>need to develop productive forces for communism to happen
>this fucks up the earth and nature
how do we reconcile this as gommunists? whenever I see people calling for protecting the amazon there is an argument that the people cutting down the trees are just trying to make a living.
139 posts and 17 image replies omitted.>>2534499I need to remind you that over 75 percent of CO2 emissions are done by the top 100 companies and the military; not the average citizen.
>>2534922Thank you for your honesty, rapeuyghur. Just one offtopic question, what is your opinion on trans people?
>>2534930>It goes without saying that this does not by any means prevent us from demanding the unconditional annulment of all laws against abortions or against the distribution of medical literature on contraceptive measures, etc. Such laws are nothing but the hypocrisy of the ruling classes.The Working Class in the Soviet Union was the ruling class. Hence why every single country ruled by a revolutionary Proletarian dictatorship banned abortion in it's revolutionary period.
During it's revisionist period, when they started to liberalise the economy, when jobs were no longer guaranteed, firing and hiring was instituted they all implemented abortion as a social "pressure valve" that didn't exist under Stalin/Hoxha etc
>Thanks LeninThanks Stalin, Krupskya, Kollantai, Zetkin, Semashko and others for banning abortion once socialism has been built in 1932!
>>2534970>lenin's ussr was revisionist and not real socialismabsolute state of larouchites lol
>>2534980Uh oh, cuck fag retard alert
>>lenin's ussr was revisionist and not real socialism>absolute state of larouchites lolLenin was pretty explicit socialism hadn't been built by the time he died in 1924
In fact one of his last writings was against the second international faggots who accused the Bolsheviks of taking power before a level of civilisation had been built (by capitalism) before socialism could then be built
<You say that civilization is necessary for the building of socialism. Very good. But why could we not first create such prerequisites of civilization in our country by the expulsion of the landowners and the Russian capitalists, and then start moving toward socialism?https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1923/jan/16.htmNo communist in 1924 believed socialism had been built. In fact the fight against the trotskyite opposition (1924-1927) was whether socialism could be built in one country, especially a backward agarian one like Russia
It was only in 1932, the Congress of the Victors, after the first Five year plan that Communists in the Communist Party agreed socialism had been built
is this retard unironically suggesting banning abortion is good
>>2535019>Congress of the Victors, after the first Five year plan that Communists in the Communist Party agreed socialism had been builtmost of the people here were killed by the regime for being reactionaries so clearly they had it wrong, Stalin corrected that and began to re allow abortion in 1951
>>2534949maybe we should do something about that
>The trouble is that both parts of Saito’s argument—his reintroduction of a Marx depicted as a Promethean hyper-industrialist for the better part of his life, and his description of Marx’s metamorphosis into a “degrowth communist” in his final years—are wrong. There is no evidence (Saito’s references to G. A. Cohen notwithstanding) that Marx was ever an extreme productivist, which would mean seeing the expansion of production in and of itself as the beginning-and-end-all of human development. The notion that Marx became a “degrowth communist” in his last years, is so lacking in any substance that Saito is unable to find a single sentence in Marx’s work that in any way presents such a view. In fact, the whole argument in this respect is textually insupportable.
>Those statements that Saito takes as suggesting that Marx had adopted a degrowth perspective are all connected to Marx’s much broader, lifelong commitment to sustainable human development, as emphasized for decades in Marxist ecological theory. Marx’s approach was certainly ecological in this sense. But the notion of growth vs. degrowth was unthinkable in his time, and thus its application to Marx in Saito’s argument is historically anachronistic. Marx did not live in a full-world economy, but in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, where industrialization still had not developed in most of the world. Even in England, local transport was still in the horse-and-buggy stage.
>Although figures like Engels and Lankester warned of global environmental depredations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this did not translate in their minds into a notion that economic growth in the abstract was the problem, and degrowth as a solution would certainly never have crossed their minds. Rather, they saw the ecological contradiction as lying in the nature of capitalism as a society geared simply to short-run profit, and thus necessarily failing to protect the environment. The issue was sustainable human development.
>Still, setting aside Saito’s whole claim that Marx was a degrowth communist, there remains the question of the concepts of “degrowth” and “degrowth communism” themselves, as viewed in our own time. I think that a concept of planned degrowth is a necessary strategic perspective in the critique of the wasteful, destructive, unequal, and irrational world of monopoly capitalism in the Global North. Per capita energy use in the United States is sixty times that of Nepal. If all the world had the per capita ecological footprint of the United States, we would, at the present time, need three or four planet Earths. The United States and Europe account for the bulk of the historical carbon dioxide emissions, while their per capita emissions still exceed those of China, even though their role in world production is diminishing. The United States is the most automobile-dependent country in the world. In the Global North, we see a system geared to maximizing capital accumulation for a very few by means of the exploitation and expropriation exercised by multinational corporations, while generating a habitability crisis for the earth itself. Obviously, these conditions demand an ecological revolution in the twenty-first century.
