Can Doom Turn Toward Socialism?
Last year during the last few days of September, just a few weeks after Treasurer Hank Paulson issued a ransom note to Congress demanding 700 billion in unmarked bills in exchange for the kidnapped global economy, I violated the rules for editing Wikipedia and committed an act of digital vandalism. Wikipedia’s entry for the term “late capitalism” read: “Late capitalism is a term sometimes used to refer to capitalism of the second half of the 20th century, generally with the implication that it is historically limited, and will eventually end. However, the notion of late capitalism is partly an ideological perspective. This is because there is no way of telling exactly when capitalism will end, or if it will simply keep evolving instead…” My edit changed the buy cialis online usa second and third lines: “However, the notion of late capitalism is a clearly historically bound term, as it is now obvious just how and when capitalism will end. It will end sometime next week when all the credit cards stop working.”
There is a tendency amongst the digiterati to side with Wikipedia over vandals, or more generally to be more concerned about being technically correct rather than with being simply honest, and more concerned with carving out a palatable position in a digital network of like minded comrades rather than being technically correct, but I stand by my act of vandalism. I would assert that while the credit and debit cards continue to at least partially function, and while capitalism has not, in fact, ended the core reality is just what my little joke indicated. The liberal democratic system of capitalism is disintegrating.
A good example of what I would deem as the ideological thinking of the leftist or socialist digerati was published at Monuments are for Pigeons in a two part series of posts entitled The End is Nigh. What is set up in these two entries is a false opposition between peak oil advocates like James Kunstler and what is really a standard socialist critique of capitalism. Rather than demonstrate how these predictions of doom in fact reinforce and illustrate a broad socialist critique, and rather than incorporate critiques of industrialism and technology into a socialist view, Victor of the Monuments delights order generic cytotec in pointing out how various doomers are wrong, wrong, wrong.
But all along Victor has to admit that the doomers have some legitimate points:
“Is the world ending? Possibly. Peak oil is an attractive thesis because it points out the absolute limits of a carbon-based economy. But focusing on absolute limits of oil, or even water or air substitutes a technical problem for a social one. It’s not about how much we have theoretically, but who has the power to decide how those resources get used.”
Well obviously the crisis is about both the technical problem of how many resources we have and who has the power to decide how these resources get used. And as we begin to really perceive the technical problem of how much oil there is, for example, we have an opportunity to also see how the social problem of who gets to decide how this resource is used threatens our collective survival.
The primary problem with Victor’s posts on the subject of peak oil, ecocide, primitivism, and doomsters is that he doesn’t take on the strongest arguments presented by those he opposes, but exploits their weakest arguments. A prime example is his approach to Malthus. While Malthus’ ideas about overpopulation and resource depletion are troubling, and while his ideas can lead to reactionary conclusions, there are many avenues towards correcting Malthus and all of them involve actually engaging what he said and not who he was. To claim that Malthus hated poor people and thus his ideas were wrong is not a valid approach to arguing with his thesis. The challenge is to demonstrate how humans have the potential to change their social relations and control reproduction and production collectively and cooperatively, but not to claim that Malthus was a bad man and should be ignored.
There are competing strands in Victor’s long posts. On the one hand by pointing to the system of capitalism and the social relations that it engenders as being the primary problem, and by chastising those doomers who fail to raise the possibility of changing our social relations, Victor is doing good work. However, his argument veers toward a denial of solid evidence and when he employs a double standard–simultaneously chastising those who would castigate Americans for their over-consumption while accusing all first world doomers of fearing a barbarism that has already arrived in the Third World of exhibiting class privilege–Victor appears to be almost counter-revolutionary. By denying the dystopian vision of the doomers, a vision based on at the very least much more compelling arguments than the ones Victor presents, he shows an attachment to capitalism, seemingly refusing to understand that capitalism is late.
Oil production has peaked, the credit cards are maxed out, and the oceans are rising. The end of this system is Nigh. The question is who will fill the void and make the next one. buy Ampicillin Without Prescription cheap online Will the International working class be the human race, or are we going to let the whole thing die out?
i agree with your basic thesis that it is contradictory to deny predictions or theories about the end of capitalism (simply because they are about the end of capitalism, rather than assessing the evidence) at the same time as being socialist. I wonder, myself, about the merit of the theory that the end of a ‘carbon-based economy’ or of credit cards is sufficient to end capitalism. but i’m not really sure if that’s what you are arguing.
