[Fwd: Position in the World-System and NationalEmissions of] (fwd)

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx 06/29/00 01:44PM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:

>To purport to answer your question fully would be to assume the
>approach of a utopian.   The answer to your question must come in
>the main from the practice, trial and error, of billions of people.

This is evasive. I'm not asking for a 24-volume detailed blueprint -
I'm asking for general principles of organization,

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CB: And of course there is a big element of the "idiot questioner" in your question. You already know the major elements of the socialist proposal for the transformation of society.

You are also not acknowledging that one major general principle of organization that I gave you is the same as the old one: abolition of private property, because profiteering is an absolute barrier to any major diminution in oil usage because oil is such a critical resource in concrete capitalism 2000.

As far as, GENERAL principles of organization specifically related to ecological problems, Louis Proyect and Mark Jones, et al.,  have given you them in spades over the course of many years.

95% plus of the history of humanity has demonstrated that humans can survive with a drastically different technical base than that of today in the West.
And  it has by no means been proven that people are happier today than through out most of that time period.

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 and specifically
those that are technically feasible but politically impossible under
capitalism.

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CB:  The general principles of organization that are technically feasible but politically impossible under capitalism:

 We don't have an alternative to oil and fossil fuels right now ( and I don't have some genius natural science discovery ). So, as a general matter I would start with fulfillment of the physiological necessities. Food, shelter , etc. for 6 billion people. Perhaps as a ROUGH estimate for a first step,  the whole world should become one giant Cuba in terms of its average individual material kit.  Oil usage should be drastically confined to basic sufficient food , medicine and shelter production....

Totally elimination of all production and existing nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, and 95% of all the rest of military production (impossible without the abolition of capitalism). Howabout a new general custom that almost everybody goes to sleep when it is dark, so that electric light usage is drastically reduced .... How about a moratorium on 95% of television for some number of years ? Moratorium on the production of jetskis for some number of years., living arrangements more like those from the first thousands of years of humanity etc, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.  etc. etc.

With sufficient consciousness in the billions, all of this would not have to reduce the average quality of life. It is possible to be genuinely happy with much simpler kit of pleasures leisures and productive activities if one is raised differently than the average Westerner.

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 If red-greens can't do this, they will convince no one of
anything except their millennarian fervor.

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CB: They've already done it, as far as GENERAL principles. The general principles are the reversal of the critical problems  that have been repeated 10,000 times, hundreds of times on these lists , alone. These are the guides to the search for the more specific and technical answers, which people really do have the creativity to find, if they divest of commodity fetishism.

If you took up the red-green assumptions, rather than taking up a permanent posture of skepticism, you could convincingly answer your own question as far as GENERAL principles.