when this food is thrown away, it rots and releases yet more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Production based on never-ending accumulation is the prime motor of the capitalist system as the less privileged lower classes and less developed countries face the effects of the climate crisis. But this does not have to continue to be the case- we must do something about the state of our society to prevent capitalism and try to save the future of our earth!

No discussion of green capitalism as a transnational project would be complete without attention paid to China. China is the dominant leader in sustainable technologies, including solar, wind, and hydro, and a top producer of electric vehicles and lithium batteries and storage. At $132 billion it’s the largest investor in renewable energy spending one-third of the world’s total (Buckley and Nicholas, 2017). China’s push into green manufacturing also play a key role in transnational accumulation. In the wind industry China has five of the top-ten turbine manufacturers, and in solar four of the top six. Both wind and solar TNCs have penetrated markets throughout the world, established regional headquarters, maintain foreign subsidiaries, global manufacturing and research institutions in every region of the world (Harris 2019). Additionally, in the production of solar inverters, the technology that converts the sun’s energy into electricity, China has seven of the world’s top-ten companies, Huawei being number one. Taking solar and wind together China has been the largest investor in clean energy for nine straight years, illustrating its central position in green capitalism. China also fulfills a leading role in organizing financial resources for green investments around the world. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, founded by China with over 80 member countries, has made sustainable infrastructure a priority. In 2019 the bank issued its first global green bond attracting orders from 27 countries (AIIB, 2019). Through various financial institutions China has a large footprint in the world’s Green Bond market, which totaled $1 trillion by 2020. The China Development Bank (CDB) and China Export and Import Bank (CHEXIM) also play a role in promoting solar and wind companies abroad, loaning out more than $2.5 billion over the past decade. Globally, there are 2,000 funds dedicated to financing green development, with five trillion under management. Additionally, over $2.6 trillion has been invested worldwide in low-carbon energy projects. All this indicates the growing basis for a hegemonic bloc built around green accumulation in which China has taken a leading position. An important aspect of China’s activity are investments and loans in the Global South, financing sustainable energy projects in cash-poor countries at low rates. As Tim Buckley, director for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, notes, “It is a way of expanding China’s growing global presence and dominant economic force, and it progressively reorients the world from the US and European-centric view of the last fifty years” (Garrison, 2019). In this sense China becomes an influential leader for the Southern fraction of the TCC fighting for an equal place in a multi-centric world order. But China’s environmental effort is fraught with contradictions. The fossil fuel industry maintains tremendous political clout just as the industry does in the West. Although China increased solar and wind capacity by 65 gigawatts in 2019, it was overwhelmed by an expansion of 249.6 gigawatts of coal-fire capacity. Coal also plays an important role in China’s One Belt One Road strategy (OBR). Since 2001, Chinese state and private firms invested in 240 coal projects in 25 countries, surging 300 percent since the inception of OBR (Pen, et al., 2017). Moreover, in the $143 billion loaned for 165 energy and transportation ventures in 32 countries only 5.3 percent have been for solar and wind (Zhou, et al., 2018). Similar problems appear in CDB and CHEXIM loan activity. Between 2000-2018 almost 75 percent of their energy loans went to fossil fuel projects, while renewables constituted just 1.35 percent of total loan activity. (Kong and Gallagher, 2020). In the struggle to build what Xi termed an “ecological civilization” China faces its own class contradictions. Li Peilin, vice-president of the elite think-tank the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), points to “three major contradictions of Chinese society…contradictions between rich and poor, labor and capital, and cadre and masses” (Li, 2018, 586). Xuangong Wu, also writing in the CASS journal, details how such contradictions manifest including “the return and even strengthening of economic exploitation, rapid widening of the income distribution gap…and significantly aggravated social contradictions” (Wu, 2019). Wu warns that China “developing at the highest speed in the history of the world…formed both socialist and capitalist production relations… as the two kinds of production relations and economic laws coexist and interact with each other, the more powerful one will guide the direction and determine the future and destiny of social development” (ibid, 3). These contradictions are evident in the struggle for an ecological transformation. Half of all large protests in China are over environmental issues, as the enforcement of laws are often weak and ineffective (Xin Zhou, 2020). Speaking to contending forces, Jeffery Ball of the Brookings Institute writes, …they depend on an ever-shifting balance of power inside China between opposite camps in what amounts to the mother of all energy-system transitions. On one side is China’s old-energy lobby, the shrinking but still-massive juggernaut invested in the continuation of an economy powered largely by coal: mining it, transporting it, and building and operating the massive machinery that burns it. This camp is largely government-controlled, run by many of the massive state-owned enterprises that have dominated China’s economy for decades. On the other side is the new-energy lobby, the growing but still-smaller constituency that earns its money by making, selling, and operating everything from solar panels to wind turbines to batteries to electric cars. This group includes prominent private firms founded in the last decade or so by entrepreneurs and widely traded on Western stock exchanges, which is to say owned by investors around the globe. The fight between the high-carbon and low-carbon energy camps is, to be sure, a battle among industries, among companies, and among government ministries. Increasingly and crucially, though, as the economic case for renewables grows more compelling, it also is a fight within each of those institutions (Ball 2020). Hence, the struggle to develop an environmentally sustainable society is as central to China as it is to countries in the West. China/US Relations Friction between the US and China exemplifies nationalist/globalist contradictions, reflecting tendencies in the competiting hegemonic projects. The tensions originate in historical imperialism, and over the future of global capitalism. Ideological differences on state and market economies are linked to Western colonial domination. Lacking sufficient capital many countries in the Global South use state-directed development, and China is the primary example. The Western TCC welcomed China into global capitalism when it offered cheap labor and investment opportunities. But with powerful TNCs and advanced technology, state subsidies and industrial policies are now seen as competitive advantages over neoliberal markets—ironic given Western criticism of state economics as inefficient and bureaucratic. Even so US, European and Chinese TCC fractions co-invest and mutually profit. Consequently, the globalist/nationalist hybrid authoritarian alliance responded with a two-sided trade war. One side demands China conforms to Western institutional rules that favor market mechanisms over state direction, and this plays well with US and EU TCC fractions. But the other side, which disrupts global value chains, drags Europe and Canada into trade conflicts with the US, and creates an uncertain investment climate are opposed by the TCC. This isn’t so much a struggle between nations, as over how best to construct a successful model for global capitalism. Most want problems worked out through negotiations within transnational institutions, and above all, not disrupt capital flows and linked production. Yet nationalist pressure has disrupted globalist’s goals. During two years of trade talks financial elites Stephen Schwarzman, Hank Paulson, and John Thornton were interlocutors between Wall Street, Washington, and Beijing. But Jude Blanchette from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies noted, “There is still a strong Wall Street-to-Beijing channel. The question is, is it effective? I think the answer is demonstrably no…The conversation is no longer prefaced on how do we boost economic growth and integration” (Mai, et al., 2020). What results is a complex mix of contradictions entailing imperialist history, the social fallout from globalization, and political calculations between nationalists and globalists. All this intersects with the conflicting TCC projects. If we view Trump’s full-scale antagonism towards environmental laws and science from the viewpoint of an emerging struggle between two hegemonic projects, his opposition takes on strategic clarity. This encompasses China’s lead over green accumulation. But for the TCC green technologies offer wide ranging opportunities for joint ventures, cross-border investments and transnational coordination to confront global warming. All of which are already in play.

Professor of International Politics, Capitalist Peace Theory: A Critical Appraisal, Oxford Encyclopedia of Politics, DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.013.314,

Classic definitions of capitalism stress along these lines the extent to which capital and other productive resources are owned by private people and the profits these “capitalists” try to reap. According to Weber (1958, p. 17), “[C]apitalism is identical with the pursuit of profit, and forever renewed profit, by means of continuous, rational, capitalistic enterprise [emphasis in original].” Current contributions to CPT do not, as indicated, rely on such a minimalist definition of capitalism, rendering it difficult to establish which facet of a country makes them more peaceful both internally and externally.1 A second problem with the extant literature boils down to the observation that extant theories do not sufficiently explore how the wealth possibly created through a capitalist organization of the political leaders renders political leaders reluctant to use armed force. Unless one adopts a crude Marxist approach and perceives governments to be the lackeys of the capitalist class, it is the government and not Wall Street or its functional equivalents around the world that calls the shots in this regard. The lack of proper micro-foundations of the approach is all the more severe as the riches that economic openness allegedly provokes can also be used for military purposes. The relationship between development and conflict is thus indefinite (Schneider, 2014a). A third and related criticism focuses on the incomplete nature of the approach. Advocates of the CPT approach often do not differentiate between the level of economic freedom and changes towards it. This has the consequence that capitalist peace theories shy away from addressing the distributional effects that transitions to economic openness create (Bussmann, Schneider, & Wiesehomeier, 2005; Bussmann & Schneider, 2007). This neglect is especially grave in light of the classic interpretations of capitalism by Marx (Kliman, 2015) and Schumpeter (1942) who both stressed risk taking and the alternation between economic expansion and contraction as defining features of capitalism. This article addresses these challenges after an introduction of the historical literature that has disputed whether capitalism is a source of conflict or of peace.