As far as ‘ideological thinking’ — I prefer to think of ideology in a way that differs from the orthodox view. The orthodox view is that ideology “tricks” people, hiding the truth. The idea being that people who think ideologically are essentially mistaken. The problem I have is that this implies that those who call others ‘ideological’ or criticize some aspect of a specific Ideology have it right. They have access to the truth. They are objective.
I guess I prefer (with althusser) to think of ideology as more than ‘false consciousness’… I don’t think that anyone is outside of ideology, nor could humans really exist even in theory outside of ideology. it is productive. it is a structure we require to be human as we mean that colloquially, when we speak of humans as people who have goals, roles, meaningful actions, “I”s, names, etc.
I agree that ideology can be used repressively. I don’t doubt that at all. It’s just that there is no “true consciousness” as opposed to the “false consciousness” of ideology.
Just wanted to point you in the direction of this entry on the excellent Civil Eats blog: http://civileats.com/2009/03/04/what-next-a-peak-oiler-gives-some-perspective/#more-2489
I’m not sure I get Victor’s point. (In fact, I hope I’ve got him wrong.) Is he saying that 3,000 mile salads and a suburban lifestyle built around the automobile make sense if they’re socialist salads and socialist suburbs? That’s what I took from his posts, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that I mistook his point and that he wasn’t saying anything as outrageously stupid as that.
KMO and Season to Season,
I plan on writing another post on the subject of ideologies soon that will answer both of your posts I believe.
Doug
Hi Doug,
I read your post with interest, and I appreciate you taking this argument seriously. What I set out to do in those posts was historicize the doomsters. There is a long tradition – going back to Malthus – of claiming there are technical limits to consumption. It’s not that I think this is wrong necessarily, but that it misses the point, for three reasons.
1) Peak oil is an interesting thesis, and I remain to be convinced either way. However, the end of oil will not spell the end of capitalism. Capitalism is defined by a global market in labour power. The drive to destroy the ecosphere will not stop until that market is ended, which requires revolutionary change. Changing what we consume – or, more broadly, the carbon-fuelled basis of the economy – will not change capitalism’s inherent drive to expand, and leave environmental costs as externalities. So I dispute the idea that “the end of this system is nigh.” It will not change until mass democratic movements take it over. It will simply slip into barbarism – which, as I’ve pointed out, already exists for most people.
2) What defines capitalism as a system is we are forced to sell our labour power for a wage. Consumption is one moment in the circuit of capital, and, I’d argue, not the most important one. Once we’re separated from the means of production, commodity fetishism results: we see relations between things instead of between people. American workers aren’t exploited by the objects they consume, but by the universalization of the labour market. Which is why I don’t think castigating them for being greedy gets us anywhere.
3) I don’t think doom motivates people. Workers already know they’re being screwed over, every day. Castigating their consumption reinforces powerlessness. We have to speak on the contradictions that workers themselves identify – which in the credit crisis are numerous – not on the ones we find most important. I wrote more about the topic:
http://orangepolyester.blogspot.com/2006/05/is-marxism-elitist-part-two-electro.html
Finally, what struck me about so much doomster literature is its moralism. Not only do I find its hectoring tone personally off-putting, I think it gets us further away from socialism, which is about encouraging people’s capacities to confront capitalist power.
Thanks for the opportunity to have this exchange.
Victor,
Sorry I didn’t see your comment for so long. I guess the length of it got caught up in our moderator software or something.
In any case I’ll work backwards in a reply.
3) I’m a worker and I know how I’m being screwed over every day, however I also know that I’m vested in this system and that I’m complicit in it. Ignoring relationships between people is THE error of the doomers. I’d agree with you there. However, pretending that the natural world doesn’t exist, or that there isn’t a pressing urgency behind a revolutionary project of changing our social relations based on natural/use value issues is to be in denial.
2) Production and consumption are both threatened by by resource depletion, and the extent to which production is aimed at profit making and not providing useful products for people or providing for the public good is the extent to which ecological catastrophes are intensified.
1) I agree that Capitalism must be destroyed before it destroys us. The question before us is whether a Late Capitalism will mean a Late Human Race or not. Suicide or Revolution?