Why We Need to Look Beyond Capitalism to Save the Planet
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- Опубликовано: 25 июн 2024
- Are there truly viable capitalist solutions to the ecological crisis? What are the limits of market logic and how do they prevent us from saving the biosphere? This video will cover a couple reasons why capitalism cannot be the way forward for life on Earth.
Read the full script here:
/ introduction
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Narration, script, and editing by M.
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Patreon:
/ themarxistpro. .
Twitter:
/ marxistproject
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References:
Burkett, P. (2009). Marxism and Ecological Economics: Toward a Red and Green Political Economy. Haymarket Books.
Williams, C. (2010). Ecology and socialism: Solutions to capitalist ecological crisis. Ha ymarket Books.
thewire.in/environment/ipcc-w...
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2...
www.theguardian.com/world/202...
www.aljazeera.com/opinions/20...
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00:00 - 02:41 Introduction
02:42 - 08:33 The Limits of Market Logic
08:34 - 14:00 Are We Trying to Save Capitalism, or the Planet?
14:00 - 15:24 Conclusion
15:25 - 15:52 Outro
It's lovely to see a sober Marxist analysis that goes beyond standard liberal "personal responsibility" moralizing on this crucial issue. Amazing stuff.
Extremely well researched! Can't imagine the hardwork you had to do to make this video. Making a video that has proper economic critique and looks at the core of the capitalist solutions to the ecological crisis demands next level dedication.
Keep up the good work! Support from Comrades in India! ✊🏿
To save ourselves
True, the planet will be fine.
This is such a pointless distinction to make. Who cares if a lifeless rock floating in space continues to exist?
@@Tetragrammaton22 No life will survive, we won’t even if all complex life goes extinct simple celled organism will eventually evolve into multi-cellular organisms. Human will not survive the environmental catastrophe, bacteria can
@@Tetragrammaton22 Not lifeless, we can't possibly destroy all life on Earth. So, it's essentially about saving humanity. The extremophiles are going to be fine, I guarantee.
@@bugsbunny4647 This reminds me of George Carlin "the planet will be fine...We are f****d
Lets spread this channel around as much as poss by sharing videos and links, etc.
They have an important message and it's one that the algorithm doesn't take kindly too.
Anti-capitalist voices tend to be penalized within capitalist systems.
We are not saving the planet, we are saving ourselves. The planet will be fine with or without us.
I really like this channel as it helps supplements my current reading of Capital. I would make a suggestion though, it can be hard to follow and understand the narration especially when nothing is changing on the screen for long periods. I think it would help me at least if you used more on screen graphics of visuals that kept up with the script. Keep up the good work.
Nice video, will you spend more time in the future discussing Marx's writings on the metabolic rift? Or perhaps the antithesis between town and country? Either way, I look forward to whatever is uploaded.
Tldr communism allows for more green alternatives as it doesn't have a profit motive and allows for more money to be pushed into helping the planet.
Humble invitation for tou to go over the ecological rift and John Bellamy Foster work. Cheers.
I used to think that capitalism could simply be reformed, "corrected", but now it is clear that it needs to be replaced completely with socialism.
Actually the ultimate choice is clear, which is socialism or barbarism, because capitalism cannot sustain itself forevermore.
@@eugeneproff5404 yes
From 1930s to 1980 Capitalism was "reformed" under the system that they call "Social Democracy", that allowed greated productivity in the First World Countries, allowed the creation of long roads, computers, the internet, and acess to technology and eletrical energy to many people, because it limited the power of Capitalists in society. However as time passed, the burden of Social Democracy became to much, new technology was causing harm to capitalists profits (as more and more is produced, so less capital they gain, since things costs less), and since private property of the means of production and the nation state still existed, over-production of Capital still continued (altrough the larger contratcs of the goverment was able to lessen this problem for many years), eventually leading to the crisis of the 70s. Them capitalists decided to destroy Social Democracy around the world, putting neoliberalism in their place. Neoliberalism is the old capitalism before 1930s but even more agressive, destroying countries and living standars around the world as profits never became so important.
Love your videos! Your analysis of the extensive connection between capitalism and climate change reminds me of Andreas Malm’s Fossil Capital
Hooray for the new video. Thank comrades.
Working now. But I'm super keen to watch this later! (Algorithm comment).
Really well articulated!
Keep up the amazing work Comrade! ❤️
Another amazing video.
Fantastic video - maybe the most important topic you've done yet.
