Because Capital Doesn't Care

The June 14 NY Times is awash in information about climate chaos but they make the assumption that those with power actually care how many people die. Columnist Paul Krugman took a break from telling us inflation is no biggie, to start worrying about the lack of response to climate chaos. He cites the drying up of Salt Lake and wonders why no one is doing anything about it. Listen Paul: Capital doesn't care. While individual and mostly local capitalists are nervous about the impacts of poisonous dust clouds, decimated bird populations, diminished snowpack etc.., they also realize that putting more water in the lake hurts development and economic growth, that is, affects the essential circuits of Capital. A wicked problem indeed. A little late to feign surprise Paul. Krugman points to the Aral Sea as an example of what is to be avoided but why stop there? There are millions of examples of purposefully destroyed ecosystems and they all have the same root cause. Paul thinks it is up to "policy makers to act." Where is rationality, he wonders? Then there is the report from Southeast Asia on the "fresh urgency" of climate change "worries", that is, farmers dying of heat stroke or committing suicide over personal economic ruin. They all need to understand, Capital doesn't care if they all die. Readers of the Times will care, will fret, will "worry", but will do nothing to stop emissions. Like the Salt Lake "policy makers", they all know the reality. “This is everyday climate change at work: a slow-onset shift in environmental conditions that is destroying lives and livelihoods before our eyes,” write the activists about conditions in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal. In his novel Ministry of the Future, author Kim Stanley Robinson imagines a day when wet-bulb temperatures kill tens of millions and THEN "policy makers" snap to attention. A day, an Event, a rupture. Anything but The Long Now we currently endure. Then the Times has pictures of roads in Yellowstone Park washed out by flooding and a piece wondering if "carbon capture can be part of the climate solution". Some gal from the "office of fossil energy and carbon management" says yes. Office of Carbon Management? Really? Do they know that Capital doesn't care? They will do something, "Yes, but not now, not yet" to quote Stuart Hall. We live in what he called "The Great Moving Nowhere Show" because it is all frantic enrgy but never actual movement. Not the Long Arc of History bending toward Justice or anything else. Just "The Long Slow Cancellation of the Future" as Mark Fisher (RIP) put it.

Why We Can't Have Nice Things

In a capitalist "democracy" (although strong arguments are being put forward as to why we should call it "neofuedal 'democracy'") short-term profit accumulation takes precedence over any kind of "general welfare" or public good. In fact, there is no distinction between them. More profit is always good and no law shall be passed that restricts this axiom. Because it would look bad if corporations had their own police and army, they created the state and a veneer of "democratic" goverance, supposedly of, by and for the people. Some rubes actually buy into this farce but most people simply accept it as "better than fascism". No matter how bad their lives get at least they don't live in Ethiopia. Of course "government" and "the state" come in many shapes and sizes, and often at a very local level people try to put environmental or social justice concerns ahead of profit. But power flows from the top so a higher level of capitalist government can be enlisted to "pre-empt" these brave attempts at local autonomy. Rubes who identify as "conservative" can be enlisted to support these restrictions on their own freedom by framing the issue as socialism vs the free market. Because they can't understand the way the tyranny of the capitalist state is exactly the same as the tyranny of the market, the state simply enforcing market dictates, they consume more shit and wave flags. They pass laws enforcing their own slavery. When you are that stupid, you deserve to be in chains. Meanwhile, as the social fabric continues to unravel, we naturally see law and order becoming the simplistic go to for the forces of reaction. The George Floyd Rebellion backlash melds perfectly into growing disgust over massive homeless camps. The answer? more cops. More guns. Bigger fences. Destroy antifa. Who knew?

What If Both Are True?

Conservatives say "guns don't kill people, people kill people." Of course both are true but such a complex thought can't be processed by the American mind. One or the other. Give us two choices, Yay or nay. They also like to say "you can't legislate the evil that lurks in the heart." Which is true enough, but also forces you to accept the insane amount of evil in American hearts compared to the rest of the world. ( but only if logic is part of your thought process). The obvious answer then is to both pray and get a gun. Green Capitlism in action, from the WaPo: NextEra Energy, which operates one of the world’s largest renewable-energy businesses, has played an outsize role in Florida. Its campaign contributions and lobbying prowess have made it a juggernaut in state politics and regulatory matters. “We have 120 years of crazy regulatory practice in electricity and natural gas,” Mr. McCullough said. “There will be a day when someone will ask why they have just an extension cord there instead of the appropriate transmission line, because none of this makes good economics or engineering sense.” Mr. Mc Cullough doesn't understand capitalist economics, where this makes perfect "sense". The company profits rise, end of discussion. Wealth is generated, GDP goes up. Doesn't matter if your product is renewable or dirty energy, you still have to work the system with deals, greasing the wheels. Florida is also on the bleeding edge of what is known as "preemption legislation", that is, if state legislators get wind that a local municipality is considering policy that might hurt corporate profits, they step in with a bill that prevents locals from protecting themselves. As a Florida state rep put it "any socialist policies meant to harm the free market" must be preempted.

