OMNI
US CAPITALISM
NEWSLETTER #23, January 31, 2021.
Compiled by
Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace, Justice, and Ecology.
What’s at stake:
We seek an economic system for all people and species that enables
affirmative government and supports domestic and international peace, economic
and social justice, human rights, democracy, and protects and enhances the
earth and species. [For more see What’s at stake in Newsletter
#18.]
Contents: US Capitalism Newsletter #23, Jan. 31, 2021
Foster, et
al. The
Ecological Rift
Alperovitz, Governing for Sustainability
Weissman,
Citizens United, Gov Contractors, Elections
Wilkin and
Martin, Sustainable Parenting, Teaching
Caring v. Capitalism
Lowy, A Radical Alternative to Capitalist
Catastrophe
Wittner, The US Is #1 in ?? Consequences of Capitalism
Newsletter #22 http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2015/04/us-capitalism-newsletter-22.html
TEXTS
The huge ecological rift
driven between human beings and nature by capitalism
The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the
Earth
by John
Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark and Richard York. MONTHLY REVIEW: AN INDEPENDENT SOCIALIST MAGAZINE, 2011.
Humanity in the twenty-first
century is facing what might be described as its ultimate environmental
catastrophe: the destruction of the climate that has nurtured human
civilization and with it the basis of life on earth as we know it. All
ecosystems on the planet are now in decline. Enormous rifts have been driven
through the delicate fabric of the biosphere. The economy and the earth are
headed for a fateful collision—if we don’t alter course.
In The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth, environmental
sociologists John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York offer a radical
assessment of both the problem and the solution. They argue that the source
of our ecological crisis lies in the paradox of wealth in capitalist society,
which expands individual riches at the expense of public wealth, including the
wealth of nature. In the process, a huge ecological rift is driven between
human beings and nature, undermining the conditions of sustainable existence:
a rift in the metabolic relation between humanity and nature that is
irreparable within capitalist society, since integral to its very laws of
motion.
Critically examining the
sanguine arguments of mainstream economists and technologists, Foster, Clark,
and York insist instead that fundamental changes in social relations must occur
if the ecological (and social) problems presently facing us are to be
transcended. Their analysis relies on the development of a deep dialectical
naturalism concerned with issues of ecology and evolution and their interaction
with the economy. Importantly, they offer reasons for revolutionary hope in
moving beyond the regime of capital and toward a society of sustainable human
development.
Praise for the book:
This book is desperately
needed, because it ends any illusion that we can solve our pressing
environmental crises within the same system that created them. With tweaking
the system—using incremental market-based strategies—off the table, we can put
our efforts into genuine, lasting solutions.
—Annie Leonard, author and host, Story of Stuff
Marx’s concept of ‘metabolic
rift’ in the circulation of soil nutrients between countryside and town is
generalized by Foster, Clark, and York to an insightful Marxist analysis of the
current ecological rift between modern capitalism and the ecosystem. It is a
scholarly, well-referenced, and important contribution. —Herman E. Daly, Professor Emeritus, School
of Public Policy, University of Maryland and author, Beyond Growth
This important book treats
industrial capitalism as the globally destructive force that it is, and
powerfully points the way toward, as the authors put it, ‘universal revolts
against imperialism, the destruction of the planet, and the treadmill of
accumulation.’ We need these revolts if we are to survive. This book is a
crucial part of that struggle. —Derrick
Jensen, author, Endgame and The Culture of Make Believe
This timely new work
promises to become a basic resource in understanding the incompatibility
between capitalism and ecology, and also in arguing for the ecological
dimensions of any future socialism.
—Fredric Jameson, Professor, Duke University; author, Valences of the Dialectic
The Ecological Rift deserves
to—and needs to—become a classic in its field.
—Simon Butler, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal
John Bellamy Foster is
editor of Monthly Review. He is professor of sociology at the University of
Oregon and author of The Ecological Revolution, The Great Financial Crisis
(with Fred Magdoff), Critique of Intelligent Design (with Brett Clark and
Richard York), Ecology Against Capitalism, Marx’s Ecology, and The Vulnerable
Planet. Brett Clark is assistant professor of sociology at North Carolina State
University. He is coauthor (with John Bellamy Foster and Richard York) of
Critique of Intelligent Design. Richard York is associate professor of
sociology at the University of Oregon. He is co-editor of the journal
Organization & Environment and coauthor (with John Bellamy Foster and Brett
Clark) of Critique of Intelligent Design.
FROM PRIVATE ACCUMULATION, PURSUIT OF
PERSONAL PROFIT, AND CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH, AND ENORMOUS INEQUITIES, TO
PUBLIC GOOD
Gar Alperovitz, “The
Political-Economic Foundations of a Sustainable System,” Ch. 18, Governing
for Sustainability, The Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2014. Analysis by Dick Bennett.