Suuiiiii Marxist Projekt posted
He he he… suiiiii
I’m really depressed because I did a huge research project on this and the predictions I came to are happening way earlier
Algo comment. Based.
Marx with a banger quote at the end.
One example is EV vs. public transport:
Under capitalism it's much more profitable if everyone buys their own electric vehicle.
But the way more ecologic option would be public transport, a couple rentable cars, and bicycles.
Another is longevity: Under capitalism it's beneficial if products die after a few years, and replacements are bought.
A planned economy could design products with max. longevity in mind, so that eg. one vacuum cleaner could pass through generations.
I became a Marxist by unintentionally stumbling into these contradictions and realizing liberal solutions were still bandaids and that you would need either totalitarian fascism or socialism
Love your videos marxist project❤
Comment below if you see this!
:)
You seem to be actually critiquing anarcho-capitalism, not neoliberal capitalism. Neoliberal capitalism does not posit that all government action disconnected from profit motives is bad, just that it should be minimized in favor of market action when workable. Anarcho-capitalism is the system that only cares about what markets think, with no regards to any kind of externalities. When you talk about how money is uni-dimensional, you are also functionally wrong, as though pricing one thing is uni-dimensional, you can price many different things. In your example, all you have to do to achieve multi-dimensionality is price the connections between different phenomenon. In pollution, if a car produces multiple pollutants, you can place limits and prices or financial penalties on each pollutant, like C02, carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide. This all seems like a titular slight of hand where you critique one system that has all the problems you think your system can fix but call it something else so you can claim that your critiques actually are directed at our current system. Capitalism has problems with climate action because it is focused on profit to much, loosing sight of how pollution can negatively effect people in the future, but socialism has a similar problem in that effects are ignored if the problems they cause only ever arise in the far future. The Soviets made most of their revenue through oil sales and the destruction of the Aral Sea was due to short sighted decisions surrounding agricultural irrigation. No system is immune to climate disasters and the way you portray our current system seems to neglect this fact.
The difference is that ancaps don't want a State, while liberal capitalists want one that tries not to participate in the free market. How much they want the State to intervene in the market determines how neoliberal, or even social-democratic they are.
5:00 "In essence, wage labor is THE defining feature of capitalist economies." Not that it didn't exist before capitalism, but that wage labor as the primary source of labor is THE defining feature of capitalist economies.
"Actually existing socialism" that self-proclaimed socialists like to defend is nothing more than state capitalism, and state capitalism is not socialism (for multiple reasons). ESPECIALLY when there is no ongoing effort to democratize and transfer the duties of the state (starting with the military and police) to the masses of the proletariat...because failing to make that effort is all the evidence any reasonable socialist should ever need that the intent of the state is not to pursue socialism, but to maintain itself as a distinct authority above the people for its own self-preservation, and to protect the status of the elite who run it as being elite.
It would be great if you would do a video on state capitalism, both what it is and its role in the transition towards either socialism OR various forms of statism. Too many people, including many socialists, conflate state capitalism AND statism of any seemingly pro-social variety with socialism and communism.
Have you ever heard of "The Dictatorship of the Proletariat?" If yes, perhaps you can explain what that is.
@@Tetragrammaton22 Yes. In fact, I've heard about it far more than any prominence that Marx ever gave it. Marx used the term *almost* exclusively when addressing Blanquists, who were a group of people who saw literal dictatorship as the pathway towards a socialist future. Marx was, in short, trying to sway them away from that view towards his position of bottom-up democracy by using terms they identified with. When Engels was told of its anti-democratic interpretation, he repudiated it.
Rosa Luxemburg put it really succinctly ("The Russian Revolution" chapter 8: "Democracy and Dictatorship"):
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But socialist democracy is not something which begins only in the promised land after the foundations of socialist economy are created; it does not come as some sort of Christmas present for the worthy people who, in the interim, have loyally supported a handful of socialist dictators. Socialist democracy begins simultaneously with the beginnings of the destruction of class rule and of the construction of socialism. It begins at the very moment of the seizure of power by the socialist party. It is the same thing as the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Yes, dictatorship! But this dictatorship consists in the manner of applying democracy, not in its elimination, but in energetic, resolute attacks upon the well-entrenched rights and economic relationships of bourgeois society, without which a socialist transformation cannot be accomplished. But this dictatorship must be the work of the class and not of a little leading minority in the name of the class - that is, it must proceed step by step out of the active participation of the masses; it must be under their direct influence, subjected to the control of complete public activity; it must arise out of the growing political training of the mass of the people.
