On Jun 22, 2008, at 1:56 PM, Gar Lipow wrote:
Certain forms of consumption, such as massive amounts of flying and
SUVs probably are unsustainable (and are also comparatively new). But
quite luxurious electric trains are sustainable - ones where you are
guaranteed a seat, and which run 24 hours a day with no more than a
ten minute wait are sustainable.
But doesn't this depend on how much travelling is going on? If every
Indian and Chinese person wanted or tried to commute or travel using
these trains as much as the well-endowed American does (or would do,
if he were to switch to riding trains instead of driving his car), is
the above still feasible without significantly impacting the
environment?
I find all of the below (the rest of your post) agreeable. I agree
that it is not global north worker luxuries that is keeping the global
south worker down. The flip, it seems to me, is also that the loss of
some of these luxuries for the global north (workers and all) is an
inevitable consequence of a more equitable form of living. But the
adjustments you speak about, IMHO, will include such "sacrifices" (in
quotes since they are not sacrifices at all, but an exchange of
received desires for an as yet unknown ideal(*)) from both the north
and the south. I propose that we differ mostly on the extent of the
adjustment required. I say mostly since I think there is a point of
more substantial difference: when you write that capitalism is
wasteful, I would contend that it (along with "modernity"?) is so in
an even larger sense: it fosters techno-utopian consumption and
promotes a single-dimensional approach to living that is inherently
unhealthy and unsustainable.
The reason is because contemporary capitalism is enormously
wasteful, avoidably wasteful, wasteful on a breathtaking and
staggering scale. That was not always true. In the 19th century a
substantial percent of pink-skinned working class wages probably came
from exploitation of other workers with other skin colors. But that
is no longer the case: exploitation of the global south (including
exploitation of the global north's internal global south, produces
less wealth than investing the capital used for control directly
could produce. In the 19th century it would have been true to say that
the poor nations were poor because the rich nations were rich and the
rich nations were rich because the poor nations were poor. But from
the early 20th century onward while the first was still true, the
second no longer was. The huge waste that occurs as a side effect of
class division in the U.S. could pay for not just GDP, but real
material wealth to be greater. (Probably in a more equal society we
prefer a tradeoff where we had less stuff and more spare time, but
that would be a choice, not an ecological requirement.) The global
south as a whole, in the absence of a external imperial feet on the
neck, and the absence of internal imperial feet on the neck could
catch up to the U.S. in a matter of decades and do so sustainably.
(Just as the global north has its own internal global south, the
global south has its own internal global north.) The problem is that
actually existing capitalism can't make that transformation. It
requires some type of global transformation - either global socialism,
or a modification of capitalism by a global new deal into a global
social democracy, one that is less neoliberal and closer to socialism
than any actually existing social democracy. So probably we are all
doomed, but what dooms us is not the working class of the global north
thriving at the expense of the working class of the global south. Both
halves of that premise are wrong. The working class of the global
north is not thriving, they are stagnating. But most of what they have
is NOT at the expense of the global south; the constant unleashing of
all four horsemen against the global south benefits only the rich of
the global north, not the global north as a whole.
--ravi
(*) the inversion of Ayn Rand is intentional.
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