Intelligent decentralisation and modern society

‘It’s almost inconceivable that the major features of what we call “capitalism” will exist for the rest of human history (unless, of course, we drive ourselves to extinction in the near future through war, pollution or other self inflicted injuries). (Stanford J “Economics For Everyone 2008 p34 )

What Jim Stanford has written in the above quote, as with his book in general, represents a very pertinent estimate of the realities we face. The self inflicted injuries he mentions are all very much part of present day reality as those who control our societies pursue their, inequitable and unsustainable drive for growth and destruction of our planets ecosystems in the name of short term private profit. A major factor in this drive to self destruction is the centralisation of power, including over elected governments, in the hands of self centred, ruthless, greedy and short sighted corporation chiefs including of those who profit from war.

In his last chapter Stanford outlines an approach towards working for substantial democratic reforms within capitalism and eventually a movement towards ending capitalism and to establishing a sustainable society based on democratic principles and people participation. This suggested approach coincides with the view expressed in a recent Search essay draft. Having argued the case for a democratic movement and ecological socialism to replace domination of our economy and social-cultural life by a few capitalists the Search Essay draft comments –“This kind of democratic grassroots movement needs organisations and political parties committed to these values, and committed to coalition building rather than vanguard domination as a key principle in the project.”

The highly centralised and vanguard orientated Leninist parties, despite original good intentions, perhaps inevitably, fell into Stalinist and Maoist domination and criminal oppression when in power. While making progress on some fronts these parties failed to end the economic, social and cultural inequity and oppression endemic to Slave, Feudal and Capitalist societies. We have to develop a new way that enables people to control their own lives and is based on sustainable, open and democratically controlled economic practices. Both Stanford and the Search Essay draft make the point —that there is no existing blue print; we have to create a new approach and that, whilst it calls for deep thought and considerable intellectual input, is a task for a mass movement and concerned people not just a self styled elite, or vanguard.

The Debate in Australia

There are all manner of political, economic and cultural ideologies currently being argued. We are even confronted with the claims of both witting falsifiers and easily misled individuals who try to deny the threat or to argue that climate change it is not an issue that human beings can do anything about.

In a very useful recent book “ The Clean Industrial Revolution” scientist Ben MCNeil wrote –“Although Venus is much further away from the sun, its temperature is nearly three times that of Mercury” In answer to his own question “How is that possible?” McNeil goes on to explain that– “The Venusian atmosphere is nearly all composed of CO2 while on Mercury there is virtually none” . McNeil makes it clear that Climate Change is real and it is being driven by human activities.

Yet important as the above and other extremely valuable scientific points and practical suggestions Mc Neil makes on the issues we face the economics that need to flow from understanding these points are much more complex than McNeil admits to. He argues that we can resolve our problems by encouraging the corporations to invest in renewable energy and clean technologies. He also argues that we can increase productive output and simultaneously tackle the issue of climate change. In short, as I read him McNeil’s advertised training in economics unfortunately, to some extent, undermines his valuable contribution to understanding the science involved in getting a handle on climate change. As a result he mixes an important contribution to understanding reality with what amounts to a plea for continuance of the private profit driven consumer society that is, if not the, a major factor in creating the very problems his science based arguments clearly indicate must be confronted.

Now, despite the above critical comments, I agree with McNeil as to the importance of trying to convince the people who currently decide what we produce and how we produce it that it is actually in their own narrow, self centred short and medium term profit making interests to invest in renewable energy and ecologically sustainable productive enterprises. But, McNeil seems to me to underestimate the extent to which greed and a twisted perception of short term self interest dominates the thinking and decisions of the powerful few who currently make the important economic decisions. Further what he proposes is only the beginning of a much more radical transforming process necessary to our survival.

What is being missed by McNeil,and also by all too many others, is that ever upward, or increased, growth while essential to the function of capitalism, is in direct contradiction to the ecological need to recognise that we live on a planet that has finite resources —and that reality imposes limits on both the character and extent of human actions.

Technological fixes in a society in which the economy is driven by the race for private profit will not do. We need cooperating, peaceful and equitable human societies– and that requires a radical shift from production for private profit to production to meet the needs and ecologically permissible luxuries of life. One of the things that this need highlights is that equity must become a central issue. What governments do is very important, but what experience to date is revealing is that governments are for the most part failing to take on the real economic decision makers, namely the privately owned corporations. Without a major cultural and public opinion and action shift, that is then reflected in the actions of parliaments and governments, the chances for any decent human future are slim .

I appreciate and welcome the contribution McNeil’s book makes to understanding important aspects of the science of climate change. My problem with his argument is that — there are ecological issues which he is either not aware of or is deliberately ignoring. We do, as I have suggested above, live on a finite planet and ongoing growth is simply not an option if our planet is to remain a place suitable for human and many other life forms. As Dr. Peter Hay argues there is need to reassess our change vector and recognise that the ever upward growth and continued destruction of ecological systems spells disaster. (Hay Peter “Main currents in Western Environmental Thought” 2002 see also Dr Hay’s paper presented to Hobart Search Round Table 2008 on www.search.org.au).