>All of this means that, in ecological terms, the rich countries need to reduce their per capita energy use, while the poorest countries need to increase theirs, so that we reach a sustainable global equilibrium. The wealthy countries of the capitalist core are also the historic imperialist countries, expropriating surplus from the Global South to benefit the apex of the world system in the Global North. A July 2024 study by Jason Hickel and his coauthors in Nature Communications shows that labor in the South provides 90 percent of the world’s labor contribution to production, while receiving only 21 percent of the income in return. This inequality lies at the center of the entire imperialist world system.
>What is essential in the Global North then is not simply “degrowth” in the negative, purely quantitative sense, but also in a positive sense: the creation of a society of substantive equality and ecological sustainability. This requires a focus on qualitative development; income, wealth, and resource redistribution; meeting basic human needs for the entire population; production for use, not exchange; rational distribution of resources; cultivation of social use and communal values; and so on. To say that limits to growth and even degrowth are necessary in the wealthiest, most globally exploitative, and wasteful parts of global monopoly-finance capital, is not to make degrowth into an absolute principle, any more than it is to make economic growth itself one. The governing principle of Marxist ecology is always sustainable human development. Moreover, it would be wrong to claim that the poorest countries do not need growth in the means of production. To be a socialist today means to stand for the building of a society of substantive equality and ecological sustainability, measured in global terms[…]
>Ecological imperialism is not a new form of imperialism, but the foundation of all imperialism, making economic imperialism possible and always accompanying it. From the beginning, capitalism developed in large part from the colonial looting of the periphery of its resources and its labor, a process carried out by force with no pretense of equal exchange. Such expropriation was the direct expropriation of resources, including the expropriation of land and bodies. In Marx’s view, it was not exchange, but robbery. He argued that the Industrial Revolution was preceded by a process of “original expropriation” (a term that he said he preferred to “original [or primitive] accumulation,” since it better captured the actual nature of the process at work), in which the commons were forcibly expropriated from the population, creating the mass of the industrial proletariat. This same process of original expropriation also took place in the colonies, but there, as Marx explained, it was even more openly violent and brutal, involving extirpation (genocide) of Indigenous populations and slavery. If economic imperialism, as Marx wrote, involves a process of expropriation in which more labor is received for less, ecological imperialism involves a process where more nature is received for less. Colonialism was all about the robbing of nature/resources/bodies to benefit the “mother country.” The economic exchange aspect of this was often only the surface level.
>A lot of study has been devoted in the metabolic rift tradition to the nineteenth-century guano trade in Peru (particularly on the Chincha Islands). The early to mid-nineteenth-century soil crisis, which was the focus of Marx’s theory of metabolic rift, arose out of industrialized capitalist agriculture, in which key soil chemicals, including nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus, were removed from the soil in food and fiber sent hundreds and even thousands of miles to the new urban manufacturing centers (also concentrated centers of population), where they ended up polluting the cities, rather than being returned to the soil. The result was the loss of soil fertility. To repair this capital turned at first to natural fertilizers, the most productive of which was guano from the Chincha Islands off of Peru. This led to a huge guano trade. Many of the guano diggers were Chinese indentured workers, referred to by the British as “coolies,” and in fact were subjected to a form of slavery. The workers who dug the guano on the Chincha Islands, under conditions of extreme exploitation and de facto slavery, invariably died on the job. In this, we find a classic case of ecological imperialism. The Opium Wars on China, which had their basis in the British creation of poppy plantations in India for the export of opium by force to China, were, arguably, a case of ecological imperialism of another type and can be studied in that context. These historical examples help us to understand the nature of ecological imperialism today[…]
>In his discussion of the metabolic rift in the first volume of Capital, Marx insisted on the need for the “restoration” of social metabolism in line with the universal metabolism of nature—something that was possible in its entirety only in the higher society of socialism. Obviously, the socialist movement would need to strive for that in the present as part of the movement toward the future. Marx clearly thought this would be a primary task in the construction of a socialist society. He insisted on the need to create sustainable conditions for “the chain of human generations.” For Marxism, the dialectic of necessity and freedom has always involved recognizing those material conditions that are objectively necessary at any given time, including both those imposed by nature and society. In order to promote social freedom in a socialist society a level of material development allowing for enough for all, and conditions of substantive equality and ecological sustainability, are required. It is only in this context that the development of a society characterized by what Marx called “freedom in general” is possible[…]
>China is not only a major country, but even more significantly in the present world context, a country committed to “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” Like all countries, China has huge environmental problems. But Xi Jinping Thought has linked the goal of developing a great modern socialist society between 2035 and 2050 to the building of an ecological civilization and an aesthetically beautiful China. He insists that mountains of green are more important and more valuable than mountains of gold. These are not just words, but represent principles that have been put into practice, constituting a coordinated effort that has already made China the leader worldwide in alternative energy technologies addressing climate change, in reforestation and afforestation, in the speed of pollution reduction, and in other areas. China is at present the leading emitter of carbon dioxide globally, but on a per capita basis is well behind countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan. The main issue here is China’s dependence on coal-fired plants, which, however, is now considerably below its peak. Beijing is making strenuous efforts to reduce its overall emissions and its dependence on coal and is introducing hard emissions targets, no longer simply carbon intensity targets, beginning in 2026. Moreover, there are signs that China’s carbon emissions have now peaked and are decreasing ahead of schedule. With all the difficulties and contradictions, there is no doubt that China’s very serious efforts in this respect offer hope to humanity as a whole in this critical area. These efforts, moreover, are not simply top-down, as is often supposed. Not only are these struggles motivated by the Communist Party of China, but they are also in part responses to Chinese on-the-ground mass environmental movements.