Section One: Alperovitz, like Klein, asks us to
master a new story with a new set of characters and contexts and vocabulary. Ridding
ourselves of US capitalism requires us to give our minds a thorough wash, after
lifetimes of indoctrination favoring an economic system of self-aggrandizement,
and then commit ourselves to the struggle to replace that pernicious system by
one that serves and cares for the planet and its inhabitants. Here is his central statement: “…getting serious about sustainability
requires focused attention on why public policy support has, at best, been able
to slow but not stop ecological deterioration.
The roots of this challenge lie in the growing concentration of wealth
and income and the consequent self-reinforcing capture of the machinery of
politics to serve private ends.” The
rest of the essay discusses symptoms of this conquest and how we can restore
public ends. Examples of the symptoms,
in addition of course to the steady
concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals devoted to
capital accumulation instead of the public
good, are: the dispersal of
cities and the destruction of labor unions.
Section
Two, “What Does Justice Require?”
summarizes a case against the
“enormous inequities of today” and for more equal societies simply because
equality (equity, fairness, justice) produce a better world (e.g., better
health) for all. Here Alperovitz digs
into the conceptual corrosions that prevent us from bonding as communities and
rising up against the system’s wrongs, especially the long, powerfully funded
and organized manipulation of the ideas of “private” and “public.” Contrary to the constructed wisdom, the
glorified “private” market system is in fact highly subsidized by the public,
and the rich are rich by having grabbed common assets egregiously. Read pp. 194-95 carefully.
Section
Three, “Building an Alternative,” singles out “community wealth building as the place to begin developing an
alternative.” These institutions
“—non-profits, cooperatives, employee-owned institutions, land trusts,
community corporations—“create living-wage jobs, and anchor those jobs in communities.”
Section
Four, “International Developments,” extends the argument and examples globally,
to the worker cooperative movements
of Argentina and Mondragon in Spain, and the consumer cooperatives. Some countries, Italy and Japan for example,
have strong worker and consumer cooperatives.
Section Five, “Next Steps,”
explains ways the people’s economic power can be translated into political
power, how “locally anchored jobs and investment” can become the national
system “to build political support for sustained
green transition” and a durable democracy.
This will require an enormous struggle by the people, but we have done
it before with FDR’s/Democratic Party’s
New Deal. A key concluding
statement: “The ultimate goal of these strategies is to undermine and
eventually replace the destructive ‘grow
or die’ imperative inherent in the current market-driven system.” [See Alperovitz’s book: What
Then Must We Do: Straight Talk About the Next American Revolution. 2013.]
SUBVERSION OF US REPUBLIC BY MONEY--CITIZENS UNITED—AND RESISTANCE
Public Citizen: Urge President Obama to require all federal
contractors to disclose how much they spend trying to influence elections.
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9:46 AM (4 minutes ago)
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Dick,
Right now.
We have our very best chance to severely
disrupt Citizens United since the moment the United States
Supreme Court handed down that abominable ruling more than five years ago.
But we have some hard work to do.
Right now.
HERE’S WHERE THINGS STAND:
Thanks to a campaign spearheaded by Public
Citizen, President Obama is thinking about requiring all federal contractors to
disclose how much they spend trying to influence elections.
Don’t mistake this for
some bureaucratic triviality.
Our taxpayer dollars go to thousands of
companies — including most of the largest corporations — that supply the
government with everything from pencils to toilet seats to nuclear submarines.
And, because of Citizens United,
those corporations can secretly spend literally as much as they want supporting
(or attacking) politicians.
However, with an executive order from the
president requiring transparency, we can prevent Big Business from corrupting
our democracy with all that dark money.
Right now.
HERE’S HOW WE GOT THIS FAR:
Over the past few months, Public Citizen and
our allies have made a major push to win White House support for this
much-needed rule.
We’ve collected more than 600,000 petition
signatures in support of dragging the dark money out of the shadows.
Last week — on the anniversary of another
horrid Supreme Court campaign finance ruling, McCutcheon v. FEC —
we held a rousing demonstration in front of the White House (and brought all
those petitions to deliver to President Obama).
With allies, we also organized rallies in 50
cities around the country — from Honolulu, Hawaii, to Concord, New Hampshire —
in support of the executive order.
Those are absolutely
stunning numbers.
But we have more to do.
Right now.
HERE’S HOW WE WIN:
In the weeks ahead, we’re going to:
· Direct thousands of calls to the White House
from concerned citizens across the country demanding presidential action on political spending by corporations that do
business with the government.
· Organize members of Congress to add their
voices to the nationwide grassroots
demand for disclosure. Constituents across the country will contact their
representatives and senators — by email, by phone and in person — and urge them
to ask President Obama to act.
· Provide policymakers our detailed and
technical expertise to back up the push for an executive order.
