> >From: On Behalf Of [email protected] > > > >The key issue is to fight for effective regulation and environmental > >planning. > > It's a nice idea, but large corporations cannot be regulated because, in our > country, money IS political power. See:
Hi Jay, In actual fact, corporations have been regulated in the past, certain environmental advances were accomplished in the past via regulation, and there are still certain social services too. And whenever the bourgeoisie felt sufficiently threatened, as in wartime for example, it will introduce am additional amount of regulation, often of the harshest nature. This regulation will be, of course, capitalist regulation, that rewards capitalists and squeezes the masses. Nevertheless, your point, if restated more carefully, is correct. Capitalist governments represent capitalist interests. Sometimes these agencies represent common interests of the bourgeoisie as a class, but sometimes, especially now, they represent the most narrow interests of various privileged sectors. The bourgeoisie as a whole, in its neo-liberal bliss, is quite happy with this situation today. This means that having effective regulation and planning under capitalism are always a matter of intense class conflict, and what is gained in one period may be lost in the next. But to retreat from this struggle in the hope that the "invisible hand" of properly designed market measures will avoid these problems is absurd. Its neo-liberal blindness. As the history of carbon trading shows, these market measures are just as subject to "regulatory capture" as regulation is. The fact is that these market measures involve artificial markets, set up by the government; complex sets of rules that make overall oversight of them impossible; and a gigantic increase in a bureaucracy which is directly tied to the various capitalist interests. For example, the specialists specifying that various carbon offset projects allegedly do save carbon emissions are tied directly to the industries involved. The carbon tax, allegedly so simply when imagined in the minds of its ideologues, involves the same problems when implemented in practice. The actual practice of the carbon tax shows the same type of problem of regulatory capture, of industries getting exemptions, of complicated rules as carbon trading, atlhough the lesser experience with the carbon tax means it has had less time to build up a set of scandals. Aside from those problems, the market forces unleashed by the carbon tax, as well as carbon trading, can result in unexpected consequences, as market forces always have. For example, increasing the cost of certain fossil fuels has led to increased devastation of forests. Then of course new market measures have to be devised which supposedly will protect the forests (REDD). And then these measures have to be corrected when it turns out they have unexpected consequences, so there's REDD+. Perhaps in a few years we will have REDD++. It's neo-liberal blindness to ignore these things. And the argument that regulation is always impossible is just neo-liberal ideology. The fact is the that the nature of environmental problems requires direct planning and direct regulation. The extent of this planning, if carried out seriously, will lead to the need for a certain amount of overall economic planning. Indeed the naturalist Prof. Timothy Flannery raised the issue that trying to plan certain carbon emissions leads to the need to plan more and more industries, and he worried, in his significant book "The Weather Makers", that such planning and regulation would lead to a "carbon dictatorship", as he called it. He was right to pose the issue of planning and where it would lead, and I think his scare term the "carbon dictatorship" is actually a vivid and worthy contribution to the discussion, but he's wrong to forget about the issue of the class nature of planning, and the class struggle over planning, and to believe that he could avoid this via market- style measures. When the bourgeoisie starts to take the environmental issue more seriously, and as it faces both environmental catastrophes and the further crisis of neo- liberalism, it will eventually shift to some type of mixed or regulated capitalism, as it has in the past. It may wait so long that massive tragedy occurs on a global scale, but eventually, it will be forced to take some action. But this action will bear very heavily on the masses, and also be very contradictory in its effect on the environment. There must, therefore, be constant pressure on this planning: we must fight not only for the eradication of the present style of neo-liberal government agencies, but for mass influence on the planning and on the supervision that the companies obey the planning. We must also fight to ensure that planning for mass welfare is regarded as a component part of environmental planning: otherwise not only will the masses be squeezed by the coming crises, but they will be uninterested in the environmental measures that will be seen simply as another oppression. And we must definitely denounce any idea that such government planning, dominated by the bourgeoisie, is "socialism". This fight over regulation and control can never be won decisively and once and for all under capitalism. It will lead eventually to various struggles, to nationalizations (and struggles over how the nationalized part of the economy is run--these nationalizations also not being "socialism"), and eventually be a component part of a struggle for socialist revolution. But we must fight for this environmental planning and regulation, and not wait for revolution, nor trust in the "invisible hand". As far as the article you directed my attention to, it ignores the class issues involved in planning, and even the shifts in the type of bourgeois planning. I would agree with it that "...the decisions, orders, hearings, and press releases of...the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and even the Bureau of Internal Revenue, ...foster, aid, and indeed legitimate the special claims of small but highly organized groups to differential access to tangible resources which are extracted from the common." But who ever said that neo-liberal agencies, the polished product of decades of backlash against even the previous bourgeois regulation, were "the custodians of the commons"? They are actually the rapists of the common, but it's impolite to say this straightforwardly in such an article. The article ignores the issue that a struggle will take place over how to treat "the commons", the outcome depending ultimately on the class struggle, but also for a time on whether a substantial secction of the bourgeoisie finally recognizes that something serious has to be done about the environment. (To avoid misunderstanding, let me reiterate that even when a section of the bourgeoisie does recognize this, this doesn't me that it will be a neutral administrator of the commons, or that it will consistently defend the environment, or that it won't squeeze the masses as hard as possible. Thus the working masses will have to fight the bourgeoisie that is serious about the environment over the proposed measures, and not fight only the section of the bourgeoisie that doesn't yet care about the environment.) The article raises the question "Are the Critical Problems of Modern Society Insoluble?" If one ignores the class struggle, then they truly are. -- Joseph Green > > -------- > > EROSION OF THE MYTH OF ADMINISTRATORS OF THE COMMONS > > "Indeed, the process has been so widely commented upon that one writer > postulated a common life cycle for all of the attempts to develop regulatory > policies. The life cycle is launched by an outcry so widespread and > demanding that it generates enough political force to bring about > establishment of a regulatory agency to insure the equitable, just, and > rational distribution of the advantages among all holders of interest in the > commons. This phase is followed by the symbolic reassurance of the offended > as the agency goes into operation, developing a period of political > quiescence among the great majority of those who hold a general but > unorganized interest in the commons. Once this political quiescence has > developed, the highly organized and specifically interested groups who wish > to make incursions into the commons bring sufficient pressure to bear > through other political processes to convert the agency to the protection > and furthering of their interests. In the last phase even staffing of the > regulating agency is accomplished by drawing the agency administrators from > the ranks of the regulated." [pp. 60-61]. > > http://jayhanson.us/_Systems/BerylCrowe.pdf > > Here's the reality: http://www.wimp.com/oilspills/ > > -------- > > Jay > > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
