John Clarke, former major organizer for the Ontario Coalition of Poverty (OCAP), posted this on Facebook yesterday.
Capitalism’s assault on the natural world is now producing impacts that must lead us to rethink our view of the class struggle and the strategies that flow from it. We must restrain the hand of those responsible for this worsening horror, ensure that populations aren’t abandoned in the face of the terrible results that are already upon us and transform anti-capitalist politics into mainstream thinking and a viable political project
I also wrote the following:
Can we continue to treat the Earth as unlimited and resolve the problem of climate change? The capitalist economy necessarily is a process that is infinite. Consider the money circuit of capital (see The Money Circuit of Capital). If we look at the beginning and the end of the process, there is a quantitative difference between the two. This quantitative difference is profit, and that is the goal of the whole process. Thus, if you invest $1,000,000 at the beginning of the year and receive $1,100,000 at the end of the year, you receive $100,000 profit. This difference has arisen from a process of exploiting workers (that is where the $100,000 comes from–the workers produce more value than what they themselves cost to produce). However, once the capitalist process has ended through the sale of commodities and the capitalist has $1,100,000, this money is no longer capital. Capital is a process, and once it is finished, it no longer is: its birth is simultaneously its death, so to speak. The capitalist who now has $1,100,000, to remain a capitalist, must invest the money again–but because of competition with other capitalists, he will have to invest more than $1,000,000. There is thus an in-built infinite process of continuous expansion (interrupted by economic crises due to the impossibility of obtaining an adequate profit rate). Such an infinite process in the context of a finite Earth hardly bodes well for efforts to eliminate the causes of climate change.
as I have already indicated, a caring planet and a capitalist economy are mutually exclusive (see The British Labour Party’s 2019 Manifesto: More Social Democracy and More Social Reformism, Part One). Of course, there is room for improving the current environmental situation through changes to more renewable resources, but the infinite nature of the capitalist economy contradicts any real solution to the problem of environmental degradation. From Ann Davis (2010), “Marx and the Mixed Economy: Money, Accumulation, and the Role of the State,” in Science and Society (pages 409-428), Volume 74, Number 3, page 412:
Circulation, and the expansion of value, is an end in itself, and therefore without limit.
The idea of “environmental stewardship” within a capitalist society is an illusion.
Environmental degradation will continue since it will always be necessary to expand the economy infinitely. Climate change may be addressed to a certain extent (although, there are powerful capitalist interests in the fossil-fuel industry), but not environmental degradation and climate change that are due to the nature of the capitalist economy.
Unless the social relations that characterize an economy that moves towards infinity is addressed, caring for the planet is simply a will-o’-the-wisp.
Clarke, however, has recently shown that he opposes capitalism in various ways. However, as I pointed out in other posts (see for example Basic Income: A Critique of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty’s Stance or “Capitalism needs economic coercion for its job market to function” (Ontario Coalition Against Poverty: OCAP)). he has in the past adopted a social-democratic or social-reformist stance.
It is to be hoped that Mr. Clarke does not change his recent focus on challenging the roots of the social problems we face: the class power of employers and its associated economic, political and social structures.
The Abolitionary 