>The notion of an “ecological civilization” first arose as a systematic historical concept in the early 1980s in the Soviet Union. However, it was soon adopted, developed, and put into practice in China. Needless to say, the very idea of building an ecological civilization goes against the principal logic of capitalism. Although the contradictions are huge, China presently is charting a distinctive path toward sustainable human development, remarkable in a developing country. It has resurrected the mass line and is rebuilding the worker-peasant alliance with its rural revitalization and dual circulation models. I do not think China’s path is the only path, even in the Global South. We see other socialist-oriented countries making enormous strides based on their own conditions. Here I would point especially to Cuba and Venezuela. All paths toward sustainable human development by definition go against the logic of capitalism.https://monthlyreview.org/articles/ecological-marxism-in-the-anthropocene/ >>2536870THANK GOD, ITS A FUCKING GOOD COMMENT IN THIS THREAD
>>2536870Thanks for the great article here anon. To me this is the most important part:
>What is essential in the Global North then is not simply “degrowth” in the negative, purely quantitative sense, but also in a positive sense: the creation of a society of substantive equality and ecological sustainability. It's easy to assume our current industrial landscape is rational and highly advanced. In many ways it could be called primitive and wasteful.
A good modern example of this is how many late-developing nations skipped wired landline telephones entirely and skipped straight to 4G towers.
If similarly, the heaviest and most ecologically destructive forms of development were to be considered simply bootstrapping periods to help us advance our techniques further, we could achieve much higher quality of life gains for less ecological damage. For example, why bother developing a city to be car-centric when instead you can develop advanced public electric rail systems from the beginning?
The problem is up front capital. And the problem is that those without capital are forced to develop it from nothing, in the most bootstrappable way, requiring these economically harmful methods to overcome the lack of more advanced forms of technology. This means cars which can just be bought as commodities rather than rail which requires public maintenance and large up front capital costs.
Destruction and abolition of industrial processes is not some luddite adherence to the past but instead a more radical adherence to an ecologically sound future. We need ultra advanced technologies and we need to develop them fast because primitive technologies like automobiles and global shipping industries are simply not working well. We could instead rely on diets of locally sustainable plants organized into vegan diets and eliminate entirely these ecological costs while strengthening local resilience against climate effects by moving agricultural systems to use local plants.
It's worth considering de-growth as a radical embrace of the past modes of production, because the past "worked" in a way that the present does not - without substantial external inputs in a given local geographical region. But this does not mean a vulgar return to primitive communism, instead a return to the ecologically sound principles of past life but at a higher stage of advancement.
Mixed private and communal living in commie blocks surrounded by permaculture gardens of indigenous plants, managed by ultra advanced AI robots which are taught using the knowledge of ancient indigenous people who spent generations learning how to live off those very plants in these specific regions. This would be a far more advanced and meaningful vision of the future than parking lots, cars, and monoculture rows of crops replacing every acre of land on earth.
Rather than reject and transcend nature, we must embrace and learn from it. It's easy to think that taking plants, arranging them into rows, and creating primitive, yes extremely primitive machines, to harvest them in parallel, is the peak of human civilization. Because it enables an exponential increase in how much crop output could be generated by a given number of agricultural workers
But the side-effects of these transformations are countless:
>Commoditization of crops
>Markets for crops and a race to the bottom on prices
>Cutting corners on reparation of the soil and limitation of negative ecological impact
>Access to bulk raw plan material to feed to animals
>Feasibility of mass animal agriculture on factory farms
>Economic incentive to deforest to grow cattle
>Higher demand for cattle feed
>More demand to deforest to grow more cattle feed
We grow more plants to feed animals to eat than we grow plants to feed humans. These insane cause and effect chains of non-reasoning taken by capitalism result in utter ecological destruction as an economic imperative
We destroy one thing, the forests and nature, to get another, mass production of hamburgers.
It's always crazy seeing supposed communists turn into an eco-fascist if their right to eat hamburgers is questioned. I say factory farming should be illegal.
