collective human greed sustainable? or be ecologically tied to earth?

[Sam Da Communist]

the greed of humans are pretty much fucking up the planet comrades, we have been altering this planet for thousands of years. socialism will ease that problem no doubt, but planet-fucking will still continue, perhaps it will even increase with the development of the 3rd world.

If we call for complete sustainability will we risk our health, education, food quality and productions? will we risk humanity's scientific luxury driven progressiveness?

How do we manage the environment in a socialist world?

How do we manage our greed for advancement of luxurious living that involves science?

The environmentalists seem very primitivist sometimes.

[Dean]

the greed of humans are pretty much fucking up the planet comrades, we have been altering this planet for thousands of years. socialism will ease that problem no doubt, but planet-fucking will still continue, perhaps it will even increase with the development of the 3rd world.

If we call for complete sustainability will we risk our health, education, food quality and productions? will we risk humanity's scientific luxury driven progressiveness?

How do we manage the environment in a socialist world?

How do we manage our greed for advancement of luxurious living that involves science?

The environmentalists seem very primitivist sometimes.

Moved to sciences & Environment - Dean

[Raúl Duke]

Use sustainable tech...that allows us to be highly productive yet not so totally damaging.
The issue is not "human greed" (too much of a simple blame) but the fact that under capitalism companies engage in cost-reducing measures so to increase profitability. Socialist economy are not based around profit so that in itself would facilitate the use of sustainable tech as the community/workers decide on their use.

[Philzer]

Hi!


How do we manage the environment in a socialist world?

The answer is easy and also unsatisfactory for all they which think they are must nothing change in their head and in their life.

The Human must be an Human.

I.E. the power of cognition of four dimensionals must follow a fourdimensional ethic.

So long the people want only one in their life, eat the planet and all what they can get into their mous, so long will be class society.

I think communism means not endless consum and waste for everybody, like the most lefts are thinking, Sorry, I think so at the moment, communism can only be an scientific based society with 4 dimensional ehtic and also not with the real exist three dimensional acting individuals which are a spiritual-result of many thousands years of class society.

The fighting between the three and the four dimensional individuals will rule over living or die of these species.

Kind regards

[Philzer]

Hi Raul!


Use sustainable tech...that allows us to be highly productive yet not so totally damaging.

sustainable tech is a good way, of course. but dont forget that is always or mostly a more expensive way as an well-matched un-sustainable technology.

-> result: the people must rule: more consum, and after me the Flood, or a little bit less and a future for my childs, this decision-making cannot solve by modern technic allone!

If you believe in this, I dont hope, I must tell you, this is exactly the religion of capitalism.

-->>revleft.com/vb/communism-and-religion-t73036/index7.html




The issue is not "human greed" (too much of a simple blame)

Mhhh. Difficult. I call this behavior not "human greed", but instead
"unconscious life" -> this means all phenomens includet, for example population explosion and also consum explosion.....


but the fact that under capitalism companies engage in cost-reducing measures so to increase profitability. Socialist economy are not based around profit so that in itself would facilitate the use of sustainable tech as the community/workers decide on their use.

I think this is the most important fact. But also here is a problem.

If you have at your state frontier a capitalistic system, and there the people can waste the world with biggest cars for example, all people will leave your socialism. I know this, I´m from GDR.

(its more difficult than I can explain in short: in competition with the western world the real existing socialism had also destroy the world, for to come in a balance of consuming-waste, it was a economic-war)

Like Marx said, it will be only work worldwide.

Kind regards

[Quail]

Capitalism puts profit before the environment, so things are produced in an unsustainable way to cut costs. Under capitalism, there is a vast amount of overproduction and waste too - for example, food that is grown halfway across the world gets wasted each time it changes hands; some isn't considered good enough to even be shipped over here, some spoils on the way, some spoils in the warehouse, the supermarket, etc. More food than we need is produced because everyone is trying to grow as much as possible to make more money. In a communist society, we would produce much less because there is no incentive or reason to produce more than we need.

A lot of sustainable technologies or their development may not be profitable right now so in a capitalist society, there isn't much point in investigating them. Capitalism is quite short-sighted in that (it seems to me) short-term profit is seen as being more valuable than long-term sustainability.