· Build on our success in generating media
support for contractor disclosure —
including a recent column published by The New York Times.
· Use social media tools to engage more and more
Americans in this critical opportunity.
One of the things that
distinguishes Public Citizen as such a powerful public interest organization is
our ability to deploy so many different advocacy tools: organizing and
lobbying; research and legal analysis; traditional media outreach and
innovative online advocacy; and much more.
And we are going to
bring everything we’ve got to strike a blow against Citizens United.
Right now.
Your support can help lock down
this benchmark victory against Citizens United and power all the work we’re doing
together to preserve democracy.
Can you chip in $5 or more?
We can make history.
Robert Weissman
President, Public Citizen © 2015 Public Citizen • 1600 20th Street, NW /
Washington, D.C. 20009 • unsubscribe
HOW WE CAN MAKE THE TRANSITION FROM THE SELF-REGARDING CULTURE OF US
CAPITALISM TO THE OTHER-REGARDING CULTURE OF CARING : EDUCATION
Sustainable Parenting: Unlocking Our
Human Potential - Healing Our Plundered Planet. January 28,
2014. Donovan C.
Wilkin Ph. D., Cynthia D.
Martin Ph. D.
What if civilization disappeared virtually overnight,
including 90% of the world’s population? What if the survivors had to start
over on a desperately depleted planet? A growing number of prominent experts is
warning of the potential collapse of human civilization before the middle of
this century. What sort of human culture might re-emerge? Wilkin and Martin
believe a more sustainable culture with a higher and more equitable quality of
life is not only possible, but with a better understanding of evolution,
probable. The key is in teaching
children to be more caring, sharing, and tolerant of differences, as well as
instilling deep reverence and respect for the natural world. This highly
readable collection of parenting tips based in an ecological perspective on the
latest childhood development research is intended to educate today’s parents,
the first and most important teachers of tomorrow’s pioneers, in the skills
they will need to establish a more livable and lasting human culture.
PRESERVATION OF THE PLANET V. DESTRUCTION BY
CAPITALISM
Ecosocialism: A Radical Alternative to Capitalist
Catastrophe BY
MICHAEL LÖWY. Haymarket, 2015.
http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/Ecosocialism
Publisher’s
description:
Capitalism is
killing the planet, and the preservation of a natural environment favorable to
human life requires a radical alternative. In this new collection of essays,
long time revolutionary and environmental activist Michael Löwy offers a vision
of ecosocialist transformation. This vision combines an understanding of the
destructive logic of the capitalist system with an appreciation for ongoing
struggles, particularly in Latin America.
About the
author
Michael Löwy is
emeritus research director at the CNRS (National Center for Scientific
Research). His books, On Changing the
World and the Politics of Combined
and Uneven Development have been translated into twenty-nine languages.
Reviews
Praise
for On Changing the World:
“His
collection of essays, combining scholarship with passion, impresses by its sweep
and scope.” —Daniel Singer, author, Prelude to Revolution
“Michael
Löwy is unquestionably a tremendous figure in the decades-long attempt to
recover an authentic revolutionary tradition from the wreckage of Stalinism,
and these essays are very often powerful examples of this process.” —Dominic Alexander, Counterfire
Michael
Löwy,
Ecosocialism: A Radical Alternative to
Capitalist Catastrophe. Haymarket,
2015.
For
me personally the most revealing expose of the politics of global warming is
James Hansen’s Storms of My Grandchildren
(2009). By 1988 Hansen knew the
terrible truth of increasing CO2 leading to global warming, and he tried to
tell Pres. George W. Bush. Clever Bush
advisers invited him to make a presentation at the White House, followed by a
bought scientist who argued uncertainty,
the well-honed corporate tricksterisms to prevent public awareness of
scientific truth. The President could
say, I listened to two notable scientists on both sides--peril or not--and
decided Hansen was not convincing--and the US lost a decade of effective
prevention of climate change.
Lowy opens (Preface, p. 2) with a
quotation from Hansen’s book: “Planet earth…is in imminent peril”; it is the
rock on which Lowy makes his case for a radical change in our dominant economic
system, which he labels ecosocialism.
“Ecosocialism
is a political current based on an essential insight: that preserving the
ecological equilibrium of the planet and therefore an environment favorable to
living species, including ours, is incompatible with the expansive and
destructive logic of the capitalist system” (vii). –Dick
THE CONSEQUENCES OF US
CAPITALISM: A SUMMARY
WITTNER THE BLOG
The United States Is
Number 1 -- But in What? 10/13/2014 01:54 pm ET | Updated Dec
13, 2014 [I read it in The Free Weekly, Fayetteville, AR,
10-30-14, www.freeweekly.com --Dick]
·
Lawrence WittnerProfessor of History emeritus, SUNY Albany
American
politicians are fond of telling their audiences that the United States is the
greatest country in the world. Is there any evidence for this claim?