Tony, professor of philosophy at Iowa State University and the author of Technology and Capital in the Age of Lean Production., "Red Innovation", Jacobin, 3-31-2015, https://jacobin.com/2015/03/socialism-innovation-capitalism-smith // QUEERMAID

Investments pushing the frontiers of scientific knowledge are just too risky. The advances sought may not be forthcoming. Those that do occur may not ever be commercially viable. Any potentially profitable results that do arise may take decades to make any money. And when they finally do, there are no guarantees initial investors will appropriate most of the resulting windfall. There is, accordingly, a powerful tendency for private capital to systematically underinvest in long-term research and development. Despite popular perceptions that private entrepreneurs drive technological innovation, the leading regions of the global economy do not leave the most important stages of technological change to private investors. These costs are socialized. In the quarter-century after World War II, the high profits garnered by American corporations due to their exceptional place in the world market allowed corporate labs to engage in “blue-skies research” projects. But even then, public funding accounted for roughly two-thirds of all research and development expenditures in the United States, creating the foundations for the high-tech sectors of today. With the rise of competition from Japanese and European capital in the 1970s, private-sector funding of research and development increased. However, long-term projects were almost entirely abandoned in favor of product development and applied-research projects promising commercial advantages in the short-to-medium term. Basic research continued to be funded by the government, like the work in molecular biology that supported the move of agribusiness companies into biotechnology. The same was true for projects of special interest to the Pentagon — the developments associated with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, for instance, which paved the way for modern global positioning systems — and other government agencies. But medium-to-long-term R&D in general was in great danger of falling into a “valley of death” between basic research and immediate development, with neither the government nor private capital providing significant funding for it. For all their rhetoric touting the “magic of the marketplace,” those in the Reagan administration recognized market failure when they saw it. They began to offer federal and publicly funded university laboratories various carrots and sticks to undertake long-term R&D for US capital. New programs were created to provide start-ups with resources to develop innovations prior to the “proof of concept” required by venture capitalists. Under Reagan, the Small Business Innovation Development Act even mandated that federal agencies set aside a percentage of their R&D budget to fund research by small firms. These and other forms of public-private partnership have granted US capital enormous competitive advantages in the world market. It’s no surprise that Apple’s tremendously successful line of products — iPads, iPhones, and iPods — incorporate twelve key innovations. All twelve (central processing units, dynamic random-access memory, hard-drive disks, liquid-crystal displays, batteries, digital single processing, the Internet, the HTTP and HTML languages, cellular networks, GPS system, and voice-user AI programs) were developed by publicly funded research and development projects. It hasn’t been the dynamics of the market so much as active state intervention that has fueled technological change. The Promised Golden Age Technology is more than just a weapon for inter-capitalist competition; it is a weapon in struggles between capital and labor. Technological changes that create unemployment, de-skill the workforce, and enable one sector of the workforce to be played against another shift the balance of power in capital’s favor. Given this asymmetry, advances in productivity that could reduce work time while expanding real wages lead instead to forced layoffs, increasing stress for those still employed and eroding real wages. Two ongoing technological developments further strengthen the power of capital. Advances in transportation and communication now enable production and distribution chains to be extended across the globe, allowing capital to implement “divide and conquer” strategies against labor to an unprecedented extent. Astounding new labor-saving machines are also becoming more and more inexpensive. A recent exhaustive study of over seven hundred occupations concluded that no less than 47 percent of employment in the United States is at high risk of being automated within two decades. Anything approaching this level of labor displacement will yield more misery, not progress, for ordinary workers. But the lower cost and higher capacities of machines have also led to change of a better sort. As the prices of computer hardware, software, and Internet connections have declined, many people can now create new “knowledge products” without working for big capitalists. Multitudes across the globe now freely choose to contribute to collective innovation projects of interest to them, outside the relationship of capital and wage labor. The resulting products can now be distributed as unlimited free goods to anyone who wishes to use them, rather than being scarce commodities sold for profit. It is beyond dispute that this new form of social labor has generated innovations superior in quality and scale to the output of capitalist firms. These innovations also tend to be qualitatively different. While technological developments in capitalism primarily address the wants and needs of those with disposable income, open-source projects can mobilize creative energies to address areas capital systematically neglects, such as developing seeds for poor farmers or medicines for those without the money to buy existing medications. The potential of this new form of collective social labor to address pressing social needs across the globe is historically unprecedented. In order to flourish, however, open-source innovation requires free access to existing knowledge goods. Leading capital firms, hoping to extend their ability to privately profit from publicly supported research, have used their immense political power to extend the intellectual property rights regime in scope and enforcement, severely restricting the access open-source projects require. Copyright, after all, was extended for twenty years at the turn of the century, just as Internet access was starting to balloon. Despite these barriers, the success of open-source projects shows that intellectual-property rights are not required for innovation. Further evidence is provided by the fact that most scientific and technological workers engaged in innovation are forced to sign away intellectual property rights as a condition of employment. These rights actually hamper advancement by raising the cost of engaging in the production of new knowledge, and by diverting funds to unproductive legal costs. The World is Flat? Capitalism also hampers the ability of much of the world to contribute to technological advancement. Whole regions of the global economy lack the wealth to support meaningful innovation. Today, only four countries spend over 3 percent of their GDP on research and development; a mere six others devote 2 percent or more. Capital in these advantaged regions has the opportunity to establish a virtuous circle, free-riding on the extensive public investment discussed above. Privileged access to advanced R&D enables capitalists to appropriate high returns on successful innovations; these returns allow those companies to make effective use of technological advances in the next cycle, setting the stage for future profits. At the same time, enterprises in poorer regions, lacking access to high-level R&D, find themselves trapped in a vicious cycle. Their present inability to make significant innovations that would enable them to compete successfully in world markets undercuts their future prospects. Only a handful of countries — such as South Korea and Taiwan — have ever been able to move forward from this starting disadvantage. Global disparities in technological change alone do not explain why 1 percent of people in the world now own 48 percent of global wealth. But they are a major part of the story; technological change is a weapon that enables the privileged to maintain and extend their global advantages over time. Creative Non-Destruction The destructive effects examined above are not necessary features of technological change; they are necessary features of technological change in capitalism. Overcoming them requires overcoming capitalism, even if we only have a provisional sense of what that might mean. The pernicious tendencies associated with technological change in capitalist workplaces are rooted in a structure where managers are agents of the owners of the firm’s assets, with a fiduciary duty to further their private interests. But a society’s means of production are not goods for personal consumption, like a toothbrush. The material reproduction of society is an inherently public matter, as the technological development of capitalism itself, resting on public funds, confirms. Capital markets, where private claims to productive resources are bought and sold, treat public power as if it were just another item for personal use. They can, and should, be totally done away with. Large-scale productive enterprises should instead be acknowledged as a distinct type of public property, and exercises of authority within these workplaces as acts of public authority. The principle of democracy must then come into play: all exercises of this authority must be subject to the consent of those impacted by it. Though additional regulations would be needed if managers were elected and subject to recall by the workforce as a whole, technological advances in productivity would not typically result in the involuntary unemployment of some and the overwork of others, but rather in reduced work for all. We know this because workers say they want more time to spend with their families and friends, or on projects of their own choosing. With democracy in the workplace, the drive to introduce de-skilling technologies would be replaced with a search for ways to make work more interesting and creative. Suppose that decisions regarding the general level of new investment were also a matter for public debate, eventually decided by a democratic body. If there were pressing social needs, the overall rate of new investment could be increased; if this were not the case, it could be stabilized. These bodies could then set aside a portion of new investment funds to provide public goods free of charge, putting more useful goods and services outside the market’s reach. The public goods of scientific and technological knowledge resulting from basic research and long-term R&D would be decommodified, too, as would the fruits of open-source innovation. The latter could be unleashed by abolishing intellectual property rights and by providing an adequate basic income to all — enabling anyone who wished to participate in open-source projects to do so. If special incentives were required, generous prizes could be awarded to the first to solve important challenges. Remaining funds could then be distributed to other elected bodies at various geographical levels, each of which would determine what share would go to public goods in a region. The remainder would be distributed to local community banks charged with allocating them to worker enterprises. Various qualitative and quantitative measures could be employed to measure the extent to which those enterprises used technologies to meet social wants and needs effectively, with the results determining the income beyond the basic level received by their members (and the members of the community banks that allocated investment funds to them). Abolishing intellectual property rights would have the added benefit of ensuring that wealthy regions could not use technological knowledge as a weapon to create and reproduce inequality in the global economy. This danger would be all but eliminated if every region were granted a fundamental right to its per capita share of new investment funds. Finally, if workplaces used productivity advances to free up time for their workers rather than to increase the output of commodities, resources would be depleted and waste generated at a much lower rate. Abolishing capital markets and replacing them with democratic control over levels of new investment would free humanity from the “grow or die” imperative and the environmental consequences that follow from it. If enterprises were acknowledged as inherently matters of public concern, it would eliminate the obscene absurdity of having the fate of humanity rest on whether profit-driven oil companies have the political and cultural power to extract and sell an estimated $20 trillion of fossil-fuel reserves, as they clearly plan to do. If open-source innovation flourished, the creative energies of collective social labor across the planet could be mobilized to address environmental challenges. If poor regions with fragile ecologies were guaranteed their fair share of new investment funds, the pressure to sacrifice long-term sustainability for the sake of short-term growth would be overcome.

