alanjjohnstone
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Democratic “society” to me does not imply centralised “society wide” planning and a single gigantic plan although such things as dealing with global warming does involve commitment to an agreed central strategy decided via various bottom-up decision making much like the COPs but the recommendations implement at various lower levels, at the moment nationally, or city-wide or corporately by industry sector. So society to me also means local and regional communities, mostly based on geographic criteria. And society also involves another aspect of community – work/industrial/production networks. We talk of the scientific community, don’t we?
Social decisions are, of course, different, from individual choices but those individual choices do add up to collective demands and may conflict with other social needs.
Society will have some form of administration to adjudicate priority and arrange satisfaction. Todays democratic structures are currently incapable but it does not mean a socialist system will not create an effective means of carrying out the will of the majority in society, while still protecting the interests of the minority.
All we can do is generalize and lay down some broad principles and I don’t believe we are all that distant in our understanding that we should be splitting hairs over issues that there is sufficient versatility about establishing processes.
Allies breaking ranks
“We are not aware of any information that points to Iran,” Japan’s Defense Minister Taro Kono told reporters. “We believe the Houthis carried out the attack based on the statement claiming responsibility,” he added.
Another positive report
https://www.dw.com/en/un-environment-chief-inger-andersen-the-solutions-are-there/a-50365306
“There are about one to 1.5 billion hectares of degraded forest land which are not used for anything, so let’s invest in that, grow trees. If we were to do that, nature would give us a break of about 12 gigatons of carbon. And when we invest in nature, we also get biodiversity back. When we invest in nature we also ensure that we get better health outcomes.” explains Danish economist and environmentalist Inger Andersen was appointed as the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).
“That all sounds very good, but we’re not doing terribly well right now.
We are not. And I guess the issue is that these are difficult choices. It’s difficult to make those shifts rapidly, but thinking of it on the bigger global scale, shortly after 2050, there will be nearly 10 billion people on this planet. And today we have about 800 million people going to bed hungry and about 1.3 billion living in extreme poverty.
These people have every right to aspire to what you and I have. But if we all live like you and I, we would need five planets…Poorer countries want wealth, they want growth, they want the opportunity to have what you and I have. But in a smarter way. And the solutions are there because today we have energy options that are cleaner.”The scientists offer their answer
“…We can now say the next decade has the potential to see the fastest economic transition in history…”
Experts identified 36 developments that would produce GHG being halved, from renewable energy to changes in food production, the design of cities, and international transport, such as shipping. All of them are judged possible to achieve by 2030.
“…Key to any transition will be the growing social movements that are pressing for urgent action on climate breakdown. By driving behavioural change, such as moving away from the overconsumption of meat and putting pressure on governments and companies, civil movements have the power to drive the transformation needed in the next decade, say the report’s authors…”
Will capitalism take up the baton and run with it?
There has been many scarcity arguments put forward that we have reached peak-this or peak-that.
Somehow that means there is no alternatives for us to use.
There is always second-best and third-best options to choose from. No one thing is indispensable, (well maybe oxygen and water and the latter has shortages and rationing right now)
I am a shameless cornucopian socialist, abundance is my aim. If I am rationed in one item, so be it, because the compensation will be plenty in everything else.
But look through forum archives when the definition we sometimes use “according to self-defined needs” was challenged on the grounds that it will be society as a whole and not individuals which will decide free access.
Yes I know you think Paris limits won’t be met. Sorry if I inferred that you did. Governments are still basing policy on their achievement though, with many people not fully realizing they were political targets not scientific ones.
If the 7.0C by 2100 is indeed the trajectory we are heading towards because not sufficient action is being taken (and there isn’t, quite the contrary, in fact) and N.B. this is not media click-bait stories or maverick scientists with personal agenda but only two first published in a series of 30 expected research papers which some may and some may not concur with.
But with 6.0C- 7.0C then there is guaranteed runaway climate change which cannot have any predictions made about it because of the lack of data on all the possible feedback loops and their various different impacts. It becomes outside the realms of science, or at least any accurate models of the details of what could occur.
