The central planning that existed in the Soviet Union had the similar horrific incentives as does market allocation (workers don’t want to submit themselves to the rule of a class of coordinators, they want to control their own work and participate in managerial tasks and the implementation of innovations in their industry). I don’t think any of us are talking about that economy – which wasn’t economic democracy, but instead the rule by what I’d call a coordinator class of planners, party bosses, and intellectuals – when we say we want a democratic and planned economy.

Planning in the future must necessarily be participatory, bottom up, federated, democratic/self-managed, and solidaristic – none of which existed in the Soviet Union.

In terms of spurring innovations forward, again this is just the simple dynamic that humans are naturally curious creatures, and we will spread good ideas when we see them. It has nothing to do with markets. Patents, trademarks, trade secrets, copyrights, etc… all prevent good technology from being used by the people. They prevent popular initiatives aimed at innovation (since we don’t have access to the sum of all human knowledge) and instead capitalists are allowed to monopolize the profits while coordinator class people are allowed to monopolize the empowering work of developing innovations.

I second the stuff Luis said as well.

Best, Brian Kelly

There are lots of advocates for capitalism and profits (funny, you’d think we wouldn’t need laws to protect shareholder profits if that’s what’s supposed to be the self-interest that drives the whole system.). There are some advocates for justice who say that we need to balance the growth of profits with the impact they have on people. And then there are the advocates for justice who say that no human death, no cancer cluster, no lost ecosystem is justifiable for profit. The latter is by far the smallest category, and typically has the smallest voice.

If our movement is to succeed, we need to place the megaphone directly in front of those who speak with the later voice and say, “the system needs to conform to the moral stance these people have taken, not the other way around.”

Standing with Tuvalu, with the people who live below mountaintop removal sites, with the folks who live next to major ports and shipping facilities is not an extreme position or an ineffective one. We’re not pretending to write the roadmap for the future, we are trying to re-negotiate the terms of ‘acceptable cost’.

To jump in I wanted to respond to the spirit of Aaron’s post, that there’s something about the ineffectiveness of these global summits and conferences of world leaders that doesn’t seem accidental and seems more deeply rooted in our society. Fundamentally I think that’s the point that Julianna is missing, a truly green capitalism is NOT POSSIBLE. It’s not like “oh that’d be nice too, but we’ve got this more urgent thing right now. Once we stop global warming we can work on getting rid of capitalism.”

Capitalism is a system that necessarily grows based on short term gains. Capitalism isn’t greed but it is necessarily profit driven and profit is necessarily short term. It seems weird that all these industry folks can’t seem to see beyond the next 20 years, but that’s because how profit works. Profit is not about looking ahead, it’s about looking at the man next to you in the race and just beating him in at this moment. If companies did R&D for the future on the planetary scale they’d be left in the dust by other companies that feed millions coca-cola by blowing up mountains.

But this still seems strange, why don’t we just get all the capitalist in a room (one in a charming place with a little mermaid statue … like Copehnagen!) and say “look we’re all going to be screwed if we don’t work together so let’s control this beast called capitalism. If we control it we can use its productive power [and it sure does have a whole lot Julianna is right google makes my life awesome.]and do things right.” But capitalism is uncontrollable, period. Capitalism is based on dividing people from their labor, from their neighbor and from themselves to do all that producing. These productive forces combine into this crazy thing called “The Market” to which even those “in control” like Alan Greenspan are mercy to its moodswings, and it’s pretty bi-polar. The process of making all that productive force work in a sane, controllable manner IS the process of overcoming capitalism. That’s why we’re against capitalism, so we can live in a sane society that can respond in a meaningful way to things like climate change. So capitalism hasn’t just “gotten out of hand” it is out of hand.

I’ll admit though Julianna that we can’t afford to say “COP15 is full of capitalism pigs, SHUT IT DOWN!” Saying “end capitalism before we solve climate change” is just as insane as saying “Solve climate change before we end capitalism.” We need to do what we can through reform and global agreements that maintain capitalist economy, but we also need to be actively working to end it. They are not mutually exclusive. We need to promote the alternatives that are already growing around the world, and we need to build a movement to spread and defend those alternatives, all at the same time as putting people to work with green jobs and winning strong emission standards. In order to follow both projects we need to PROMOTE not downplay the explicit critique of capitalism within the climate movement. Saying “oo don’t mention capitalism yet” will end in this runaway train called capitalism derailing somewhere on a much hotter planet.

Glad this conversation is going on. Keep up the good work!
-Luis

Juliana, I don’t really want to jump into this conversation but wanted to push back against the “tragedy of the commons” theory that has some how become the environment movement’s justification for the need of national or international solutions.

This years winner of the noble prize for economics has been working on proving that acceptance of the “tragedy of the commons theory” is, in itself, the tragedy of the last 50 years.

here is a quote of her’s

International donors and nongovernmental organizations, as well as national governments and charities, have often acted, under the banner of environmental conservation, in a way that has unwittingly destroyed the very social capital — shared relationship, norms, knowledge and understanding — that has been used by resource users to sustain the productivity of natural capital over the ages. The effort to preserve biodiversity should not lead to the destruction of institutional diversity. . . . These institutions are most in jeopardy when central government officials assume that they do not exist (or are not effective) simply because the government has not put them in place.