Richard V., president of the American Institute for Boys and Men. "Capitalism is failing. People want a job with a decent wage – why is that so hard?", Brookings, 4-29-2019, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/capitalism-is-failing-people-want-a-job-with-a-decent-wage-why-is-that-so-hard/ DB

Before capitalism, there was work. Before markets, before even money, there was work. Our remotest ancestors, hunting and gathering, almost certainly did not see work as a separate, compartmentalized part of life in the way we do today. But we have always had to work to live. Even in the 21st century, we strive through work for the means to live, hence the campaign for a “living wage”. As a species, we like to define ourselves through our thoughts and wisdom, as Homo sapiens. But we could as easily do so through the way we consciously apply effort towards certain goals, by our work – as Homo laborans. It nonetheless took two revolutions, one agricultural, one industrial, to turn “work” into its own category. Industrial capitalism sliced and diced human time into clearly demarcated chunks, of “work” and “leisure”. Work was then bundled and packaged into one of the most important inventions of the modern era: a job. From this point on, the workers’ fight was for a job that delivered maximum benefits, especially in terms of wages, in return for minimum costs imposed on the worker, especially in terms of time. For Karl Marx, the whole capitalist system was ineluctably rigged against workers. Whatever the short-run victories of the trade unions, the capitalist retained the power; the ultimate control, over workers’ time. And the worker would remain forever alienated from their work. The goal was to assert sovereignty over our own time, free of the temporal control of the capitalist, able “to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner”. The problem of alienation is far from solved. Only one in three American workers say they feel “engaged” with their work. But in terms of material conditions of life, across the broad sweep of economic history, capitalism has delivered pretty well for most workers. Wages rose, hours fell, life (mostly) got better. Global poverty halved. As an economic system, socialism fell from grace, and, by and large, and in spite of recent rhetoric on the American political left, continues to fall. There are many variants of capitalism, of course, from welfarist Scandinavia through Anglo-Saxon laissez-faire to Chinese market statism. But the trend seemed pretty clear. Capitalism works. And it works, most importantly, for workers. But now? Over the last decade, the logic of markets and the workings of capitalism have been intensely questioned and challenged, both from the populist right and the socialist left. Young Americans and supporters of the Democratic party are now more enthusiastic about socialism than capitalism (by 6% and 10% margins, respectively). Leading candidates now proudly describe themselves as socialists – unthinkable just a few years ago. (Whether they are in fact socialists by any sensible definition of the term is of course another matter.) Future history books may begin the chapter on the current era with the events of 15 September 2008, when Lehman Brothers filed for the biggest bankruptcy in history, with $639bn in assets and $619bn in debt. Or perhaps the starting date will be three years later, when on 17 September 2011, two years after the official end of the recession, hundreds of protesters gathered in Manhattan’s Zuccoti Park to “Occupy Wall Street”. Or 8 November 2016, when Donald Trump ascended to the highest office in the land. It all depends whether, in hindsight, our crisis comes to be seen as economic or political in nature. Certainly, the Great Recession was a massive economic shock. Nine million jobs were lost and 4m homes foreclosed on. Average household income dropped by 7%. Black families saw their already limited wealth stock cut almost in half. And the recovery has been painfully slow, in what some economists have labeled a “zombie economy”. But the Great Recession also shone a light on trends long predating the downturn, not least in terms of stagnant wage growth for so many workers. By comparison with the postwar years, economic growth has been slow for the last few decades. At the same time, the transmission mechanism linking economic growth to the wages of workers appears to have broken. The share of income going to workers has dropped sharply, from 64% in 1974 to 57% in 2017. In the last few years, as the zombie gradually wakes up, household incomes and wages have begun to nudge upwards – but families are still having to work more hours to get the income they need. Women are working more, and earning more (though the pay gap remains). But as men work less, and earn less, many families are simply standing still in economic terms. Since 1979, the median male wage in the US has dropped by 1.4% for whites– and by 9% and 8% for black and Hispanic men, respectively. Workers at the top of the earnings and education distribution have seen their paychecks continue to fatten: not so on the middle and bottom rungs of the labor market. Wage growth remains torpid in the middle of the distribution. At the same time, the volatility of incomes at the bottom of the distribution has grown, in part because of shifts towards the so-called “gig economy”, intrinsically episodic, and in part because of the rise of unpredictable schedules. Most American workers are still paid by the hour, and half of them have no formal control over their schedules. Two in five hourly-paid workers aged between 26 and 32 know their schedules less than a week in advance. Hard to arrange childcare on that notice. Many American workers are fighting, like the trade unions of old, on two fronts: for money, and for time. Why? Why, for so many for middle-class and working-class Americans has “economic growth become a spectator sport”, as the liberal economist Jared Bernstein memorably put it. There are two competing explanations for what happened to tear the connective tissue between growth and wages: the Productivity Story and the Power Story. The productivity story goes as follows: wages reflect the productivity of the worker; the modern economy rewards skills more than in the past; and lots of people have not upskilled quickly enough. Under the wonky label “skills-biased technological change”, this view prevailed across most of the political spectrum well into this century. Free markets could deliver fair-enough outcomes, so long as everyone got the education and training they needed. “Lifelong learning” became the mantra of all, and the cliched answer from politicians and scholars to the deepening problem of inequality. There are two problems with this story. First, the necessary investments in education and training were never actually made. Community colleges, the most common post-secondary destination for students from families in the bottom 80% of the income distribution, are underfunded, overstretched and largely ignored by the policy elite. Lifelong learning never made it from the thinktank policy briefs and Davos panels to the real lives of real people. The second problem is that productivity turns out to be only part of the story – and perhaps not even the most important part. It is certainly wrong to claim that there is no relationship at all between productivity growth and wage growth. But the connection has certainly become less clear over time, and harder to square with the trends in wage inequality. Even the strongest and most thoughtful proponents of the Productivity Story, such as Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, concede that it is but one element. As Strain writes, “it is most useful to think of wages as being determined by a combination of competitive market forces, bargaining power, and institutions”. The Power Story is that wages do not reflect the productivity of the worker, but their power. Lower wages are a reflection of growing powerlessness, the result of four intersecting trends. First, unions have become almost mythical creatures, unicorns of the labor market. Just one in 20 workers in the US private sector are members of a trade union, down from more than one in four in the 1950s. Sometime around 1980, US businesses declared war on unions, and won. Second, the wage gap between similarly qualified workers in different companies has widened. One widely cited study finds that one-third of the increase in the earnings gap from 1978 to 2013 occurred within firms, while two-thirds of the rise occurred between firms. It is the market power of one firm versus another that determines wages, rather than the power of a particular employer versus its workers. Even if workers can get organized, they cannot force a completely different employer to share more of their surplus with them. (Now that would be socialism.) Third, market power has become increasingly concentrated into fewer, larger companies, especially in terms of power in the labor market. The dangers of monopoly power in market economies are well known, and the push for strong anti-trust laws has historically united the pro-market right and the progressive left. In recent years the threat of monopsony power (ie a dominant single buyer), not least in employment, has risen. Amazon is the poster child of monopsony power. But in many towns, a single hospital might be the biggest employer, and the sole employer of nurses, for example. Hard in these circumstances for workers to negotiate better pay and conditions Fourth, the labor market is not as tight as it looks. There is a still a large “reserve army” of workers, serving to hold wages down. This may not be what the headline unemployment rate – now down to 4% – is telling us. But the headline rate tells us less than in the past, because millions of workers have dropped out altogether, and so are not counted in the unemployment statistics. The chances of a “prime age” man being in paid work has dropped by eight percentage points in the postwar decades. For most of this period, women’s employment rates were increasing – but, in the US at least, that rise stopped abruptly around the turn of the century, and has actually edged down slightly. Black, Hispanic and less-educated adults have all seen the sharpest drops in participation. This powerlessness of workers in specific companies has fueled calls for higher minimum wages. At a federal level, the value of the wage floor has dropped by 46% since 1968. Seminal scholarship from David Card and the late, great, Alan Krueger helped to allay fears about negative economic consequences of a higher minimum wage. But a big challenge here is that the gap between richer and poorer places has also grown. A $15 minimum wage may make perfect sense in Boston (median wage = $24.16 an hour). But perhaps not in Brownsville, Texas (median wage = $11.59). Half of US workers earn less than $18.58 per hour. A worker without power is one with a lighter paycheck. They may also suffer greater indignities or disrespect in the course of daily working life. James Bloodworth’s Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain describes the loss of dignity faced by Amazon warehouse employees and Uber drivers. Horror stories abound of workers under constant surveillance, unable to take bathroom breaks and so resorting to adult diapers, or bullied or harassed by bosses or other workers. In 2011, the Morning Call of Allentown, Pennsylvania, reported that managers at the local Amazon warehouse refused to open the doors for ventilation despite soaring temperatures. They put ambulances outside instead, for the workers who collapsed. Vivid stuff, and no doubt true in the particular. But it is important to note that it is not the general experience of most workers. The proportion of Americans reporting that they were “treated with respect at work” has held steady at around 92% since 2002, according to the General Social Survey. For some critics of capitalism, workers lost the power struggle right at the outset. As Marx (Groucho, this time, not Karl) once put it, “What makes wage slaves? Wages!” Whatever material gains workers managed to achieve came at the price of a profound loss of sovereignty. In her book Private Government: How Employers Rule Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk about It), philosopher Elizabeth Anderson argues that CEOs are the new totalitarians, who “think of themselves as libertarian individualists”, while acting in practice as “dictators of little communist governments”. We imagine ourselves free but effectively barter our freedom away in exchange for pay, effectively handing over our passports as we punch in.