Well,
yes. When it comes to violence and preparations for violence, the United States
is, indeed, No. 1. In 2013, according to a report by the Stockholm International
Peace Research Institute, the U.S. government accounted for 37 percent of world
military expenditures, putting it far ahead of all other nations. (The two
closest competitors, China and Russia, accounted for 11 percent and 5 percent
respectively.) From 2004 to 2013, the United States was also the No. 1 weapons exporter in
the world. Moreover, given the U.S. government's almost unbroken series of wars
and acts of military intervention since 1941, it also seems likely that it
surpasses all rivals when it comes to international violence.
This
record is paralleled on the domestic front, where the United States has more
guns and gun deaths than any other country. A study released
in late 2013 reported that the United States had 88 guns for every 100 people,
and 40 gun-related deaths for every 400,000 people―more than any of the 27
economically developed countries studied. By contrast, in Britain there were 6
guns per 100 people and 1 gun-related death per 400,000 people.
Yet, in
a great many other areas, the United States is not No. 1 at all.
Take
education. In late 2013, the Program for International Student
Assessmentreleased a ranking of how 15-year old students from 65
nations performed on its tests. It showed that U.S. students ranked 17th in
reading and 21st in math. Aninternational survey a
bit earlier that year by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development found that the ranking was roughly the same among American adults.
In 2014, Pearson, a
multinational educational company, placed the United States 20th in the world
in "educational attainment" ― well behind Poland and Slovakia.
American
health care and health fare even worse. In a 2014 study of
health care (including infant mortality, healthy life expectancy, and mortality
from preventable conditions) in 11 advanced industrial countries, the
Commonwealth Fund concluded that the United States ranked last among them.
According to the World Health Organization,
the U.S. health care system ranks 37th in the world. Other studies reach somewhat different
conclusions, but all are very unflattering to the United States, as are studies
of American health. The United States, for example, has one of the world's
worst cancer rates (the
seventh highest), and life expectancy is declining compared to other
nations. An article in
the Washington Post in late 2013 reported that the United
States ranked 26th among nations in life expectancy, and that the average
American lifespan had fallen a year behind the international average.
And
what about the environment? Specialists at Yale University have developed a
highly sophisticated Environmental Performance Index to
examine the behavior of nations. In the area of protection of human health from
environmental harm, their 2014 index placed the United States 35th in health
impacts, 36th in water and sanitation, and 38th in air quality. In the other
area studied―protection of ecosystems―the United States ranked 32nd in water
resources, 49th in climate and energy, 86th in biodiversity and habitat, 96th
in fisheries, 107th in forests, and 109th in agriculture.
These
and other areas of interest are dealt with by the Social Progress Index, which was developed
by Michael Porter, an
eminent professor of business (and Republican) at Harvard. According to Porter
and his team, in 2014 the United States ranked 23rd in access to information
and communications, 24th in nutrition and basic medical care, 31st in personal
safety, 34th in water and sanitation, 39th in access to basic knowledge, 69th
in ecosystem sustainability, and 70th in health and wellness.
Poverty,
especially among children, remains a disgrace in one of the world's wealthiest
nations. A 2013 report by the
United Nations Children's Fund noted that, of the 35 economically advanced
countries that had been studied, only Romania had a higher percentage of
children living in poverty than did the United States.
Of
course, the United States is not locked into these dismal rankings and the sad
situation they reveal about the health, education, and welfare of its citizens.
It could do much better if its vast wealth, resources, and technology were
utilized differently than they are at present. Ultimately, it's a matter of
priorities. When most U.S. government discretionary
spending goes for war and preparations for war, it should come
as no surprise that the United States emerges No. 1 among nations in the
capacity for violence and falls far behind other nations in providing for the
well-being of its people.
Americans
might want to keep this in mind as their nation embarks upon yet another costly
military crusade.
Lawrence
S. Wittner (www.lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of
History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is a satirical novel about
university corporatization and rebellion, What's Going On at UAardvark?
US Capitalism Newsletter #22
History of Capitalism
Steve Fraser, The New Robber
Barons | Moyers & Company ...
US Capitalism Today
Fulton, Swiss HSBC
Boing,
Boing: Taibbi, The Divide
Resistance (but so is this all)
Venus Project
Documentary Series
Public Citizen,
Appeal to Pres. Obama
Naomi Klein, Capitalism vs.The Climate
Foster and
Clark, “Crossing the River of Fire” Review of Klein
Dick, Klein’s
Appeal for a Cooperative World Before Too Late
Ladha and Kirk,
Capitalism Is Just One Story
Pilisuk
and Rountree, The Hidden Structure of Violence
Give Us
Alternatives in Affirmative Government:
Post Office Banking
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