Current Conditions

The previous post got long enough. I am continuing here.

I guess I have three objections to McNally's book, as far as I have read. It may turn around, and I may eat my words.

1) There is the corny line about "allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good." I don't like the line, because it is often used to justify actions that are inadequate or flat out not good. However, McNally seems to find fault in pretty much every social organization. Modern history is the history of people struggling to improve their lives. They have not utterly failed. There have been comparative successes. We in the US are not living in the 19th century, when people worked 14 hours a day for less than living wages. There are people -- many people -- living in that kind of misery in the world, and we need to work to end exploitation everywhere. And we may get pushed back to that kind of life, as the world economy and ecology collapses. But we should admit there has been some success and there is the possibility of more success. Despair is not a good basis for action.

2) McNally does not seem aware of how fragile the world economy is, at least according to many capitalist economists. The governments of Europe and the US are making serious mistakes in trying to cope with the current recession/depression. Much of the world depends on the US market, which is contracting. Attempts to impose austerity -- in Europe especially -- have led to strikes and mass demonstrations and may lead to revolution in some countries. If austerity succeeds, then the world will sink deeper into recession/depression, since modern western economies are dependent on consumer spending. I think all these problems are fixable, but not if the current morons remain in power.

3) The world is facing huge problems, which I mentioned in my previous post: global warming, depletion of resources, degradation of land and water. Capitalism, historically, has relied on expropriation of resources -- the flood of New World silver that came into Europe after 1492 and helped fund the rise of capitalism; land enclosure in England, the first capitalist power; the conquest of Africa and Asia, which provided Europe with resources and markets... And capitalism has always relied on competition and growth. Competition means several companies are trying to fill the needs of a single market, which means overproduction and waste. This supposed to be efficient. It isn't. It leads to periodic crashes due to overproduction, and it means a lot of stuff is thrown away, because it isn't needed. The economist Schumpeter called this "creative destruction." It might as well be called simple destruction.

In order to work, capitalism needs to use up a lot of everything. What happens when it has used up most of the world?

What happens when global warming hits hard, when crops fail -- as they are doing now, countries flood or suffer severe droughts? And when we have to change the world entirely in order to survive? Can capitalism -- a system of competition, growth and waste -- survive?