I also think that some people need to recognise that since we live on this planet, we are part of the ecosystem. I personally think that if we have to make a few sacrifices to keep our environment nice (or even possible) to live in, that we should be willing to make them until we can develop a way of living more sustainably. (I don't know if many people would agree with me on that one, but I don't really see much point in fighting for a better society if the planet is going to be so fucked up we can't live good lives anyway.)

I don't think that there would be the same overconsumption of resources under communism anyway because our society today is based on consuming, consuming, consuming and I think that people are pressured into doing that by society's values.

Sorry for the jumbled reply. My thoughts aren't very ordered right now, but hopefully there's something in there that makes sense.

[Jimmie Higgins]

the greed of humans are pretty much fucking up the planet comrades, we have been altering this planet for thousands of years. socialism will ease that problem no doubt, but planet-fucking will still continue, perhaps it will even increase with the development of the 3rd world.I don't think "greed" is the problem because it's sort of a abstract moral concept - if a homeless person takes extra free samples of something and hordes it - he's greedy. If a poor person who has little sees a chance to get paid under the table and collect unemployment benefits, that's greedy right? Yet when big business throws out unsellable items or when property owners let homes and hosuing developments stay empty rather than sell at a loss because housing prices are down, it's not greed - but what has a bigger impact on both humans and the environment.


If we call for complete sustainability will we risk our health, education, food quality and productions? will we risk humanity's scientific luxury driven progressiveness?Potentially in some areas, but on the whole I don't think so. If our priorities were to figure out how to make things sustainable then I think it would not be difficult - if our priority in next quarter's profits or a beurocrat's production quota... then yes it is quite difficult.


How do we manage the environment in a socialist world?Democratically. This is why I think we do need some (democratic) central planning of the economy. There will be some big projects that workers could persue that would be able to save resources as well as provide more people with things they need. My favorite example is from a Popular Mechanics. An engineering prof. assigned his grad students a project of how to grow crops for an entire city with existing technology that would be sustainable. While the came up with several different ideas, the best one was for city-block sized highrizes for growing crops indoors. In their plan it would actually filter surrounding air, and it would filter a lot of the city's waste-water - some of which would then go to the crops, but the rest would go back as clean water into the city's system. Farm-labor would become more healthy and be more like industrial labor (people would be out of the sun, not have to bend over all day and because of a controlled environment, no pesticides would be needed). The reduction of shipping needs would have a huge impact on the environment because crops would be grown within urban centers and so produce would not need to be shipped 1000s of miles in diesel trucks or large freight ships. All the land used for crops could be returned to a natural and diverse ecosystem.

In the end the prof. concluded that even though this could be made within years, it will never happen because to be vialble many of these farm-skyscrapers would have to be built and it would take about a decade for investors to see a return on their profits whereas there is still a lot of land left in the US for crops and people can grow there with a tiny fraction of the overhead that it would take to do urban farming on an industrial scale.


How do we manage our greed for advancement of luxurious living that involves science?

The environmentalists seem very primitivist sometimes.Yes, I find this to be a problem in the current envirionmental movement (also some elitism, nationalism and xenophobia in the mainstream US environmental movement*). It keeps the movement small and alienates working class people from a movement that could actually become more powerful if it took on working class issues. Who bears the brunt of anti-environmental policies by big business? Working class communities are always loacated in the low points of urban areas: South Central Los Aneles is what it is because this is where all the factory smoke used to settle in the area - in Oakland, West Oakland in predominatly black and working-poor and this is where the docs with all the pollution and dirty water is. New Orleans 9th ward: lowest part of the city. The historical 5-points in NYC: this used to be a swamp and as the citiy developed in the 19th century, this is where the sewage from the entire city would settle. Not to mention, who ingests the toxic chemicals used by companies - farmworkers, industrial workers etc.




*The eco-warrior who's getting a lot of press lately for crashing into a whaling boat (also because there's a cable documentary about him) was invited to speak to a university class I took on the environment back in 1999 and my prof and this eco-warrior are part of a faction in the Sierra Club that thinks that immigration to the US should be stopped.

[Vanguard1917]

There's nothing greedy about people always wanting and demanding more from life. In fact, that's how human progress is made. It's an entirely conservative position that the masses should be happy with what they already have. And, nowadays, environmentalists (mostly middle- and upper-class Westerners) are some of the most prominent advocates of this position. They promote austerity under the guise of 'sustainable living' and they are explicitly against rising living standards in the developing world (e.g. 'if everyone in Asia and Africa were to have living standards as high as those in the West, we would need five planets!').