Of course, it can be argued that increased counter-measures will be taken when the situation grows acute and serious. But that is just as speculative. The present facts is that not enough is being done, and that recommendations are being ignored.
I worry that you are not worrying about those scientists who are worried about future events which are no longer seen as possible but is increasingly viewed as probable.
Our message is a simple one to convey – Capitalism is going to fail in controlling climate change and if not an existential to our species it will give pain and suffering and death to millions of our fellow humans and when that happens we don’t know what effect it will have politically or economically and it is justifiable to consider the likelihood of the breakdown of society on a global scale and describe it as the end of civilisation as we know it now. Utopia or Dystopia? Socialism or Barbarism?
“… either in the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes…”
That is the outcome facing us, isn’t it, if you were a betting man?
Our big question is do we thing that honesty is the best policy or that it will be more politically circumspect for socialists to offer hope, no matter how remote or forlorn it might be in reality.
A genuine pessimist would be advocating a return to primitive communism of clans and tribes as capitalist economy and nation-states disintegrates.
Terminology is important to discussion and bandying words around without fully comprehending their meanings won’t be fruitful.
Let us define scarcity and abundance. It is limited supply – versus – boundless demand . Our wants are essentially “infinite” and the resources to meet them “limited” is the usual claim. According to this argument, scarcity is an unavoidable fact of life. It applies to any goods where the decision to use a unit of that good entails giving up some other potential use. In other words, whatever one decides to do has an “opportunity cost” — that is the opportunity to do something else which one thereby forgoes; economics is concerned with the allocation of scarce resources.
However, abundance is not a situation where an infinite amount of every good could be produced. Similarly, scarcity is not the situation which exists in the absence of this impossible total or sheer abundance. Abundance is a situation where productive resources are sufficient to produce enough wealth to satisfy human needs, while scarcity is a situation where productive resources are insufficient for this purpose. Abundance is a relationship between supply and demand, where the former exceeds the latter. In socialism a buffer of surplus stock for any particular item, whether a consumer or a producer good, can be produced, to allow for future fluctuations in the demand for that item, and to provide an adequate response time for any necessary adjustments. Thus achieving abundance can be understood as the maintenance of an adequate buffer of stock in the light of extrapolated trends in demand. The relative abundance or scarcity of a good would be indicated by how easy or difficult it was to maintain such an adequate buffer stock in the face of a demand trend (upward, static, or downward). It will thus be possible to choose how to combine different factors for production, and whether to use one rather than another, on the basis of their relative abundance/scarcity.
How do we tell when something is becoming scarce, and how do you pass this information on to others?” Well, we use the tools and systems that capitalism bequeathes us, which will be suitably modified and adapted and transformed for the new conditions. There is stock or inventory control systems and logistics. The key to good stock management is the stock turnover rate – how rapidly stock is removed from the shelves – and the point at which it may need to be re-ordered. This will also be affected by considerations such as lead times – how long it takes for fresh stock to arrive – and the need to anticipate possible changes in demand. The Just-In-Time systems are another well tried and trusted method of warehousing and linking up supply chains which can be utilised. If requirements are low in relation to a build-up of stock , then this would an automatic indication to a production unit that its production should be reduced . If requirements are high in relation to stock then this would be an automatic indication that its production should be increased. And there will be the existence of buffer stocks to provides for a period of re-adjustment.
The modern world is a society of scarcity, but with a difference. Today’s shortages are unnecessary; today’s scarcity is artificial. More than that: scarcity achieved at the expense of strenuous effort, ingenious organisation and the most sophisticated planning. The world is haunted by a spectre – the spectre of abundance. Socialism means plenty for all. We do not preach a gospel of want and scarcity, but of abundance. If the assumption of abundance is not regarded as far-fetched (which, we say it is not) then there is a “better method of ensuring individual consumer choice than voting with vouchers/money: free accessOur critics have fallen into the same erroneous way of looking at the matter as the bourgeois economists with their taken-for-granted assumptions about human nature being inherently lazy or greedy and have fallen hook, line and sinker for Garett Hardin’s ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ that if people get free things, they’ll act like locusts. Likewise, many on the Left have aligned themselves with the argument of the arch pro-capitalist Ludwig von Mises in asserting the need for a common universal unit of accounting. According to this argument, only by means of such a unit can we directly compare different bundles of inputs and thus supposedly select the “least cost “combination. For Mises this unit is money; for some so-called leftists, labour-values. The purpose of a common unit of account is to expedite economic exchange – what communism will lack – rather than the actual efficient deployment of resources as such. Having a common unit of account has nothing to do with the technical organisation of production itself and everything to do with capitalism’s own priorities such as the need to determine profitability and the rate of exploitation.