>>2536870>For example, it is a mistake to fall into the reductionistic trap of seeing the current planetary ecological crisis in terms of climate change alone, however all-encompassing that may appear to be, since it is crucial to recognize that we have crossed or are in the process of crossing most of the other planetary boundaries as well. All ecological problems today need to be addressed, including conditions of human survival (and the survival of living species in general), along with the conditions of living well on the earthSuch a good quote. This is the trap of development. It happens on a personal and also national level. A nation has to enslave themselves to foreign capital investment which forces the path of car-centric urban planning and heavy industry in the most exploitative way. The only way that this expropriation of nature can happen is first through the expropriation of human labor, as this labor is the mechanism through which all environmental degradation happens. If humans were not forced into labor for the bourgeois then they could not be forced into causing climate change.
If they were guaranteed health, safety, and decent lives, no matter what, in the most ecologically sustainable ways, through whatever method we need to achieve that, we would sidestep this bourgeois-imposed requirement to destroy the ecosystem
It's possible to do industry in a way that doesn't fuck over the planet and we've made a lot of progress over the years in figuring out how to do that. If all the wealthy industrial nations of the world still relying on coal and natural gas for electricity were to decommission all coal and natural gas power plants by a certain date and switch to non-fossil fuel energy sources; nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal, etc., that alone would reduce global CO2 emissions by 30%. Replacing all combustion automobiles with electric engine automobiles and shutting down the crude oil industry and switching to plant-derived hydrocarbons would reduce CO2 emissions by another 40%. All of the alternatives to fossil fuels are simply better in every way, not just in terms of environmental impact, but in energy efficiency, fuel density, long-term sustainability, etc. Any industrial manufacturing process that involves burning fossil fuels to generate lots of heat can be done better and more efficiently with hydrogen or electric arcs or induction. Theoretically CO2 emissions could be cut down to almost pre-Industrial levels if the richest countries in the world all cooperated on this and sacrificed their own short-term profits for long-term survival. But they won't. They've got too much inertia, too much sunk costs logic, too much corruption and bureaucratic incompetence, etc.
<The Double Objective of Democratic Ecosocialism>by Jason Hickel - September 2023
>We face a double crisis as the twenty-first century unfolds. On the one hand, it is an ecological crisis: climate change and several other Earth System pressures are exceeding planetary boundaries to a dangerous extent. On the other hand, it is also a social crisis: several billion people are deprived of access to basic goods and services. More than 40 percent of the human population cannot afford nutritious food; 50 percent do not have safely managed sanitation facilities; 70 percent do not have necessary health care.
>Deprivation is most extreme in the periphery, where imperialist dynamics of structural adjustment and unequal exchange continue to perpetuate poverty and underdevelopment. But it is evident also in the core: in the United States, nearly half the population cannot afford health care; in the United Kingdom, 4.3 million children live in poverty; in the European Union, 90 million people face economic insecurity. These patterns of deprivation are shot through with brutal inequalities of race and gender.
>No political program that promises to analyze and resolve the ecological crisis can hope to succeed if it does not also simultaneously—that is, in the same stroke—analyze and resolve the social crisis. Attempting to address one without the other leaves fundamental contradictions entrenched and will ultimately give rise to monsters. Indeed, monsters are already emerging.
>It is critically important to understand that the dual social-ecological crisis is being driven, ultimately, by the capitalist system of production. The two dimensions are symptoms of the same underlying pathology. By capitalism here, I do not mean simply markets, trade, and businesses, as people often so easily assume. These things existed for thousands of years before capitalism, and are innocent enough on their own. The key defining feature of capitalism that we must confront is that it is, as a condition for its very existence, fundamentally antidemocratic.
>Yes, many of us live in electoral political systems—as corrupt and captured as they may be—where we select political leaders from time to time. But even so, when it comes to the system of production, not even the shallowest illusion of democracy enters. Production is controlled overwhelmingly by capital: large corporations, major financial firms, and the 1 percent who own the lion’s share of investable assets. Capital wields the power to mobilize our collective labor and our planet’s resources for whatever it wants, determining what we produce, under what conditions, and how the surplus we generate shall be used and distributed.
>And let us be clear: for capital, the primary purpose of production is not to meet specific human needs or to achieve social progress, much less to achieve any concrete ecological goals. Rather, the overriding objective is to maximize and accumulate profit.