Check out Elinor Ostrom and more of her work.

People when left to their own devices come up with creative solutions that actually work and are based in cooperation with the natural systems that they depend upon. Can governments work to build social capitol and the ground for innovative solutions instead of international false solutions?

by the way I love you all

Yes, people make those discoveries (not markets). But my point is that if we want to get these innovations out to the public at the scale necessary to avert climate disaster, markets are the best tool I know of to do that in time.

Here’s the problem – we’re in a world that has global problems that transcend borders and transcend countries’ capacities to deal with them (carbon emissions, fisheries collapse, water shortages, etc). We won’t be able to solve them with just local solutions because that doesn’t avoid the tragedy of the commons and doesn’t change existing transnational operations. This means we need to deal with this on a global scale. So yes, we absolutely need to reform macroeconomic systems.

But economic transactions alone do not kill social interactions. The two can coexist.

Maybe we’re splitting hairs here. I don’t think any of us think capitalism is going to be gone tomorrow. But saying we’re against capitalism isn’t moral absolutism. I’m against capitalism because its bad. Because it stifles innovation and discovery. Capitalism kills millions upon millions of people. It is a death system.

To say that capitalism is the cause of human innovation and discovery is to do a tremendous injustice to the ingenuity of the human spirit – a spirit which cannot be beaten down even under the most perverse of economic systems.

But in terms of capitalism’s EFFECT on that human spirit, well, it commodifies all innovation and discover. Enter patents, copyrights, trademarks, borders, lack of access to internet and communication, and the like. Enter TRADE SECRETS. The public doesn’t have access to the sum of all knowledge because rich, greedy capitalist owners STEAL the knowledge that was created by the people and claim it as their own.

I think its important to properly place human discovery where it belongs: WITH PEOPLE. Capitalism doesn’t cause discovery – it constantly stops it. Markets don’t help human interaction – they instill antisocial values in people who are otherwise cooperative and sharing. My friend Michael Albert who runs ZNet and co-developed the participatory economic model of post-capitalist economics has this to say, succinctly, about markets: “Markets aren’t a little bad, or even just very bad in some contexts. Instead, in all contexts, markets instill anti-social motivations in buyers and sellers, misprice items that are exchanged, misdirect aims regarding what to produce in what quantities and by what means, mis-remunerate producers, introduce class division and class rule, and embody an imperial logic that spreads itself throughout [all] economic life.”

You say you agree we need widespread economic and social transformation. Well then let’s stop defending a system that has these anti-human values, define what we DO WANT, and be pragmatic about linking our need for short term reforms with our desire for long-term revolution.

Brian Kelly

with respects, i really need to check out of this conversation and others it has spurred, and much else astride. finals and bruised ribs and such.

since you mentioned seattle, here’s a thought experiment about another protest dear to my heart. what would the world be like today if the following obtained:

1) we knew everything about the bush administration’s actions from Nov. 2000 – 2.16.03, that we now know, but we knew it all and understood it well before 2.16.03;

2) on 2.17.03, magically, all the productive capacity and industrial infrastructure in the united states that is currently devoted to war-making was instantly converted to meeting mitigation and adaptation needs on climate;

3) on 2.18.03, again magically, the kinds of partnerships (like blue-green’s with mondragon) that depend upon cooperation (such as those internal to exxon – and to underscore the point, don’t think for a second toyota does not have a five year plan) were extensive throughout all of the communities which were no longer dependent on the war system for jobs;

4) on 2.19.03, maybe not so magically but for the corporate media, everyone out on the streets earlier was creating action plans around how to implement, at the community level, the implications of the IPCC Third Assessment Report;

5) on 2.20.03, almost impossible to even imagine without laughing but work with me here, that instead of trying to control the debt (at home and broad) that conflict creates, and instead of running up the systemic risk that the dismantling of capital controls in the 1990s made possible over the past decade, the banks and insurers and investors and everyone else genuine worried about rate of return and long-term yield were to say “you know what, there’s this whole conversation around national industrial policy happening on the ground, maybe the only thing we are good for is facilitating how folks want to manufacture the things we really need. let’s let them do that, and heal from the ravages of the past century that we have been responsible for, more than once.”

fantastic, no? but let me ask everyone on this thread and everyone reading it: suppose all that happened in a matter of days. at time of writing, it is not yet lunchtime in copenhagen. suppose all that happened.

would we be then talking at lunchtime, around our own kitchen tables, about growth in markets, or how to downshift them? what would we be talking about contracting? who would we talking about having the mechanisms necessary to adapt to climatic changes?

if someone were to say, “what would the world be like if the U.S. spent more than the rest of the world combined to build (now) useless, wasteful, dangerous stuff like bunker-busting nukes and Boeing-made airplanes to drop them from?” would we laugh at the very idea? would we cringe at it being a possible reality? would we be thankful that such possibility is, like feudalism, a stage in social evolution that we have progressed beyond?

would we eat?

look, i’m no more a marxist that i am a mckibbenist, ted nordhausist, pachuri-ist, or obamaist. the only thing that i care about is what they get right. here in this world, here and now. i have no illusions about any of this, and i deeply respect the work that you for one, julia, have been doing. the only thing i care about is getting it right.

are we so late in the day that we cannot be sure?