Slow Money, financial permaculture and capitalism

Anything that keeps the Capitalist system of private property intact won’t last. Liberals tried and how the “permaculturist” want to give it go. It is all feel good crap that is full of contradictions. Unless Capitalism is irradiated and the profit motive eliminated you are not solving anything and will just prolong the problems.

Permaculture was used by Cuba but certainly not as a socialist solution. The creator of permaculture is not Marxist. But it’s good you saw that once Cuba’s industrial world collapsed they smartly used permaculture as one means to adapt, survive and to an extent thrive.

The bicycle is an example of a simple machine which can be used indefinitely by multiple generations, and is run on human energy. So, it does represent a simple appropriate means of travel for reasonably short distances. One can manufacture a bicycle in a sustainable way – zero waste. The mindset behind it is a dependable mode of transportation. Craftmanship would be appropriate.

Industrialization is not simply manufacturing. I will assume you don’t need an explanation of what that is.

Deadbeat if you’re going to speak for Marxism, for god sakes at least read him first.

Deadbeat you wouldn’t know a critique if it hit you side the head.

That is a non sequitar Max because if my head was struck it would hurt but it still doesn’t describe how anyone identifies a real critique.

As usual you don’t confront what I’ve posed. Instead, rather thoughtlessly per your usual diatribe, you pull out a sentence and claim you’re addressing anything I’ve stated. You haven’t.

Teafoe2 identified your methods from which you try to lamely divert from yourself. However Max this entire debate counters what you have posted because your Chomskyite ideology is steeped in contradictions.

In fact Max lets examine your entire idea of humanity.

The crux of the issue with Marxism (whether the so-called vulgar implementation or the Marxist thesis itself) is that it is born out of a notion of worker ownership of production. There is nothing in this transfer of ownership that presupposes harmony. The determination of equality becomes as illusive as the pursuit of happiness. There is inherent a class struggle that is perpetual.

Your argument is a non sequitar and a strawman. Marxism is about providing a scientific critique of the Capitalist system (of which you offer none whatsoever) so that people can understand the system that controls them and a mode of thinking that can free their mind from the Capitalist indoctrinations.

Marxism provides an outline of how to achieve the overthrow of Capitalism and what can be put in its place. An outline is not a doctrine. It is up to the people to define their future. One such outline is the dictatorship of the proletariat. In other words MAJORITY RULE. From majority rule derives a society that maintains checks and balances. Majoritarian rule of the political economy suppress the worst aspects of humanity. People MUST cooperate. What you deride as “harmony” is the natural OUTCOME of having a society that puts the needs of people first.

What you do Max is distort Marxism and create strawman arguments. You are no better than Glen Beck when it comes to that.

However let’s examine your world view of humanity. In your world view you’ve state the following …

There is inherent a class struggle that is perpetual.

Thus Max you offer no hope for humanity because in your stated view there will always be classes ruling over humanity. Apparently in your defeatist view people do not have the capacity to become aware of class and to overcome and transcend this problem.

In that case … There is no needs to struggle against Racism and Capitalism. Even by your view of the world your “permaculture” solution is nothing more than wishful thinking.

A little thinking would do your posts some good. Who knows you might even find something pertinent to say.

Apparently Max when you are backed into a corner due to your contradictions all you have left are insults rather than rational arguments. Unless your real function is the promotion of nice sounding diversionary rhetoric (which IMO is the true agenda of the Chomskyite Left) you need to deeply reassess, challenge, and examine the contradictions inherent in your world view.

As usual you don’t confront what I’ve posed. Instead, rather thoughtlessly per your usual diatribe, you pull out a sentence and claim you’re addressing anything I’ve stated. You haven’t.

A little thinking would do your posts some good. Who knows you might even find something pertinent to say.

But the underpinnings of Marxism again is the assumption of a worker who must be defined clearly as a producer and the connection of the capital and production to the work is the essence of what a Marxist vis a vis Capitalist transition is essentially all about

No Max that is the Marxist CRITIQUE of how Capitalism exploits and degrades humanity. Marxism provides the basis for an intellectual critique of the system. What you are doing Max is making an argument against an intellectual critique of Capitalism.

If you are against this critique of Capitalism then please offer your own non-contradictory critique of Capitalism. And please don’t re-introduce Henry George since it has already been shown that his critiques and solutions are contradictory and can easily be circumvented and will not end Capitalism.

Max doesn’t explain how he plans to end the property relationship in his notion of “permaculture”. This is the blind spot of so-called “environmentalists”

There are those who have attempted to inject into this notion of worker ownership an ecological concern. One can inject this into any ideology and say “problem solved”. But the underpinnings of Marxism again is the assumption of a worker who must be defined clearly as a producer and the connection of the capital and production to the work is the essence of what a Marxist vis a vis Capitalist transition is essentially all about.