Open University Business School, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK; Back to the capitalist future: Fantasy and the paradox of crisis; Culture and Organization, 22:2, 158-177, DOI: 10.1080/14759551.2014.897347

Yet these leaders’ responses also bear witness to a certain contradiction implicit in¶ the naming of an event as a crisis. It simultaneously speaks to the need for transformation¶ and the desire for stability. Indeed, the uncertainty surrounding this near catastrophe¶ was assuaged through the trumpeting of the ability of elites to ‘solve’ and¶ ‘fix’ the problem and in doing so return to a state of ‘normalcy’. George W. Bush¶ thus stated optimistically in late 2008 that whereas ‘this problem did not develop overnight¶ and it will not be solved overnight’, nevertheless, ‘with continued cooperation¶ and determination it will be solved’ (BBC News, 15 November 2008). Illustrating the¶ global reach of this discourse Yi Gang, deputy governor of the People’s Bank of¶ China (the Chinese central bank), promised that his country would ‘actively participate¶ in rescue activities for this international financial crisis’ (BBC News, 15 November¶ 2008).¶ This longing for renewed security, for the problem to be ‘solved’, plays into the¶ rearticulation of ‘crisis’ as an element of a broader fantasmatic narrative of recovery.¶ Fundamental to this narrative framing is the characterizing of these dislocating¶ events as markedly different than the stable period preceding them, thus opening the¶ way for the promotion of the possibility of ‘recovery’ and consequently the ability to¶ recapture the subjective security associated with a less anxious time prior to the¶ crisis. More precisely, these discourses promoting ‘recovery’ are symptomatic of the¶ attempt to construct a new beatific discourse promising individuals uncertain over¶ their future the ability to ‘recapture’ their former stability as social subjects.¶ The immediate responses to the crisis illustrate this phenomenon. A continual¶ refrain from elites following the meltdown were themes not of transformation but¶ recovery. This emphasis was apparent in newly elected President Obama’s February¶ 2009 address to a joint session of congress. After acknowledging that ‘the impact of¶ this recession is real, and it is everywhere’ he strikes a triumphant tone stressing the¶ nation’s inherent capacity to ‘recover’:¶ But while our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken, though we are¶ living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know¶ this, We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger¶ than before. (Obama 2009a)¶ Whereas this triumphant rhetoric is perhaps to be expected by any incoming leader¶ faced with the daunting task of confronting massive socio-economic problems, what¶ is of interest is the framing of such optimism around the promises of recovery. The¶ ringing pledge that ‘we will rebuild’ and ‘we will recover’ contains within it an assumption¶ that current troubles are temporary and ultimately exceptional rather than reflective¶ of deeper and more fundamental problems with contemporary capitalism.¶ Through this fantasy, the crisis was changed from a threatening encounter with the¶ ‘real’ to a more manageable ideological ‘reality’ linked to romanticized themes of¶ recovery and future progress. This narrative of crisis was on full display in the aftermath¶ of the events of 2008. In Obama’s 2009, State of the Union, he proclaims¶ The answers to our problems don’t lie beyond our reach. They exist in our laboratories¶ and our universities; in our fields and our factories; in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs.¶ What is required now is for this country to pull together, confront boldly the challenges¶ we face, and take responsibility for our future once more. (Obama 2009b)¶ The articulation of these events as a ‘crisis’ then served ironically as a force for subjects¶ to once again stabilize their identity. The narrativizing of this event as a temporary aberration¶ lent itself to the proffering of an idealized vision of the future emphasizing¶ themes of ‘stability’ and ‘normalization’. Reflected, in this respect, was the ideological¶ paradox of crisis – where the failure of an ideology is transformed into an opportunity¶ for re-identification and potential ideological renewal.

John, Professor Emeritus, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO. “Sustainable Capitalism: Our Best Hope for the Future.” Prepared for presentation in Cabin Fever Lecture Series, Baraboo, WI, January 23, 2008. https://ikerdj.mufaculty.umsystem.edu/presentation-papers/sustainable-economies/sustainable-capitalism-our-best-hope-for-the-future //InTr

Obviously, many economists do not agree with this conclusion. While ignoring the law of entropy, they profess a profound faith in the ability of humans to find an alternative for any energy resource we might deplete. However, the diminishing time-value of economic benefits is clearly reflected in market rates of interest, which heavily discount the value of future events. For example, economic benefits expected to accrue a decade in the future are worth less than fifty cents today for each dollar expected later. Potentially cataclysmic events such as fossil energy depletion and global climate change are of little economic importance today because their ultimate impacts are still beyond the five-to-ten-year planning horizons of most corporations. Economic events expected 70 years in the future are worth only a penny on the dollar today. From everything we know about the basic nature of natural ecosystems and human societies, today’s economic planning horizons are simply too short to allow economics to ensure the long run sustainability of humanity. Still, many economists proclaim that free markets somehow will allocate scarce resources to meet the needs of future generations. While such beliefs provide a convenient defense of our narcissistic society, they are beliefs without basis in fact. Other economists recognize the risks to sustainability inherent in relying on markets. Various political strategies and public policies have been proposed for creating markets that fully reflect ecological and social costs and benefits, both within and across generations. Markets would be allowed to allocate natural and social resources among alternative uses over time, once economic values were assigned to ecological and social externalities. However, attempts to internalize non-economic externalities inevitably lead to misallocation of ecological and social resources. Society and nature both provide direct intrinsic values, in addition to their derived economic values.[4] People benefit directly from their personal relationships with other people and from relating to their natural environment. These direct ecological and social benefits provide the necessary motivations for sustainability. If these direct non-economic benefits are ignored or denied, the value of sustaining the long-run health and productivity of society and nature will be grossly underestimated. In addition, social and ethical values cannot be converted into dollars and cents nor efficiently allocated by markets. The economics of sustainability requires a fundamentally different way of thinking. As Albert Einstein once pointed out, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Industrial economic development, which has dominated thinking for the past two centuries, is based on a mechanistic view of the world. We humans are but cogs in a giant, complex machine. Sustainable economic development must respect the fact that the world is actually a natural living ecosystem, of which we humans are a part and within which we are integrally connected. A sustainable economy must then mimic the natural processes of living, biological systems. Living plants have the capacity to capture and store solar energy to offset the usefulness of energy lost to entropy. They have the capacity to be useful to other species – to be productive – and at the same time to devote a significant portion of their energy to renewal and regeneration. Obviously, an individual life is not sustainable because every living thing eventually dies. But living communities clearly have the capacity to be productive while devoting a significant part of their life’s energy to conceiving and nurturing the next generation. Even we humans are capable of capturing and storing solar energy; we just do it with windmills, dams, and photovoltaic cells. We also have an inherent tendency to produce and reproduce, even when we have no economic incentive to do so. Otherwise, few of us would choose to raise children. To achieve sustainability, we must respect this basic human tendency by diverting a significant portion of our energy and the earth’s energy from individual economic uses to renewal and regeneration for use in the future. It will take energy to rebuild and redesign the windmills, dams, photovoltaic, and other solar collection systems needed to sustain future generations. And perhaps most important, it will take human energy to renew and regenerate the healthy families, communities, and civil societies needed to ensure that whatever energy is available in the future is put to constructive rather than destructive uses. Sustainable economies must function according to the principles of regenerative, living systems. For example, the development of sustainable communities must be guided by the principles of healthy, productive natural ecosystems, including holism, diversity, and interdependence. Ecosystems are more than collections of individual physical and biological elements. They are holistic – relationships matter. Diversity also is essential in sustaining natural ecosystems, for renewal, resilience and resistance, regeneration and adaptation. Interdependence transforms the potential benefits of holism and diversity into positive ecological reality. Interdependent relationships are neither extractive nor exploitative but are mutually beneficial. The guiding social principles for sustainable communities, including trust, kindness, and courage, arise from a set of common core values, which transcend religion, philosophy, race, nation, and culture.[5] Trusting relationships are built on the core values of honesty, fairness, and responsibility. When trusts are validated, relationships grow stronger, and when violated, they grow weaker. Relationships of kindness are built on the core values of empathy, compassion, and respect. Sustainable relationships sometimes require mercy rather than justice. Finally, trust and kindness accomplish little without the courage to act. It takes courage to reject deception, inequity, irresponsibility, ruthlessness, and disrespect – to be trusting and kind. The guiding economic principles of sustainability include value, efficiency, and sovereignty. Economic value is determined by scarcity, meaning there is less of something available than people need or want. Things of great intrinsic value, such as air, may be of no economic value if they are not scarce. Sustainable communities and societies must produce things of economic value. Economic efficiency reflects economic value relative to the economic costs of the things used to produce it. Sustainable communities and societies must make efficient use of their land, people, intellect, energy, and money. Economic sovereignty is the freedom to make informed choices. In sustainable communities, people must be free to make their own decisions and must accept responsibility for their choices. The integrity of a community, meaning its completeness, strength, and soundness, depends on the extent to which the principles of sustainability permeate all aspects of the community. The social community, for example, must be more than a collection of people. The relationships among individuals must be holistic, diverse, and interdependent. Its social and cultural resources must be used wisely, not just to create economic value but to create things of intrinsic social value. Social integrity depends on ecological and economic integrity. Sustainable relationships between a community and its natural environment can be derived directly from the principles of social relationships. Environmental pollution and degradation violate the principles of kindness or trustworthiness in relationships among people, both within or among generations. And natural resources must be used not just to create economic value but also maintain the intrinsic value of living in a clean and healthy natural environment. Ecological integrity depends on social and economic integrity. Finally, a sustainable local economy also must be holistic, diverse, and interdependent. A degree of specialization and standardization may be necessary for efficiency, but a sustainable economy must maintain a measure of diversity and its economic relationships must be mutually beneficial, rather than extractive or exploitative. Economic relationships must be based on trust, not just contracts and laws, and must reflect a sense of kindness toward others, including those of the future. Economic integrity is inseparable from ecological and social integrity. A number of specific programs are available to guide communities through the sustainable economic development process. The Natural Step is a nonprofit organization founded in 1989 by Swedish scientist, Karl-Henrik Robèrt. A number of rural eco-municipalities across Canada and the United States are working to develop “ecologically, economically, and socially healthy communities for the long term” by using the Natural Step framework.[6] The Natural Step seeks to minimize the accumulation of wastes from both naturally occurring and manufactured substances while maintaining the productivity of natural ecosystems and sustaining a healthy, productive local society. The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies is an international alliance of more than 50 independently operated local business networks dedicated to building local living economies.[7] A living economy is defined as one in which economic power resides locally, for the purpose of sustaining healthy community life and natural life as well as long-term economic viability. There is no shortage of programs to guide sustainable economic development. The key to success, however, is widespread local commitment to the purpose and principles of sustainable economic development. Many individuals, businesses, nonprofit organizations, municipalities, and informal communities are taking the initiative to live, work, and govern by the principles of sustainability. The fundamental question confronting humanity, however, is whether people in general will be willing to forgo some level of individual economic self-interest to ensure the long run sustainability of humanity. If we continue to behave like non-thinking animals, following our most basic instincts and urges, our species will suffer the same fate as any other non-thinking species that finds itself in a position of dominance in its ecological environment. We will continue to expand our population and consumption until we degrade and deplete the resources that must sustain us. Humans are not exempt from the fundamental laws of nature, regardless of how much we think we know or how technologically advanced we may become. Unfortunately, the ecosystem dominated by we humans today includes the entire biosphere of the earth.