Socialism will not be about “setting prices at zero”. It is about doing away with the whole notion of price and exchange value so that the very concept of “setting prices at zero” is a meaningless one. To talk of setting prices at any level presupposes still a capitalist framework. If supermarkets tomorrow said, ‘All cans of beans are free’ the shelves would be cleared in hours. But if they said the same the next day, and the next, it would become pointless to go and fill your arms with cans of beans, and easier to just go and take a reasonable stock to keep close to hand. Money and prices are not abolished, but their need is rendered redundant. Just because individuals in a free access economy are not restricted by money from taking what they want, does not mean they will want to take everything they can possibly lay their hands on. The point about a communist society is that there is no objective or external economic mechanism like money or prices mediating between the individual and his or her wants.
My real point is that even at the now accepted lower end of projections the Paris Agreement of 1.5-2.0C is no longer seen as valid.
But no projection can stick to facts, can they. They are predictions.
But this is not merely media or activist alarmism, but interpretation of data from two sources of researchers with two different models, one from France’s National Centre for Meteorological Research which are using better more exact models than those from the past.
It cannot be so easily dismissed as alarmist. Fuller details here
“…The new models is that increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere will warm Earth’s surface more — and more easily — than earlier calculations had suggested.
If confirmed, this higher “equilibrium climate sensitivity”, or ECS, means humanity’s carbon budget — our total emissions allowance — is likely to shrink… other models developed independently have come to the same unsettling conclusion, Boucher confirmed. “The most respected ones — from the United States, and Britain’s Met Office — also show a higher ECS” than the previous generation of models, he said.
This is bad news for the fight against global warming…”As I previously argued, many scientists are on the conservative side and this article confirms this by relating how
“…Stephen Belcher from the UK Met Office and Rowan Sutton from the UK National Centre for Atmospheric Science — wrote in a blog earlier this year, tiptoeing around the implications of the new models…”
But if we step back to get a fuller picture of the situation, we can see that the prevailing is now that prognosis is not getting any better and each report is reflecting bad news. Even the scientist you cite holds that 3.0C is likely, not 1.5C-2.0C and that is not at all good news, even if it is not as bad as some higher figures being projected. Unless of course you dismiss the current extreme weather events are not linked to the current 1.0C rise
New climate models unveiled by French researchers Tuesday showed Earth’s average temperature could rise a “terrifying” 6.5-7.0°C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century if dramatic action is not immediately taken to slash carbon emissions.
The findings suggest the planet may be warming significantly faster than scientists previously believed as the world’s major economies continue to burn fossil fuels at unsustainable rates.
This worst-case scenario of 6.5-7.0°C of warming assumed continued economic expansion driven by growth of fossil fuel production.
And so far this is still what is taking place.
However, Penn State University climate scientist Michael E. Mann sounded a note of caution about the dire scenarios predicted by the new models.
“Some earlier versions of the models appeared to underestimate climate sensitivity somewhat,” said Mann, “and I suspect that some of these more recent versions are actually over-estimating it a bit.”
“I suspect, when all is said and done, we’re probably looking at something in the range of 3-4°C and no higher, at least for near-term warming,” Mann added. “If we allow the warming to persist for centuries, then other long-term positive feedbacks (vicious cycles) could kick in, giving us substantially more warming.”
So even conservatively now, the 1.5 – 2.0C target will be exceeded.
