- 29 Jun 2016 02:21
#14696894
I was wondering what peoples' thoughts were to the relation between socialism and ideas of environmental sustainability (A vague and contested term).
Whether the implications of socialism are best founded in technology and social relations that are environmentally sustainable in their production and consumption or is environemtnalism something that isn't able to necessarily be fitted into a modern conception of such an economic model?
AND
Ways in which workers rights can be supported by and support environmentalist concerns.
Two sources which inspired this line of thought.
Global Political Economy, 4th Ed., Robert O'Brien & Marc Williams, p. 254
Kaufman summarizes the origins of some greenies being middle class liberals who are detached from working class/labor concerns nad such their methods and perspectives are founded on environmentalism negligent towards them.
Ideas for Action, 'People, Nature, and Other Animals', Cynthia Kaufman, p. 205-206
She goes on to talk about a company that was clear-cutting at unsustainable rates and eventually was shutting down mills nad such, thus able to forge an alliance between greenies and workers about the bad practice of the timber company, with the environmental consequences affecting many of the workers where they lived.
Whether the implications of socialism are best founded in technology and social relations that are environmentally sustainable in their production and consumption or is environemtnalism something that isn't able to necessarily be fitted into a modern conception of such an economic model?
AND
Ways in which workers rights can be supported by and support environmentalist concerns.
Two sources which inspired this line of thought.
Global Political Economy, 4th Ed., Robert O'Brien & Marc Williams, p. 254
Different conceptions of development contribute to contending perspectives on sustainable development. Radical approaches reject capitalist development and argue that capitalism is responsible for both the creation and perpetuation of poverty and environmental degradation (Saurin, 1996). From this perspective, development requires rejection of the current international economic order, and a search for development models that emphasize small-scale, participatory development. In this view, the pursuit of economic growth can be counterproductive since such growth frequently stimulates policies that degrade the environment.
On the other hand, the dominant conception of sustainable development accepts the prevailing global political and economic structure, and locates development within the capitalist political economy. Within the dominant approach, economic growth per se is not a problem but an inescapable starting point. The report by the Trilateral Commission, Beyond Interdependence, states: 'Given the growth imperative evidence in the material poverty of much of human kind, the only reasonable alternative is sustainable development' (McNeil et al. 1991, p. v). As this report suggests, economic growth is necessary in order to eradicate poverty. The world Bank, which has adopted sustainable development as its goal, has argued that it is poverty which is responsible for environmental degradation. In this view, economic growth provides the instruments through which societies can address environmental degradation.
In this debate between different approaches to development, history has shown convincingly that it is not the economic system as such, but the importance attached to environmental values that is central. The radical critique is on firm ground when it draws connections between capitalist development and unsustainable modes of production and consumption. But it is surely on shaky ground when it assumes that a socialist (or non-capitalist) economic system automatically provides the conditions for sustainable practices. The evidence of the environmental disasters created b the communist regimes in central and Eastern Europe are stark reminders of the fact that environmental pollution was in many cases far worse under these regimes than in the capitalist west. The objection that these were not true communist states is irrelevant.
It is irrelevant because one can equally claim that Western states are not examples of true capitalism. But, more importantly, these regimes provide a counter to the claim that capitalism creates environmental degradation, since whatever we call their economic systems, they were certainly not capitalist.
Kaufman summarizes the origins of some greenies being middle class liberals who are detached from working class/labor concerns nad such their methods and perspectives are founded on environmentalism negligent towards them.
Ideas for Action, 'People, Nature, and Other Animals', Cynthia Kaufman, p. 205-206
In the 1980's, it was practically a common-sense assumption that environmental concerns and labor concerns were opposed to one another. In the Pacific Northwest, the issues were posed as a choice between the protection of spotted owls or the jobs of loggers. Laborers often took the side of the corporations that hired them i arguing that environmental constraints were bad for companies and therefore bad for the employment and wages of workers. This reflected the old business-labor accord, according to which what's good for business is good for labor.
Environmentalists, on the other hand, often framed their concerns as protecting an innocent nature against bad people. So the needs o people were not part of the equation.
It took the work of some very sophisticated organizers to begin to change that equation, Judi Bari, who was a member of the deep ecology environmental group Earth First! and an activist in the radical anarcho-syndicalist union Industrial Workers of the World, did important work getting environmentalists and labor activists to identify common interests, and helped each to understand and frame their demands in ways that would foster cooperation.
As a member of Earth First!, she was disturbed by the practice of tree spiking. She was a working-class person who didn't see the loggers as enemies. As she struggled within the organization to develop tactics that were not so hostile to loggers, she developed a deeper analysis that included a sense of the common ground that existed between environmentalists and the loggers.
She goes on to talk about a company that was clear-cutting at unsustainable rates and eventually was shutting down mills nad such, thus able to forge an alliance between greenies and workers about the bad practice of the timber company, with the environmental consequences affecting many of the workers where they lived.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/For%20Ethical%20Politics.pdf#page90
-For Ethical Politics
-For Ethical Politics