There is an important fraction of the US ruling class and global TCC that links the future of capitalism to green accumulation. This includes well-known US figures, and green billionaires from Europe, China, India, and elsewhere. TCC links abound as with Wang Chuanfu, founder of the solar cell and electric car company BYD. Wang connects to Warren Buffet whose original $232 million BYD investment is now worth $1.5 billion (The Economist, 2019). Overall, the political spectrum spans neoliberals to neo-Keynesians, but all see a new historic round of accumulation in the expansion of the green economy. There is a broad field of green think tanks, NGOs, funders, and green enterprises. Think tanks and NGOs are concentrated in Europe and the US, but China, Japan, and India have major green TNCs active around the world. Green capitalism divides into three general fractions. All seek reforms within the capitalist system, but differences exist over the role of markets and government, an emphasis on lobbying and conference negotiations rather than mass movements and linking issues of social justice to environmental transformation. These are seen in the activities of corporate-funded policy groups, philanthropic supported NGOs, and Left activists of the GND. Whether these fractions coalesce into a hegemonic bloc is an open question. Rather than tracing the ownership, production, and markets of the major green corporations, which I detail elsewhere (Harris, 2010, 2013), the following will concentrate on the policy differences among major groups, their networks, and leading figures. Philanthropic Funders Twenty-five foundations constitute over 90 percent of the funding for NGOs concerned with climate change (Morena, 2016, 10). Of these, six make up 70 percent of such funding: the Hewlett Foundation; the Packard Foundation; the Rockefeller Foundation; the Energy Foundation; the Oak Foundation; and Sea Change (Morningstar, 2019, 173). Examining these philanthropies is a good starting point to understand the money and interests behind the green capitalist project. With $8.74 billion in assets Hewlett is among the most influential funders. Larry Kramer, president of the Hewlett Foundation and former dean of Stanford Law School argues that a green project needs to replace neoliberalism. Because Kramer’s analysis is perhaps the most comprehensive strategy it’s worth examining at some length. As he explains, …today’s prevailing intellectual paradigm—which has come to be labeled ‘neoliberalism’…has proven unable to provide satisfactory answers to problems like wealth inequality, wage stagnation, economic dislocation due to globalization, and loss of jobs and economic security due to technology and automation…circumstances are ripe for the emergence of a new intellectual paradigm—a different way to think about political economy and the terms for a new 21st century social contract. Helping develop and communicate such ideas is a task well suited to philanthropy (Hewlett Foundation, 2018, 2). Kramer has a broad historical understanding of hegemonic blocs. In recounting the triumph of neoliberalism he notes how its victory “in favor of free market orthodoxy in the 1970s and ‘80s reshaped the entire world…Fiscal policy, monetary policy, labor policy, trade policy, welfare policy and industrial policy (and) similarly colonized law, political science, sociology, psychology, anthropology, public policy…corporate governance, how workers and executives are paid, and how the financial sector operates” (ibid, 6). Thus, when Kramer argues for replacing neoliberalism, he is looking to reshape capitalism. Moreover, Kramer knows how organization and money are key to creating hegemonic ideas. He writes, The triumph of market ideology did not occur organically. It was, in fact, an intentional, cultivated, and—most important for present purposes—well-funded effort…the free market movement was paid for—backed every step of the way by sympathetic foundations and philanthropists who provided the resources to succeed (ibid, 6). Kramer states both Republicans and Democrats supported neoliberalism and “share the blame” for today’s social upheavals. “The upshot is that the 20th century free market paradigm has reached the end of its useful shelf life. There is little or no room left within it for useful solutions, or even productive disagreement about alternatives” (ibid, 17). This is where philanthropy comes in, to fund various think-tank to create a new narrative that can evolve into a counter-hegemonic force and replace neoliberalism. This work is already well underway, and Kramer mentions a dozen institutions in the US and Europe. Kramer’s major weakness is his lack of understanding of how quickly conditions can change when explosive social contradictions come to a head. While he stresses the role of intellectuals in creating hegemonic ideology, he demonstrates no recognition that mass movements are key in creating social transformations. His conception of building a counter hegemonic project is conceived in similar terms to the long and patient road taken by neoliberalism. But the environmental crisis may not be so patient, nor the working class and current generation of youth activists. Kramer has an elite strategy that understands the ruling class, without any real comprehension of the explosive social forces gathering below. As for key characteristics of the other major philanthropies, we can begin with the Packard Foundation, whose funding of $6.3 billion originates from the Packard family of Hewlett-Packard. It has given out $930 million to NGOs working on global climate change, funding 193 organizations in 14 different countries (Packard Foundation, 2020). Most of the board members have backgrounds in government, philanthropy, and academia, particularly in health and environment. Corporate experience usually comes from the tech sector, and half of the board are alumni of Stanford University, a network that runs through much of environmental philanthropy and West Coast wealth. Sea Change was founded in 2006 by Nathaniel and Laura Baxter-Simons. Its exclusive focus is clean energy policies and climate change. Simons was a board member of Renaissance Technologies, a Silicon Valley investment group founded by his father. He co-founded the clean-tech investment fund Prelude Ventures, and is involved with the UC Berkeley-Tsinghua Joint Research Center on Energy and Climate Change (Wikipedia, 2020a). Simons’ estimated net worth is $10.6 billion, and Forbes ranks him as the 74th-richest person in the world. A major effort of Sea Change was to help launch Climate Action100+, a group of 320 investors with over $33 trillion in assets under management, to pressure the largest corporate greenhouse emitters to curb emissions. Thus, Sea Change has strong ties to the green sector of finance and capitalists who see both opportunity and danger in the environmental crisis. The Energy Foundation headquartered in San Francisco is a unique creation. It was incorporated by the MacArthur Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and Pew Charitable Trust in 1990 and acts as a conduit for other foundations, taking in grants and distributing funds. Its main funders have been Hewlett, Packard, Sea Change, McKnight, and MacArthur. But other familiar names appear such Google, Bloomberg, and the Schmidt Family Foundation. Jason Mark is CEO and previously worked for the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Princeton (Energy Foundation, 2020). Between 1998 and 2015 the Energy Foundation made more than 30,000 grants totaling over $1.2 billion to some 12,000 recipients. It connected to the China Sustainable Energy Program with a $22 million grant from the Packard and Hewlett foundations. The Rockefeller Foundation, alongside Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, have substantial ties to financial institutions. Board members include: Richard Parsons, Chair of Providence Equity Partners and previously Chairman of Citigroup and Time Warner; Mellody Hobson, board Vice-Chair of Starbucks and a director of JPMorgan Chase; Martin L. Leibowitz, Vice-Chair of the Morgan Stanley Global Strategy Team; Yifei Li, Chair for Man Group in China, one of the world’s largest hedge funds with assets over $60 billion; and Jim Stavridis, former Supreme Allied Commander at NATO and Operating Executive and Chair of The Carlyle Group (Rockefeller Foundation, 2020). Like Kramer, President of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Stephen Heintz has an expansive criticism of capitalism. He states the systemic crisis stems from the growing obsolescence of three core operating systems that have shaped civilization for the past 350 years: capitalism, fueled by carbon since the dawn of the Industrial Age and increasingly driven by global financialization; the nation-state system, formalized by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648; and representative democracy …our practice of capitalism is both putting the planetary ecosystem at risk and generating vast economic inequality... (nation-states are) inadequate for managing transnational challenges like global warming…(and) representative democracy is neither truly representative nor very democratic as citizens feel that self-rule has given way to rule by corporations, special interests and the wealthy (Cohen, 2020). The Oak Foundation, like most philanthropies, has several areas of social justice concern, but environmental issues receive the most funding. Oak has its headquarters in Geneva, with offices in Denmark, India, the UK, the US, and Zimbabwe. It has made grants to some 4,000 organizations, and supported groups in Brazil, Canada, China, Europe, India, Southeast Asia, and the US. The budget for their environmental arm is set at $57 million a year. British-born Alan Parker is founder and main funder, having co-founded Hong Kong-based Duty Free Shoppers. His net worth is estimated at $2.34 billion. His grandson Kristian Parker heads the environmental program and carries a doctorate in Environmental Sciences. Between 1999 and 2018 Oak gave out more than $780 million in grants in over 36 countries (Influence Watch, 2020). Reviewing philanthropy board memberships reveals a mix from corporate governmental and academic fields. Virtually absent are representatives from the fossil fuel industry or military-industrial complex. Instead we see a nucleus of transnational elites dedicated to promoting green technology, with West Coast tech capitalists emerging as the most represented fraction. Visible in this network of philanthropies is the core of a hegemonic bloc with global reach, promoting a common accumulation strategy, and united by a shared political/social vision that rejects neoliberalism. Corporate-Funded Policy Groups Parallel to philanthropic foundations, which are often the creation of individual capitalist families, are corporate-funded environmental policy groups. Jean Philippe Sapinski (2016) did a detailed study of the 11 most influential. These do intensive lobbying and participate in the UN Climate Change Conferences known as COP. Each have their niche, but the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD, 2020), established for transnational CEOs and tied to the International Chamber of Commerce, is the most significant. In terms of corporate board representation among these key policy groups, energy corporations make up the largest industrial sector (48 corporations). Five are exclusively green energy firms, the others have renewables as one division among diversified investments. The next largest group are business consultants, law firms, and accountant firms involved as lobbyists, advisors, or legal representatives of companies concerned with energy and the environment. Banks and financial institutions have 23 representatives, but only one US financial firm participates in groups from North America. The strongest energy and financial ties exist among the three most networked core groups, the WBCSD, the Copenhagen Climate Council, and the International Emissions Trading Association. As Sapinski explains, The project is driven by a section of the corporate elite that seeks to establish new bases for accumulation within a broadly neoliberal order. Hence the stated goal of climate capitalism is, in the long-term, to divert financial flows from the oil and coal sectors…and redirect them to support the ecological modernization of capitalist production process. Corporate-funding…activities are crucial to conceptualize the new regime and mobilize broad corporate elite support for it. As well, the network they assemble constitute an essential infrastructure around which the climate capitalist section can organize (Sapinski, 2016). We can take a brief look at the core groups that Sapinski identifies. The WBCSD is the most formidable with over 200 TNC members, with revenues of $8.5 trillion and 19 million workers. The Executive Committee is a transnational gathering of CEOs representing world-spanning corporations that include: Shell, Nestlé, Microsoft, Banco Santander, Toyota, Unilever, and lesser known in the popular press, ArcelorMittal (India-Belgium, steel), ENGIE (France, energy), Natura (Brazil, cosmetics), and Sinopec (China, oil) (WBCSD, 2020). Founded in 2007 the Copenhagen Climate Council (CCC) was formed to provide “strong support from the international business community” in UN COP climate change policy discussions and has strong ties throughout Europe as well as China (Storm, 2020). Founded by Erik Rasmussen it brings together business leaders, policy makers, and scientists. Among its Councilors are Sir Richard Branson (CEO of Virgin), Samuel DiPiazza, Jr. (CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers), Ditlev Engel (former CEO of Vestas Wind Systems), Paul Otellini (president and CEO of Intel), Zhengrong Shi (president and CEO of Suntech), Li Xiaolin (CEO of China Electric Power International), and James Rogers (president and CEO of Duke Energy) (Wikipedia, 2020b). Lastly, the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) helps TNCs find market solutions for climate change. Its main function is to create a framework for carbon trading, and it represents a full spectrum of carbon corporations. IETA maintains a staff of policy experts in the US, Canada, the UK, Switzerland, Belgium, New Zealand, and China. Half the board turns over yearly, but among the 2019 board members corporate representatives included Bank of America, BP, Chevron, Shell, and perhaps less familiar, BHP (Australia, mining), CLP (Hong Kong, sustainable energy), Enel (Italy, energy), DeMarco Allan (Canada, climate law firm), Mitsui (Japan, metals, energy), and Suncor (Canada, tar sands) (IETA, 2020). Other corporate members include Koch, Rio Tinto, Total, and Dow. Comparing philanthropic and corporate-funded policy groups we see lines of distinct interests with significant differences in board membership and network patterns. While some overlaps exist, corporate-funded policy groups advocate a neoliberal approach to climate solutions with significant ties to energy and industrial TNCs. These corporations want to slow the pace of change while shaping future regulations to their benefit. Both wings of green accumulation seek what Antonio Gramsci termed a “passive revolution.” As social theorist William Carroll explains, Climate capitalism fits the Gramscian notion of passive revolution quite well…(it) offers a system affirming response to the climate crisis which tugs at consumerist hearts and technocratic minds, averts the need for any leap into unknown territory, and seems to carry minimal costs; promises to reconfigure the forces of production to avert runaway climate change, yet protects the relations of production which form the nucleus of a now-global, class dominated way of life; and portends a molecular shift in the historical bloc, as fossil capital enters managed decline while renewable energy substitutes (and associated workforces) develop under the control of big capital (Carroll, 2020). A passive revolution also incorporates movement leaders and activists, and in this arena, philanthropies are deeply involved. Undercutting the viability of a green capitalism is the hold neoliberal ideology maintains within the corporate and financial sector. As Sapinski notes most climate capitalists are “profoundly anchored in neoliberal ideals of corporate self-regulation, limited state intervention, and technology fetishism (italics in the original)” (Sapinski, 2016). Such ideology will reproduce all the existing problems of inequality, social conflicts, and market failures that have marked globalization. At a deeper level competitive rationality greatly weakens the ability of capitalism to respond to the environmental crisis. For example, steep drops in solar panel prices created two large-scale recessions in the industry. With a drop in price came a drop in profits and the bankruptcy of dozens of companies. Connected to the price drop was also a crisis of overproduction, with the market unable to consume the number of panels produced. In 2012 solar production in China exceeded global demand by 33 percent resulting in its two largest solar firms going bankrupt alongside dozens of others worldwide. Only in capitalism could the rapid production of a desperately needed technology at a low price produce an economic crisis. The two dominant blocs in the twentieth century were Keynesianism and neo-liberalism. Both consolidated the capitalist class around a social, political, and economic ideology that defined and structured the relations of production between labor and capital. For Keynesianism the model of accumulation centered on expanding the social contract, recognition of labor rights, secure jobs, higher wages, and greater consumption. Moreover, it was flexible enough when confronted by the civil rights and the women’s movement to encompass some of their key demands. Neo-liberalism slashed the social contracts, broke unions, and instituted austerity and flexibility into the workforce that resulted in less security, lower wages, and the precariatization of the working class. Militarized accumulation takes the full neo-liberal model, and extends its repressive character on all fronts, using racism and reactionary nationalism to control working-class anger. But green capitalism has no unifying ideology. Internally split between Keynesianism and neoliberalism, it offers no comprehensive social model of accumulation. Meanwhile, large sections of the green social base have moved to Left social democracy. The result is no common vision of social relations exist. The political split over the programmatic orientation of green capitalism was seen in the Democratic Party primaries, with Bloomberg representing the neoliberal wing and Bernie Sanders the Green New Deal. Tom Steyer and Governor Jay Inslee positioned themselves in the center, taking an approach common to environmental NGOs and philanthropic funds. What was new is for the first-time different wings of green capitalism contested for leadership in the presidential primary. Which sector wins out and defines the structure of capital/labor relations will determine the success of the project. Lacking any real appeal to the working class, green neo-liberalism cannot defeat authoritarian capitalism. If green neoliberalism wins leadership their passive revolution will fail to attract the necessary popular base, and their dedication to the market will fail to fully address the crisis. An even greater danger is the merger between neoliberal greens and the authoritarian TCC fraction. Neoliberalism has always been comfortable with technocratic authoritarian rule, well isolated from democratic input. Therefore, fractions promoting repressive and green accumulation may forge a political accommodation. Such an alliance might come about under pressure from massive flows of environmental refugees, resulting in an econationalism that pursues strict borders closures, more internment camps and competition over shrinking resources.

