John Bellamy Foster, the keynote speaker at the upcoming - to be held in Melbourne University and Victoria Trades Hall on September 30-October 3, 2011 - is the co-author (with Fred Magdoff) of a newly published book entitled What every environmentalist needs to know about capitalism.
Foster is a renowned US economist and ecologist, editor and author of The Ecological Rift, The Ecological Revolution, The Great Financial Crisis (with Fred Magdoff); Marx鈥檚 Ecology; Ecology Against Capitalism; and The Vulnerable Planet.
"The economic system that dominates nearly all corners of the world is capitalism" Foster and Magdoff write. "For most of us, capitalism is so much a part of our lives that it is invisible, like the air we breathe. We are as oblivious of it as fish are oblivious of the water in which they swim. It is capitalism鈥檚 ethic, outlook, and internal values that we assimilate and acculturate to as we grow up. Unconsciously, we learn that greed, exploitation of laborers, and competition (among people, businesses, countries) are not only acceptable but are actually good for society because they help to make our economy function 'efficiently'."
Most of us are so enmeshed in capitalism that we are barely aware of this. Certainly, those in the climate change movement today who repeat the mantra that a "market solution" is the best response possible to climate change, seem to have a very poor understanding of how capitalism works.
This new book expands, in the context of the global challenge of climate change, on the critical reality that capitalism is a social-economic system a chronically driven by the ruthless pursuit of capital accumulation.
It quotes the late Marxist economist Paul M. Sweezy that as such it is a system "that is forever changing, adopting new and discarding old methods of production and distribution, opening up new territories, subjecting to its purposes societies too weak to protect themselves."
"Caught up in this process of restless innovation and expansion, the system rides roughshod over even its own beneficiaries if they get in its way or fall by the roadside. As far as the natural environment is concerned, capitalism perceives it not as something to be cherished and enjoyed but as a means to the paramount ends of profit-making and still more capital accumulation."
The "moving and motivating force of capitalism", explain Foster and Magdoff, "is the never-ending quest for profits and accumulation" and "because of competition, companies are impelled continually to increase sales and to try to gain market share".
Capitalism鈥檚 champions claim that the egoism that drives the system makes it the most efficient and fair system possible. But this is manifestly untrue, Foster and Magdoff argue.
"Capitalism is unplanned and anarchic, at one point resembling a drifting boat, at another a runaway train. Social regulations and controls are at a minimum. Inevitably, many unintended consequences occur in the production and distribution of goods and services. Mainstream economists call these 'externalities'; to them, they are side effects of an otherwise rational and socially benign system. They include pollution of water, air, and soil, as well as disparities of wealth, significant periods of high unemployment, and failure to meet the basic needs of all people. They occur because they are excluded from the structure of economic costs and profits of the system, although they represent social and environmental costs..."
Foster and Magdoff looks at the coal industry in the US as an example:
"Let鈥檚 take the example of coal to illustrate the significance of externalities. Coal is the cheapest fossil fuel when expressed as dollars per amount of energy obtained鈥攖he cost to electric generating plants in mid-2010 was less than $3 per million BTU for coal versus around $5 for natural gas and $16 for oil. In 2007 about 70 percent of the electricity generated by fossil fuels in the United States came from coal (coal generates about half of the electricity from all sources, including nuclear, hydro, etc.). However, the cost paid for coal does not include the ecological damage done when mining the coal (how could you even begin to calculate the cost of destroying a mountaintop and filling in the valleys?), the cost of lives lost in mining and of health effects (especially black lung disease) later in life, the cost of the mercury pollution of our lakes and the ocean鈥攖he cost of the contamination of fish and humans by that mercury, the greater acidity of the oceans, runoff from waste coal storage, the global warming effects of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere and methane released during mining, and so on. Though electric companies can be forced to shoulder some direct pollution costs (such as sulfur removal from coal smoke), the price paid in money for generating electricity from coal can never come anywhere near the full cost of the damage done to the earth and its inhabitants."
All this applies very well to Australia, another coal-addicted capitalist economy.
The publisher Monthly Review Press has given permission to , one of the cosponsors of the conference, to publish "The growth imperative of capitalism", a chapter in this new book.
Click read this chapter.
"World At A Crossroads", the second Climate Change-Social Change conference to be held in Australia (the first was held in Sydney in 2008) aims to contribute towards understanding and collective action, in Australia and internationally, to urgently address the climate and social emergencies that we must overcome if humanity and the planet are to not only survive, but thrive.
Three days of feature talks, panel discussions and more than 20 workshops will discuss climate change, social change and the inter91自拍论坛 of the movements for pro-people and pro-ecological sustainability solutions for a world in crisis.
Themes and topics will include:
Capitalism, socialism and ecology 鈼 People鈥檚 power and democracy 鈼 The climate debt and the Global South 鈼 Refugees, racism and internationalism 鈼 Food security and survival 鈼 Building movements that can stop climate change 鈼 The global nuclear threat 鈼 Indigenous resistance, land and sovereignty 鈼 Feminism and climate change 鈼 Imperialism, war and oil 鈼 The market Vs social ownership 鈼 The dirty record of carbon trading 鈼 Population and the planet 鈼 Agribusiness and sustainable alternatives 鈼 The movement against coal seam gas mining
The conference is organised by 91自拍论坛 Weekly, Resistance and the Socialist Alliance. It is sponsored by the Office of Environmental Programs, Melbourne University and cosponsored by Action Aid International, Friends of the Earth (Melbourne), Monthly Review, Links Journal for Socialist Renewal, Labor Party Pakistan (LPP), Sydney University Political Economy Society, Socialist Party of Malaysia (PSM), Partido Lakas ng Masa (PLM 鈥 Philippines), Australia-Asia Worker Links, Left Unity Adelaide, Climate Emergency Action Network (CLEAN), Community Radio 3CR, Transform Asia and .
Click to register for the "World At A Crossroads" conference or to find out more about it.
Below: Some of the speakers at the conference: