In the chat someone was asking about the passage of vol. III where Marx talks about the rational government of social metabolism, this is it: "Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature [i.e. metabolism], bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working day is its basic prerequisite." (MECW, vol. 37: 807)
I think this shows Marx did have a somewhat coherent 'ecological' position that was a rational outgrowth of his main work and it certainly wasn't degrowth salvage communism but it also wasn't exactly people's republic of walmart either, it was a third thing that makes way more sense.
e.g. the In Defense of Stuff chapter of Austerity Ecology and the Collapse-Porn Addicts where Philips asks what's wrong with mass production of home video game consoles, this is obviously intended as a cheeky troll of petit-bourgeois eco-austerity anti-consumerists, but it's easy to imagine socialist-communist industry achieving "favorable conditions" for this specific "expanded necessity" in a way that is "rationally regulaiting [human] interchange with nature", with "[less] expenditure of energy" and more "worthy of ... human nature". (To spell it out a little more, in violation of Marx's taboo against blueprints of the kitchens of the future, why is there an apartment complex with 20 separate cramped individual living rooms with 20 separate gamers playing mostly the same popular games but in total social isolation from one another, satisfying this particular expanded necessity with 20 separate planned obsolescence devices, that are practically welded shut to prevent home repair or part upgrades, running off of "hermetically sealed car" proprietary software that they have no idea how to program themselves, as opposed to say, a free public indoor arcade with comfortable furniture where they spend their time collaboratively tinkering with massive gaming builds that are designed to last for decades and programming their own games instead of buying the same AAA titles with minor variations every year. To be less grandiose in scale, but still on the subject of gaming, my Nintendo Switch does not have that much greater hardware capacity than my smartphone, and it would actually be more convenient if I could just play Mario Bros. on the same device I carry around to use Google Maps. But Nintendo and Samsung are competitors, so I have to needlessly juggle two devices that were both manufactured with rare precious metals, both of which have been designed to break down and be thrown away in a landfill in five years. Ecological consequences aside, this is a waste of human labor and I'd rather have shorter hours at the socialist Switch-Galaxy Note factory and more free time to play Mario Bros.) Similarly, in Huber's and Phillips's recent critique of Saito in Jacobin, they make the claim that urban agriculture has a larger carbon footprint than traditional agriculture, and then the scientific paper they cite actually claims that a major chunk of former's carbon footprint is the fact that existing urban agricultural infrastructure is being continuously demolished and rebuilt as a side effect of the "anarchy of production" of capitalist urban real estate construction, which actually tells us very little about how "Promethean" socialism/communism could rationally plan society to reduce transportation distances of industrial agricultural output to major population centers. As a former Walmart worker myself, I'll never forget when my store manager confided in me that Walmart's business model was partly based on selling cheap fixed household necessities (such as furniture and appliances) that were designed to fall apart in 3-6 months so that the working-class customers would have to spend more money in the long run replacing them every 3-6 months. Meanwhile my bed frame I inherited from my grandmother-in-law is still sturdy and comfortable after almost a century, and I would prefer it over a Walmart bedframe for pure home decor aesthetic reasons alone.
@@codenameicarus I feel like I gave one or two cute examples of how socialist economic planning could at times reduce production while actually improving quality of life even in the realm of "want". (After all, the majority of commodities produced under capitalism are produced for exchange value and intended to be thrown away. Even beyond textbook overproduction, there are issues such as overpackaging in food and other staple goods, etc.) You don't think there's a gross underestimation throughout their work of how economic planning on an industrial scale would dramatically transform material reality? There's just this mentality throughout their work that socialist central planning, even socialist central planning that is attempting to expand the fulfillment of the realization of human want and need, will not make any sort of changes to consumption. (E.g. building public swimming pools instead of giving everyone a private backyard swimming pool.) Take for instance the fact that Philips has praised Norwegian EV production / EV infrastructure construction on multiple instances (in articles in Jacobin, the Atlantic, etc) while ignoring the Høyre's extensive push to privatize the country's already underfunded rail system. As someone who lives in a small American city, one of the things that depresses me about life under capitalism is how small American cities have just become bleak, dreary exurbs built around "stroads", places no one would want to walk around in or spend any amount of time even standing around in outside of their car. This is not even getting into how much urban real estate that could be green parks, recreational areas such as libraries, public pools and gyms, museums, theaters, etc, are wasted on parking. When I lived in NYC, I really enjoyed taking the subway (easily one of the most dilapidated and underfunded public metro systems in the world) to work; I could nap, read a book, listen to music on headphones, or chat with friendly people, typically the elderly. It sincerely felt less atomizing and socially alienating to be around other commuters. Meanwhile, walking around NYC is a nightmare because pedestrians and bicyclists are corralled into tiny pathways surrounded by bumper-to-bumper traffic, even if EVs eliminate the car exhaust fumes, there is still the noise pollution from horns, and vehicles running over pedestrians. When I got back home to my town I immediately noticed how alienating it was to drive two hours on the highway to get to work every day, plus the amount of time needed to drive to complete errands. It felt like extra labor time added onto my day, and I say this as someone who has a commercial drivers' license. I'm not someone who thinks that no automobiles will be needed under socialism (transit busses, school busses, fire trucks, delivery vehicles, freight trucks, farm vehicles, ambulances, service vehicles, personal vehicles for the physically disabled, etc.) but the reality is that automobile production requires a massive amount of resources and labor time that could be used to produce other, cooler stuff. All for a system of mass transit that is not only stressful for commuters but also so unsafe it kills and seriously injures thousands of people a year. Obviously driving through the countryside to hike or camp is a popular past time in America, but why would we have to mass-manufacture an individual personal EV sedan for every person in order for people to enjoy that, instead of, say, the parks system providing free rental EVs? And what happens when the auto plant workers' soviet decides they would rather have more free time than work extra hours so that every household has three automobiles?