Doubtless the Bolsheviks would have proceeded in this very way were it not that they suffered under the frightful compulsion of the world war, the German occupation and all the abnormal difficulties connected therewith, things which were inevitably bound to distort any socialist policy, however imbued it might be with the best intentions and the finest principles.
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There are plenty of explanations by prominent authors, activists and movement leaders. Put simply, the "dictatorship of the proletariat" is nothing more than putting the proletariat, which is the working people in a capitalist (or even feudal) society, *AS A CLASS*, into the position of *RULING CLASS* in a revolutionary democracy. "Revolutionary democracy" is also meant as "democracy from below" and "the fullest democracy," which stands in opposition to "democracy from above" and "bourgeois democracy." It is the change of rule from the minority class (bourgeoisie) to the majority class (proletariat).
If you want more background on how/why the term was used in Marx's time (because the connotations were different than they are today), I suggest looking up "The ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’ in Marx and Engels" by Hal Draper. You can find it online for free. You can also google "marxists.org glossary", and then look up the following terms (and then, of course, read the source documents so that you get a fuller understanding of what's being said and know, from personal exposure, the full context):
Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry
Dictatorship of the Proletariat
Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie
And of course, if you think that all of these people were lying about what they meant, perhaps you should look a little closer at history to see exactly what was going on. Not just at time X or place Y, but whichever time/place you want to point to, as well as what led up to it. Here's a very general hint that applies to nearly every example (not all. Nearly all) that you might point to as "socialism" or "communism" and why it went the way it did:
Look at what the United States of America and the British Empire (and its other aliases) did around that time and place. Without making excuses.
And as a contrast to all of that, here's a scenario that you should consider, seeing as how it's analogous to most of the cases you'll ever know to point to:
Say that John Adams (yes, that one. The guy who pushed hardest for independence) had the military and economic support of every empire and major nation on Earth in pushing for aristocratic or monarchial rule after winning independence (he didn't have that international support, but he DID support those things), and his opponents who wanted a republic were invaded, sanctioned, or otherwise opposed strongly by those same countries. And let's say that Adams still lost and the republic prevailed, but all of its opponents around the world continued trying to make it fail through any and all means. Just how "free" and "democratic" do you think it would be today? How prosperous would it be? How long do you think it would have taken before the state turned all media into propaganda machines to keep people working for the survival of the country (and the state...and the elite who ran it)?
Now put it into some extra context: assume that the starting point of the colonies BEFORE the revolution was abject poverty for the masses, feudalism with an ultra-wealthy ruling class, regular famines and famine-related outbreaks of disease, low agricultural productivity, and only a fraction of the land being habitable (much less arable). That's where Russia started. China was considered even more "backwards" than Russia at the time.
@@Tetragrammaton22 Because I'm not confident in youtube censoring posts with links, please verify that you got my longer response.
@@samuelrosander1048 Yes I see it, thank you. How long do you think it might take for any given society to advance beyond this phase or stage? What criteria might be required to consider that transition?
@@Tetragrammaton22 Turns out the "short and highly inadequate" version was too long for a single post. So I'll give the "ludicrously short and insanely inadequate" version here, and if you want, I'll post the other version in 2 parts.
There are examples of legitimate socialist transition happening in various conditions. One is the Zapatistas in Mexico (summary: they live in an impoverished region, run on a separate system than the official government, and are recognized by their surrounding regions to be far superior to what exists, despite their common ground of poverty and such. >300,000 people, non-contiguous territory coverage. >26 years and still going, so you can check in on them, but persecuted by the government), another is the Paris Commune of 1871 (summary: transition started, lasted briefly before they were massacred by the government. 30,000 people. Read "The Civil War in France" by Marx).
Lots of different opinions on the subject. There are some videos at the bottom that might give some better perspective than mine; they were influential on my opinions, so at least there's that. There are merits to both "hard" and "soft" revolutions, but Lenin noted at least one with the hard type: if the people don't have the education and practice of democracy normalized, they very well might not be effective (and possibly even positive) participants in it, and it gets even worse depending on the situation with resources, famine, war, interventions etc.
