Replying to what Carroll says at the end of his post:
I agree -- "discarding the growth paradigm" is a poor way to address
this, for the reasons Carroll says, i.e. "... one does not discard
social relations...". I (we) should talk instead of cutting working
time, which is a demand which has been won repeatedly in this country
and elsewhere. Cutting working time will have salutary impacts on GHG
emissions in different ways. Cutting commuting and eventually
impacting total consumption, for example. It is a feasible path to
slower growth via a demand that makes people better off with respect
to the employer.
Cutting working time can also favorably impact the US income
distribution debacle.
Cutting working time is a demand that can be organized around and not
an amorphous appeal to discard something that most people think is a
good thing.
Gene Coyle
On May 11, 2009, at 8:39 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:
Eugene Coyle wrote:
Hans, Thanks for this but I think you have inverted the priorities.
At
the end you write:
[Hans E.] This movement must become powerful enough to sweep the
suicidal oil and coal interests off the table now, and then, after the
big investments for the energy and transportation switch have been
done,
it must discard the economic growth paradigm and fight for a rational
steady-state economy.
Cox: The proposition,"The movement must become powerful enough"
blithely
assumes nearly a whole historical epoch; for me, it provokes
something
like the old saw, "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride." And of
course, a m9vement that powerful would not do anything at all with
this
or that sector of "the econolmy" but rather begin the building of a
socialist society, since that level of strength is what we call
Revolution.
Put another way, if handling the problems of ecology require a
movement
that strong, then in fact we should just forget about ecology,
renewable
energy, global warming, and focus on building a revollutionary
movement,
since nothing short of a revolution will give us what Hans says is the
necessary power to do anything with these problems.
Hans said it, not I. I merely point out what it is, in fact, that he
has
said.
And on controlling growth. First of all, growth is not a paradigm,
i.e.
a structure of ideas, it is just another name for capitalism. So
again,
Hans discusses revolution under thd label of reform.
[E.C.] It will be more effective, politically and environmentally, to
"discard the economic growth pardigm" right now, and then the other
pieces will more easily be achieved. Gene Coyle
This is an improvement, but still tends to regard "economic growth"
as a
set of ideas that can be discarded rather than as an ensemble of
social
relations. And one does not discard social relations, especially when
they are the social relations which constitute the capitalist mode of
production.
Carrol
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