The human relationship to industrial and agricultural output is barely modestly addressed. However, it is based on a mechanized view of the human state which is the deeper, more profound problem. There is a certain organicness to Marxism dialectic methods, but it is just out of reach in talking about every day life. I think in large part that is why it ends up as a vulgar form of implementation as we saw in various manifestations in eastern Europe and parts of Far East.

I am not convinced that Venezuela is an example of Marxism. Yes, there are bits and pieces which one would hope would have emerged had Marx never existed; but it is such a blend. Those who say you cannot have socialism when capitalism rules are just begging the question. No doubt there is a struggle here, but if it is doable it can be on a human scale. Still I do not think that Marx would be the template, even if there was a socialization of land and perhaps land use. We are past the days of manifestos in our back pockets, that we pull out for lunchtime reading.

I think permaculture is a non-doctrinaire way of seeing and doing which can be valuable as we move on, past this hyper industrial state.

I don’t deal in manifestos, but here are some thoughts.

The problem for me is a rejection of harmony and affection for place; the breakdown of community and the lack of humility regarding our natural interdependency. This is seen everywhere there is industrialization. I don’t care whether the nation is labeled capitalist, socialist, or a mixed economy. (Also, to be clear, if industrialization did not reign supreme, it does not assure harmony and affection for place, but with it one can be sure that harmony, etc. will never be attained.)

Recognizing that there is a Great Economy (consisting of ALL) and a small economy (the human devise) which either works harmoniously within the Great Economy or not begins to reveal what is needed.

Energy is important but less so than soil that is made from death, and provides life. Soil wraps the earth in a skin of life like no other known planet. Go outside, dig in the ground, pull up some soil in your hands, and feel it. Energy amplifies the human existence and thereby distorts it. The most efficient mode of travel is walking. It fits with the Buddhist economy which is to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption.

Energies from non-renewable and renewable have limits defined by use. Using the sun to mass produce “goods” (almost none of which are needed by anyone) is little better than using fossil.

Industrialization is a counter force to harmony. (Not to be confused industrialization with technology; particularly appropriate technologies which can be in harmony with the Greater Economy; i.e., a bicycle is an appropriate technology). Industrialization by its very nature is consumptive, destuctive in purpose, is all about the commodization of resources here on earth. Harmony requires a balance in what we take and give back.

Industrialization is an attempt to dominate the planet. To control it and create false value. The only real value comes from the planet. A board is still a part of a tree. There is no more value added by making it a board.

But this is not about perfect harmony, but rather keen awareness of our limits. I do not see anywhere in any Marxist text a concern for such limits. Certainly someone can call themselves whatever, using Marx as a suffix but it just like saying “I’m a Capitalist Marxist or I’m an Anarchist Marxist, I’m a Liberal Marxist…” These are all just game playing and confusing labels.

To Deadbeat: what you don’t understand, which seems to be far more than you do, you try to turn into some distorted name calling. Pull yourself together and think.

Don we don’t need oil or coal for 30 more years. We need to change the way we live.

OK,

Limitless growth is inherent in capitalism. Grow or die. No such thing is inherent in socialism. Needs are not the same as those you see now in which consumerism is encouraged in order to sell things. We can’t define and decide what all the needs will be. I don’t blame technology for what’s it’s currently doing to the environment. It’s how it’s used.

An interesting comment don’t you think. How do a few balance this whole Limitless growth. Technology will do the trick I don’t think so and best guess so far about 6 years to go for it or we don’t slow it. Cap and trade and that will be watered down if that so is there an underground movement we don’t know about to build renewable energy? We will need oil and coal for thirty more years a secret if so we will not need renewable energy. So just what is the thinking from the rebels and Icons in all there shapes and sizes no not what you hear on TV the real thinking.

Don

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10657124

Also remember that more oil than the Deepwater Horizon ‘spill’ has been ‘spilling’ (there’s an euphenism for you) in to the Niger Delta region over 50 years. See the link alongside the one above.

Gulf spill a familiar story in oil-soaked Nigeria
By Jon Gambrell 12:00 PM Monday Jul 5, 2010

Men walk in an oil slick covering a creek near Bodo City in the oil-rich Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

Nigeria – The brown spots run like a trail of blood down the deserted coastline near this fishing village. Just underneath a handful of sand lies spilled oil.

Oil powers this West African nation’s economy but is killing its southern shores. Villagers here say the spillage regularly washes ashore, ruining their fishing nets and meagre livelihoods. Children whose parents can’t afford school fees pass the time flipping bottle caps into tin cans.

While the world is transfixed by the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, oil spills have become a part of everyday life during the 50 years that foreign firms have been pumping out Nigeria’s easily refined fuel.