The recently publicised findings about the serious negative effects that increasing levels of CO2 and resultant acidification is having on life in our oceans underline the many faceted complexity of the threat to our planet. Further the recent TV programs that have explained the role of rainforests in the rain cycle and the problems for major river systems add yet another dimension to the massive problems the attempts to conquer nature have created. The recent and earlier ABC TV programs on the Amazon River and jungle underlined the savage and destructive role of profit seeking by large international corporations.

Some major Problems

One of the most important and challenging aspects of modern society is the above mentioned extent of centralisation of power. This is clearly expressed in the power of CEO’s and other corporation directors to rip off both consumers and share holders in the companies that make up their particular corporation. Add to this the power corporations obviously exercise over Governments in a variety of ways and the real picture of who is actually deciding the course our modern world is taking begins to emerge. But there are also other aspects to the centralisation power into fewer and fewer hands expressed for instance in State Government practices of disempowering local governments. A very recent example in Tasmania is the centralisation of control of water and sewage disposal and the loss of control by previously responsible local government bodies.

In regard to the immediately above example it is true there are those, including myself, who suspect a temporarily hidden consideration in the latest manoeuvre by the Tasmanian Government. My suspicion is that the longer term plan could be privatisation of water rights. The Labor Party was, after all, created by the Trade Unions to represent working people and their/our interests, rather than to create conditions for the maximisation of private profit at the expense of all else. Early Labor Party leaders more committed to people’s interests and not so close to big business created the important public utilities Labor is now busily demolishing.

The new water organisation in Tasmania would lend itself to making privatisation of water relatively easy and would put in further jeopardy people’s rights to clean water in Tasmania as short term profit became the main consideration in water supply issues.

However this conjecture about the real intentions of Tasmania’s Labor Government on my part, although important, is not the main point I want to discuss in this article. To add only a brief opinion — people who imagine that the liberal Party is an alternative to, rather than a bad copy of, current Labor Party leaders when it comes to dealing with the basic issues we face is not reckoning with reality.
My main concern is to discuss how we might find ways to end the rush to self destruction implicit to the way economic and political power are currently being centralised into the hands of corporation chiefs and corrupt politicians who react to the whims and demands of the rich and powerful.

How can we maximise people’s rights to have an informed and meaningful say in determining their/our own future lives?

There are many aspects to this vital question — including who controls the mass media and to what end this control is directed. An urgent need is to end the situation in which a few powerful media chiefs are able to heavily influence what information is actually available and what slant is put on this information, or actually misinformation in all too many instances. True the web opens some very useful avenues. If Murdoch and other media barons have their way they will bring the web more under their control.

The price of liberty is certainly eternal vigilance in the case of media and web control. A mass media and means of communicating ideas that challenge the status quo is a vital modern need. Discussion around how to promote and implement democratic ideas and practices and present genuinely useful information is one of several vitally important aspects to the creation of a genuine participatory democracy.

As well as replacing, with factual and relevant information, the current barrage of half-truths and outright misinformation that the status quo media currently feed us on — it is equally important to revisit the issue of how society is organised in terms of control of the production and distribution of the necessities and ecologically permissible luxuries of life. What we need to be looking for and developing are forms of economic organisation able to deliver good quality, democratically controlled efficient and ecologically sustainable products and services.

At a general level this requires less not more centralisation of power. There are enterprises and service organisations that need to be at a national or large regional level in order to provide a cohesive and efficient service to people. But particularly these organisations need to open to public scrutiny and not run by the current practice of behind close door deals. Real efficiency in terms of prudent use of resources and satisfaction of the needs and interests of people can best be achieved in the frequent case by the development of local and locally controlled enterprises that produce and provide people’s needs. The power of large privately controlled corporations is a, and in many respects the, major cause of the current climate change dangers humanity is facing but as yet, in the main, not actually confronting. This is so despite the efforts of many intelligent forward looking individuals and organisations.

Some ideas about a future

This leads me to reiterate some views concerning the sort of organisation of society that can save the human species and all of those natural phenomena in the natural world that are so essential to human survival. The above mentioned economic approach of McNeil has some things in common with some others who now believe in the dynamism of capitalism for example David McKnight and his fellow “lapsed” Marxist Eric Aarons.

When, some 6 years ago. I first took public issue with Eric Aarons regarding his sweeping assertion in his Book “What’s Right” that “Society and the state have obligations to recognise the rights of owners, including a right to a return on their property” (Aarons E 2003 p. 94) I made some points that are I believe worth repeating and re-emphasising yet again.