George, columnist. "Dare to declare capitalism dead – before it takes us all down with it", Guardian, 4-25-2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/25/capitalism-economic-system-survival-earth DB

But as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to recognise two things. First, that it is the system, rather than any variant of the system, that drives us inexorably towards disaster. Second, that you do not have to produce a definitive alternative to say that capitalism is failing. The statement stands in its own right. But it also demands another, and different, effort to develop a new system. Perpetual growth on a finite planet leads inexorably to environmental calamity Capitalism’s failures arise from two of its defining elements. The first is perpetual growth. Economic growth is the aggregate effect of the quest to accumulate capital and extract profit. Capitalism collapses without growth, yet perpetual growth on a finite planet leads inexorably to environmental calamity. Those who defend capitalism argue that, as consumption switches from goods to services, economic growth can be decoupled from the use of material resources. Last week a paper in the journal New Political Economy, by Jason Hickel and Giorgos Kallis, examined this premise. They found that while some relative decoupling took place in the 20th century (material resource consumption grew, but not as quickly as economic growth), in the 21st century there has been a recoupling: rising resource consumption has so far matched or exceeded the rate of economic growth. The absolute decoupling needed to avert environmental catastrophe (a reduction in material resource use) has never been achieved, and appears impossible while economic growth continues. Green growth is an illusion. A system based on perpetual growth cannot function without peripheries and externalities. There must always be an extraction zone – from which materials are taken without full payment – and a disposal zone, where costs are dumped in the form of waste and pollution. As the scale of economic activity increases until capitalism affects everything, from the atmosphere to the deep ocean floor, the entire planet becomes a sacrifice zone: we all inhabit the periphery of the profit-making machine. This drives us towards cataclysm on such a scale that most people have no means of imagining it. The threatened collapse of our life-support systems is bigger by far than war, famine, pestilence or economic crisis, though it is likely to incorporate all four. Societies can recover from these apocalyptic events, but not from the loss of soil, an abundant biosphere and a habitable climate. The second defining element is the bizarre assumption that a person is entitled to as great a share of the world’s natural wealth as their money can buy. This seizure of common goods causes three further dislocations. First, the scramble for exclusive control of non-reproducible assets, which implies either violence or legislative truncations of other people’s rights. Second, the immiseration of other people by an economy based on looting across both space and time. Third, the translation of economic power into political power, as control over essential resources leads to control over the social relations that surround them. In the New York Times on Sunday, the Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz sought to distinguish between good capitalism, which he called “wealth creation”, and bad capitalism, which he called “wealth grabbing” (extracting rent). I understand his distinction. But from the environmental point of view, wealth creation is wealth grabbing. Economic growth, intrinsically linked to the increasing use of material resources, means seizing natural wealth from both living systems and future generations. To point to such problems is to invite a barrage of accusations, many of which are based on this premise: capitalism has rescued hundreds of millions of people from poverty – now you want to impoverish them again. It is true that capitalism, and the economic growth it drives, has radically improved the prosperity of vast numbers of people, while simultaneously destroying the prosperity of many others: those whose land, labour and resources were seized to fuel growth elsewhere. Much of the wealth of the rich nations was – and is – built on slavery and colonial expropriation. Like coal, capitalism has brought many benefits. But, like coal, it now causes more harm than good. Just as we have found means of generating useful energy that are better and less damaging than coal, so we need to find means of generating human wellbeing that are better and less damaging than capitalism.

