¿Comunismo sin crecimiento?

by Wolfgang Harich

Considerado precursor del ecosocialismo y de las teorías del decrecimiento, el filósofo y periodista de la RDA Wolfgang Harich nadó a contracorriente del pensamiento oficial en los países del Este. Defendió desde el marxismo las tesis del Club de Roma sobre los límites del crecimiento, aunque su propuesta se basaba en plantear un comunismo decrecentista con un Estado fuerte, pues consideraba que la sociedad solo aceptaría restricciones al consumo de bienes mediante mecanismos coercitivos. Ambas corrientes tendieron a converger en las décadas posteriores, siendo la base del ecosocialismo –desde el ámbito más teórico al más activista– que ha llegado a nuestros días: interpretar el desarrollo del capitalismo como una Raubwirtschaft o economía de rapiña continuada y creciente para impulsar la acumulación de capital. Entendidos así, los movimientos sociales a menudo tienen un contenido ecológico al intentar resguardar los recursos naturales fuera de la economía mercantil, y colocarlos bajo control comunitario.

327 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2023

Reviews

[Tadici · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's a series of 6 interviews of Wolfgang Harich, an East-German Marxist philosopher (with a few letters added at the end) all focusing on the inevitable ecological collapse announced by a group of interdisciplinary experts called "The Club of Rome" in 1972 if the world economy failed to drastically change. This group in their project called "The Limits of Growth", for the first time, used a computer simulation to track rate of industrialization, population growth, environmental destruction, undernourishment, and exploitation of resources - and came to the conclusion that an imminent switch to what they called Zero Growth was necessary to avoid the end of the human race.

In these interviews Harich discusses among other things the reaction of the Western and Eastern Marxist parties and intellectuals to the above mentioned report, the class character of "The Club of Rome", and the consequences that have to be drawn in the socialist as well as in the capitalist block.

His conclusions could easily be subsumed under the modern slogan "Socialism or Extinction". His three main points that he stresses are as follows:

1. It is not certain that the communist-socialist world is going to build communism first. It could happen in the West

The argument here being that the West is significantly more industrialized and exploits immensely more resources than the rest of the world and therefore is simultaneously more capable of and necessitated to leave behind capitalism and build communism. Here he also argues that the West had already gotten past the limits of consumption that would guarantee a healthy biosphere for future generations and thus needed to not only stop it's economical growth but shrink it, "De-growth" as it is called today.

2. The up until now held believe of communism - as the gradual dying of the state - had to be called what it is: utopian. The conditions of the "end times" made this - anarchist - part of the communist conception of the future obsolete. In communism there shall be a allocating state which is able to crack down - if need be forever - to achieve a economically growth-less equilibrium in the interest of maintaining the world's biosphere.

Harich breaks with the Marxist conception of communism out of necessity. He argues that in a world that is quickly ballooning in its population, that is (eventually or quickly) using up all non-renewable resources, that is actively destroying the environment in extreme ways, there's no room of Marx's communism of "From each according to their ability. To each according to their needs." These needs might very well exceed the limits of maintaining a livable world for future generations if the rate of industrialization, the size of the population, and the level of the lifestyle of the average human being are not kept in check by a state responsible to keep the world livable.

3. This ascetic "allocator state" is the only one capable - world-wide - to ban the imminent ecology and supply dangers.


These interviews were immensely interesting to read and I don't know where I fully stand with his 3 points but these are very relevant questions that we face in the 21st century. There's many more insightful and interesting points made in this book (like for example a discussion of a symposium of Soviet scientist that at the same time put a big focus on ecology and environmental preservation and the strong negative reaction of the Western Marxists to the report who Harich calls growth fetishists) and it's definitely worth the read (though I doubt it's available in English). Of course these conversations seem naive at points or even basic, as what is only the result of a computer simulation based on 5 criteria has become a reality for us now. This simulation did not even consider global warming in any way and yet their prediction that, if nothing changed, the shit would start hitting the fan globally in the middle of the 21st century is the scientific consensus based of the data available to us.

[Aitirir · Rating 5 out of 5]

Valioso conjunto de entrevistas a Wolfgang Harich, donde, desde una perspectiva comunista,hace suyas las ideas del ecologismo y el decrecimiento.

Defiende la ventaja de la economía planificada, el Estado Socialista y, finalmente, la sociedad comunista, para hacer frente a los problemas de la limitación física de los recursos, cada vez más visible hoy en día.

También destacaría su lealtad tanto al marxismo-leninismo como ideología, como al bloque socialista en su conjunto.

PD: cómo le atiza a Santiago Carrillo en una de las entrevistas