@@user-ig4dl4iv1j Where do you get the idea that the aim is to give every single person an EV rather than just recognize that EVs will unavoidably be a part of the clean transition alongside public transport and bikes, and that a world of zero cars (other than for the physically disabled) is not merely not going to happen and is profoundly politically unpopular, but is also undesirable? Furthermore, economic planning would of course dramatically transform material reality, but through ordinary people democratically designing the economy-sometimes through more production of something, sometimes through less production of something. The problem is in assuming prior to democratic management of the economy that such transformation automatically results in a *net* aggregate reduction in production. Why would that be the case? If all the people in the world had the standard of living of, say, a middle-class Norwegian, manifestly there would be an enormous increase in net aggregate production *even as* there might be a reduction in the number of personal vehicles. A world with lots of libraries, public pools, hospitals, school, etc and the necessary increase in infrastructure, manufacturing and extraction to service all that would plainly require so much more production than there is today, for this would be delivered to 8 billion people, rather than limited to the few hundred million members of the upper middle classes of the West.
That was a great discussion that helped clear up a lot of issues I had around de-growth movements and militants/activists I’ve met. Merci à vous trois!
I'm not sure how to interpret the Huberian line of reasoning that, because the Haber process was developed in time to avert agricultural catastrophe, humanity will necessarily always overcome any limit to growth. What if there are problems caused by our patterns of consumption that don't have an unlimited supply of quick-fixes coming down the pipe to solve them? Isn't that at least worth planning for? Also, Can there be any technical intervention that isn't attended by its own ecological consequences. Artificial nitrogen has its own costs. A lot of the green growth socialism feels as much like a naked expression of hope as degrowth does a naked expression of fear. But I'm not sure either affect is helpful
Hopeful Marxism depends on the dialectical understanding of capitalism whereby the drive to exploit labor more and more efficiently encourages the centralisation of labor and develops labor saving devices which could, if grasped by a self-conscious working class, be used to build a socialist society. But I think Marx and Marxists psychologically need to suppress what is implied even in Capital vol. 1 itself: that in reality that process of technological development, rather than making socialism inevitable, makes it impossible. Every labor-saving device far outweighs its theoretical usefulness to the working class by the permanent damage it does in reality to their power to effect change by rendering them absolutely surplus. So yes we have all this wonderful technology but we've never been further from being able to bend it to our collective will.
To be clear, I disagree with you that the problem is over-consumption, and about technological advancement decreasing the power of the working class. But Philips and Huber claiming that the reasoning in Marx's analysis of the Haber process doesn't easily transfer over to other ecological problems is baffling, especially given your point about artificial nitrogen.
They complain that their critics accuse them of carbon tunnel vision and only focus on climate change and emissions but they don't really have their own proposals for such issues as biodiversity loss, nitrogen loading, etc., other than to just say that "we need to figure it out"-i.e., assume that there will be some scientific innovation soon that will solve the issue in a way that does not just further push externalities somewhere else. A sober look at these industries shows that such innovations aren't coming in any timescale that matters for the ecological issues we're talking about, at least not at scale. Degrowth in its most basic and weakest form would just be an assertion that we'd need to do some triage or overall reduction in our impact absent immediate technological panacea. Not necessarily a naked expression of fear, but the sort of modernism or 'Prometheanism' expressed by Huber and Phillips depends on a lot of wishful thinking.
There are elements of degrowth philosophy that are worth serious consideration. If we globally transition to a lower meat, higher vegetable diet, we can feed more people using less arable land. If we invest in walkable, dense communities of mid-rise apartments and adequate public transit, we can dramatically lower our per capita carbon output and spending on cars, air conditioning, and infrastructure. We have 2 goals. Lower total carbon output. Increase quality of life for the median worker. These can be pursued at the same time, but there will always be tradeoffs!
