Friday, November 02, 2018











"So, what alternative to capitalism has even a polar bear’s chance of challenging the existential threat of climate change? Communism! The alternative is communism. Or socialism, if you’d like; I prefer the former term, because it refers to a more precise socioeconomic arrangement and thus less prone to (erroneous) conflation with capitalist welfare states that profit immensely from fossil fuel extraction. But both ultimately refer to the same principles, goals and capacity for addressing the problem at hand."

Corey Rennolds is a biological sciences doctoral student.



Views expressed in guest columns are the author’s own.

It’s undeniable at this point that climate change is an extremely serious problem, and it’s progressing much faster than we predicted. We’re also far beyond taking claims at face value that those who deny the reality of climate change — and it is reality — do so for anything other than political reasons, because to admit otherwise would threaten their bottom lines.

Climate change denial is profitable. This will continue to be the case as long as capitalism — the economic order based on extracting surplus value from laborers and allocating it to a minority ruling class — remains the status quo.

It’s not just that capitalism can’t stop or even significantly mitigate climate change; capitalism is the very cause of climate change. We should dare to accuse it of such in clear terms. We should also dare to venture into more intellectually daunting territory: asking what the alternative to capitalism should actually be, and what could happen if we don’t make the change.

So, what alternative to capitalism has even a polar bear’s chance of challenging the existential threat of climate change? Communism! The alternative is communism. Or socialism, if you’d like; I prefer the former term, because it refers to a more precise socioeconomic arrangement and thus less prone to (erroneous) conflation withcapitalist welfare states that profit immensely from fossil fuel extraction. But both ultimately refer to the same principles, goals and capacity for addressing the problem at hand.

Communism — and socialism, to some — is the economic system in which the means of production are owned collectively by workers, as opposed to capitalism, in which the means of production are owned by a few (mostly) dudes. Production under communism is carried out according to the principle “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs,” a phrase made popular by the 19th-century economist Karl Marx.

Under communism, we would grow food to feed the hungry and build housing to shelter the homeless. Under capitalism, we routinely throw away good food while millions of people go hungry and let hundreds of thousands of apartments sit vacant while as many peopleremain homeless.

Capitalism is clearly not meeting our collective need to not be swallowed by the oceans. In communism, we could democratically determine how to address this need directly without considering whether it could be done at a profit.

Democracy, along with common ownership, is one of the key principles of communism. In capitalist society, only a few absurdly wealthy people have real decision-making power; within communism, we all would equally. Communist theorists through history have proposed many ways that democratic arrangement could look like, but all share the trait of mass enfranchisement.

.......

Communism wouldn’t be a panacea for climate change, because we’d still need to make the right decisions collectively. But the alternative is to keep letting just a few guys like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos make those decisions instead.

We’ve already seen what happens when capitalist elites control all the resources. Ask anyone from Puerto Rico how that’s been going. Or the people in Flint, who still don’t have clean water but do have the privilege of paying more than four times annually for their water bills than Nestlé Waters North America, which has been selling bottled water to Flint residents at a profit. Under capitalism, themismanagement and exploitation are endless.

We could wait and see what happens when those resources start to run out; when global agriculture struggles; when more people are displaced from their homes. Millions of climate refugees already know how welcoming capitalist states can be. How will massive corporations such as Amazon, which is rapidly monopolizing pretty much everything and whose workers piss in bottles for fear of punishment, respond when millions are in need and they hold all the cards?

Will they — these multinational entities without constitutions or public accountability, who control sprawling information and surveillance networks, logistics infrastructure and even our food supply — use their resources for the collective good? Or will they bite down, make us fight their wars for them, and then flee when they’ve had enough?

Our situation is dire, but only because we allow it to be. Jeff Bezos doesn’t have superpowers; he and his ilk hold the reins because we all give tacit consent to the economic order that permits them to. We could collectively decide to change that by demanding communism. And we desperately need to, soon. And by soon, I mean now. And by now, I mean yesterday. Because the water is getting higher today.

Corey Rennolds is a biological sciences doctoral student. He can be reached at cwrennolds@gmail.com.


Recently began perusing the U Maryland website (Diamond Back) while following the ridiculous trials of of football coach Maryland DJ Durkin

HFS. 

The student body that Tail Gunner Dick and I knew in the way-back would have,  after shooting atropine into individual chests, met at the Town Hall. or Varsity Grill, and reacted with extreme prejudice.  The University would have expelled Mr Rennolds for inciting to riot.

I am not making this up.


8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Proof that one can write a lot of erudite stuff and *STILL* be an emotionally plagued asshole.

Anonymous said...

It is obvious that the book educated...wellll....indoctrinated Corey Rennolds has never been to a Soviet run city before the Wall came down. The air was so dirty and acidic, even the curbs along the sidewalks were dissolving into rubble, and anything made of metal was corroded beyond recognition. When our exchange students from the former Soviet satellites arrived here, they cried, having never seen green grass and leafed-out trees. I visited one of them shortly after the wall came down, and every living thing that was supposed to be green was a jaundiced yellow or dead. Same on a journey to Berlin before the wall came down, the intervening countryside in East Germany run down and peeling at the edges, and the contrast between East and West Berlin was staggering.
Mr. Rennolds is a blithering, parochial idiot espousing concepts that have been tried and failed for at least 400 years.
No doubt if put in charge, he will exempt himself from eschewing the fruits of the industrial age, while condemning us to grub on the collective farm with sticks or maybe oxen, if he's feeling generous.
Side note to Rodge - I learned at the Town Hall that a beer pitcher can be a deadly weapon. Confronted with this jerk back in the day, we'd have each emptied a pitcher, then made the Charge of the Beer Pitchers a historical event. That's prolly why beer pitchers are not heavy glass anymore, just cheesy light plastic, which imparts an off-taste to the beer. Some things were better "back in the day".
Lt. Col. Gen. Tailgunner dick

Anonymous said...

If Mr. Reynolds believes what he writes regarding climate change he should cease polluting us with his carbon dioxide output. He could arrange to compost himself next to a tree, and finally be a benefit to society..

Billll said...

For as good an example as any, search Aral Sea, images.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=aral+sea+images&atb=v111-2_h&ia=images

Rodger the Real King of France said...

Dick — remember the two far sisters that waited at TH? Loved them.

Anonymous said...

Rodge, I vaguely remember a couple of female waitresses, but the term "far sisters" is a blank for me. I do remember shuffleboard there and the stale beer smell at the "Vous", and "Cyclops" at the White Tavern, who had one eye looking right at you while the other looked at the ceiling. Yelling "Hey Cy, gimme three deathballs, mustard" at some wee hour of the morning was the drill after an evening of partying and there was nothing else to do, because all the girls were safely locked down in their dorms. Deathballs were amazingly good!
Lt. Col. Gen. Tailgunner dick

dick said...

Correction - Cy worked at the Little Tavern (Club LT), not White Tavern. That'd be raciss.
Lt. Col. Gen. Tailgunner dick

capt fast said...

listening to the Trumpster on election eve.
wondering about proponents of cooling the warming climate and how we should risk everything possible to prevent that warming. the latest word is to prevent Baltimore from sinking beneath the tide. I wonder if they are trying to convince me to join their cause, because threatening to stop Baltimore's sinking below the waves is not making it for me.
Trump is having a ball in Missouri.
looking forward to election results tomorrow with an attitude adjusted with some legal pharmaceuticals but no alcohol at all. no worries, voted the same day my mail in ballot showed up in the mail box.
No matter what, if you are legally registered to vote, then JUST DO IT!

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