>The result is that the capitalist world-system is characterized by perverse forms of production. Capital directs finance to highly profitable output, like sport utility vehicles, industrial meat, fast fashion, weapons, fossil fuels, and property speculation, while reproducing chronic shortages of necessary goods and services like public transit, public health care, nutritious food, renewable energy, and affordable housing. This dynamic occurs within national economies but also has clear imperialist dimensions. Land, labor, and productive capacities across the Global South are roped into supplying global commodity chains dominated by Northern firms—bananas for Chiquita, cotton for Zara, coffee for Starbucks, smartphones for Apple, and coltan for Tesla, all for the benefit of the core, all at artificially depressed prices—instead of producing food, housing, health care, education, and industrial goods to meet national needs. Capital accumulation in the core depends on draining labor and resources from the periphery.1
>It should therefore come as no surprise that despite extremely high levels of aggregate production—and levels of energy and material use that are driving ecological pressures well beyond safe and sustainable boundaries—deprivation remains widespread within the capitalist world economy. Capitalism produces too much, yes, but also not enough of the right stuff. Access to essential goods and services is limited by commodification; and because capital seeks to cheapen labor at every opportunity, particularly in the periphery, the consumption of the working classes is constrained[…]
>This is the revolutionary world-historical objective that faces our generation. What would such an economy look like? Several key objectives stand out[…]https://monthlyreview.org/articles/the-double-objective-of-democratic-ecosocialism/ >>2536966Yes, but I do not think it is as simple as building more nuclear plants and changing some of the processes to use electricity. For example, electric car, it is not 0 co2 if you include the manufacturing process, maintanance, recicling, building/maintaining roads, etc. But car use may grow, which may cancel all co2 reductions of using an electric car.
A better fix than an electric car, will be - a better electric bus.
etc etc, not just cars.
I think also that it need to be possible to work less, not just to allow you to do something better than just simple consumerism; but you will be able to give yourself more time, for using a bus, etc.
<Marx's Vision of Sustainable Human Development>by Paul Burkett - October 2005
>In developed capitalist countries, debates over the economics of socialism have mostly concentrated on questions of information, incentives, and efficiency in resource allocation. This focus on “socialist calculation” reflects the mainly academic context of these discussions. By contrast, for anti-capitalist movements and post-revolutionary regimes on the capitalist periphery, socialism as a form of human development has been a prime concern. A notable example is Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s work on “Man and Socialism in Cuba,” which rebutted the argument that “the period of building socialism…is characterized by the extinction of the individual for the sake of the state.” For Che, socialist revolution is a process in which “large numbers of people are developing themselves,” and “the material possibilities of the integral development of each and every one of its members make the task ever more fruitful.”1
>With global capitalism’s worsening poverty and environmental crises, sustainable human development comes to the fore as the primary question that must be engaged by all twenty-first century socialists in core and periphery alike. It is in this human developmental connection, I will argue, that Marx’s vision of communism or socialism (two terms that he used interchangeably) can be most helpful.2
>The suggestion that Marx’s communism can inform the struggle for more healthy, sustainable, and liberating forms of human development may seem paradoxical in light of various ecological criticisms of Marx that have become so fashionable over the last several decades. Marx’s vision has been deemed ecologically unsustainable and undesirable due to its purported treatment of natural conditions as effectively limitless, and its supposed embrace, both practically and ethically, of technological optimism and human domination over nature.
>The well known ecological economist Herman Daly, for example, argues that for Marx, the “materialistic determinist, economic growth is crucial in order to provide the overwhelming material abundance that is the objective condition for the emergence of the new socialist man. Environmental limits on growth would contradict ‘historical necessity’….” The problem, says environmental political theorist Robyn Eckersley, is that “Marx fully endorsed the ‘civilizing’ and technical accomplishments of the capitalist forces of production and thoroughly absorbed the Victorian faith in scientific and technological progress as the means by which humans could outsmart and conquer nature.” Evidently Marx “consistently saw human freedom as inversely related to humanity’s dependence on nature.” Environmental culturalist Victor Ferkiss asserts that “Marx and Engels and their modern followers” shared a “virtual worship of modern technology,” which explains why “they joined liberals in refusing to criticize the basic technological constitution of modern society.” Another environmental political scientist, K. J. Walker, claims that Marx’s vision of communist production does not recognize any actual or potential “shortage of natural resources,” the “implicit assumption” being “that natural resources are effectively limitless.” Environmental philosopher Val Routley describes Marx’s vision of communism as an anti-ecological “automated paradise” of energy-intensive and “environmentally damaging” production and consumption, one which “appears to derive from [Marx’s] nature-domination assumption.”3
>An engagement with these views is important not least because they have become influential even among ecologically minded Marxists, many of whom have looked to non-Marxist paradigms, especially that of Karl Polanyi, for the ecological guidance supposedly lacking in Marxism. The under-utilization of the human developmental and ecological elements of Marx’s communist vision is also reflected in the decision by some Marxists to place their bets on a “greening” of capitalism as a practical alternative to the struggle for socialism.4
>Accordingly, I will interpret Marx’s various outlines of post-capitalist economy and society as a vision of sustainable human development. Since there are no important disagreements between Marx and Engels in this area, I will also refer to the writings of Engels, and works co-authored by Marx and Engels, as appropriate. After sketching the human developmental dimensions of communal property and associated (non-market) production in Marx’s view, I draw out the sustainability aspect of these principles by responding to the most common ecological criticisms of Marx’s projection. I conclude by briefly reconsidering the connections between Marx’s vision of communism and his analysis of capitalism, focusing on that all important form of human development: the class struggle[…]
>1. Basic Organizing Principles of Marx’s Communism>A. The New Union and Communal Property>B. Planned, Non-Market Production>2. Marx’s Communism, Ecology, and Sustainability>A. Managing the Commons Communally>B. Expanded Free Time and Sustainable Human Development>C. Wealth, Human Needs, and Labor Cost>3. Capitalism, Communism, and the Struggle Over Human Developmenthttps://monthlyreview.org/articles/marxs-vision-of-sustainable-human-development/ >>2536988The CO2 emissions in the manufacturing process mostly have to do with diesel fuel equipment being used for mining and processing lithium - hydrogen can replace diesel for heavy machinery just as batteries can replace gasoline for light machinery. And even with the CO2 emissions of the manufacturing process of electric cars, that's still nothing compared to the CO2 emissions of an internal combustion engine car over the course of its entire lifetime.
