Tony Blair’s speeches for example, are predictably full of
such glop composed of vague generalities as well as a healthy dollop of
quasi-religious platitudes and even medical metaphors would you believe
(I have documented them at length elsewhere).
To add to our litany of woes, we now have what appears to be the
ultimate apocalyptical disaster on hand, climate meltdown. Is there no
end? Apparently not for if we thought that producing political/economic
alternatives to capitalism is difficult enough, averting climate change
requires us to do what we should done decades ago and perhaps, without
be overly apocalyptic myself, it may already be too late to avert.
But there again, it may not and this presents the capitalist class with
a convenient ‘out’, for on the one hand they can use climate chaos as a
convenient scapegoat to further repress our diminishing standards of
living as well as justifying their ongoing assault on the planet’s
people, all in the name of saving us from ourselves. For along with the
ficticious ‘resource wars’ we have once again the ‘over-population
crisis’, a ‘crisis’ confined conveniently to poor people of colour in
far-off (and not so far-off) lands.
And if you think I exaggerate, just look at the slew of ‘green’
programmes on offer on TV, radio and in print, all telling us to
tighten our belts but continue to consume but consume in a ‘green’
fashion. It’s the ultimate in eating your planet and keeping it (as
long as it’s us who do the keeping)!
Of course, nowhere will you see anything resembling an alternative to
the present economic free-for-all. So for example, we are told that we
have to reduce ‘our’ use of packaging but can you imagine going into
your local supermarket, buying a chicken and ripping it from its
plastic packaging and telling the checkout person that all you need is
the chicken? Chaos would reign for the packaging not only has the price
on it but also the bar code needed to track the unfortunate chicken’s
‘progress’ from factory to toilet bowl. I suppose you could do it
aprés
the cash register, but if anyone does attempt to do this, I’d be
interested to know what happens. But in any case, it still doesn’t
solve the problem of the useless production of plastic packaging made
from, you guessed it, petroleum products.
To add insult to
injury, in an effort to shift the onus from manufacturer to consumer,
some local councils are now experimenting with charging consumers per
bin of garbage whilst others now want to fine the hapless consumer for
‘mis-binning’ (a new word for the dictionary) the crapola, that is to
say, putting plastic in the bin reserved for paper or whatever! Yet
there is no national standard for disposing of waste, thus my local
council (Lambeth) only allows me to ‘recycle’ particular kinds of
plastic, the rest goes into the landfill and it has no means of
recycling clothing, ideal for paper making (unless of course it’s made
of plastic, sorry synthetic fibres, then it too, goes into the landfill
or up the chimney flu). Other councils have different ‘standards’ for
waste disposal.
Contrast this approach with a story I saw the other day on Cuba which
has just completed the entire switchover from incandescent light bulbs
to low power, fluorescent versions. Overnight, they just stopped
selling the old, energy intensive bulbs (invented well over 100 years
ago and basically unchanged since then) and replaced them with the new
low consumption version (not to mention the fact that they last about
ten times longer). Can you imagine this happening under free-for-all
capitalism? Dream on.
While we’re on the subject of Cuba, it has also completed a shift to
the organic production of vegetables, pesticide-free (they cost too
much) and has created a national education project to assist in the
transformation to sustainable, small-scale agriculture. Again, imagine
the howls from big agri-business if such an approach was to be mandated
by what passes for government.
Even the BBC, in its late night news programme last night (BBC 2
‘Newsnight’, 18/1/07) devoted time to actually raising the issue of
whether capitalism was capable of dealing with these issues at a
fundamental level, the consensus being a resounding NO. Of course
nobody mentioned the dreaded word Socialism, preferring instead to
skate around the issue of an alternative. But of course the fact that
capitalism is the root cause of our current situation was inescapable,
based as it is on endless ‘growth’, that is to say, persuading people
to buy products they don’t need in order to make a profit.
At one point the BBC reporter even raised the issue of what to do about
the future of giant multinational corporations but again, the
alternative was unthinkable and unmentionable, instead the viewer was
left swinging in the wind with the programme suggesting that it was
down to us to change our ‘life-style’.
The paradox of not only reducing our consumption but also the kinds of
products we consume without transforming the economic nature of
production was hinted at but again, no alternative was offered.
Instead, a CEO of a leading soft drinks company talked of “responsible
capitalism” and of measuring his company’s “carbon footprint” but as
there was no guest on the programme to challenge his assertion about
the inherent contradiction of a ‘responsible capitalism’ and to offer a
viable alternative, one can only guess at the conclusions the viewer
came to but they are not too difficult to imagine.
Yet even the fact that the BBC, mouthpiece for the government, has been
forced to at least acknowledge the crisis that faces us, reveals that
many millions of people in the UK and elsewhere are, at the very least
deeply perturbed by the situation, for in spite of their illusory
wealth, they are afflicted with a vast array of dis-eases from
addictions of all kinds, psychological disorders as well as the more
obvious physical effects, obesity, heart disease and so on. In other
words, as a society we are sick, unhappy and alienated and all is the
product of the capitalist way of death.
What amazes me is the fact that the left in the totally misnamed
developed world has failed to grasp Marx’s essential observation about
the nature of capitalism,
alienation,
and to develop an alternative based upon the creation of a socialism of
modesty and sharing, in a word, community, where the development of our
spiritual life is central to the creation of a society in harmony with
the planet that is our (only) home.
‘Could
it be that we are unwittingly precipitating another punctuation that
will alter the environment to suit our successors?’ — James Lovelock,
The Ages of Gaea
Which brings me on to to my pet interest, the concept of Gaea, named
after the ancient Eygptian goddess of the Earth, the Earth Mother,
giver of life, mother of all gods of the ancient world. Derided when
James Lovelock first proposed the notion over thirty years ago, the
concept is now generally accepted as a coherent model for explaining
the fact that life is the regulator of all chemical and geophysical
processes, including the nitrogen and carbon dioxide cycles, in other
words, the climate, even down to being central to locking surplus
carbon into rocks. The entire process we call the biosphere is one,
single, infinitely complex, interlocking ‘organism’.
We are therefore, merely one expression of this complex process, albeit
apparently its most complex one, but as the venerable Frederick Engels
so eloquently stated,
“…we have the certainty that matter remains eternally the same in all
its transformations, that none of its attributes can ever be lost, and
therefore, also, that with the same iron necessity that it will
exterminate on the earth its highest creation, the thinking mind, it
must somewhere else and at another time again produce it”. —
Frederick Engels, from the introduction to ‘The Dialectics of Nature’, 1883.
All very well, but I would rather we try and rescue what we have right now and before it’s too late.
It is perhaps the realisation of this fundamental reality that is
finally sinking in to our addicted and damaged lives that will finally
move our tired and sorry arses and get rid of the bastards who are
destroying our once beautiful planet.
Writings 
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