My comments included –“individual property e.g. house, furnishings and personal items and the property of individual small producers, i.e. small farmers, trades persons, service providers and artisans should be treated as Eric suggests. But the private property of agribusiness, large companies and for profit service organisations is a different kettle of fish. …

The market does not have to be abolished but supplemented, changed and controlled via a whole complex series of democratic, including legislative, procedures”. (Bound Max Oct. 2003 and again in July 2004 “Search News”)

In my October 2003 article I had drawn on Galbraith’s argument that in crises situations increasing the money capital controlled by private individuals is not as effective, in economic terms, as is Governments having the resources, and the will, to invest in desirable projects. I agreed with Clive Hamilton that “The apologists of market capitalism … have simply annexed “human nature’ for their own purposes.” And that “Economic growth … is insistently propelling … environmental decline” Hamilton Clive “Growth Fetish” 2003 p. p.230 and 177

I also made the point that Hamilton, despite the positives in his writing was missing the full significance of Peter Hay’s observation that Non human-nature is downgraded as it ‘ is harnessed to serve the project of human over human domination” (Hay Peter Western Environmental Thought 2002 P68)

In Search News Dec 1999 I argued) “The democratic left is faced with a need to look very hard at the alternatives to capitalism and bureaucratic, centralised and undemocratic models of socialism alike.”

In an article, titled” Employment and Unemployment “ published in “Labor Forum” Vol. 5 No 4 December 1983 I wrote about the negatives of corporation power and argued the need “ to work towards an equitable society in which there could be “social harmony, opportunity for diversity, full rights of association and organisation, access to media and communication channels which allow multi way discussion. …A society in which there is sensible and sensitive use of natural resources and of those aspects of technology, including modern and future technology, which can enrich human life.”

Such ideas were at that time being more widely considered as this “ LABOR FORUM” article by a then well known communist, being given some prominence in an official Labor Party Journal demonstrates. Tragically as the Philosophy of Hayek and key elements of the politics of Thatcher have become the Labor Party’s philosophy the whole political atmosphere became more subservient to the power of the corporations. True this was done in conditions of much rhetoric, utilised by the Labor Party, of looking after the interests of people. But deregulation and the economic havoc it has eventually brought proceeded none-the-less.

Rudd talks about the failure of the economic fundamentalism or economic rationalism practised in recent decades but actions speak louder than words and Rudd is acting in the traditions of the economic fundamentalism he rejects in words.

Climate Change issues have to be addressed NOW

Serious, and devastating as the economic collapse fostered by deregulation is –and will continue to be for large numbers of people– the acceleration of the production of green house gases in a world focused on short term private profit and the destruction of our physical environment to this end is even more threatening to the human species.

The climate change issue has a very large variety of negative features, for example any intelligent viewer who watched the ABC TV program “Rainforest: The Secret Of Life “on November 1st 2009 and similar programs must be deeply concerned about what is happening to even the world’s largest Rivers and the life they have traditionally sustained.

Those of us on the left with environmental concerns, along with other environmentalists, have failed to convince enough people that putting profits before people is dooming us, and particularly those who come after us, to a dubious and not very nice future. True there are a number of signs of a growth of concern among a growing number of people but the myths projected by false or “double speak” still control the actions of governments and the thinking of all too many people. We owe it to our children to do better.

It is heartening to witness the beginnings of revolt within the Union Movement and rank and file members of the Labor Party against the dictatorial and deeply faulted approach of Labor Leaders headed by Rudd, Gillard and their State counterparts. Hope- fully more unity between disenchanted people in the Labor Party and Movement and the Environmental, Green , democratic Rights and other people’s movements can be built. Thinking people’s actions can contribute to such unity.

Hope for the future rests in the potential to develop a deeper understanding and a more widely based unity in action of thinking and concerned people. We need to achieve a radical shift away from current political, social cultural and economic policies.

Achieving that radical and historic shift will obviously not be easy. The current indications that a highly sophisticated media campaign is succeeding in spreading the false idea that a change for the better is possible via the dinosaurs who comprise the Liberal Party Coalition is not good news. Becoming embittered by such exhibitions of political stupidity will not help —we need to build on what is already showing signs of positive change and that means a need to work with people exhibiting positive signs of changing their thinking.

The genuine left that once existed within the ALP has been smothered. The chance for change, whether in the Labor Party or even more important in the broader area of potentially thinking people, rests in people acting together and collectively doing what the major political parties have proven to be incapable of.

A combination of radical thinking and peaceful, cooperative collective action on the part of all people who are concerned for a future has never been more vitally necessary. The corporations and excessive corporation power have largely caused our current problems and our major political parties are committed to what is worst in our immediate past. Blind acceptance has to give way to clear headed thinking and cooperative action based on real information and concern for the human future.

As the document “Out of The Forests A New Way Forward For Tasmania” puts it “…what is necessary is a movement which goes beyond party politics beyond even the urgent and crucial concerns being addressed by single issue organisations.”