Gary, lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Cape Breton University in Canada, “The Elephant in the Room: Capitalism and Sustainable Development.” Counter Punch. 10/19/15. https://www.transcend.org/tms/2015/10/the-elephant-in-the-room-capitalism-and-sustainable-development/ DB

16 Oct 2015 – The term “sustainable” has been used by so many people in so many different contexts that it has lost much of its meaning. It has become a buzzword in political, economic and development circles. But it is not the excessive use of the word that has ultimately rendered it largely meaningless but the fact that too many efforts to achieve sustainable development do not seriously attempt to actually achieve sustainable development. It is too often suggested that we can simply incorporate more environmentally-friendly practices into our daily lives while only tinkering with our consumption habits in order to achieve sustainability. But this simply is not true. Each of us living in wealthy nations must massively, and I mean MASSIVELY, reduce our levels of material consumption if we are to achieve a sustainable ecological footprint. And this reality is the elephant that is too often ignored in discussions about sustainable development. The belief that we can achieve sustainable development in wealthy nations such as the United States and Canada without dramatically diminishing our levels of material comfort is a form of denial that suggests we can have our cake and eat it too. Such denial is not surprising. After all, the idea of dramatically reducing our material consumption to achieve sustainable development is anathema both to corporations and to consumers who have been indoctrinated to associate success and happiness with material wealth. Capitalism requires a constantly expanding production and consumption of goods, which can only be achieved through the increased exploitation of the planet’s natural resources at an unsustainable rate. Because of this reality, sustainable development cannot be achieved without a dramatic reduction in the levels of production and consumption, which directly contradicts the growth logic that drives capitalism. But while achieving such extensive reductions would indeed be challenging, they are possible. The United Nations noted that when the UN Human Development Index is combined with the per capita ecological footprint of 182 nations, only one country has a genuinely sustainable economy. That country is Cuba. In other words, Cuba is the only country in the world that has met the basic needs—food, housing, health and education—of all of its citizens in an ecologically sustainable manner. According to the Global Footprint Network’s Living Planet Report 2014, the amount of productive land and sea available to each person on the planet in order to live in an ecologically sustainable manner is 1.7 global hectares. Meanwhile, the UN Human Development Index contains four categories of human development—very high, high, medium, and low—which are determined by a nation’s indicators related to life expectancy, education, health, and standard of living. In order to achieve sustainable development a country’s per capita ecological footprint cannot exceed 1.7 global hectares and its human development must be in the “high” or “very high” categories—a human development index value above 0.7. Cuba is the only nation that has achieved both objectives with a per capita ecological footprint of 1.6 global hectares and a “very high” human development index value of 0.815 (44th in the world). All other nations achieve either one or the other of the two objectives, but not both. Wealthy nations score very high in the human development index but have per capita ecological footprints far beyond the sustainable 1.7 global hectares. For example, the United States and Canada both rank “very high” in human development but their per capita ecological footprints are 6.8 and 6.6 global hectares respectively. Consequently, we would need four planet Earths for everyone in the world to live the lifestyle enjoyed by North Americans. Conversely, most poor nations have a sustainable per capita ecological footprint below 1.7 global hectares but rank in the “low” category of human development. Angola, for example, has a very sustainable per capita ecological footprint of 0.9 global hectares but ranks “low” in the human development index with a value of only 0.526 (149th in the world). The realities of wealthy nations (high human development and high ecological footprint) and poor nations (low human development and low ecological footprint) are directly linked. Because we only have one planet Earth, the unsustainably high per capita ecological footprints of wealthy nations such as the United States and Canada are achieved by North Americans consuming other peoples’ share of the planet’s resources. As a result, the resources of poor countries are exploited not for the benefit of local populations but to satiate the consumption appetites of wealthy nations. In Angola’s case, the country’s primary resource is oil and the main beneficiaries are western oil companies and consumers in the global North. As a result, the average Angolan consumes very few resources and has a life expectancy of only 51 years while receiving a mere 4.7 years of education. Furthermore, almost half of Angolans live in poverty. Angola’s relationship to wealthy nations in the global North reflects the reality of most poor nations under capitalism. This global inequality in both power and wealth is perpetuated by neo-colonial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank as well as by the imperialist foreign policies of wealthy nations, particularly the United States. Since we in the wealthy nations of the global North can only sustain our materialistically comfortable lifestyles by consuming other peoples’ share of the planet’s resources, we condemn those people to a shortened life of poverty and misery. In fact, more than 10 million people die needlessly each year from hunger as well as from preventable and treatable diseases under a global capitalist system that constitutes structural genocide. The gross inequalities inherent in capitalism are also a major cause of wars, mass migration, refugees, human trafficking and escalating criminal violence throughout much of the global South. Our unsustainable lifestyle is not only causing massive human suffering and death for millions around the world today, it is destroying the planet for future generations. And this gruesome reality brings us back to the elephant in the room with regard to achieving sustainable development in wealthy nations. Inevitably, to achieve sustainable development, we must stop consuming other peoples’ share of the planet’s resources. But what would this entail? In order to achieve sustainable development for everyone on Earth and to ensure the survival of future generations, we in the wealthy nations must reduce our per capita ecological footprint to 1.7 global hectares. Given that the current per capita ecological footprint in the United States is 6.8 global hectares, there is no way that such a transformation can be achieved by simply encouraging people to switch to hybrid cars and organic vegetables—if they can even afford those things. It will require a much more comprehensive shift in our consumption habits. And since Cuba is the only nation in the world that has achieved sustainable development, it makes sense to look at that country for some pointers. The disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 meant that Cuba lost its principal trading partner and supplier of oil. In order to survive, Cuba undertook a dramatic transformation of its economy during the 1990s that resulted in it achieving sustainable development. The country has continued to prioritize the use of its limited resources to ensure that the basic needs of its entire population are met with regard to food, housing, healthcare and education. It has also shifted from large-scale industrial agriculture to smaller organic farming. More than 85 percent of Cuba’s agricultural production is now organic and there is no factory farming of animals—two things that dramatically diminish its carbon footprint. There are also few privately-owned vehicles in Cuba and the overwhelming majority of the population uses public transportation, thereby further reducing the country’s carbon footprint. Finally, the country’s low consumption level of goods means that items such as vehicles, furniture, clothing, shoes and appliances are repaired and re-used in order to extend their lifespans rather than simply being discarded and replaced with new items as occurs in our disposable consumer culture. The result is that Cuba is the only nation in the world that meets the basic needs of its entire population in an ecologically sustainable manner. This redefining of socialism in Cuba has also revitalized community-based economic development through a combination of worker-owned cooperatives, small private enterprises and state-owned businesses. So while most Cubans do not enjoy the relatively luxurious materialistic lifestyles of people in wealthy nations, they are immune to the extreme poverty, misery and death that plagues much of the global South under capitalism’s structural genocide. But Cuba poses a problem for many advocates of sustainable development in wealthy nations. The country’s low consumption level of material luxuries does not represent an attractive example of sustainable development to the materialistic, consumer-driven citizens of the global North. After all, telling the average American or Canadian that they should live like Cubans (i.e. with few material luxuries) is not likely to convince them of the virtue of sustainable development. Cuba’s development model is also anathema to corporations whose profits are dependent on exploiting the planet’s resources at an unsustainable rate in order to constantly increase production and maximize profits. This quandary has resulted in many promoters of sustainability implying that we in the wealthy nations can achieve sustainable development without having to dramatically reduce our consumption levels. But since this simply is not possible, how do we make implementing an extreme shift in our consumption-driven lifestyles more appealing to the majority of North Americans? We need to change our mindset regarding the sources of success and happiness. Instead of measuring success and happiness by income earned and material possessions consumed, we need to focus on quality of life. A massive reduction in our consumption habits would mean that we could work far fewer hours in order to support ourselves. Currently, half the world’s population works too many hours while the other half is effectively unemployed and engaged in a desperate struggle for survival. An equal distribution of the planet’s resources and workload would allow all workers to be productive members of society while also enjoying ample leisure time. The corresponding increase in leisure time would allow us to engage in self-education to learn more about ourselves and the world in which we live. It would also allow us to focus more time and energy developing and sustaining meaningful relationships in our families and our communities. There is no silver bullet that will allow us to painlessly achieve sustainable development. Many believe—or hope—technology will provide a miraculous solution that will allow us to consume sustainably in the future at current levels. But despite all of the impressive technological advances of the past half-century, the extent of ecological damage to the planet has not decreased but increased during this period.