>>2537007Yes, but imagine you cut co2 by 20%, by not using the diesel cars. By use of a bus you could cut to may be to 25%. 5% is still a huge number.
But still you've mentioned just single process of manufacturing batteries. It is also recicling that you need to include. But some roads built using concrete, a chemical reaction producing co2. It is just an example, idk every step in all processes related to cars.
<Planning an Ecologically Sustainable and Democratic Economy: Challenges and Tasks>by Martin Hart-Landsberg - August 2023
>We desperately need an ecosocialist-inspired transformation of the U.S. economy, one that will allow us to substantially, equitably, and democratically reduce its energy and materials usage. This cannot be achieved without planning, a process that deserves more attention than it currently receives. Although most activist organizations are focused on winning changes in a single defined area of concern, thanks to their collective work, we do have a broadly shared vision of the societal transformation we seek.1 But a compilation of desired changes does not by itself promote an understanding of the likely challenges and tasks involved in achieving these goals.
>Even though our loosely knit movement is nowhere near powerful enough to shape government policy, now is an appropriate time for us to deepen our knowledge about how economies are transformed, as well as develop criteria for the planning process and policies most likely to produce the outcome we desire. One certain insight is that, because of the complex nature of economic processes, a transformative change in one area cannot be achieved in isolation. This realization should encourage initiatives that strengthen ties between organizations with different issue agendas, leading to greater political coherence and visibility for our demands. In fact, it is likely that without a serious effort to chart a way forward, our organizing work will struggle to gain political traction.
>Currently, some of our key demands—for example, to end fossil fuel use—leave workers fearful about their economic future. Many do not find our stated commitment to a just transition, which will ensure workers in affected industries will find employment producing different goods or in new sectors of the economy, very reassuring. They tend to view a “just transition” as more of a slogan than a policy possibility, and for good reason. They see no planning process and no political party or trade union movement with the commitment or capacity to develop such a process.
>Thus, there are good reasons to seek a deeper understanding of the challenges and tasks involved in planning. One of the most productive ways is to study an actual conversion process, in particular the Second World War U.S. mobilization experience. There is much we can learn from this experience not only because the government, under wartime pressure, successfully converted the economy from civilian to military production, but also because it was forced to rely on trial and error to create needed planning infrastructure, all the while managing relations with a reluctant and powerful capitalist class. Therefore, in what follows, I first discuss some of the key lessons to be learned from that wartime conversion. I conclude by offering suggestions for strengthening our collective effort to transform radically the U.S. political economy[…]
>A Rapid Transformation[…]>A Leading Investment Role for the Government[…]>Planning Means More than Spending[…]>Community Participation Has a Role[…]>Planning Is Political[…]>Building Capacity[…]https://monthlyreview.org/articles/planning-an-ecologically-sustainable-and-democratic-economy-challenges-and-tasks/ >>2537021Well the recycling is one of the other benefits of batteries, you can easily recover about 90% of the lithium from a dead battery, which greatly reduces the need for mining new lithium.
>>2537041Yes, but you need to calculate what is the co2 emission from all recycling. etc.
From EU page
>To calculate the amount of CO2 produced by a car, not only the CO2 emitted during use must be taken into account, but also the emissions caused by its production and disposal.
>The production and disposal of an electric car is less environmentally friendly than that of a car with an internal combustion engine and the level of emissions from electric vehicles varies depending on how the electricity is produced.
>However, taking into account the average energy mix in Europe, electric cars are already proving to be cleaner than vehicles running on petrol.Just better compared to oil cars, not ok. And not ok compared to a bus.
>>2537048This is why I said the first step would be to remove fossil fuels from the energy sector, so that we wouldn't end up talking in circles about how electric cars won't work because of the fossil fuel energy sector.
>>2537056You just downplay that a bus is much better solution.
>>2532696>permaculture is a cope of small producers. The problem is small producers.why would permaculture be limited to small producers? You can scale it up to an entire city. It doesn't have to produce
every crop, but any amount that it does produce for the people living there will save space and resources that would have been required to maintain growth outside the city. It will also make the area more resilient in case of supply chain problems (which will be a major concern in the near future)
>>2537736as a permaculture advocate, you need drones or humanoid robots for harvest at scale. we dont really have the technology yet for it to be competitive compared to industrial monoculture and would have to use human labor. it doesn't really apply to staple crops like wheat corn or rice. you could do it for fruit and veg for a pick your own grocery but thats a tiny part of most peoples diet and not much different from community victory gardens.