Conditions will be different for every time and place, so the timeline will depend. To even consider a transition, though, there are some basic things to address first, though these are just my opinion based on building the future we want before it arrives:
1) de-atomizing living communities (relationship-building), because a community of isolated individuals has little sense of solidarity, of "social responsibility," and therefore is easier to fracture. Mutual aid networks run democratically are key
2) same for people within and between workplaces; union membership is not enough. Learning about how the local economy works is important if you're supposed to have a say in running it via democracy, and that means talking to fellow workers from all sectors, and building solidarity and community (and a sense of social responsibility) with them
3) introduce real democracy in *AND BETWEEN* both living and working communities, so that the perspectives of one mesh with those of the other, allowing for more effective community (and economic) organizing and planning
4) movement leaders must be nothing more than organizers and advisors, not decision-makers. They can help galvanize and organize the public, and help them understand what their options/consequences are, but we don't want leader-worship or dictatorship to become a thing
In short, for democracy to become viable, the old mentality of "we need wise rulers who will fix all of our problems for us, if only we support/elect the right ones" must be done away with. I can provide a path towards achieving #1-3 in a separate post, but it's too long (I've written it out too many times, so now I just copy/paste).
As for how long, depending on variables including type of revolution (hard or soft), opposition, etc, it could take anywhere from 10 to 25 years to get to the point of being ready for a revolution, if at all, in the U.S.
This is all just my opinion, of course, but "it depends" is the only correct answer for the timeline, and "it would be wise for these to be addressed before the revolution" doesn't mean that they will be for any revolution. I'm willing to talk more, especially since this is quite likely to be an unsatisfying response, but here are the videos I mentioned in the meantime:
"The Future of Socialism" by "The Marxist Project"
"On Strategies for Post-Capitalism" and "Strategies for Post-Capitalism Continued" by "Mexie"
"How Capitalism Destroys Radical Movements" by "Second Thought"
The future is not green it’s nuclear fusion
> The future is not green it’s nuclear fusion
This is a very DISTANT future, if at all.
For the moment there is fossil energy - oil & gas, and nuclear fission
I am disappointed by this video. You just identify the problem, but do non-capitalist systems actually create the outcomes we desire? How does marxism/socialsism/communisum or whatever you want to call it or any other system help with climate change?
One of the questions I have is an explanation of the marxist position on commodities. Marxism seems strangely hostile to the idea...even though trade and therefore commodities is literally the only way specialization can exist. A commodity is something I produce to trade for something I need. The alternative is to try to produce the myriad of things I need myself. Which is quite the norm for human history... where most people were living wretched miserable subsistence lifestyles, making almost everything they use themselves or within the family, unable to focus on developing any specic productive capacity to innovate in techbology or produce high quality piecss of the existing technology in the era.... this hostility to commodities, to specialization seems to follow a trend of being against civilization itself.
Agree.
The term is "division of labor"
Why do you think Paleolithic life was so bad? Archaeological evidence shows that people had more hours of free time than we do now. More is not better; enough is best. So do you wanna keep living under a system that wants to kill you or are you marching with us?
The important thing is do not completely replace class struggle with environmental struggle, as euro-left did.
First
SAVE MOTHER GAIA OMG
Calm down
Then why they destroyed aral see and used my land to test nuclear weapons?
A green world is impossible. The way we live, in houses instead of being nomads, is unnatural. Climate change is not something new. In the Easter Island, when colonizers arrived, there was no life, only the Moais. The people’s living there cut down the trees to the point that they made the island useless for their survival. Many Native American tribes and Maya peoples also over used their resources, and they didn’t live in capitalism. The USSR exported gas; Salvador Allende exploited Chile’s natural resources. Electric devices need mines, and slave labor. To sum up, no economic system can support our way of living with the environment. Ships in the 15th century didn’t pollute as much as airplanes today, yet nobody is thinking about living like that. Agriculture is necessary, yet it kills biodiversity.
The further back you go in history, the less pollution we caused. Yet life back then was horrible. Nobody wants to live in the Middle Ages, or when we were hunters. I think socialists just took the eco movements to appeal to the masses. What capitalism did was accelerate the environment collapse, yet either capitalism or socialism, the end is the same: we will ruin the olanet
We are right now harvesting resources without giving back bc of the profit motive the native Americans took care of the environment and promoted bio diversity same with the aboriginal aussies. The problem is were to focused on the short term like fossil fuel and strip mining instead of nuclear power and asteroid mining so cut the pessimism before I develop depressing reading ur comment.
Sorry for any bad english it's not my first language.
Whoa take it easy with your fatalism my boi.
Sooner or later we will figure it out it's that simple. Great strides are already being made. Many solutions are already in the pipeline, the problem is corrupt politicians filling the governments of most nations. They will be a problem however, I believe one that will be eventually overcome.