Archie Bunker Wasn't Really Funny

The popular sitcom All In The Family tried to portray Archie Bunker as a lovable conservative, a working-class curmudgeon who had a good heart and just valued tradition. But in fact he was a stupid bigoted asshole and the beginning of the end for any kind of principled conservatism. The shows producers were trying to be progressive and understanding of the changes Reaganism was bringing, but mistook tolerance for politics. We can now see the results of this desire for unity. Instead of being another prejudiced dumb bastard, he was "politically incorrect". Aggrieved and full of resentful self pity, the audience was supposed to sympathize with a "regular Joe" in a changing America. We knew he wasn't a "real" racist because he had such a sweet, dumb (but loaded with "common sense") wife who liked her role of wife and mother but wanted to cautiously test the role's feminist boundaries. In this sense I see Archie as a precursor to Tea Party Trumpism with all it's defiant, boastful incoherence.When they say Make America Great Again they mean bring back Archie, exalt Archie as the anti-woke, crass, working stiff. The worker who blamed Outsiders instead of the Boss. Who wanted to fight a culture war instead of class war. Who just wanted to kick back in his easy chair and watch tv and have his wife bring him beers. Democrats blamed Hillary for alienating the Archies by calling them deplorable. But they are deplorable whiners and they were alienated long before Hillary's campaign.Now they have abandoned all pretence of political philosophy and in favor of the blood thirsty howl of the self-righteous mob.

Sleepwalking Over the Cliff

The Right-wing has made "wokeness" the thing that must be avoided at all costs. And along with concern for social justice and the rights of minorities they have now included concern about climate change as a symptom of woke. It is more awesome, more American to be asleep. More manly. States that produce fossil fuels are now protesting that attempts to pull investment from polluting industries is to buy into wokeness culture and since wokeness is a program pushed by liberal, effete intellectuals, it is to succumb to fragility and weakness. In other words, the opposite of hyper-phallic Trumpism. Large investors such as Blackrock who wanted to be responsible, conscious, green capitalists are being told in no uncertain terms that their fiduciary duty is to make money, period. In other words, even the fake simulation of green capitalism was too much wokeness for the conservative "base". We should not kid ourselves. Neither the State nor Capital gives a rats ass if there are no insects, no coral reefs, laborers dying of heat stroke. As long as there are profits and tax revenues on the short-term horizon they are prepared to see forests go up in smoke and bodies pile up. The global head of responsible investment at HSBC lifted the veil when he gave a presentation at the Financial Times Conference titled : "why investors need not worry about climate risk". Of course he was hustled off the stage amidst apologies but he delivered the unvarnished truth; there are immense profits in misery. How strange to live in a time when it is bad to be awake. We are supposed to slumber through the American Dream, which might be what Timothy Morton was getting at with "hyper-reality". When things get too real, we can retreat into fantasy and disavowal. On the "social cost of carbon" battlefront, the Highest and Most Sacred Supreme Court ruled that the Federal government can continue assigning a "cost" to emmissions or “estimates of the monetized damages associated with incremental increases in greenhouse gas emissions.” In the next breath we get: “An accurate social cost is essential for agencies to accurately determine the social benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions when conducting cost-benefit analyses of regulatory and other actions,” the order said. The question I've been asking is are we talking "estimates" or "accurate" accounting? It matters if you insist on using markets to regulate behavior.

Revolutionary Subject

In a review of Andreas Malm's Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency, (Open Democracy Oct.2020) Cihan Tugal asks who Malm is referring to when he uses "we". Who is the subject that will foment radical change, or what Malm calls "war communism"? Tugal criticizes Malm for not including "one mention of organizing or mobilizing the workers of these (fossil fuel) companies to carry out the necessary nationalizations." Those in the climate justice movement are constantly being called on to identify the revolutionary agent or subject that will form a base. It is orthodox socialist/Marxist theory to point to "the working class" and then move on but do these "workers" Tugal and others point to actually interpellate as workers? Are they in any sense a class for themselves, sharing a common understanding or "class belonging"? Does the climate movement wait for this class to rise up and lead and if yes, for how long? Tugal is willing to entertain the possibility "that workers are so complicit in pollutant capitalism that they can't be counted on." But then he asks Malm to name an "effective social replacement...or whatever the social equivalent of workers might be." I would ask: why is it deemed so necessary to name this agent? Any suggestion the reified "working class" won't lead is labelled "petty-borgeoise substitutionism". Hense the dead-lock. Waiting for Godot. Waiting for the "rational" abandoment of fossil fuels and a "Just Transition" led by Capital and it's clients in government. Good luck with that plan. This is the critique of "spontaneity". I would argue the existential nature of the current crises changes the calculus, that you can indeed initiate a rupture using whatever available social agents and the struggle will radicalize them. The process creates the subject when the future is on the line. Tugal goes on to blame "disorganization of the working class" but I would suggest a re-organization does not fit into the timeframe we face for salvaging the biosphere. Lots and lots of workers would join an energized mass movement once things got going. But if Leninism is proletarian leadership of "the people" I would say that in our time, in the current conjuncture, this formula needs to be reversed. If that is substitutionism, so be it.

Voting Our Way To Power?

Results are in. The DSA Green New Deal Committee put up a slate of 11 candidates running for office around the country. So far they are all losing. Some races were close and yes, the campaigns helped build infrastructure and pushed a green message, but none of our people are in power. After lots of organizing effort and resources spent. What are known as "opportunity costs". Things that we could have been working on but weren't. Now DSA Political Committee wants to use abortion politics to mobilize the masses but I fear this means supporting Democrats. Tough to get super inspired. You try to develop a strategic plan and keep clear priorities to work on for the long haul but these Events inevitably pop up, what we call brushfires, and everyone drops what they were doing and rushes to put out the Crisis of the Moment. But women are outraged and leadership thinks that emotion can be mobilized toward some real gains. But how? Putting millions in the streets? A march, a rally, some speeches by Democrats? What crisis will pop up tomorrow? Maybe Capital will start a little war or some Black men will get shot by racist cops. Maybe they will ban books or raise prices. Something for sure. Whack a mole here, whack a mole there. Plenty of moles.