I am so glad that Marxists are actually looking deeply into “degrowth” and critiquing it on its own terms. It feels like degrowthers are inevitably just uncomfortable with industrial society, and with their own consumption (as it is popular with the group of middle-class people who are broadly affluent enough to have access to a lot of material goods and often free time, and thus the idea of lesser consumption appeals to them). Meanwhile, Leigh Phillips is right that the working class is not living in extreme abundance, but rather lives in precarity and insufficient access to the resources that they want and need, and a political agenda that says that people need to consume less when they are already not consuming enough of what they want and need is fundamentally guaranteed to be unpopular. We need hyper abundance of energy and sophisticated production processes, and this will fundamentally require nuclear power. And we have the technology to build nuclear reactors that are incapable of meltdown, as China demonstrated literally last week with their completion of the first thorium reactor to produce electricity for the grid. Say what you will about China, but they are doing a much better job in moving to zero-emission energy than anywhere in the West, and to the extent they have any influence I blame the ecosocialists’ hatred of nuclear power for this (as we saw in Germany with their shutting down of their last 3 nuclear plants which were then replaced with the worst energy source of all - coal power - and yet the Green Party and the Social Democratic Party of Germany saw this as a political win!) 😤
Degrowthers are uncomfortable with the vision that technology will solve all of our problems, which is ridiculous on its face. Once you accept the fact that technology won't save us what are you left with? Degrowth.
While the working class of the Global North lacks abundance, it's dubious to imply that they under consume, rather it's that capitalism in its pursuit of ever expanding markets turns the consumptive activities of working class people into vehicles for profit instead of ones fulfilling human need. Although technology as a solution offers some hope, Saito through Marx identifies how it often fails to create liberating outcomes for workers and instead produces tools for their exploitation and control. That's why degrowth goes to the heart of human needs and places an imperative on Marx's concept of use value. Humans are already consuming and producing past the earth limits; the discussion from here on should be about redistribution.
What is this 'capitalism finds solutions to ecological problems when its profitable' bs.. We're in a literal Poly-crisis and near ecological collapse but can't bring ourselves to say that the most privileged should tone it down a bit
And of course the actual quote was "If there is a solution to [a] problem that is profitable then capitalists will solve that problem, if the resolution to the problem is not profitable or insufficiently profitable [...] they won't" and "this does not only go for ecological problem, this goes for everything [like in medical research for new antibiotics, which is not profitable, rather than drugs for chronic disease]". And this statement is not even remotely controversial, it is just very basic Marxism. So that was not the bs here.
@@AsirIset the fact is even the profit-prohibiting ecological problems HAVE NOT BEEN SOLVED! these 'so called solutions' only reduce the worst aspects and the problems in which they continue and create new ecological problems. Thinking technology, 'even in the hands of capitalist', can be used wisely, is uncritical
"...At a bare minimum, we need a seriously muscular social democracy on an almost global level... " Sentences like this from Philips make the anarchists (and their apocalyptic TAZ proposals) he sneers at seem considerably more reasonable.
"I'm Southern, all vowels are the same to me" Ever been to New Zealand, Derick & comments? We only have one vowel. Ut's "U". Pronounced "Uh". It's just one big Vowel Movement down there. Gosh, I remember the same introduction to Radicalism in the mid-90s. It was almost the done thing to be on board with a 99.99% die-off, and some held that we should, as a species, cease to exist. Strange days. Everyone was studying Derrida et al, nobody was really thinking about Production. It was all "cultural". This discussion, especially the second half, really took me back to those days in the early 90s, University, anarcho BS.
I kinda can't stand LP for a lot of reasons, mainly Palestine, but his call for a Promethean push from Marxists I'm 100% on board. Degrowth isn't happening unless there's a famine/pandemic/war that forces "degrowth" upon us. Besides the fact that degrowth doesn't solve for existential threats like climate change or some other world ending catastrophe that would call for energy and industries that could only be achieved by nuclear and technology
I'm not necessarily against nuclear power, but what's wrong with living more with the natural variations of sun and wind and wave? What if our society is unable to maintain the complexity necessary for nuclear stations to function safely? Is Marxism and a lower energy society incompatible?
We need to think about giving back the night, at very least. This would have multiple benefits for energy consumption, the biosphere, and working class quality of life.
We can get to a much cleaner electric grid if we are ok with an average of 1 hour per week with no power. That's still over 99% reliability. There are tradeoffs we need to consider. What about getting to a 90% carbon-free grid but keeping half of all natural gas power plants on standby as grid-scale backup generators? It's not 100%, but it's damn close. And it's possible in under a decade.
@stephendaley266 can't people die without like, cpap machines? I think there are probably ways to use energy more efficiently that don't require cutting power to people's homes, which may or may not contain life sustaining medical devices.
My only critique of Leigh Philips is his insistence on enabling the state to accomplish his goals at a time that the state is losing power and legitimacy. I don't even think capitalism right now allows for social democracy. Neoliberalism was not only a political choice but more a economic necessity.
If firms stay in place, but their owner changes, dont most of the problems remain? It does not matter who controls the firm, the market has it's own logic, and the owner, whomever that might be, must abide by it, or lose martket share, and eventually, lose their firm.
