Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

Page 5

Page 6

Page 7

Page 8

Page 9

Page 10

Page 11

Page 12

Page 13

Page 14

Page 15

Page 16

Page 17

Page 18

Page 19

Page 20

Page 21

Page 22

Page 23

Page 24

“Socialism is Illogical and Irrational” ...Continued from previous page 14 “The idea is that the rich countries should take the position, led by the World Bank, that the problem of pollution is that the poor countries, the Third World, don’t follow rational policies. ‘Rational’ means market policies. Many of them are resource and raw material producers, energy producers, and they sometimes try to use their own resources for their own development. That’s irrational. That means that they are using resources for themselves, often at below market rates, when there are more efficient producers in the West who would use those resources more efficiently. That’s interference with the market. Also, these Third World countries often introduce some measures to protect their own population from total devastation and starvation, and that’s an interference with the market. It’s an interference with rational market policies. The effect of this Third World irrationality is to increase production in places where it shouldn’t be taking place, to increase development where it shouldn’t be going on, and that causes pollution. So if we could only convince those Third World countries to behave rationally, that is, to give up all their resources to us and stop protecting their own populations, that would reduce the pollution problem. This document was produced with a straight face” (author’s emphasis). The same day on the same page of the New York Times there was another unrelated article, reproduced from Economist magazine, about a World Bank internal memo, written by the same Lawrence Summers, which had leaked. The NYT included an interview with Summers in which he claimed that the article was meant to be sarcastic. Chomsky commented: “The World Bank memo added to what had been said in the article about Third World irrationality. It said that any kind of production was going to involve pollution. So what you have to do is do it as rationally as possible, meaning with minimal cost. So suppose you have a chemical factory producing carcinogenic gases that are going into the environment. If we put the factory in Los Angeles, we can calculate the number of people who will die of cancer in the next forty years. We can even calculate the value of their lives in terms of income or whatever. Suppose we put the factory in Sao Paulo or some even poorer area. Many fewer people will die of cancer because they’ll die anyway of something else, and besides, their lives aren’t worth as much by any rational measure. So it makes sense to move all the polluting industries to places where poor people die, not where rich people die. That’s on simple economic grounds.” Summers did point out in his memo that there might be some counterarguments based on human rights and the right to a certain quality of life. But he further points out that if we allow these arguments to enter into our calculations, then just about everything the World Bank does would be undermined. In the fifteen years since that report there is plenty of evidence of its principle thrust, the export of hazardous production processes to poorer areas of the world, in action. The same principle works in all areas of production. Capital is international, it goes where the profit is and in the process it undermines the position of the workers in the areas it leaves behind opening them up to greater exploitation as wage and benefit costs are driven down ready for whatever menial service jobs may be introduced for some in the next stage of the capitalist merry-go-round. Capital has no conscience and neither do those who function at the higher levels of the system who benefit from it. So, there you have it, on the one hand the rationality and logic of free-market capitalism, a world devoid of humanity in every sense. Corrupt, polluting and choking to death on the consequences of its own greed and immorality. On the other hand you have the rationality and logic of socialism, a world where humanity can thrive, where the challenges of meeting the needs of every human being on the planet are balanced against the needs of the planet. Where everyone, including Mother Nature, has a voice and a place at the table, where there are no weak and poor, where there are no needy, where there are no outsiders . . . and no money. The choice is ours; we have to want change enough to bring it about. We have to build socialist thinking one brick at a time, spread the message one person at a time. Last November pundits were predicting the “Perfect Storm” economic collapse scenario due to the convergence of high oil prices and the credit crisis. Both of these events were triggered by the logic and rationality of capitalist greed and corruption; the first through an illegal attempted grab of resources and the second through greed for the easy money to be made out of sub-prime mortgages and the subsequent selling on of re-packaged and concealed risk to other greedy “suckers”. In both instances the capitalists are making vast fortunes or are being bailed out from the “public purse”, screened from the consequences of their greed and crimes. Some might feel that this “event” will provide a window of opportunity where the masses will suddenly get the socialist message by osmosis. Don’t hold your breath! Socialism is about spreading the truth, about making socialists and only socialists can do that. Socialism is logical, rational, pro-people, pro-environment, and above all + pro-active. Alan Fenn

Page 15

Socialist Standard January 2008