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Green Capitalism: The God That Failed
This book deals with the prime threat to human life on earth: the tendency of global capitalist economic development to develop us to death, to drive us off the cliff to ecological collapse. It begins with a review of the origins of this economic dynamic in the transition to capitalism in England and Europe and with an analysis of the ecological implications of capitalist economics as revealed in the work of its founding theorist Adam Smith. I argue that, once installed, the requirements of reproduction under capitalism – the pressure of competition, the imperative need to innovate and develop the forces of production to beat the competition, the need to constantly grow production and expand the market and so on, induced an expansive logic that has driven economic development, and now overdevelopment, down to our day.
In successive chapters I explicate and criticize the two leading mainstream approaches to dealing with the ecological consequences of this overdevelopmental dynamic – décroisance or “degrowth,” and “green capitalism”. I show that the theorists and proponents of no-growth or de-growth like Herman Daly or Tim Jackson are correct in arguing that infinite economic growth is not possible on a finite planet but that they’re wrong to imagine that capitalism can be refashioned as a kind of “steady state” economy, let alone actually “degrow” without provoking economic collapse. There are further problems with this model, which I also investigate. I show that the theorists and proponents of “green capitalism” such as Paul Hawkin, Lester Brown and Frances Cairncross are wrong to think that tech miracles, “dematerialization,” new efficiencies, recycling and the like will permit us to growth the global economy more or less forever without consuming and polluting ourselves to death. I show that while we’re all better off with organic groceries, energy-efficient lightbulbs and appliances, recycling and the like, such developments do not fundamentally alter the eco-suicidal tendencies of capitalist development because infinite growth, even green growth, is just not possible on a finite planet.
In the final chapters I argue that since capitalism can only drive us to ecological collapse, we have no choice but to try to cashier this system and replace it with an entirely different economy and mode of life based on minimizing not maximizing resource consumption, based on public ownership of most, though not all of the economy, on large-scale economic planning and international coordination, and on a global “contraction and convergence” between the North and the South around a lower but hopefully satisfactory level of material consumption for all the world’s peoples. Whether we can pull off such a transition is another question. We may very well fail to overthrow capitalism and replace it with a viable alternative. That may be our fate. But around the world, in thousands of locations, people are organizing and fighting against corporate power, against land grabs, against extreme extraction, against the incessant commodification of our lives. Here and there, as in Greece and China, ruling classes are on the defensive. All these fights have a common demand: bottom-up democracy, popular power. In this lies our best hope. This little book is intended as more ammunition for that fight.
About the author
Richard Smith has worked as a sailboat rigger, African expedition leader, carpenter-builder and briefly as a lecturer in history. He wrote his UCLA History Ph.D. thesis on the contradictions of market reform in China’s transition to capitalism (1989). He held postdoctoral appointments at the East-West Center in Honolulu and at Rutgers University New Brunswick and has published articles on the Chinese revolution, China’s road to capitalism, and capitalist development and China’s environment for Against the Current, New Left Review, the Ecologist, and Monthly Review and other journals. He has published articles on capitalism and the global ecological crisis in the Journal of Ecological Economics, Capitalism Nature Socialism, Real-World Economics Review, Truthout.org, Adbusters, and other media. He is presently completing a book on China’s communist-capitalism and ecological collapse.
Contents
Chapter 1: How Did the Common Good Become a Bad Idea? The Eco-suicidal Economics of Adam Smith
Chapter 2: Beyond Growth or Beyond Capitalism?
Chapter 3: Green Capitalism: The God That Failed
Chapter 4: Climate Crisis, the Deindustrialization Imperative, and the Jobs vs. Environment Dilemma
Chapter 5: Capitalism and the Destruction of Life on Earth: Six Theses on Saving the Humans
In successive chapters I explicate and criticize the two leading mainstream approaches to dealing with the ecological consequences of this overdevelopmental dynamic – décroisance or “degrowth,” and “green capitalism”. I show that the theorists and proponents of no-growth or de-growth like Herman Daly or Tim Jackson are correct in arguing that infinite economic growth is not possible on a finite planet but that they’re wrong to imagine that capitalism can be refashioned as a kind of “steady state” economy, let alone actually “degrow” without provoking economic collapse. There are further problems with this model, which I also investigate. I show that the theorists and proponents of “green capitalism” such as Paul Hawkin, Lester Brown and Frances Cairncross are wrong to think that tech miracles, “dematerialization,” new efficiencies, recycling and the like will permit us to growth the global economy more or less forever without consuming and polluting ourselves to death. I show that while we’re all better off with organic groceries, energy-efficient lightbulbs and appliances, recycling and the like, such developments do not fundamentally alter the eco-suicidal tendencies of capitalist development because infinite growth, even green growth, is just not possible on a finite planet.