Sounds like 'the community as universal capitalist' that Marx critiqued Proudhon for in the Paris Manuscripts. Maybe as a transitional phase; continuity and all that?
sounds like a problem for markets. Public ownership isn't subject to like, market failure. And yeah, it seems to me that any productive process will retain its historical characteristics, until it gradually changes to fit into new social pressures. i.e. market pressures vs democratic pressure
Interesting theoretical discussion, and a very clear discouragement to read this Saito work tbh. I just don't feel the political discussion was as interesting because a lot of their positions seem strawmanning or unproductive. Obviously climate activists, some of even the degrowth kind, are vying for political solutions, not continuing to blame consumers. Overall I fail to see how trying to resurrect bureaucratic social democracy and entrusting everything to the state while keeping productive structures the same is any better than degrowth ideology.
On your everything in Marx or what you understand about Marx is wrong, a central issue, beyond the novelty thing which is an issue, imo, is what the appeal to Marx is doing. It's taught in plenty of college programs,, but the argument should be able to stand on its own whether or not it shares a fidelity to the true Marx, Hegel, or whatever x.
@@VarnVlog I agree with you but tend to extend it, you already addressed this point via the real subsumption conglomerate. I just think finding some x who agreed with you, even strongmaning de-growthers, here, doesn't make a bad argument otherwise. I get the incentive, appeal to Marx, hence politically salvient, yet still terrible unless it's a more ideological or more theological appeal.
@@VarnVlog So, the larger points I'm trying to make is about why appeals to x in themselves are substitutes for arguments. In sum, even if Marx paid the groundwork for such an argument, it's still a bad one. It's Negri but even worse.
"They don't like Industrial stuff" Yes. This is quite the point. It's a culmination of tendencies that, for me, started in the early 90s. A neo-Hippy, Romantic, unscientific, soft-minded position.
The idea that built in obsolescence doesn't matter is absurd, this is so fundamental to capitalist production that to get rid of it would end capitalism as we know it. Framing it as a middle class issue seems wrong headed. The so called "efficiency" of capitalism is vastly over rated. No work place I have ever been in was actually efficient if the production process as a whole was considered, it was only efficient in relation to profit. In order to believe capitalism is efficient one must completely ignore that (1) capitalism as such wouldn't function if it didn't socialize harmful results of production so those costs are born by poor people, because otherwise production wouldn't actually generate any profit and (2) that many short term efficiency gains come at the expense of massive debts that are unsustainable--including the tendency of industrial agriculture to destroy soil fertility over time. From what I've heard, Saito's "degrowth communism" doesn't seem to amount to much, but it's dishonest to pretend that there is not a crisis of industrial production that CANNOT BE SOLVED WITH EXISTING TOOLS, TECHNOLOGIES, or IDEOLOGIES. We need a "revolution" that amounts to inventing a whole new mode of production that has never existed, whatever political measures are used to get there. Obviously capitalist technologies will need to be incorporated into this mode of production but I don't think there is a gradual path to a new mode of production. Capitalist production started under feudalism within the Cistercian monasteries--perhaps we need new monasteries which are dedicated to inventing the new mode of production, rather than primitivist lifestyle degrowth projects. In these new monasteries, we can expect to see some unheard of mix of the very primitive and the very high tech, combining techniques and forms in ways that are not possible within the constraints of contemporary capitalism.
How does your revolution decarbonize cement? Now, maybe we do need a revolution to decarbonize cement, but you still need to explain *why* we need a revolution in order to decarbonize cement and *how* that revolution will do so.
@@codenameicarus Good question, this sounds a little silly but my gut instinct would say that this is almost an accounting and calculation problem. What I mean is that the way capitalist accounting and assigning of value work, the problems caused by using ordinary cement are externalized and not accounted for, so that they can be ignored. So you would want some mechanism for pricing in environmental impact that would incentivize decarbonization. And if we are talking about the built environment, maybe sometimes this would lead to decarbonizing cement, but perhaps in other cases it would lead to developing alternative materials and building techniques. I think that accounting for the environmental cost of production would probably already be revolutionary in a sense, since capitalism would cease to function and profits would be destroyed if capitalists actually had to pay those costs. But of course, what would be really revolutionary would have to include some system of distributing necessary labor and freeing up timenergy for all workers, and of deciding how to handle surpluses, and of ensuring that workers have political control over automation rather than working as alienated appendages of a mega machine, which is something Marx talks about in the famous passage on machines in the Grundrisse. I'm not a huge fan of the idea that magically "co-ops will save us", but in terms of creating spaces where it might be possible to develop the specific practices, techniques, and technologies that we would need to create a different kind of economy that has a different relationship to the biosphere from capitalism, co-ops do seem like plausible spaces to engage in such experiments, with one caveat: there is no guarantee that anything people try will work, just making co-ops doesn't automagically solve anything.