Socialists are irreconcilably opposed to such reactionary sentiments.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Socialists are irreconcilably opposed to such reactionary sentiments.I agree with everything you said about how sustainability is used in the current context by liberal environmentalist, but to be clear from my perspective, I thing we do want sustainability and production for use as opposed to the wastefulness of profit driven production in capitalism. Workers will probably want to find the most efficient, least destructive, and easiest way to produce as much as we want and need. It's not in our interest to use up collectively used resources whereas it is in the interests of capitalist business to suck resources dry as quickly as possible and then move on and let the local state and governmnet and workers pick up the pieces.

[turquino]

I think this is tied to the question of to what extent there should be a global leveling of wealth. If this isn't addressed then any 'socialism' will only perpetuate the problem. In ecological terms there is a group of a few hundred million people consuming disproportionally large amounts of the planet's resources while the remaining five billion are left to make due with much less, while simultaneously having to suffer the brunt of the damage to the environment. Under the present conditiions it wouldn't be possible to raise up those 5 billion to the level of the others without quickly exhausting the earth's mineral and fossil fuel resources. I've read that if every person on earth consumed the same amount of oil as the average american, known oil reserves would be exhausted in under a decade! I suspect the only solution remaining is reducing the present consumption of those wealthy hundreds of millions, something they would obviously be opposed to. But they shut their eyes to the problem for which they are responsible, and won't want to change voluntarily.

[Sam Da Communist]

How about hydro electric turbines and dams, they screw up ecosystems. the life of a human is anti-environment, this is regardless of socialism or captialism.

everyone, Yes i acknowledge capitalism is mega-anti-environment, but so is socialism but WAY lesser of an evil, or will it be? the 3rd world needs development and the 1st world need to give up and go massively backwards. I am for the primitivisation of the 1st world, and the development of the 3rd world.

The 3rd world, that was what i was wanting to talk about. China and india, africa, sth america, south asia are emerging, and they want equality! but teh environmentalist movement even seems to deny the development of the 3rd world's need to progress, and talk about it selfishly, 1st worldly and bourgeois nationalistically, almost pseudo-fascistically.


.............
Yes, I find this to be a problem in the current envirionmental movement (also some elitism, nationalism and xenophobia in the mainstream US environmental movement*). It keeps the movement small and alienates working class people from a movement that could actually become more powerful if it took on working class issues. .......

*The eco-warrior who's getting a lot of press lately for crashing into a whaling boat (also because there's a cable documentary about him) was invited to speak to a university class I took on the environment back in 1999 and my prof and this eco-warrior are part of a faction in the Sierra Club that thinks that immigration to the US should be stopped.

Yes, elitism, fucking elitism! should check out the sea shepard or the greenpeace fuckers. Very anti-japan, very nationalistic, pseudo-racist, and our fucked corporate racist media loves it.

Who the heck is that eco-warrior of the anti-human xenophobe kind? that publicity creating crazy idiot smashed his fast million-dollar hollywood-millionaire-funded boat deliberatly! check it out in youtube! The Greenpeace anti-whale thing goes too far sometimes. sometimes i wonder if they love humans more than they love animals, it would be good if they were anarchist or communist like us, but no, they are bourgeois or petty bourgeois!

[Quail]

How about hydro electric turbines and dams, they screw up ecosystems. the life of a human is anti-environment, this is regardless of socialism or captialism.

everyone, Yes i acknowledge capitalism is mega-anti-environment, but so is socialism but WAY lesser of an evil, or will it be? the 3rd world needs development and the 1st world need to give up and go massively backwards. I am for the primitivisation of the 1st world, and the development of the 3rd world.


I don't think that the life of a human has to be anti-environment. Hopefully in the future we will be able to use more things like solar panels and wind turbines. If every building was built in an energy efficient way and had solar panels for heating, for example, that would use a lot less energy without compromising on heating or whatever (although wouldn't work so well in countries with less sunlight). I also don't see why taller buildings couldn't have their own wind turbines or whatever. Just a couple of random ideas off the top of my head (and I'm sure people can pick holes with those ideas; I'm not prepared to go into massive detail about how they would work if anyone tries to tell me I'm being ridiculous because I'm sure that there are many ways of using technology we already have to make our lives more sustainable, but it just isn't profitable enough), but I'm sure there are many creative ways to generate power with less of an environmental impact.

