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Mother Pelican
A Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability

Vol. 16, No. 11, November 2020
Luis T. Gutiérrez, Editor
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Eco-Stalinism: A Tongue-in-Cheek Manifesto
Part 3 - Magicians and Medics

Giorgio Baruchello

November 2020


20.11.Page16.Manifesto.jpg
British artist Sacha Jafri is drawing his largest painting for charity purpose in Dubai hoping to save ten million children (ANSA).


Entitled simply “Eco-Stalinism”, this anonymous revolutionary plea for eco-Stalinism circulating in the dark web belongs to the literary genre of so-called “rants”, which flourished in Scotland in the 17th and 18th centuries, e.g., the 1700 “MacPherson’s Lament” (aka “MacPherson’s Farewell”) made famous by Robert Burns 88 years later (and sung by The Corries in the 1970s). Given its communist inspiration and copyright status, I publish it as my own, so as to exemplify vividly what happens to common goods under legal and economic regimes based upon the institutions of private property and individual self-maximisation.

Don’t fall for the marketeers’ incantations. It is black magic. It’s bad religion run amok. The “optimality” that the self-proclaimed heirs of Adam Smith and Milton Friedman incense is the one that stops the slaves from getting more bread because the pharaoh would lose a grain of gold. Pareto may have been fine with that. I don’t think most people would. Would you? Only pharaohs and their sycophants are happy with this notion.

The “creative destruction” that the same heirs invoke is destruction, yes, and creates more misery for most. Also, it creates the conditions for species-wide extinction. What a creativity! Besides, these heirs themselves cannot be sure about any positive creation, or spill-over, until later. Often, when it is too late anyhow. The matter is empirical, inductive, not deductive. And the facts shout loudly: “global warming”.

The “invisible hand” that these people worship is indeed, ipso dicto, invisible—just like their brains. And it is no hand. It’s a foot. The foot that kicks in the posterior all those who lose in the competition. The foot that pushes down the poor and keeps them there. The foot that squeezes blood from aging turnips, unrolling stones and first nations, so that the rich may be rich—as well as richer and richer. The foot that runs swiftly in and out nations and markets, causing booms and busts. The foot that tramples the weak and all those who don’t have money. Ask the indigents, check the infants, the invalids, and the indigenous peoples of the world. That foot really stinks. It must be infected. It would be wiser to call a medic.

Don’t fall for the marketeers’ exculpations and excuses either. They’re sophistry. In the face of criticism, their first reaction will be that of simply ignoring it. After all, they own the politicians, the media and much of academia. A loud silence is not too arduous an achievement, for them. Yet, if ignoring you and your criticism is no longer a possibility, then they will attack you. They will make fun of you: “pie in the sky”, “bleeding heart”, “nostalgic”, “anachronistic”. They will belittle you: “unqualified”, “unscientific”, “unrealistic”, “utopian”, “fantastic”, “enthusiastic”. They will denounce you: “communist”, “socialist”, “anarchist”, “feminist”, “extremist”, “terrorist”. Eventually, if and only if the criticism has not gone away, they will try to sound reasonable. Yes, there are “market failures”. Yes, there have been “shocks”. Yes, there can be “exceptions”. Yes, it’s a “transition”.

In any case, even when putting on their nicest mask, the superstitious doctrine in which they are entangled is never really revised. “Market failures” are ad hoc hypotheses blaming something or someone else for the nonsense that the markets and their modus operandi have set in place by the compelling force of their internal logic of selection. There is nothing alien to “tsunamis”, “crony capitalists”, “unchecked greed” and other so-called “externalities”. Were the marketeers capable of self-reflection, then they would admit that “shocks” themselves are not external either, but part and parcel of their own self- and all-consuming monster.

There roams around Earth a rotting Leviathan, called “capitalism”, comprising financial speculation, climate destabilisation, popular insurrection, warfare and oil cartels. None of this is surprising to those who have studied the history of actual world economies. It is the bloody market—the real one; not the one abstracted into convenient equations and printed in our textbooks. Karl Marx had already warned these marketeers about all such matters one hundred and seventy years ago, more or less. Did they listen? Capitalism thrives on crises, guys, until it collapses; or it brings down entire societies in order to keep going.