In the chat someone was asking about the passage of vol. III where Marx talks about the rational government of social metabolism, this is it:
"Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature [i.e. metabolism], bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working day is its basic prerequisite." (MECW, vol. 37: 807)
I think this shows Marx did have a somewhat coherent 'ecological' position that was a rational outgrowth of his main work and it certainly wasn't degrowth salvage communism but it also wasn't exactly people's republic of walmart either, it was a third thing that makes way more sense.
e.g. the In Defense of Stuff chapter of Austerity Ecology and the Collapse-Porn Addicts where Philips asks what's wrong with mass production of home video game consoles, this is obviously intended as a cheeky troll of petit-bourgeois eco-austerity anti-consumerists, but it's easy to imagine socialist-communist industry achieving "favorable conditions" for this specific "expanded necessity" in a way that is "rationally regulaiting [human] interchange with nature", with "[less] expenditure of energy" and more "worthy of ... human nature". (To spell it out a little more, in violation of Marx's taboo against blueprints of the kitchens of the future, why is there an apartment complex with 20 separate cramped individual living rooms with 20 separate gamers playing mostly the same popular games but in total social isolation from one another, satisfying this particular expanded necessity with 20 separate planned obsolescence devices, that are practically welded shut to prevent home repair or part upgrades, running off of "hermetically sealed car" proprietary software that they have no idea how to program themselves, as opposed to say, a free public indoor arcade with comfortable furniture where they spend their time collaboratively tinkering with massive gaming builds that are designed to last for decades and programming their own games instead of buying the same AAA titles with minor variations every year. To be less grandiose in scale, but still on the subject of gaming, my Nintendo Switch does not have that much greater hardware capacity than my smartphone, and it would actually be more convenient if I could just play Mario Bros. on the same device I carry around to use Google Maps. But Nintendo and Samsung are competitors, so I have to needlessly juggle two devices that were both manufactured with rare precious metals, both of which have been designed to break down and be thrown away in a landfill in five years. Ecological consequences aside, this is a waste of human labor and I'd rather have shorter hours at the socialist Switch-Galaxy Note factory and more free time to play Mario Bros.) Similarly, in Huber's and Phillips's recent critique of Saito in Jacobin, they make the claim that urban agriculture has a larger carbon footprint than traditional agriculture, and then the scientific paper they cite actually claims that a major chunk of former's carbon footprint is the fact that existing urban agricultural infrastructure is being continuously demolished and rebuilt as a side effect of the "anarchy of production" of capitalist urban real estate construction, which actually tells us very little about how "Promethean" socialism/communism could rationally plan society to reduce transportation distances of industrial agricultural output to major population centers. As a former Walmart worker myself, I'll never forget when my store manager confided in me that Walmart's business model was partly based on selling cheap fixed household necessities (such as furniture and appliances) that were designed to fall apart in 3-6 months so that the working-class customers would have to spend more money in the long run replacing them every 3-6 months. Meanwhile my bed frame I inherited from my grandmother-in-law is still sturdy and comfortable after almost a century, and I would prefer it over a Walmart bedframe for pure home decor aesthetic reasons alone.
@@user-ig4dl4iv1jWhere is the conflict in that passage with People’s Republic of Walmart? Where in this is a critique of economic planning?
@@codenameicarus I feel like I gave one or two cute examples of how socialist economic planning could at times reduce production while actually improving quality of life even in the realm of "want". (After all, the majority of commodities produced under capitalism are produced for exchange value and intended to be thrown away. Even beyond textbook overproduction, there are issues such as overpackaging in food and other staple goods, etc.) You don't think there's a gross underestimation throughout their work of how economic planning on an industrial scale would dramatically transform material reality? There's just this mentality throughout their work that socialist central planning, even socialist central planning that is attempting to expand the fulfillment of the realization of human want and need, will not make any sort of changes to consumption. (E.g. building public swimming pools instead of giving everyone a private backyard swimming pool.)
Take for instance the fact that Philips has praised Norwegian EV production / EV infrastructure construction on multiple instances (in articles in Jacobin, the Atlantic, etc) while ignoring the Høyre's extensive push to privatize the country's already underfunded rail system. As someone who lives in a small American city, one of the things that depresses me about life under capitalism is how small American cities have just become bleak, dreary exurbs built around "stroads", places no one would want to walk around in or spend any amount of time even standing around in outside of their car. This is not even getting into how much urban real estate that could be green parks, recreational areas such as libraries, public pools and gyms, museums, theaters, etc, are wasted on parking. When I lived in NYC, I really enjoyed taking the subway (easily one of the most dilapidated and underfunded public metro systems in the world) to work; I could nap, read a book, listen to music on headphones, or chat with friendly people, typically the elderly. It sincerely felt less atomizing and socially alienating to be around other commuters. Meanwhile, walking around NYC is a nightmare because pedestrians and bicyclists are corralled into tiny pathways surrounded by bumper-to-bumper traffic, even if EVs eliminate the car exhaust fumes, there is still the noise pollution from horns, and vehicles running over pedestrians. When I got back home to my town I immediately noticed how alienating it was to drive two hours on the highway to get to work every day, plus the amount of time needed to drive to complete errands. It felt like extra labor time added onto my day, and I say this as someone who has a commercial drivers' license. I'm not someone who thinks that no automobiles will be needed under socialism (transit busses, school busses, fire trucks, delivery vehicles, freight trucks, farm vehicles, ambulances, service vehicles, personal vehicles for the physically disabled, etc.) but the reality is that automobile production requires a massive amount of resources and labor time that could be used to produce other, cooler stuff. All for a system of mass transit that is not only stressful for commuters but also so unsafe it kills and seriously injures thousands of people a year. Obviously driving through the countryside to hike or camp is a popular past time in America, but why would we have to mass-manufacture an individual personal EV sedan for every person in order for people to enjoy that, instead of, say, the parks system providing free rental EVs? And what happens when the auto plant workers' soviet decides they would rather have more free time than work extra hours so that every household has three automobiles?
