Can Civilization Survive Capitalism?

[Richard Kerver]

Can Civilization Survive Capitalism?
by Noam Chomsky, NationofChange Op-Ed, 8 March 2013; bold highlight added

Once again, Noam Chomsky, one of our preeminent thought leaders has focused our attention exactly in the right way in asking the question "Can civilization survive capitalism?"  Right now the most well informed opinion is no.  Of course its much worse and the real question is "Can the human species survive capitalism induced climate catastrophe," never mind some civilized version of humanity.

There is “capitalism” and then there is “really existing capitalism.”

The term “capitalism” is commonly used to refer to the U.S. economic system, with substantial state intervention ranging from subsidies for creative innovation to the “too-big-to-fail” government insurance policy for banks.

The system is highly monopolized, further limiting reliance on the market, and increasingly so: In the past 20 years the share of profits of the 200 largest enterprises has risen sharply, reports scholar Robert W. McChesney in his new book “Digital Disconnect.”

“Capitalism” is a term now commonly used to describe systems in which there are no capitalists: for example, the worker-owned Mondragon conglomerate in the Basque region of Spain, or the worker-owned enterprises expanding in northern Ohio, often with conservative support – both are discussed in important work by the scholar Gar Alperovitz.

Some might even use the term “capitalism” to refer to the industrial democracy advocated by John Dewey, America’s leading social philosopher, in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

Dewey called for workers to be “masters of their own industrial fate” and for all institutions to be brought under public control, including the means of production, exchange, publicity, transportation and communication. Short of this, Dewey argued, politics will remain “the shadow cast on society by big business.”

The truncated democracy that Dewey condemned has been left in tatters in recent years. Now control of government is narrowly concentrated at the peak of the income scale, while the large majority “down below” has been virtually disenfranchised. The current political-economic system is a form of plutocracy, diverging sharply from democracy, if by that concept we mean political arrangements in which policy is significantly influenced by the public will.

There have been serious debates over the years about whether capitalism is compatible with democracy. If we keep to really existing capitalist democracy – RECD for short – the question is effectively answered: They are radically incompatible.

It seems to me unlikely that civilization can survive RECD and the sharply attenuated democracy that goes along with it. But could functioning democracy make a difference?

Here we pause as Noam points out that so-called capitalism is at odds with democracy.  Its the political-economy debate.  The American experiment from the Jeffersonian era up until the industrial era was blessed with the wealth afforded it by the land and its natural resources, as well as a benign human politic - true democracy (or at least an approximation to it).  But the industrial era, fueled first by coal and then petroleum resources, allowed for accelerated growth, and the increasing concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands.  Then the modern era.

Let’s keep to the most critical immediate problem that civilization faces: environmental catastrophe. Policies and public attitudes diverge sharply, as is often the case under RECD. The nature of the gap is examined in several articles in the current issue of Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Researcher Kelly Sims Gallagher finds that “One hundred and nine countries have enacted some form of policy regarding renewable power, and 118 countries have set targets for renewable energy. In contrast, the United States has not adopted any consistent and stable set of policies at the national level to foster the use of renewable energy.”

 

It is not public opinion that drives American policy off the international spectrum. Quite the opposite. Opinion is much closer to the global norm than the U.S. government’s policies reflect, and much more supportive of actions needed to confront the likely environmental disaster predicted by an overwhelming scientific consensus – and one that’s not too far off; affecting the lives of our grandchildren, very likely.

As Jon A. Krosnick and Bo MacInnis report in Daedalus: “Huge majorities have favored steps by the federal government to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated when utilities produce electricity. In 2006, 86 percent of respondents favored requiring utilities, or encouraging them with tax breaks, to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they emit (euro) [ Also in that year, 87 percent favored tax breaks for utilities that produce more electricity from water, wind or sunlight. These majorities were maintained between 2006 and 2010 and shrank somewhat after that.

The fact that the public is influenced by science is deeply troubling to those who dominate the economy and state policy.

One current illustration of their concern is the “Environmental Literacy Improvement Act” proposed to state legislatures by ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-funded lobby that designs legislation to serve the needs of the corporate sector and extreme wealth.

The ALEC Act mandates “balanced teaching” of climate science in K-12 classrooms. “Balanced teaching” is a code phrase that refers to teaching climate-change denial, to “balance” mainstream climate science.

Hope that we're all awake to the political reality spelled out here.

Media reports commonly present a controversy between two sides on climate change.

One side consists of the overwhelming majority of scientists, the world’s major national academies of science, the professional science journals and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

They agree that global warming is taking place, that there is a substantial human component, that the situation is serious and perhaps dire, and that very soon, maybe within decades, the world might reach a tipping point where the process will escalate sharply and will be irreversible, with severe social and economic effects. It is rare to find such consensus on complex scientific issues.

Whoops, my one disagreement - the timeline - it is "dire" right now.  We are already at the tipping point and it is happening before our eyes.  A 2 degree warmed world is no longer possible.  Only question is are we going to halt the unfolding catastrophe in time to prevent a 4 degree warmed world?

The other side consists of skeptics, including a few respected scientists who caution that much is unknown – which means that things might not be as bad as thought, or they might be worse.

Omitted from the contrived debate is a much larger group of skeptics: highly regarded climate scientists who see the IPCC’s regular reports as much too conservative. And these scientists have repeatedly been proven correct, unfortunately.

Well, yea, we've known that since the third assessment report, and I'm one of them.  Noam goes on, about so called externalities, that banal license granted corporations to pollute and foist other social & environmental harms into the commons and onto the public.  The single greatest mistake made.

Environmental catastrophe is far more serious: The externality that is being ignored is the fate of the species. And there is nowhere to run, cap in hand, for a bailout.

So that's it in a nutshell or acorn or peach seed - nowhere to hide!  And finally, an answer...

Throughout the world, indigenous societies are struggling to protect what they sometimes call “the rights of nature,” while the civilized and sophisticated scoff at this silliness.

Let's rephase that - the preeminent rights of nature as existed before the allowance of society for corporations to pollute the commons.  That license is hereby and in perpetuity revoked.  We must OccupyTheEconomy because the situation demands nothing less.  Occupy the corporate shareholder meetings, arrest the corporations, beginning with ExxonMobil May 29th in Dallas, to issue a cease and desist order, to arrest the corporations before it is too late!  I call on all good people to join me in the fight, not just of our lifetimes, but all of human time.

Expressions of solidarity, support and engagement welcome at the OccupyTheEconomy forum thread.