Also, I think that it's quite important to educate people in more developed countries about the impact of their lifestyles and build grassroots movements for more sustainable living. I think it's also a shame that most "left" groups don't give the environment more coverage because a combination of respect for the environment and a genuine desire to raise the living standards of people in other parts of the world (which should follow from being a socialist/communist) could persuade people to make more sustainable lifestyle choices. It's clear that people in the richest countries consume far too much, but I don't know if people are necessarily aware of that, or the impact of their lifestyle on other people and the planet.

[Philzer]

Hi!

So more I take a look here in the forum, I feel the future of communism is fade away.
But it is very funny to read all this paradise stories, enough for thousands of fairy-tale-books like "Thousand and one night".

It may be also a god bonanza for fantastic film makers from Hollywood.
But this is not for found new ways for future of mankind.

The lefts of the world have found their own religion. It´s really great!

Almost I hear Marx cry, if he would know, that his great scientific work, “the capital”, is come to a new bibl, with complete no self-spirit of their readers.

This new “left religion” seems to me like a mix between the pantheistic religion of capitalism, with the declaration all we need is more of all, more people and more technology, and at the other side the primitive altruistic* arguments from the Christians, all must equal participating from killer-eating the earth.

* altruistic behaviour is not a higher level in conscious than egoism, this is only a necessary part, and only in a certain mix of this behaviour-types you can get an ESS, please read some sociobiology, for example “The egoistic gen” from Richard Dawkin, than you will know, ESS is not more than the living form of animal world, and also of all opportunistic forms of human society like slavery or capitalism


There's nothing greedy about people always wanting and demanding more from life. In fact, that's how human progress is made

You mix in unscientific kind different things. The more and more and never stopping human creativity (brings progress), with the stupid greedy to waste and waste the world of the average uncreative and low- conscious individual (destroys the world for example with unnecessary super-big cars)

(Schopenhauer called them “the fabric ware of the nature”, I agree this statement only in the result, but I know the separating process by the class society)

The purpose of them are never to be creatively individuals, on the contrary, their job is to be war-slavery (soldiers), work-slavery and the new function in the exploitation-democracy states is to be consume slaver for an profitable waste of the planet by order and profit of the bourgeois.


'if everyone in Asia and Africa were to have living standards as high as those in the West, we would need five planets!'

I think it is always true. May be a little overacted, may be a little understated. But you are a religious individual, and so your destiny is not to recognize the four-dimensional space-time-continuum in which we live in.

May be you have misunderstand, that this statement of earth-destroying, comes not from the western rulers-class, they only want to maximise their profit and ignore the consequences in typical religious way.

It comes also not from the average democratic-consumer-slave of the rich western countries, this is a statement of minority of progressive people, which are organized in “Attac” for example.

This statement doesn’t mean, that the poor people, for example in Asia or Africa, should not get a better living standard**, it demands that the wasting of planet in the democratic nations must be less.
** but also they must ending their self-explosion (extreme growth of population)

Your signature shows not a scientific understanding of the world and postulates an unlimited wasting of our planet. Sorry, this is what I read out of this.

Kind regards

[Jimmie Higgins]

Hello, Philzer,

This statement doesn’t mean, that the poor people, for example in Asia or Africa, should not get a better living standard**, it demands that the wasting of planet in the democratic nations must be less.
** but also they must ending their self-explosion (extreme growth of population)This outlook ignores inequality WITHIN nations... and in the US, inequality now like that of Victorian era. For me the question is not that X number of people always equals Y amount of resources because it is also a question of class and priorities. In the Victorian era there was a huge ammount of environmental damage and yet most people enjoyed little of the wealth and consumed very little. The factories and trains and shipyards made cities black with suit, ecosystems were destroyed etc. In China there is a huge amount of environmental damage yet millions and millions of workers do not have a high consumption level.

So the determining factor is the priorities of production and who is in charge of production. If it is capitalists or state bureaucrats then they will tend to not be concerned with the effects of production on workers or the environment. If workers could run production, they would probably have an interest in not drinking poisoned water or breathing smog.


Your signature shows not a scientific understanding of the world and postulates an unlimited wasting of our planet. Sorry, this is what I read out of this.Please refrain from ad hominum arguments and claims about religion unless you would like to create a seperate thread on the topic of your assertion that activists base their politics on faith, not science; and please provide evidence if you want to make such claims otherwise it comes across as trolling.