@@user-ig4dl4iv1j Where do you get the idea that the aim is to give every single person an EV rather than just recognize that EVs will unavoidably be a part of the clean transition alongside public transport and bikes, and that a world of zero cars (other than for the physically disabled) is not merely not going to happen and is profoundly politically unpopular, but is also undesirable?
Furthermore, economic planning would of course dramatically transform material reality, but through ordinary people democratically designing the economy-sometimes through more production of something, sometimes through less production of something. The problem is in assuming prior to democratic management of the economy that such transformation automatically results in a *net* aggregate reduction in production. Why would that be the case? If all the people in the world had the standard of living of, say, a middle-class Norwegian, manifestly there would be an enormous increase in net aggregate production *even as* there might be a reduction in the number of personal vehicles. A world with lots of libraries, public pools, hospitals, school, etc and the necessary increase in infrastructure, manufacturing and extraction to service all that would plainly require so much more production than there is today, for this would be delivered to 8 billion people, rather than limited to the few hundred million members of the upper middle classes of the West.
That was a great discussion that helped clear up a lot of issues I had around de-growth movements and militants/activists I’ve met. Merci à vous trois!
I'm not sure how to interpret the Huberian line of reasoning that, because the Haber process was developed in time to avert agricultural catastrophe, humanity will necessarily always overcome any limit to growth. What if there are problems caused by our patterns of consumption that don't have an unlimited supply of quick-fixes coming down the pipe to solve them? Isn't that at least worth planning for? Also, Can there be any technical intervention that isn't attended by its own ecological consequences. Artificial nitrogen has its own costs. A lot of the green growth socialism feels as much like a naked expression of hope as degrowth does a naked expression of fear. But I'm not sure either affect is helpful
Hopeful Marxism depends on the dialectical understanding of capitalism whereby the drive to exploit labor more and more efficiently encourages the centralisation of labor and develops labor saving devices which could, if grasped by a self-conscious working class, be used to build a socialist society. But I think Marx and Marxists psychologically need to suppress what is implied even in Capital vol. 1 itself: that in reality that process of technological development, rather than making socialism inevitable, makes it impossible. Every labor-saving device far outweighs its theoretical usefulness to the working class by the permanent damage it does in reality to their power to effect change by rendering them absolutely surplus. So yes we have all this wonderful technology but we've never been further from being able to bend it to our collective will.
To be clear, I disagree with you that the problem is over-consumption, and about technological advancement decreasing the power of the working class. But Philips and Huber claiming that the reasoning in Marx's analysis of the Haber process doesn't easily transfer over to other ecological problems is baffling, especially given your point about artificial nitrogen.
The interpretation is that he thinks we will always be saved by technology, which is patently false.
They complain that their critics accuse them of carbon tunnel vision and only focus on climate change and emissions but they don't really have their own proposals for such issues as biodiversity loss, nitrogen loading, etc., other than to just say that "we need to figure it out"-i.e., assume that there will be some scientific innovation soon that will solve the issue in a way that does not just further push externalities somewhere else. A sober look at these industries shows that such innovations aren't coming in any timescale that matters for the ecological issues we're talking about, at least not at scale. Degrowth in its most basic and weakest form would just be an assertion that we'd need to do some triage or overall reduction in our impact absent immediate technological panacea. Not necessarily a naked expression of fear, but the sort of modernism or 'Prometheanism' expressed by Huber and Phillips depends on a lot of wishful thinking.
There are elements of degrowth philosophy that are worth serious consideration.
If we globally transition to a lower meat, higher vegetable diet, we can feed more people using less arable land.
If we invest in walkable, dense communities of mid-rise apartments and adequate public transit, we can dramatically lower our per capita carbon output and spending on cars, air conditioning, and infrastructure.
We have 2 goals.
Lower total carbon output.
Increase quality of life for the median worker.
These can be pursued at the same time, but there will always be tradeoffs!
Huber, Philips & Varn was a great combo. Thanks for this!
Great episode
Solid episode
I am so glad that Marxists are actually looking deeply into “degrowth” and critiquing it on its own terms. It feels like degrowthers are inevitably just uncomfortable with industrial society, and with their own consumption (as it is popular with the group of middle-class people who are broadly affluent enough to have access to a lot of material goods and often free time, and thus the idea of lesser consumption appeals to them). Meanwhile, Leigh Phillips is right that the working class is not living in extreme abundance, but rather lives in precarity and insufficient access to the resources that they want and need, and a political agenda that says that people need to consume less when they are already not consuming enough of what they want and need is fundamentally guaranteed to be unpopular. We need hyper abundance of energy and sophisticated production processes, and this will fundamentally require nuclear power. And we have the technology to build nuclear reactors that are incapable of meltdown, as China demonstrated literally last week with their completion of the first thorium reactor to produce electricity for the grid. Say what you will about China, but they are doing a much better job in moving to zero-emission energy than anywhere in the West, and to the extent they have any influence I blame the ecosocialists’ hatred of nuclear power for this (as we saw in Germany with their shutting down of their last 3 nuclear plants which were then replaced with the worst energy source of all - coal power - and yet the Green Party and the Social Democratic Party of Germany saw this as a political win!) 😤
Degrowthers are uncomfortable with the vision that technology will solve all of our problems, which is ridiculous on its face. Once you accept the fact that technology won't save us what are you left with? Degrowth.