Environmentalists estimate as much as 2 billion litres of oil have poured into the Niger River Delta during that time – at a rate roughly comparable to one Exxon Valdez disaster per year.

/…..

Which makes it extremely difficult to refute him, since he advances no coherent propositions. The strawmen he erects are not constructed syllogistically, but out of sentence fragments jammed together willynilly.

Observe how careful he is not to quote those he attacks directly. He selects a word, posits it sans original context, then hangs a string of adjectives on it, then attacks his creation obliquely, from the right flank.

The “Marx” he rails against is a Marx that exists only in his imagination. The real Karl Marx anticipated Max’s concerns about the effects of runaway industrialization by a century and a half.

Yes, it is true that those who found themselves trying to create “Socialism In One Country” often displayed a limited understanding of what they were about. Persons/groups calling themselves “Marxist” or “Socialist” have been guilty of many serious mistakes and many serious crimes. But this does not prove that everyone who invokes the name Marx or the term Socialism is a criminal or an idiot.

We who desire to see the current balance of social power overturned are at a very early stage in the process. There is no organized coherent movement with a definite program of action we can support or reject. Which is to say we are at a stage where the number of political activists who engage in various activities, i.e. the abundance of “footsoldiers”, is not very important.

Because there is no agreement on the goal or on how to get there.

So what we need now are not more footsoldiers, but a few real Generals. I mean political generals, people capable of discerning the most promising way forward, and then of motivating others to move ahead on the same path.

I’m hoping there are young people with fresh minds reading the articles on this site, some of whom have the potential to become the kind of “political generals” I describe.
If the reader happens to match the description, and is serious about trying to develop her/himself into the kind of leader we need, you will find a deep knowledge of the works of Karl Marx and F. Engels indispensable.

Yes you will need to study a lot else besides. But before you can go further you need your basic Marxist analysis of how capitalism works.

Nowadays we know that to understand the physical world, we have to study Einstein & Planck, plus a mountain of more recent science. But before you can tackle E=mc2, you need to study Newtonian physics, learn all about kinetic & potential energy, levers, pulleys, refraction vs reflection.

It’s the same in politics; before you can essay to create in the manner of a Beethoven or a Charlie Parker you have to know and understand the major & minor scales.

If you listen to this Max, you’ll be lost in a 19th Century British Gentleman’s club cloud-cuckooland forever.

It is infantile to make this an argument about “technology.” The fact is, either we can try to downscale and power everything with only solar, wind, tidal, and geothermal power now, using as little as possible and restructuring ourselves into egalitarian societies that aren’t based on consumption, waste, and destruction or we can continue on the path we are now, and we will “have our computers” until the reality of the environmental disasters caused by this destroys the institutions that keep electrical grids and oil wells running. “Marxism” is a vacuous hole that doesn’t guarantee holistic environmental practice or really anything other than a vague vision of economics. That’s all I have to say here.

The purpose of Marxism is to do something that you refuse to do. Critique the Capitalist system. You are not going to get what you want without Marxism no matter how much you think you can avoid it or at worst — condemn it.

Deadbeat and, now, teafoe2, are touching on the real differences here; and it is not Socialism or Marxism or Capitalism. It is the fundamental difference between those who believe that human endeavors are limitless, that we need only apply technology to get us beyond what is all around us collapsing; and those who see an order to the universe that implies limits and sees this desire to transcend these limits as, what the Greeks called hubris and wrote about as great tragedies.

Max has now gone philosophical unfortunately his philosophy is grounded in irrational analysis and distortions. However Max’s arguments reflects the kinds of logic that will be spewed by Liberals-Progressives against Marxism. Liberalism has been discredited — not by the Right — but by the current crisis. The primary goal of Liberalism is to manage the contradictions of capital accumulation via a class of elite managers and to put a “pretty-face” on the Capitalist system.

Max offers only the contradictory ABC’s (axioms, bromides, and cliches) of Liberal appeals masked as “solutions”. His best advocacy was the Henry George “land-tax” but Max is on record being against the redistribution of wealth and fails to fully explain how the taxing only land-use will bring about justice. Perhaps that those appeals had cache in the late 19th Century (BTW, Marx, Engels, and De Leon all identified the flaws in George’s advocacy) but is totally outdated for 2010. Today you have investment bankers raking in $1,000,000,000.00 annually in compensation and bonus operating out of 1000 sq ft high rise offices. Taxing land will not redistribute wealth from this kind of fictitious activity.

Once again Max is oblivious to his contradictions. This is the denial inherent of the failure of Liberalism. He blames “humans” (“human endeavors”) for the way the Capitalist system was imposed on humanity. This kind of callous rhetoric from the “Left” is no different to the Right-wing blaming the poor — the victims of Capitalism. It ignores the reality of power and conquest, slavery and exploitation of humanity.