>>2538120>you need drones or humanoid robots for harvest at scale>>2538120As a permacilture advocate you should know that the entire point of a permaculture food forest is to achieve an ecosystem of every trophic level. This means fruit and nut trees, herb and fruit bushes, and staple grasses can fit in too. Then vegetables of all sorts. You can achieve a fully balanced vegan diet from a well designed permaculture food forest especially if you raised small livestock like chickens inside it
>>2538120>you need drones or humanoid robots for harvest at scale. we dont really have the technology yet for it to be competitive compared to industrial monoculture and would have to use human laborTrue but this is a benefit not a disadvantage. Because large portions of all human labor must be stopped. Its misallocated human labor causing climate change. Every bit put towards stopping it is a good thing
>>2538205>staple grasses can fit in toonever seen this at a scale that can feed people. you need like an acre per person per year and if you are doing it right you would have to spread that acre of grass over a hundred. per person. harvesting by hand inbetween trees and shrubs would suck ass. all the people ive seen get their whole diet locally mix traditional agriculture and its pretty labor intensive. idk how you would deal with housing in a city that also has a hundred acre woods for every citizen
>>2538211>Every bit put towards stopping it is a good thingyou mean like giving people jobs picking wheat?
>>2538233>you mean like giving people jobs picking wheat?No, taking the entire tech sector and putting it towards software for robotics that can help do it at scale. Harvesting grain is hardly a problem, we already have ways to do it at scale. If grain is the big issue here it can be done using traditional agriculture or agroforestry until some better way is found, then everything else can be done using permaculture. The real big issue is that everyone has to become vegan. Because most plants we grow are fed to animals. We need to stop doing that. Global meat consumption is too high and causes health problems.
>>2538233>harvesting by handI don't advise this at all. I think we can assume it's a foregone conclusion that this can be automated if enough labor is put towards developing such robotics but right now it's not happening.
>>2538237it'd probably be feasible to automate a first-pass then workers do a manual second-pass. idk though.
>>2538241Yeah. I'm not trying to be confrontational but I genuinely think we can be doing a lot better than we are now, especially if for instance 10% of STEM labor were directed entirely towards it. It would practically be a solved problem. And given that it's arguably a top priority ecologically, this 10% number is conservative.
>>2538237>Harvesting grain is hardly a problem, we already have ways to do it at scale. If grain is the big issue here it can be done using traditional agriculture or agroforestry until some better way is found, then everything else can be done using permaculture.yeah thats what im saying you cant drive combines through a forest
>The real big issue is that everyone has to become vegan.yes this is why we need a dtop to elect vegan stalin and have state regulated food production
>taking the entire tech sector and putting it towards software for robotics that can help do it at scaleyeah thats what you would need. like little monkey or bird drones to go inbetween the trees and do the tedious monotony. i would apply it to the monoculture too. make the combines smaller or modular and interplant row cropping to reduce pest and disease transfer, roboautomated chop and drop mulch. and instead of monoclonal crops diversified hybrids. you dont need identical clones if you have modular harvest drones and flexible processing. it still wouldn't be in a city tho
i almost think vertical hydro farming powered by nuclear and separate reforestation project is a better use of time then trying to manipulate a forest into making enough food to feed a city. and a lot of places cities are at are not really suitable for crops anyway
were just really far away from something like this if it even turns out to be practical in practice. right now i just think its only useful as a supplement and the big stuff is informing agroecological techniques but at least as i understanding it not really something that scales in its pure form, like as an unmaintaned forest that you completely satisfy your needs at will. that only works if you have a ton of space way more than a suburban lot and like 20-30 years of daily work to establish it
>>2538254I think I pretty much agree with you, except that Marx thought the abolition of the rural urban divide was important and I agree. I don't know the best way to rectify this
I think artificial food production methods like the "vertical hydro farming powered by nuclear" you mentioned is better suited for experimentation and genetic engineering of plants on a mass and more automated scale, rather than just food production. Part of the problem here is that if we used "vertical hydro farming powered by nuclear" this reinforces the rural urban divide because this requires a huge material capital cost up front to create it, and then we become dependent on it. Whereas I see it more advantageous to remove our external dependencies and move towards being closer to enabling off-grid lifestyles. Essentially these supply chain dependencies create obligations between groups of people and separations between groups. For this reason in my opinion it's better to have DIY small scale manufacturable super advanced technologies powered mostly by communal FOSS software and hardware schematics to allow groups of people to not depend as much on centralized manufacturing
The urban must not depend on the rural's food production and the rural must not depend on the urban's technology manufacturing
For this reason the urban must to a large extent produce their own food somehow, maybe this is where "vertical hydro farming powered by nuclear" comes in. Nextly the rural must be able to produce its own means of production, this means the machinery must be closer to being DIYable or not centralized towards being produced by some specific geographical region. Even if this means moving back to earlier form of computational or robotic technologies but in more complex configurations. Such as analog computing hardware
>>2538254>that only works if you have a ton of space way more than a suburban lot and like 20-30 years of daily work to establish itfor me if anything this reinforces the urgency of starting. this is one of the most important points in my opinion
>>2538364>idk precisely what is meant by the rural urban divide but i think a sort of progressively increasing gradient might count?Yeah this seems like a good idea. I think rather than prescribing exact designs at the geographical or urban planning level, once the means of production is made communal and work towards abolishing class distinctions between the rural and urban are made, concrete decisions can be made by those encountering those material changes at that time. It may not mean abolishing dense urban cities, maybe it could also mean creating ultra high speed communal public transit allowing each access to all areas of society by any individual worker, letting a farmer live in a dense city to study or work in a technological firm to guide agricultural engineers, or whether it means for an urban food service worker to decide they want to spend the fall helping as a farm hand
>>2538237Technology doesn't necessarily have to be catered toward industrial capitalist mass production. People could develop farm machinery that is small and affordable enough for average people to be subsistence farmers using prosumer versions of industrial technology for a non-industrial purpose, but capitalism and industry do not want that, they don't want the machines to be subservient to the human; they want the human to be subservient to the machine.