While the working class of the Global North lacks abundance, it's dubious to imply that they under consume, rather it's that capitalism in its pursuit of ever expanding markets turns the consumptive activities of working class people into vehicles for profit instead of ones fulfilling human need. Although technology as a solution offers some hope, Saito through Marx identifies how it often fails to create liberating outcomes for workers and instead produces tools for their exploitation and control. That's why degrowth goes to the heart of human needs and places an imperative on Marx's concept of use value. Humans are already consuming and producing past the earth limits; the discussion from here on should be about redistribution.
What is this 'capitalism finds solutions to ecological problems when its profitable' bs.. We're in a literal Poly-crisis and near ecological collapse but can't bring ourselves to say that the most privileged should tone it down a bit
And of course the actual quote was "If there is a solution to [a] problem that is profitable then capitalists will solve that problem, if the resolution to the problem is not profitable or insufficiently profitable [...] they won't" and "this does not only go for ecological problem, this goes for everything [like in medical research for new antibiotics, which is not profitable, rather than drugs for chronic disease]".
And this statement is not even remotely controversial, it is just very basic Marxism. So that was not the bs here.
@@AsirIset the fact is even the profit-prohibiting ecological problems HAVE NOT BEEN SOLVED! these 'so called solutions' only reduce the worst aspects and the problems in which they continue and create new ecological problems. Thinking technology, 'even in the hands of capitalist', can be used wisely, is uncritical
"...At a bare minimum, we need a seriously muscular social democracy on an almost global level... " Sentences like this from Philips make the anarchists (and their apocalyptic TAZ proposals) he sneers at seem considerably more reasonable.
"I'm Southern, all vowels are the same to me"
Ever been to New Zealand, Derick & comments? We only have one vowel. Ut's "U".
Pronounced "Uh".
It's just one big Vowel Movement down there.
Gosh, I remember the same introduction to Radicalism in the mid-90s. It was almost the done thing to be on board with a 99.99% die-off, and some held that we should, as a species, cease to exist. Strange days. Everyone was studying Derrida et al, nobody was really thinking about Production. It was all "cultural".
This discussion, especially the second half, really took me back to those days in the early 90s, University, anarcho BS.
@@mattgilbert7347 I have been on kiwi socialist calls
@@VarnVlogGood enough . Honorary Cuzzie-Bro.
That was excellent.
Philips has lost the plot. Prometheus? Really? Give me a break. He literally believes any problem can be solved by technology.
I kinda can't stand LP for a lot of reasons, mainly Palestine, but his call for a Promethean push from Marxists I'm 100% on board. Degrowth isn't happening unless there's a famine/pandemic/war that forces "degrowth" upon us. Besides the fact that degrowth doesn't solve for existential threats like climate change or some other world ending catastrophe that would call for energy and industries that could only be achieved by nuclear and technology
Degrowth doesn't factor in the energy needed to remove carbon from the atmosphere, at least not in any realistic scenario
Love the newish intro
I'm not necessarily against nuclear power, but what's wrong with living more with the natural variations of sun and wind and wave?
What if our society is unable to maintain the complexity necessary for nuclear stations to function safely? Is Marxism and a lower energy society incompatible?
@@EastWindCommunity1973 they need to get more efficient as power replacements at scale
We need to think about giving back the night, at very least. This would have multiple benefits for energy consumption, the biosphere, and working class quality of life.
We can get to a much cleaner electric grid if we are ok with an average of 1 hour per week with no power.
That's still over 99% reliability.
There are tradeoffs we need to consider.
What about getting to a 90% carbon-free grid but keeping half of all natural gas power plants on standby as grid-scale backup generators?
It's not 100%, but it's damn close.
And it's possible in under a decade.
@stephendaley266 can't people die without like, cpap machines? I think there are probably ways to use energy more efficiently that don't require cutting power to people's homes, which may or may not contain life sustaining medical devices.
My only critique of Leigh Philips is his insistence on enabling the state to accomplish his goals at a time that the state is losing power and legitimacy. I don't even think capitalism right now allows for social democracy. Neoliberalism was not only a political choice but more a economic necessity.
How are non state actors going to build nuclear power plants?
@@jumboridesagain7336 are we sure we want nuclear plants left and right tho? Apparently they also take decades to set up
If firms stay in place, but their owner changes, dont most of the problems remain? It does not matter who controls the firm, the market has it's own logic, and the owner, whomever that might be, must abide by it, or lose martket share, and eventually, lose their firm.