In the final chapters I argue that since capitalism can only drive us to ecological collapse, we have no choice but to try to cashier this system and replace it with an entirely different economy and mode of life based on minimizing not maximizing resource consumption, based on public ownership of most, though not all of the economy, on large-scale economic planning and international coordination, and on a global “contraction and convergence” between the North and the South around a lower but hopefully satisfactory level of material consumption for all the world’s peoples. Whether we can pull off such a transition is another question. We may very well fail to overthrow capitalism and replace it with a viable alternative. That may be our fate. But around the world, in thousands of locations, people are organizing and fighting against corporate power, against land grabs, against extreme extraction, against the incessant commodification of our lives. Here and there, as in Greece and China, ruling classes are on the defensive. All these fights have a common demand: bottom-up democracy, popular power. In this lies our best hope. This little book is intended as more ammunition for that fight.
About the author
Richard Smith has worked as a sailboat rigger, African expedition leader, carpenter-builder and briefly as a lecturer in history. He wrote his UCLA History Ph.D. thesis on the contradictions of market reform in China’s transition to capitalism (1989). He held postdoctoral appointments at the East-West Center in Honolulu and at Rutgers University New Brunswick and has published articles on the Chinese revolution, China’s road to capitalism, and capitalist development and China’s environment for Against the Current, New Left Review, the Ecologist, and Monthly Review and other journals. He has published articles on capitalism and the global ecological crisis in the Journal of Ecological Economics, Capitalism Nature Socialism, Real-World Economics Review, Truthout.org, Adbusters, and other media. He is presently completing a book on China’s communist-capitalism and ecological collapse.
Contents
Chapter 1: How Did the Common Good Become a Bad Idea? The Eco-suicidal Economics of Adam Smith
Chapter 2: Beyond Growth or Beyond Capitalism?
Chapter 3: Green Capitalism: The God That Failed
Chapter 4: Climate Crisis, the Deindustrialization Imperative, and the Jobs vs. Environment Dilemma
Chapter 5: Capitalism and the Destruction of Life on Earth: Six Theses on Saving the Humans
108 pages, ebook
First published March 18, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 8, 2017
A fairly short compilation of five previously published articles. Parts of it come off a bit bombastic and chemophobic, perhaps some is understandable considering the relative shortness of the book and its focus. This nicely lays out the reasons for the systematic failures of a capitalist economy to make the changes necessary to keep carbon levels at reasonable amounts to contain global warming. There have been 2+ decades of high profile international conferences that have failed to see any meaningful curtailing of carbon emissions. There have been numerous well intentioned die-hard ecological business-people that have failed to deliver any meaningful reductions in carbon emission. Why? Smith claims that the failures have to do with the capitalistic free-market system. A business that is genuinely trying to be eco-friendly cannot operate in a competitive marketplace, since that necessarily involves higher costs that only very few would be willing to pay. He also highlights that the drastic reduction in carbon emissions required makes it impossible to 'buy' our way to efficiency since all the new stuff created would have a huge carbon footprint. Thus, the solution is to have fixed limits on resources that are available to use in a steady-state. Coincidentally, the economy is coupled to material usage meaning a reduction or cap on material inputs necessarily leads to a reduced economic growth, or even de-growth. The problem here is that a capitalist economy does not function successfully in a no-growth or de-growth regime. This is the reason for no state taking on the task of climate change in any way that is relevant to prevent it, since it necessairly means bringing on a recession. The solution proposed is to socialize the large companies so that the public interest, having the planet remain habitable by humans in the coming decades/centuries, is considered in business operations, and the losses because of this can also be taken on by society.
This is one of the few places where I have actually seen solutions to the problem proposed, instead of just listing the myriad of problems with the status-quo. The idea of public ownership of the industries is appealing and very difficult to refute, if preserving a habitable planet is of interest. There are a few questions I have about the implementation Smith proposes for the democratized socialism. Smith seems to make the same mistake as so many other economists: assuming the people are and behave logically (spoiler: they don't). With this consideration, it seems like the same problem of overproduction and consumption could 'democratically' appear within the framework proposed if the industries and their limits are democratically determined.
Overall this is a great read that questions something that is taken as an axiom: free-market capitalist economies work best. 'Best' is of course qualitative and it seems that it is/has proven incapable of realistically incorporating externalaties. If maintaining a human habitable planet is a priority, then a free-market capitalist economy is just about the worst option for doing this.
This is one of the few places where I have actually seen solutions to the problem proposed, instead of just listing the myriad of problems with the status-quo. The idea of public ownership of the industries is appealing and very difficult to refute, if preserving a habitable planet is of interest. There are a few questions I have about the implementation Smith proposes for the democratized socialism. Smith seems to make the same mistake as so many other economists: assuming the people are and behave logically (spoiler: they don't). With this consideration, it seems like the same problem of overproduction and consumption could 'democratically' appear within the framework proposed if the industries and their limits are democratically determined.
Overall this is a great read that questions something that is taken as an axiom: free-market capitalist economies work best. 'Best' is of course qualitative and it seems that it is/has proven incapable of realistically incorporating externalaties. If maintaining a human habitable planet is a priority, then a free-market capitalist economy is just about the worst option for doing this.
May 10, 2019
Through and accessible mapping of the inherent contradictions between capitalism and sane environmental policies.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews