The capitalist system of economics brought us most of the good stuff we have today. Without private individuals being able to raise the capital needed to develop innovative new ideas we just would not have most of the stuff we now think of as essential to our lives. I don’t believe governments would ever think of developing most of the stuff we now take for granted – innovation can happen sponsored by governments, but it is necessarily narrow, limited by the imagination of a relatively small number of people. The capitalist system has allowed an unlimited number of ideas to be tested and to fail or succeed.
However…
Whilst I am not a marxist, I agree with one important observation that Marx made: the capitalist system is an exploitative, expansionist system and it will collapse when it runs out of people/ resources to exploit. He called this “the crisis of capitalism”. I’m not sure I agree that a capitalist system is inevitably exploitative (in practice it usually is) but I am convinced that it is inevitably expansionist.
Tim Jackson, in his book “Prosperity without growth” (ISBN 978-1-138-93541-9 and definitely worth reading), tries to argue that we can/must switch to a non-expansionist system of capitalism to save ourselves from the consequences of an environmental catastrophe, but I can’t get over the simple fact that the payment of interest requires the economy to grow for the capital plus interest to be paid back (If anybody can explain why this is not true then lay on McDuff).
I am convinced that we face an environmental catastrophe. Not really for the planet (which will recover even if it takes a million years), but certainly for its ability to sustain anything like the number of people who are currently on it. Read “Collapse” by Jared Diamond (ISBN 978-0-241-95868-1) as well as the aforementioned “Prosperity without growth” if you need convincing.
I am not convinced by the current proposals for tackling the problem.
Everybody is talking about a “Green recovery” but this is an oxymoron. Any growth takes us closer to the point where the earth’s systems cannot cope and both the environment and the supply of biological material (food, wood, etc.) collapses to the point where a large proportion of the human population will have to die before equilibrium is restored.
We cannot go back to running the world’s economies as we have done up until now.
Take as an example, the small company I work for (name withheld to protect someone or other): the company has to compete within the existing system. That means it must always seek growth and economic efficiency. Growth comes from selling more stuff, but to prevent the oncoming environmental catastrophe we need our economies to be producing less stuff (see the statistics in “Prosperity without growth”). But, my company can’t survive without producing more stuff – pedal to the metal , accelerate towards the cliff edge: no choice, no chance to turn back. Sorting the useful stuff out of the company’s waste stream is not economically efficient (it would cost us more than the recovered stuff is worth to us, so thousands of pounds worth of useable stuff goes in landfill every year). This is not a criticism of my company; it has no choice but to operate as best it can in the world it lives in.
Somehow we need to find a way for the world to function without humans using ever more resources.
Most of the people on the planet get by on what we would consider to be an impossibly meagre amount of resources.
If they all used as much as we do, the world’s ecosystems would collapse instantly.
What are you prepared to give up to protect your own future, and that of your children?
I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not ready for this. I have 6 musical instruments and I can give you a dozen reasons why I want more. But whilst I can afford to buy more, I don’t need them and the planet can’t cope with all of us having more musical instruments (or pick your must-have thing).
For me, music is something essential about being human, but we have to change the way we think about it.
I can’t imagine that some system of forced communal ownership of resources (or guitars, if you will) is going to fix this, but if not, what is?
Ceefer Madness 