This is my understanding, for what it’s worth
Socialism is more than just not an exchange economy; it is not an economy at all, not even a planned economy. Economics, or political economy as it was originally called, grew up as the study of the forces which came into operation when capitalism, as a system of generalised commodity production, began to become the predominant mode of producing and distributing wealth. The production of wealth under capitalism, instead of being a direct interaction between human beings and nature, in which humans change nature to provide themselves with the useful things they need to live, becomes a process of production of wealth in the form of exchange value. Under this system, production is governed by forces which operate independently of human will and which impose themselves as external, coercive laws when men and women make decisions about the production and distribution of wealth. In other words, the social process of the production and the distribution of wealth becomes under capitalism an economy governed by economic laws and studied by a special discipline, economics.
Socialism is not an economy, because, in re-establishing conscious human control over production, it would restore to the social process of wealth production its original character of simply being a direct interaction between human beings and nature. Wealth in socialism would be produced directly as such, i. e. as useful articles needed for human survival and enjoyment; resources and labour would be allocated for this purpose by conscious decisions, not through the operation of economic laws acting with the same coercive force as laws of nature. Although their effect is similar, the economic laws which come into operation in an exchange economy such as capitalism are not natural laws, since they arise out of a specific set of social relationships existing between human beings. By changing these social relationships through bringing production under conscious human control, socialism would abolish these laws and so also the economy as the field of human activity governed by their operation. Hence socialism would make economics redundant.
What we are saying, in effect, is that the term exchange economy is a tautology in that an economy only comes into existence when wealth is produced for exchange. It is now clear why the term planned economy is unacceptable as a definition of socialism. Socialism is not the planned production of wealth as exchange value, nor the planned production of commodities, nor the planned accumulation of capital. That is what state capitalism aims to be. Planning is indeed central to the idea of socialism, but socialism is the planned (consciously coordinated) production of useful things to satisfy human needs precisely instead of the production, planned or otherwise, of wealth as exchange value, commodities and capital. In socialism wealth would have simply a specific use value (which would be different under different conditions and for different individuals and groups of individuals) but it would not have any exchange, or economic, value.
Economising is simply about the rational allocation of resources and applies to all societies based on various general principles such as opportunity costs etc.
It was Stone Canal. Two protagonists are in search of a book by Dietzgen.
MattC and BrianG, I believe introduced him to the SPGB during a university campaign.
He was a staunch defender of the SPGB as this post from my personal blog demonstrates.
https://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2007/04/o-would-some-power-giftie-gie-us-to-see.html
Another short answer would be “economic democracy.”
Besides communist Marx employed four other words to describe future society: associated, socialised, collective and co-operative. All these words convey a similar meaning and bring out the contrast with capitalist society where not only the ownership and control of production but life generally is isolated and atomised.
Natural resources and the man-made instruments of production would be held in common: Marx speaks of “a community of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in common” (Vol. I) and, in his Critique of the Gotha Programme, of “the co-operative society based on the common ownership of the means of production” and of “the material conditions of production” being “the cooperative property of the workers themselves”.
It is significant that Marx never defined communist society in terms of the ownership and control of the means of production by the State, but rather in terms of ownership and control by a voluntary association of the producers themselves. He did not equate what is now called “nationalisation” with socialism. Socialism is an economic system based upon conscious planning of production by associated producers (nowhere does Marx say: by the state), made possible by the abolition of private property of the means of production. As soon as that private property is completely abolished, goods produced cease to be commodities. Value and exchange value disappear. Production becomes production for use, for the satisfaction of needs, determined by conscious choice
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx wrote of future society as “an association which will exclude classes and their antagonism” and “an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”
In Volume III of Capital Marx writes three or four times of production in future society being controlled by the “associated producers.”
Association was a word used in working class circles in England to mean a voluntary union of workers to overcome the effects of competition. This was Marx’s sense too: in future society, the producers would voluntarily co-operate to further their own common interest; they would cease to be “the working class” and become a class-free community.
20,000 people packed New York City’s Washington Square Park Monday night as Sen. Elizabeth Warren delivered a speech about the corporate corruption. She urged voters to support her plan to “fundamentally transform our government” by creating a system beholden to people’s needs, not Wall Street interests.
