Why the right must always be anti-green

["Barry Brooks" <durable@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The resolution of ecological problems requires solution of the main economic
problem, surplus productive capacity.

Surplus for what?

One kind of surplus is when the full use of productivity capacity would
produce more than can be sold.  This market defined surplus occurs whenever
the full labor force using the current technology could produce more than can
be sold.  This problem has led to policies intended to increase demand, like
government spending and private advertising.  When it is possible to limit
production business will not produce more that can be sold, so the amount
actually produced tends to track effective demand.

The solution to the market defined surplus is consumption growth, but that
solution leads to another kind of surplus, the resource defined surplus, which
occurs when we can produce at rates nature can't sustain.  When the consumer
economy succeeds in allowing full use of capacity it leads to unsustainable
levels of resource consumption.  This kind of surplus productive capacity
can't be solved by more growth; it is caused by growth.

The hyper-active consumer economy stands behind our ecological problems.
And, the class problem lies behind the consumer economy, because it is the
class problem that imposes the false requirement of full-employment.  So long
as workers are kept dependent on wages the need for full employment arises.
In an automated economy full employment will lead to excess production.  So
long as we engage in excess production, and the consumption and waste required
to support excess production, the class system remains intact.  Class
privilege is the source of ecological problems, and the main obstacle to their
solution.

The owning class does not allow workers to work less as automation is
introduced, because that would violate the first (stupid) principle of class
privilege, leisure is only for the few.  The 40 hour week did not make a life
of leisure or end wage dependence, but it was one step in the right direction.
With technology, we should produce less than the maximum possible.

It will be revealed that workers are parasites just as much as the owners when
automation finally makes workers as useless as the idle rich.  This
in-you-face fact is not too much to accept in return for our gaining the
capacity to stop poverty and hyper-consumption at the same time.

We need to cut our CO2 production from burning fossil fuels by about 90% to
really slow global warming.  That can only be done when the imperatives for
action and production have been replaced by the imperatives for thought and
conservation.  Economic idleness is a virtue when wasteful and useless
economic activities are the alternatives.

So, the answer to the class problem and the ecology problem is not to make the
owners into workers, but to make the workers as idle, and as free, as the
owners.  The environment demands nothing less.  And, that's what people really
want.

Barry












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