Sounds like 'the community as universal capitalist' that Marx critiqued Proudhon for in the Paris Manuscripts.
Maybe as a transitional phase; continuity and all that?
sounds like a problem for markets. Public ownership isn't subject to like, market failure.
And yeah, it seems to me that any productive process will retain its historical characteristics, until it gradually changes to fit into new social pressures. i.e. market pressures vs democratic pressure
Interesting theoretical discussion, and a very clear discouragement to read this Saito work tbh.
I just don't feel the political discussion was as interesting because a lot of their positions seem strawmanning or unproductive. Obviously climate activists, some of even the degrowth kind, are vying for political solutions, not continuing to blame consumers. Overall I fail to see how trying to resurrect bureaucratic social democracy and entrusting everything to the state while keeping productive structures the same is any better than degrowth ideology.
On your everything in Marx or what you understand about Marx is wrong, a central issue, beyond the novelty thing which is an issue, imo, is what the appeal to Marx is doing. It's taught in plenty of college programs,, but the argument should be able to stand on its own whether or not it shares a fidelity to the true Marx, Hegel, or whatever x.
@@PRSmith-vl6hi which is why I think making ecological arguments off of obscure marxology is weird
@@VarnVlog I agree with you but tend to extend it, you already addressed this point via the real subsumption conglomerate. I just think finding some x who agreed with you, even strongmaning de-growthers, here, doesn't make a bad argument otherwise. I get the incentive, appeal to Marx, hence politically salvient, yet still terrible unless it's a more ideological or more theological appeal.
@@VarnVlog So, the larger points I'm trying to make is about why appeals to x in themselves are substitutes for arguments. In sum, even if Marx paid the groundwork for such an argument, it's still a bad one. It's Negri but even worse.
@@VarnVlogYep. It's "radical" in that sense. Quite odd - adolescent, even.
I think you called it "Radical Chic"
"They don't like Industrial stuff"
Yes. This is quite the point. It's a culmination of tendencies that, for me, started in the early 90s. A neo-Hippy, Romantic, unscientific, soft-minded position.
The idea that built in obsolescence doesn't matter is absurd, this is so fundamental to capitalist production that to get rid of it would end capitalism as we know it. Framing it as a middle class issue seems wrong headed.
The so called "efficiency" of capitalism is vastly over rated. No work place I have ever been in was actually efficient if the production process as a whole was considered, it was only efficient in relation to profit.
In order to believe capitalism is efficient one must completely ignore that (1) capitalism as such wouldn't function if it didn't socialize harmful results of production so those costs are born by poor people, because otherwise production wouldn't actually generate any profit and (2) that many short term efficiency gains come at the expense of massive debts that are unsustainable--including the tendency of industrial agriculture to destroy soil fertility over time.
From what I've heard, Saito's "degrowth communism" doesn't seem to amount to much, but it's dishonest to pretend that there is not a crisis of industrial production that CANNOT BE SOLVED WITH EXISTING TOOLS, TECHNOLOGIES, or IDEOLOGIES. We need a "revolution" that amounts to inventing a whole new mode of production that has never existed, whatever political measures are used to get there.
Obviously capitalist technologies will need to be incorporated into this mode of production but I don't think there is a gradual path to a new mode of production. Capitalist production started under feudalism within the Cistercian monasteries--perhaps we need new monasteries which are dedicated to inventing the new mode of production, rather than primitivist lifestyle degrowth projects. In these new monasteries, we can expect to see some unheard of mix of the very primitive and the very high tech, combining techniques and forms in ways that are not possible within the constraints of contemporary capitalism.
How does your revolution decarbonize cement?
Now, maybe we do need a revolution to decarbonize cement, but you still need to explain *why* we need a revolution in order to decarbonize cement and *how* that revolution will do so.
@@codenameicarus Good question, this sounds a little silly but my gut instinct would say that this is almost an accounting and calculation problem. What I mean is that the way capitalist accounting and assigning of value work, the problems caused by using ordinary cement are externalized and not accounted for, so that they can be ignored. So you would want some mechanism for pricing in environmental impact that would incentivize decarbonization. And if we are talking about the built environment, maybe sometimes this would lead to decarbonizing cement, but perhaps in other cases it would lead to developing alternative materials and building techniques.
I think that accounting for the environmental cost of production would probably already be revolutionary in a sense, since capitalism would cease to function and profits would be destroyed if capitalists actually had to pay those costs.
But of course, what would be really revolutionary would have to include some system of distributing necessary labor and freeing up timenergy for all workers, and of deciding how to handle surpluses, and of ensuring that workers have political control over automation rather than working as alienated appendages of a mega machine, which is something Marx talks about in the famous passage on machines in the Grundrisse.
I'm not a huge fan of the idea that magically "co-ops will save us", but in terms of creating spaces where it might be possible to develop the specific practices, techniques, and technologies that we would need to create a different kind of economy that has a different relationship to the biosphere from capitalism, co-ops do seem like plausible spaces to engage in such experiments, with one caveat: there is no guarantee that anything people try will work, just making co-ops doesn't automagically solve anything.