@@YourCapyBro_windows95_3DPipes you seem too delusional. If you weren’t, you’d read that even all of the Earth’s copper deposits aren’t enough to go electric. Copper is necessary, and even recycling them wouldn’t be enough to turn this world into an electric world. Moreover, electric energy isn’t really clean because of the batteries’ waste and they produce too little energy that realistically, the world won’t work if we depend on them
Can all in left YT please start educating people about both: (1) the difference between right-authoritarian vs. right-libertarian; & (2) the difference between left-authoritarian vs left-libertarian? It’s long overdue. People aren’t cattle or sheep: They will understand if we educate them.
Though we need to educate (& learn) about all the nuance.
Please stop spamming this all over youtube. I see you everywhere.
Also, there really isn't a difference between so called right "libertarians" and right authoritarians. Or even left "authoritarians" and left libertarians.
The political compass is trash and so are these labels.
The planet will be fine. Venus is fine without humans. Mars is fine without humans. We need to save ourselves.
Venus had an atmosphere once. maybe it had life on it. who knows. But there seemed to be an out of control greenhouse effect.
but i get your point :)
@@WastedContender ok...
Well, yes, the planet will not physically disintegrate but we could do permanent damage to a significant portion of life (perhaps most of it) in the biosphere -- which in many ways is the defining feature of Earth as a planet.
Obviously climate change is a human-conceived (and human-induced) crisis but that doesn't mean it wont have fatal consequences for millions of other species. At any rate, if climate change transforms Earth into Venus or Mars, I personally think that would be anything but fine.
Why are you making this arbitrary distinction? We don't care about Venus or Mars, we care about Earth and maintaining biodiversity.
british empire malthusian propaganda
Imagine ditching the best economic system that has ever been implemented on large scale just because its leaders refuse to dramatically change the system to prevent ecological disaster. Changing the base system won't eliminate the unsustainable industries, just change how they are managed. On top of that, transitions this large would put a massive strain on the economy which would further disincentivize the needed industry changes. Developing countries aren't concerned about ecological disasters as much as rich, developed countries because they are struggling enough as it is to support their own people. Try to think through practical solutions instead of just pushing ideology. Idealists tend to destroy the best parts of the systems they change because they don't consider the necessary transitionary period. Don't fall into this pitfall like many (if not all) of the leaders of the communist transitions have! Far too many people have died that didn't need to if the transitions were practically thought through.
I dont think all of the workers and farmers in the underdeveloped world, who are the ones bearing the brunt of the climate catastrophe (disproportionately created by the developed world), would agree that this is "the best economic system that has ever been implemented."
There are plenty post-capitalist solutions out there that have been worked out by experts in various disciplines.
@@themarxistproject Those workers and farmers in the underdeveloped world are often exploited by middlemen in the developed world, giving them fewer resources to cope with disasters. Working through the current system to fix that problem is possible. Just because a portion of the system is exploited by a group of corrupt individuals doesn't mean the system itself doesn't work well in general. After all, it solved many of the major problems of the system that came before it.
@@samuelwilger4242 the "bad managers" argument misses the mark because it doesn't realize that the search for lower unit labor costs (and thus higher profit margins) is an integral feature of the capitalist model. Market mechanisms are what drive multinational corporations to pack up and find the cheapest, least-protected labor -- even at the cost of the workers it previously employed. A substantial portion of all the commodities circulating the global market rely on extremely cheap labor (and at times outright slavery). These low unit labor costs are hidden in the final product, but they nevertheless capture the reality of exploitation in the current system. Capital will *always* seek the largest margins, and this necessarily comes at the price of returns to labor.
I'm sure, because you seem so smart, that you know what a negative externality is. What must be done with these negative externalities? They must be internalized by those that cause them. What better way to internalize than by having those negatively impacted also be the ones positively effected by the production involved, i.e., the people owning the production themselves.
Right. The system is fine, the leaders just lazy and unwilling to change. Let's vote right next time, and everything is going to be fine, just fine.
First dislike. Free market will save us from ourselves
Nice b8
-🤡
Free market =/= capitalism, though they do go together well and are commonly used together. In any case...
The current organization of the economy is what has caused environmental disaster; it is not capable of stopping it.
@@Tetragrammaton22 I have changed. I am now a Deng Xiaoping Taliban Stalinist.
p̳r̳o̳m̳o̳s̳m̳
Another amazing video.