These deaf magicians’ “exceptions” are nothing but the standard trick of prejudiced people: they prove the rule, instead of leading to its revision. As to “transitions”, that’s also part of the absurd myth of the invisible hand. Since the markets are assumed from the very start to bring forth prosperity, in due course, whenever prosperity doesn’t arrive—which is always the case for the “losers” in the game—then the marketeers can simply say to those who have doubts: “wait.” And when the waiting has become unbearable, they can start anew with the whole charade of ad hoc exculpations.

Real medics have real remedies, instead. There are three “Rs”, for instance, that are well-known to work. Any intelligently run economic system should have “reduce, re-use and recycle” as foundational theoretical principles and basic practical criteria for the efficient guidance of all economic activities. Patently enough, however, the world in which we live does not take these three “Rs” seriously enough. The environmental and social collapse goes on, in fact. And yet that is precisely why the conventional wisdom has to be abandoned in lieu of something truly sensible.

Everywhere, green parties, in all chromatic nuances, have been preaching ad nauseam about those first three “Rs”, but in no country have these parties managed to get enough votes to make the three Rs the standard, obvious, integral, logical structure of the economic order. The reason of these parties’ failure is easy to grasp. So easy, in fact, that it repels the mind; hence it never gets discussed openly. The rich don’t want it, for they would not get as rich—and richer and richer—as they try constantly and mercilessly to become by systemic compliance with the extant economic order, i.e., without even thinking about it. You can think about it, instead.

Think about it, then. The first “R” goes against the sacred idol of growth. Reduce consumption and you reduce production. Reduce production and you reduce the profits. The second “R” does the same. That is why we live in an absurd place where it is normal for people to use something and throw it away—razors, straws, socks—rather than keep it, repair it if needed, and pass it on to the kids. That is also why we live in an absurd place where chunky, complex industrial products are designed to stop functioning after a few years, lest too few of them get sold over time. Refrigerators, cars, computers, phones—you name it. Obsolescence is carefully engineered, so that profitability doesn’t suffer. And all the stuff that’s thrown away makes heaps of toxic garbage, while more and newer pounds of flesh are cut off our planet’s living body. The third “R” is the only one that can find some profitable use—in the usual, sick sense of making more money for extant money. That is why the third R has been tolerated and, to some extent, implemented.

Additionally, there is a second group of three “Rs” that are far less debated, even if they have been known to be effective in generating the conditions for a less insane economic order. They read: “redistribute, recover, regulate”.

The first “R” refers to having much, much, much higher taxes for the rich, like the West did after WWII. Since the rich own so much more than they need, to the point of using their money to gamble in the stock exchange market, then some of their wealth can be taken away in order to pay for the social and environmental life-support systems of the world and support those who are in dire need. The suffering imposed on the rich in this manner is less than the one caused by trimming toenails—not to mention chopping off heads.

Consider it enlightened, enforced charity. We don’t need a complex theory of justice for this kind of intervention, which would benefit the rich themselves. For one, in fact, the rich would become less-hated public figures. Also, their personal virtue would be given a chance to improve by sheer compliance with the tax system. They wouldn’t have to move a finger. Societies themselves would improve, for less inequality translates into less crime and less violence. The rich, as a result, would be saluted as regular and predictable benefactors, rather than occasional ones who think it wise to be charitable in order to stem rebellion or revolution.

What is more, by avoiding tax avoidance, the rich would contribute to creating a vast public wealth capable of subsidising the social and environmental life-support systems of the Earth at every level, while also draining resources for unproductive speculation, which is not a healthy entertainment. If the rich resist, however, then they will have to be re-educated. If they refuse re-education, then you throw them against the wall, together with their lawyers and accountants. And the unredeemable consumers that were mentioned in Part 2. Purge, baby, purge.

