[PEN-L:2475] Re: women & technol

[blairs@xxxxxxxxxxx (Blair Sandler)]

At 9:03 AM 1/19/96, Peter.Dorman wrote:
>A quick reply to Blair, who says that environmentalism encourages people to
>create more markets rather than search for alternatives to capitalism.
>
>I agree that most *economists* who become exercised over environmental issues
>look for market-like solutions.  In some cases they are even right to do this.
>But the more committed environmentalists tend to see the shortcomings of this
>approach, recognizing that changes in the direction of economic development
>require a more coordinated form of intervention.  Even where new markets are
>appropriate -- e.g. applying the polluter pays principle to create new taxes
>or marketable permits -- the political process fails to act because, under
>capitalism, the concentration of wealth in the hands of those who benefit from
>pollution eviscerates democracy.
>
>By the way, it seems that Blair and I have had very different experiences in
>environmental groups.  Most of the environmentalists I've worked with think
>economists are either lackeys or out to lunch.  This seems to be the case the
>closer one gets to grass roots (and working class) activists, such as the
>anti-toxics folks.
>
>As for the question, what is socialism.... well, that's another thread, to put
>it mildly.  I'll just avoid all the hard questions and say that socialism is a
>system under which "society" has determinate control over "the economy".
>
>Peter Dorman


Hi Peter! Nice to see you (if only briefly) at the meetings.

The people I hang out with personally are lefties, Marxists, red-greens.
But to say that activists think "economists are either lackeys or out to
lunch" doesn't address the question of markets. What I find is that
activists are either already radicals, socialists, or more generally
possessed of a systemic critique, in which case they are less susceptible
to the lure of expanding market processes as environmental fix, or they are
environmentally concerned (possibly very grassroots) with no systemic
analysis of capitalism, in which case they tend to deploy an implicit and
often unconscious externality discourse. Economists [read nc economists]
are of two kinds/minds concerning environmentalism: free-marketeers and
pro-government regulation types. Both of these policy types follow from the
externality discourse. One says: in the absence of markets, make more of
them! The other says: in the absence of markets, substitute government and
force corporations to act as if there were markets.

Lefty environmentalists (grassroots activists, to be sloppy) typically tag
along behind the mainstream liberals, adding only the cry that government
can't succeed either, under capitalism, because it is undemocratic. I think
the interesting thing on the activist level is that activists seem to have
pretty much decided not to bother with government (precisely on account of
the criticism in the previous sentence) and go right at the corporations
(unless they treat the govt. itself as just another big corporate
enterprise). Nonetheless, here too they are always trying to influence the
way corporations behave. This is a self-defeating strategy, I think. I
mean, we can win little battles but are always losing the war as long as we
are teaching corporations how to produce more *efficiently* -- which is
precisely what is at stake when e.g. a community grassroots organization
says that the health and welfare of its citizens/members are not being
valued properly.

Regarding socialism: yes, my point is that avoiding all the hard questions
leaves us with empty statements. What does it mean for "society" to have
"determinate control" over the "economy" ? We used to think we knew (public
ownership of means of production, central planning, etc.) but it seems
pretty clear now that nobody has any idea really what it means. Nor any
idea how to get there. Instead of trying to control corporations, I think
we ought to be focusing on experimenting with constructing non-capitalist
non-exploitive enterprises that could provide lessons and means for
replacing capitalist appropriation of surplus with collective,
non-exploitive surplus appropriation. This could provide a context in which
explorations of democracy could acquire concrete content.


Blair