>>2535027I'm not providing a moral qualifier.
I'm simply telling you that when Communists come to power abortion will be banned as it was in every single revolutionary period of the Proletarian Dictatorship ruled by a Communist Party.
Even many Communists with liberal worm-brains will find themselves in the same position as Communists in Soviet Union, Hoxha's Albania etc.
That in order to achieve Communism you need to rapidly expand the forces of production. When you consider that human beings are the living representatives of productive forces no Communist can accept liquidating it's own working class for bourgeois individualism and the disaster that has been (CIA funded) bourgeois feminism.
>>2538480>I'm not providing a moral qualifier. >entire post is a moralistic rantMany such cases.
Is communism inherently anti-ecological? Or is it the only real solution to today’s planetary crisis?
Communism, The Highest Stage of Ecology makes a bold intervention in contemporary environmental debates, refuting the myth that socialism and ecological responsibility are at odds. Instead, Guillaume Suing argues that planned economies—unlike capitalist market systems—offer the necessary framework for sustainable resource management, food sovereignty, and scientific agricultural advancements.
Drawing on historical case studies from the Soviet Union and Cuba, Suing explores the successes and contradictions of socialist environmental policies, from agroecology to energy planning. He critically engages with ecosocialist currents and exposes the limitations of “green capitalism,” ultimately reaffirming the centrality of dialectical materialism in understanding and confronting the climate crisis.
Translated into English for the first time, with a foreword and scholarly contextualization by Henry Hakamäki and Salvatore Engel-Di Mauro, this book is an essential contribution for scholars, activists, and all those seeking a radical path toward ecological and social liberation.
https://www.iskrabooks.org/communism-the-highest-stage-of-ecologyhttps://www.iskrabooks.org/_files/ugd/ec1faf_75814d39efa34ba28681f756b9398b1b.pdf>>2538480Ironic thing to say considering my flag, but Stalin had an excuse (an impending threat of a Nazi invasion and the need to rebuild the country (again) after it, nessesitating excessive workers) to ban abortion which a hypothetical future communist country would not have.
>>2538508>had an excuse (an impending threat of a Nazi invasion Also Hoxha's Albania in 1979.
<Abortion was a crime in communist Albania as it contradicted the party directive to increase the population at almost any cost.https://balkaninsight.com/2017/11/09/albanian-women-remember-fear-of-abortion-during-communism-11-06-2017/And oh look they re instituted abortion in 1989-1991 during capitalist restoration in Albania as imperialists took control of that country and began pursuing a policy of degrowth, depopulation and genocide
<In 1989, the Ministry of Health issued a directive allowing abortions to be legally performed in cases of rape or incest or when the woman was under sixteen years of age. In 1991, it issued another directive legalizing, for the first time, abortion on family planning and social grounds. https://web.archive.org/web/20120204074628/https://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/abortion/doc/albani1.doc
>which a hypothetical future communist country would not have.You think the equivalent of a Nazi Germany does not exist in NATO? You think NATO will not ROFL stomp a country that raises the Red Flag?
You think a hypothetical future communist country is not going to come under the exact same pressures as Soviets in 1930s or Hoxha's Albania?
>>2538558I noticed you fail to bring up Romania. Curious, as their anti-reproductive rights laws were moat in line with your preferences.
>>2538504Thanks anon! I'll give it a read later. Do you happen to have a copy of Kohei Saito's "Capitalism in the Anthropocene"? That one's been on my backlog too.
>>2538558>imperialists took control of that country and began pursuing a policy of degrowth, depopulation and genocide Buzzing with buzzwords
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