Deadbeat poisons the well with his “Whether or not “global warming” is caused by “industrialization” is still a matter open for debate.” This is the argument the status quo who have held power for centuries use. It is the language of limitless growth because we can never be certain. Our uncertainty is the power yielded by those who dominate the planet. And those who buy into it are complicit with this power regardless of ideological pretexts.

Actually Max, in times of crisis Capitalists look for scapegoats and have a tendency to become “environmentalists”. They blame the crisis on the “limits of nature” in order to deflect attention away from the inherent structures of the Capitalist system. This way they can come up with schemes like “carbon taxes” and “carbon trading” in order to shift the tax burden onto the working class and inflate their fictitious activities.

What you advocate Max is NOT a non-growth economy where wealth and resources are equally distributed and accessible. Your advocacy Max is DEFLATION. Deflating the economy is REACTIONARY. In the best mode of J.P. Morgan, you will impoverish more people and transfer more wealth to the Capitalist class. Once again Max technology is not the problem. CAPITALIST control of the means of production and private property is the problem.

Marx and all that springs from those who declare themselves followers, is really a pretext for another way of achieving what their “nemesis” diseased Capitalism has with all its resources forced forward – An Icarus belief in flying, we can, we do, and let us play at being God? It is this belief in transcending universal order, a god-like belief in the hubris of human existence that makes Deadbeat and his ilk a kind of status quo that has been ruling for many centuries now. It is the ultimate Faustian bargain that the Deadbeats proclaim with each post; repeatedly cloaking it in distortions round “Chomskyites” and the like. These are all distractions to what is in the marrow of what they say. It may or may not have been so much thought through as sipped through the dominant American pop culture.

WTF?! Max your brain has been soaked in the Liberal opiates for much too long. Your rhetoric is the real challenge facing all anti-Capitalists. Liberals are so desperate to maintain their elitism that they haven’t realized that the Capitalist class don’t give a shit about them anymore and that their usefulness to the continuation of Capitalism is now defunct.

Chomskyism represents what the “Left” has degraded into over the past 40 years. In fact the WSWS identifies this tendency as “middle-class” Leftism and raised this issue recently against the ISO. They site the desire of the “Left” to rally around celebrities and identity politics rather than confront issues that deal with real day-to-day working class aspirations. I agree with this premise. I would have not limited the problem to the ISO. This is a problem overall with the so-called “Left”. However I would take the critique further to also include ignoring the rising power of Zionism in the USA. Here the “Left” anoints an admitted Zionism as its intellectual leader. Clearly this reflects of the absolute corruption of the Left. This is not a mere sectarian complaint but an analysis of a FUNDAMENTAL contradiction and illustrates the degrading of the Left from core principles.

Chomsky as the Left’s most foremost intellectual leader has made a good living (like other Left personalities most notable Amy Goodman who rakes in $1,000,000.00/year compensation) pretending to be a radical while acting as an apologist for Zionism. Chomsky as a “Libertarian Socialist” critiques of the Capitalist system are awfully thin and has not really promoted in his hours of commentary a Marxist critique of the system to his followers. If Chomsky had the guts to offer a real critiques of both American Zionism and Capitalism I doubt that he would still be working at MIT but the Left would be in a better intellectual position to deal with the current crisis. Unfortunately, the mainstream Left today is intellectually bereft of offering critiques of the Capitalist system. In fact Max your perspectives is very much in alignment with today’s mainstream “Left” viewpoints. Thankfully we are seeing the emergence of Marxist scholars like David Harvey and Richard Wolff getting their perspective out. Thankfully via the Internet we are seeing and hearing from many more Marxist scholars today.

It is this core difference between those who see limits and see great complexity and diversity within these limits; and those who whether with the ideology of Capitalism or that of Marxism who unquestioningly push for a plundering in the name of the great human experiment of limitless growth that leads to a profound difference of how we should live on this planet we find ourselves on.

Economic democracy is a push for human participation in economic decisions. Plundering for profits is what Capitalism is about. Marxism is about providing as scientifically as possible a critique of the workings of the Capitalist system.

What you are doing Max is engaging in a system of hope, faith and belief. Your call for “limits” without redistribution will only result in harmful and dangerous reactionary outcomes. Your lack of analysis and clarity is why you are incapable of understanding the contradictions of your advocacy.

It is infantile to make this an argument about “technology.” The fact is, either we can try to downscale and power everything with only solar, wind, tidal, and geothermal power now, using as little as possible and restructuring ourselves into egalitarian societies that aren’t based on consumption, waste, and destruction or we can continue on the path we are now, and we will “have our computers” until the reality of the environmental disasters caused by this destroys the institutions that keep electrical grids and oil wells running. “Marxism” is a vacuous hole that doesn’t guarantee holistic environmental practice or really anything other than a vague vision of economics. That’s all I have to say here.