needs, consumption & productive forces

["Brian Milani" <bmilani@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello PEN-Lers,

	Apologies for another absence, which didn?t allow me
even to respond to the discussion variation I contributed on
?patriarchy, capitalism, and wealth?.  Thanks to Tom W. on the
Postone reference, and Jim D. for the Kanth reference; they both
sound interesting, and I will check them out.  I will refrain from
raising old issues except as they impact on the current discussion
on needs and consumption.
	
	On this, I want to raise a more historical perspective on
the question of needs and consumption.  As seems to be
implied by the very amount of discussion on this topic here,
I?d say that questions of consumption are absolutely central to
our creating an alternative society today. And these questions
also relate directly to problems like climate change.
	A few weeks back Yoshie raised the whole notion of
?productive forces? as the determinants of goals of social struggle.
I think I disagree with the degree of her economic determinism
in those cases,  but I certainly agree with putting much greater
attention on the nature of productive forces.  I feel, however,
we need to look at the economic, political and cultural potentials
as well as the limitations corresponding to a given level of
productive forces.  By and large, I think most contemporary
Marxists have overlooked qualitative changes in the nature of
productive forces over the last century.

	I can?t make the whole argument for new productive
forces here--it took a good portion of the book I?ve just
finished--except to say they have been set loose by the
industrialization of culture, they express a new relationship of
culture (or human development, or ?reproduction?) to the
economy, and signal potentials for qualitative non-material
economic development.  From an ecological perspective, they
bring possibilities for the substitution of human intelligence for
capital, energy and materials through economic redesign. I?d
argue that the full employment of these new productive forces
are absolutely incompatible with capitalism (for a whole
variety of reasons I explore more in my book), and thus they
constitute a threat to the system.  Since WW II, the main
dilemma for capitalism has been how it can selectively tap
these powers for its own purposes while simultaneously
repressing their full flowering.

	For both human development and ecological
regeneration today, questions of consumption and need are
absolutely central economic questions.  And our whole level of
(potential) postindustrialism dictates that we look increasingly
at not just the distribution of wealth and production (the traditional
concerns of the left and labour in the industrial era), but the very
content and nature of wealth and production.  In many respects,
this is what the the new social movements have been doing
increasingly since the Fordist era: attacking all forms of
domination which stifle human potential development, and
gradually developing alternative forms of seeing and living.
?Identity politics? can certainly be quite alienated, but this comes
with the territory; at their best however, questions of ?identity?
should be fundamental questions of what kind of people we want
to be.  These are key questions about how we employ the new
productive forces of human development and cultural
production.
        The mainstream left has largely been ignoring a basic
shift in the nature of progressive social change brought by the
industrialization of culture: a reversal in the relationship of
opposition and alternativeswhere developing alternatives is
the main priority.

	Our environmental crises--like most of our social
problems--are not simply results of a destructive system run
amuck, but also of the suppression of tremendous potentials for
qualitative development.   This is why I can agree with Doug H.
that it is not simply corporations who are the baddies of
environmental destruction.  But it is also why I react to the notion
that our task is to convince everyone we need to sacrifice more.
Quite the contrary: since the Depression, capitalism has only
survived by perpetuating scarcity (achieved primarily through
waste: war industry, the auto/suburb complex, etc).  The
creation of a ?conserver society? ultimately means freeing
up great potentials for qualitative development, for a much
greater quality of life.
	An economy based on human development is not
necessarily a cozy one, because all of us have these negative,
anti-developmental tendencies inside us.   Capitalism?s forms
of ?people production? have people producing themselves
as competitive, alienated and dependent people.  Real change
certainly has to be individual as well as social.  But while this
requires some personal courage and effort, I think the
benefits socially and individually far outweigh the sacrifices.
And certainly, on the level of political-economy, we should be
emphasizing the opportunities and potentials, since
capitalist ideology pushs only the costs of social and
ecological harmony.  I?m not talking utopia here--it just sounds
like it, since capitalism is so completely mobilized against
developmental possibilities.
       The ?end-use? approach that soft-energy path people,
and more recently industrial ecologists, advocate comes
down to putting human and ecosystem needs first, and then
working backwards to satisfy these needs as elegantly and
efficiently as possible.  We have got to be emphasizing that
the social implications of this end-use approach taken to its
logical conclusion is in fact postindustrial socialism.  Ultimately,
the end-use approach is a ?use-value? approach, which puts
human needs first, and is incompatible with a focus on
accumulation.  Thus meeting people?s real needs, and using an
absolute minimum of materials and energy is not inconsistent.
And as Rudhyar argued over 30 years ago, real abundance--
what he called ?plentitude?--is qualitative not quantitative.  But
meeting qualitative needs--or even determining what these
needs are--is not a simple matter, and it requires a much
higher level of consciousness than the old industrial class
consciousness.  But these are the facts of life and struggle
at the level (or potential) of productive forces in our era.

	The left?s weakness on alternatives has, I think, been
reflected in the discussion on needs, consumption, and
climate change.  I agree with JBR Jr. that emissions
trading can conceivably be designed to be a useful instrument
for lessening emissions.  But it would amount to simply
rearranging deck chairs on the Titantic if it wasn?t part of
a larger design strategy to unleash growing potentials for
ecological production and organization. Sustainability will
never be achieved by limiting industrial development, but
only by transforming it altogether with regenerative
development.
	Issues of consumption have to be transformed from being
simply questions of reducing material consumption and into
questions of building new forms of qualitative consumption.
Human consumption is, after all, human self-production,
something many feminists have been saying for some time.
And transforming production today necessarily means
transforming consumption.