As concerns the second “R”, since the rich became rich by marrying into, or inheriting, money created by seizing public resources (e.g., the 1970s–1990s privatizations) or free-riding on them (e.g., nature’s ecosystems, societies’ cultures), then they can be made whole by introducing great plans for the national recovery of control over publicly owned resources. Just look at Norway and how they have managed their oil. Armed with these resources, public institutions would have the revenues to fund adequately life-enabling public bodies that protect those institutions themselves, and everybody else, from the vagaries of private profit-seeking, especially financial ones. They would be like city gates and city walls shielding civilised peoples from marauding barbarians and savage storms.

In short, States and local authorities should have much else and much more to fund their activities but the sole instrument of issuing debt. Owning enterprises and assets would be one sane addition to their currently depleted quiver. To the same end, money-creation and credit-creation should be returned to public authorities, if not to them alone 100%. It is only by having a publicly chartered, stiffly regulated credit system or, more simply, a purely public system of banking and investment that the productive resources of the nations can be kept from getting sucked away by debt-creating leeches and, insultingly, hidden away on tiny islands and corrupt countries. Canada’s and China’s history, North Dakota’s exceptionalism in the US, or the Bretton Woods agreements are all cases to be studied and examples to be emulated.

It is only by having such a system that resources can have a chance to be steered in a truly efficient manner, in order to fund life-enabling services rather than rich-enriching chains for all to bear. Again, think about it. The debt burden has been the largest tumoral growth blocking the healthy running of all humours inside the living bodies of the planet and of societies. Yet, it is also the one that can be cut most neatly with a knife, i.e., by simple measures: repudiate odious debt; nationalise all banks; use all public resources to capitalise the public banks. If the rich resist, then they will have to be re-educated. If they refuse re-education, then you throw them against the wall, together with their lawyers, accountants, etc. I am sorry, but there may always be people incapable of seeing what is best.

The last “R” is the pivot around which all else orbits. Public authorities are legitimate if and only if they promote the common good, and the good is good if it is consistently and comprehensively life-enabling. It is not a matter of democracy. It is a matter of objectivity. Choice is secondary. Life comes first. All policies must therefore lead to the elimination of all forms of depredation of the poor and of the environment. If people’s needs are met and ecosystems restored, while the economic order is reset so as to be thoroughly green, then the economic order on Earth is good, and the laws surrounding it legitimate. Nothing else counts qua ultimate deciding factor. Not even freedom or the will of the people—that’s one thing that good old Stalinism grasped, perhaps a little too eagerly.

To make the financial accounting equally sane, “capital” must be understood in terms of actually met needs and of overall flourishing of vital capabilities, whether we are addressing “human”, “natural”, “knowledge” or “social” capital. Private businesses can survive in any legal environment, after all—those that survive competition, I mean. They need not be steered, in other words, by competition alone, which drives them toward the bottom. In parallel, they can be steered by enforced regulations compelling them to higher and higher levels of contribution to the common good. That’s the other pincer that we need. “Full employment” worked precisely in this way for three decades in post-war Europe, as reconstruction and peace were woven into the legal framework of business life, without ever abandoning competition. The Montreal Ozone protocol is yet another example, and a more recent one to boot. Alas, if only the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) had been followed and enforced as closely!

Note ~ This article is one of a series, as follows:

Eco-Stalinism: A Tongue-in-Cheek Manifesto
Part 1 - The Barking Madness
Part 2 - Left and Right
Part 3 - Magicians and Medics
Part 4 - The Green Man of Steel


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in Genoa, Italy, Giorgio Baruchello is an Icelandic citizen and works as Professor of Philosophy at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Akureyri, Iceland. He read philosophy in Genoa and Reykjavík, Iceland, and holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Guelph, Canada. Since 2005 he has been the editor of Nordicum-Mediterraneum: The Icelandic E-Journal of Nordic and Mediterranean Studies. He has authored several books, including Why Believe? Approaches to Religion with Garrett Barden. His publications encompass several different areas, especially social philosophy, theory of value, and intellectual history. Northwest Passage Books has published five volumes of his collected philosophical essays.


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