[Philzer]

Hi Jimmi!

In first, my intention is not war between you and me. I am a hobby philosopher, and I am only searching for truth.

Not for ideology. Neither for the bourgeois, nor for the working class. Only for mankind and a better future of at all.


This outlook ignores inequality WITHIN nations...

I answer you: the parallel existing of the inequality, between the nations and within the nations, is only a smart method of the bourgeois, and also the excuse for the working class in the exploitation-democratic-states, to justify their squeeze out of the rest of the world.

Remember I asked you: are you realized that all the goods, for example only, which the average American worker can buy in Wal-Mart for example, and which is produced in Asia, China, India, Africa...... would cost 5 or 10 times more if they would produced in Germany, USA or GB?

This results that they are can buying multiple of them, which they are self produced.

Can people from this countries tourist into the reach states? No.

The tourists from the reach exploitation-nations journey to the poor countries for to let “swinging their eggs” for low price value....etcetera.

It is what Marx called exploitation. F.Engels says about this problem: “Peoples who exploitation other peoples, can never be free”.


In China there is a huge amount of environmental damage yet millions and millions of workers do not have a high consumption level.

Exactly. The reason is, they are produce for dumping prices for the reach nations.

The rulers of China following a strategy for to regain their economic.

We can compare this with Stalin´s worker-battalions or with the direct slavery in USA.

And for to attracting the imperialistic investors, there must be dumping-wage-slaves. And for the moment, at least, the winner is the peoples of USA and NATO-countries, I mean.

Understand this should not be an apology for the Chinese rulers, only a try to explanation.


your assertion that activists base their politics on faith, not science; and please provide evidence if you want to make such claims

I think it is not so much hard to explain that. The earth is not endless.
I think always, this must know everybody who has a computer to write here.

And in the consequence there is also not an endless consume.

The method to ignore the effects of the own actions are a typical religious way if I had tried to explain here:

-->> revleft.com/vb/communism-and-religion-t73036/index7.html

I see the fight against such religious view “We-eat-everything, but in common" * as a most important job for all real communists. The promise of wasting the planet for the unconscious mass will catch you after the revolution. :D

This is my experience in reality.

(*in deutsch nenne ich diese Individuen Bedürfnismonotheist, can someone translate it into good English?)

Kind regards and have a nice day!

[Jimmie Higgins]

Hi Jimmi!

In first, my intention is not war between you and me. I am a hobby philosopher, and I am only searching for truth.Oh, no I didn't take it that way and I did not intend any animosity - only debate. I only recommended sticking to the issue and not getting into a debate about weather Marxist ideology is used religiously by some people because it would derail the topic of environmentalism.

Just to reiterate: I do not believe that the interests of our rulers and the interests of working class people are the same and the experience of workers in the US over the last 30 years shows this to be true. While US economic power grew in that time, it did so at the expense of the working class. Living standards have declined and social services have been cut to the bone. Far from the stereotypes of SUV driving white Americans that are shown on TV and promoted by politicians, most people have become more in debt and work more hours for less compared to Japanese or European workers.

Second, I don't think anyone here is arguing that environmental problems will disappear with the end of capitalism or that resources are infinite. My argument is that working class people, if they ran society collectively would have an interest in sustainability because there would be no short term gain that outweighs the long-term benefits of sustainability.

Private property and the profit motive are a guarantee for environmental destruction. For example, the IMF required that Brazil landowners use land for productive purposes and this essentially ensured that only land developers and loggers would buy most rain-Forrest land. Fishing or mining companies are not tied to one lake or piece of land - it is in their economic interest to get every last drop of resources from a mine or lake and then quickly move on to a less depleted one.

If we have any hope of developing in a sustainable way, then capitalism must be challenged and taken out. A democratic and collective way of organizing society, in my view would have more of an interest having - for example - fishing operations that could be set up and then geared to not destroying the ecosystem and therefore the original fishing operation as well. We would not be interested in creating urban sprawl (which make sense in a profit-system because tracts of land can be bought cheep and crammed with cookie-cutter homes with low-labor costs). It would not make sense in such a situation for California rice to be feeding China or Haiti or even transporting most of our food over 3,000 of land inside the current US.

So while problems will not be solved, a collective and democratic society will have a much better chance of attempting to solve our collective problems.