	I?m not as sceptical about individual green consumerism
as Yoshie is.  I think it has its place, but I agree it has definite
limits.  There?s no guarantee, for example, that the creation of
new markets for ?green? products aren?t simply add-ons that
increase material throughouts in the economy.  And, as we?ve
already seen with various forms of ?retail wheeling? of energy
which supposedly give people choice, individuals don?t have
the knowledge or time to make truly ecological decisions. And
the greatest efficiencies come via organization on a community,
not simply household, level.
	What we should be pointing to, however, are the forms of
collective or cooperative consumerism that can simultaneously
reduce resource throughputs, build community spirit and
awareness, create markets for truly green production, and spur
local/regional eco-development.  Shared facilities, like auto-
share networks or co-housing, can increase quality of life while
drastically reducing materials throughput.  Green building
materials advocacy projects (like ours in Toronto) can work
with community retrofit operations to assure overall reduction
of materials and energy use, while creating markets for truly-
ecological production, along with creative new jobs.

	If we are serious about real social and ecological
alternatives, we can?t get away from some sort of
?entrepreneurial? approach--since the tendency in almost all
forms of eco-development is toward decentralization and
grassroots participation.  Perhaps it?s true that we might want
to call it something else, because in the long run, the new
?ecopreneurialism? must increasingly be driven by ?use-value?
not exchange-value.  That is, accumulation is ultimately
antithetical to regeneration, or qualitative wealth--which, as
Martin Sklar put long ago, ?disaccumulates?.
	But if the transition is gradual and incremental, which it
must be to be practical, we must have transitional regenerative
enterprises which can be successful in the existing system.
Even without substantial changes in the rules of the game, small
businesses like AutoShare networks, green contruction firms and
community-supported agriculture can thrive in the existing system
to some degree.  In the long run, however, we really have to be
changing the rules of the game so that accumulation (monetary
or material) is no longer the driving force of economic life.
Community development plans, sustainable community indicators,
product stewardship systems, green tax shifting, planning by-laws,
community financial systems, community currencies, green
municipal utilities, etc. can all by part of this.
	By focusing on the development of new rules which make
everyday enterprise ethical and ecological, we can go beyond
seeing markets and the state as being antithetical.
All markets operate with rules, and there are many ways to
change them.  If we can make everyday economic activity
regenerative, the state can be more of a coordinator than a
policeman.  That?s a long-term goal, but it has immediately
practical implications for transitional strategies and current
action.
	I do think it?s realistic to see corporations as basically the
bad guys, economically and environmentally.  But it?s also
unrealistic to expect them to run according to different rules than
the profit-motive.  Small companies--as expressions of social
movement alternatives and civil society--have the space to do
this, but not corporations...  until, that is, we change the rules and
driving forces of the economy.  The problem with many (no
longer) actually-existing socialisms is that they never really
changed the rules to facilitate qualitative development, and as
Wallerstein says, just ran whole national economies like giant
corporations.  We shouldn?t be moralistic about this since they
thrived in situations where the new productive potentials were
still fairly immature. For us, however, until ?private? consumption
and production becomes (qualitatively) developmental, real
democratic socialism will be a distant dream.
	I will add a final comment on ?efficiency?.  Certainly we
have to be careful about how we use this termespecially at a
time when quality and human development is key to the economy.
But let?s face it, global capitalism is just about the most wasteful
inefficient system anyone could devise.  As Herman Daly says,
real efficiency would have us increasing restrictions on the flow
of material goods and resources, and decreasing restrictions on
the flow of information--and, through free trade and intellectual
property rights, globalization is doing precisely the reverse.
	Real efficiency today--with new productive forces based
in human creativity and integration with ecosystem flows--
depends much more on eliminating the chasm industrial capitalism
has created between production and consumption, paid and unpaid
labour, formal and informal economies, public and private spheres,
than it does on traditional struggle in the waged sector.   In fact,
equality, fairness and power in the formal economy may depend
upon our making visible, and consciously valuing, the previously
invisible or undervalued work of both human development and
natural systems.
            Real qualitative production cannot take place with
production and reproduction so divided.  It?s essential for unions
in manufacturing, construction, service, etc. to be determining
what truly regenerative production should be in those sectors.
If they don?t, they will be shooting themselves in the foot,
because conventional capital-intensive development, based in
labour-displacement and waste production is a dead-end.
	  We should face the fact that Marx lived at a time
when the new productive forces had not yet emerged.  He saw
the revolution as a way of making possible the New Human,
direct democracy and the good society.  Today, the
situation is reversed: we need to begin creating the New Human,
establishing direct democracy and achieving ecological harmony
in order to make the revolution. Our power to oppose corporate
globalization derives from our rootedness in developing
alternatives.

	So much for now.  By the way, my book is Designing
the Green Economy: the postindustrial alternative to corporate
globalization, published by Rowman & Littlefield.

					Brian M.


Brian Milani
Eco-Materials Project, Toronto
Green Economics Website
http://www.greeneconomics.net