Will, senior reporter at Fortune, covering markets and the economy. "‘We may be looking at the end of capitalism’: One of the world’s oldest and largest investment banks warns ‘Greedflation’ has gone too far", Fortune, 4-5-2023, https://fortune.com/2023/04/05/end-of-capitalism-inflation-greedflation-societe-generale-corporate-profits/ DB

When costs go up, so do profits? That’s not how capitalism is supposed to work, but that is the recent trend. For over a year now, consumers and businesses, both in the U.S. and worldwide, have struggled with stubborn inflation. But the soaring costs haven’t prevented corporations from raking in record profits. The companies in last year’s Fortune 500 alone generated an all-time high $1.8 trillion in profit on $16.1 trillion in revenue. Voices largely on the left side of the political spectrum have been sounding the alarm on this—think: Bernie Sanders in Congress or Jon Stewart’s recent grilling of former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers—but now an economist at one of the world’s oldest and greatest investment banks is singing the same tune. Albert Edwards, a global strategist at the 159-year-old bank Société Générale, just released a blistering note on the phenomenon that has come to be called Greedflation. Corporations, particularly in developed economies like the U.S. and U.K., have used rising raw material costs amid the pandemic and the war in Ukraine as an “excuse” to raise prices and expand profit margins to new heights, he said. And the French investment bank isn’t just historic: It’s one of the select banks considered to be “systemically important” by the Financial Stability Board, the G20’s international body dedicated to safeguarding the global financial system. Furthermore, Edwards wrote, in the Tuesday edition of his Global Strategy Weekly, after four decades of working in finance, he’s never seen anything like the “unprecedented” and “astonishing” levels of corporate Greedflation in this economic cycle. To his point, a January study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City found that “markup growth”—the increase in the ratio between the price a firm charges and its cost of production—was a far more important factor driving inflation in 2021 than it has been throughout economic history. Typically, higher commodity prices and labor costs squeeze corporate margins, especially if the economy is slowing. But Edwards pointed to data released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) last week that showed profit margins still near a record high relative to costs in the fourth quarter. The strategist said he assumed margins would have “declined sharply” at the end of last year as the economy slowed, but instead, “How wrong I was!” SOCIETE GENERALE Edwards added that he fears the “super-normal profit margins” of corporations in the U.S. and abroad could eventually “inflame social unrest” if consumers continue to struggle with inflation. “The end of Greedflation must surely come. Otherwise, we may be looking at the end of capitalism,” he warned. “This is a big issue for policymakers that simply cannot be ignored any longer.”

John, Professor Emeritus, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO. “Sustainable Capitalism: Our Best Hope for the Future.” Prepared for presentation in Cabin Fever Lecture Series, Baraboo, WI, January 23, 2008. https://ikerdj.mufaculty.umsystem.edu/presentation-papers/sustainable-economies/sustainable-capitalism-our-best-hope-for-the-future //InTr

We are in the midst of a great transition. Our economy, our society, and our natural environment are going through a period of fundamental change. This transition is at least as great as the industrial revolution and possibly as important as “the enlightenment” – the beginning of science. Contrary to popular belief, this is not a technological revolution, although new electronic and biological technologies are certainly relevant to the transition. It is a philosophical revolution, a revolution in thinking about the nature of reality, about how the world works and our place within it. Ways of thinking that seemed adequate in the past are incapable of meeting the challenges of today and of the future. To complete the transition, we must rethink virtually every aspect of our lives. The industrial era brought many material benefits to humanity, and none of us would choose to return to a pre-industrial agrarian society. Capitalism has proven to be the most efficient economic system and no alternative system has proven capable of meeting the material needs and wants of society. However, the industrial era of development is inherently dependent on natural and human resources that are rapidly being depleted. And today’s capitalist economies, being inherently dependent on those resources, quite simply are not sustainable. The mechanistic worldview that dominates scientific thinking today is incapable of resolving the most pressing ecological and social challenges of tomorrow. New electronic and biological technologies will simply create more problems that we cannot solve and deplete more resources that we cannot replace, unless we use them in ways that reflect a new understanding of the world and our place within it. There is a growing realization among an increasing number of people that the things we are doing to address today’s challenges aren’t working, and are not going to work in the future. The unending military conflicts in the Middle East, the inevitable decline in fossil energy production, and the climate changes triggered by global warming are but symptoms of deeper, more fundamental problems within all modern industrial societies. Capitalist economies are very efficient and tremendously productive but they are using up the resources upon which they must depend for their future productivity – they are not sustainable.[3] This is not a matter of personal opinion; it is rooted in the most fundamental laws of science. Sustainability ultimately is a matter of energy. Everything that is of use to humanity – our houses, clothes, food – requires energy to make, energy to use, and in fact, is made of energy. All useful human activities – working, thinking, managing – also require energy. And equally important, the usefulness of human energy is a product of society. We are not born as productive mature adults but as helpless little babies. We have to be nurtured, socialized, and educated by society before we are capable of being useful to society, and that requires social energy. According to the first law of thermodynamics, energy can be used and reused but can never be created or destroyed. However, the second law of thermodynamics – the law of entropy – states, whenever energy is used or reused some of its usefulness is lost. When energy is used, it is always transformed from more concentrated, organized forms to more dispersed, less concentrated forms, as when we burn fuel in an automobile or fuel our bodies with food. In fact, the usefulness of energy arises from its natural tendency to disperse. Even though no energy is lost when it is dispersed, it must be collected, reorganized, reconcentrated, and re-stored before it can be reused. All of this requires energy – energy which is no longer available to do anything else. This is the essence of the law of entropy and entropy is inevitable. The only source of energy available to offset entropy is the daily inflow of solar energy. The fundamental problem is that capitalist economies provide powerful incentives to use and reuse energy but provide no incentives to collect and store solar energy for the purpose of offsetting the energy lost to entropy. Even the solar energy captured through agriculture and forestry is put in the marketplace for consumption rather than used to regenerate and renew energy resources for future use. The basic problem is that economic value is inherently individualistic in nature; it accrues to the individual and thus must be expected to accrue during an individual’s lifetime. It makes no economic sense to invest anything for the sole benefit of someone else, certainly not an unknown someone of some future generation. An economy driven by economic self-interest, as is increasingly the case in all modern capitalist economies, actually accelerates the process of entropy. Such economies are not physically sustainable. Less appreciated but no less important, capitalist economies also dissipate social energy because they weaken human relationships. Economic efficiency requires that people relate to each other impartially, which means impersonally. People must compete rather than cooperate, if markets are to work efficiently, and competition degrades personal relationships. Economic efficiency encourages people to work away from their homes and shop outside of their local communities. They make more money but they have less time and energy to spend sustaining their families and communities. Modern capitalist economies turn human relationships into economic transactions, depleting the social energy needed to create productive people, thus accelerating the depletion of social energy. Such economies are not socially sustainable. In addition, all economic value comes either from nature or society. An economy creates nothing; it is simply a means of facilitating our individual relationships with each other and with the earth. If we continue to extract from nature and to exploit society for our short-run, individual benefit, eventually there will be no remaining sources of economic value. Capitalist economies take from nature and society but give nothing back to sustain either nature or society. Today’s capitalist economies are accelerating the tendency toward economic entropy and quite simply are not economically sustainable.

Hannes, Professor of Geography at the University of West Georgia. “Theorizing Capitalism and its Demise.” From Capital to Commons: Exploring the Promise of a World Beyond Capitalism. University of Bristol. Pp 27-28. // QUEERMAID

A third option, which breaks with both the autonomist and anarchist frameworks, is to embrace the state as an instrumental actor in liberating and then harnessing the commons to bring about a seismic shift out of capitalism. This mostly reformist approach is well captured in the work of Paul Mason (2016), who views the potential of a scarcity-busting freed general intellect primarily through the lens of state-based leadership and command. Mason’s focus therefore quickly turns to the need for large government driven programmes involving the breaking up of monopolies and targeted nationalizations, hi-tech macroeconomic planning, debt management, and a top-down effort to tackle climate change. In taking this position, however, the bottom-up impetus of commons-based peer production, where ‘the state’ is generally viewed with a good deal of scepticism, is mostly abandoned. Instead, Mason falls back to a politics and economics that are largely in line with standard democratic-socialist discourses. While this direction is probably the most likely to be adopted by leftist politicians and parties today, it also has its share of serious pitfalls. Autonomist and anarchist scholars of the commons, for instance, adamantly argue that the state is hopelessly intertwined with the dictates of capital, forming a capital state nexus that renders any vision of a state-led evolution out of capital an unrealistic fantasy. A further and more immediate challenge, however, especially considering its more mainstream, change-from-within outlook, is that socialist discourses are largely failing to garner the electoral support they would need to pursue the envisioned unleashing of the commons. This is likely the result of these discourses having increasingly lost touch with the changes taking place in capitalism and the subsequent shift in the workforce and labour’s self-perception. The failure of socialist parties, organizations, and unions to prevent the eroding of the middle class amidst widespread deindustrialization undoubtedly has also played a role. In this sense a general scepticism has set in towards the idea of ‘the state’ as a representative of the people’s will, reflecting to some extent the anarchist/autonomist position noted earlier. Within this context, then, it should not be surprising that the increasingly dominant post baby-boom generation finds itself largely unconvinced by suggestions of shifting economic control from capital to the state, that is, exchanging one distant, hierarchically organized form of decision making with another. In Europe this generational attitude is reflected in the plummeting of traditional party membership and, more particularly, the broad implosion of the socialist left, where, with a few exceptions, neither moderate nor more radical leftist parties can gain much electoral traction (van Haute, 2011; Taylor, 2018). In the US, in turn, while younger adults appear to be warming somewhat to the term ‘socialism’ (the term is generally not defined in polls), there is, at the same time, a deep lack of confidence in government in general (Jones and Saad, 2019; Pew, 2021). Given these trends and attitudes, rooted in the reality of a capital-state nexus that takes more than an election to overcome, it is difficult to see how a post-capitalist political economy could effectively spawn from a big-government, socialist platform.