Forum / Obverse and Reverse of Political Economy for the Remainder of This Century

• 
  strannikov

  Sep 01, 02:09pm

  Which “capitalism”? Whose “socialism”?

  For good or ill, none of us reside any longer in the eighteenth, nineteenth, or twentieth centuries (well, some of us do continue to live in the twentieth century, but that’s another problem). Both capitalism and socialism have since grown fairly distant from their original conceptions and respective articulations, and today both show their incapacities for dealing with the world we live in.

  Two cases in point:

  Across the past century, as contests between “capitalism” and “socialism” heated up, every capitalist economy on Earth and every socialist economy on Earth aiming to put a good face on their domestic efforts committed itself to industrialization (entrepreneurial schemes for the former, statist schemes for the latter). With these earnest commitments, both capitalists and socialists worldwide committed themselves (without much further thought given to just what they were embarking on) to developing those economic conditions which, in our century, now begin to show themselves as the emergence of Technogenic Climate Change.

  Breakneck industrial competition across the previous century exacerbated the conditions now contributing to wildfire outbreaks on almost every continent (no compelling need now [except to meet lingering demands of mere formality] to await the verdicts of climate attribution studies):

  France, Spain, and Greece have been conspicuous for wildfire outbreaks this summer, while massive wildfires in the Canadian province of British Columbia spawned clouds of smoke that were blown across the entire continent.

  In the U.S., in Washington, Oregon, Nevada, and Texas (the Ross Fire has consumed over 90,000 acres this past week and continues to burn), clouds of smoke have performed similarly.

  Elsewhere, not only do Greenland and Antarctica continue to lose ice mass at astounding and astonishing rates but the world’s remaining mountain glaciers continue to erode and vanish (case in point: this past week’s disaster at the intersection of the borders of Tibet, Nepal, and China).

  Global water cycle disruptions resulting from semi-engineered water management schemes now yield results as promising as the Colorado River steadily drying up (opportunistic flash floods in Grand Canyon National Park notwithstanding), with Lakes Powell and Mead waiting their turn.

  —and in another elsewhere, El Nino 2026/2027 has begun introducing a fresh new drought to Panama (barely recovered from the historic drought of 2023/2024), whose famous canal will be forced (again) to reduce traffic accommodation over coming months because the freshwater stocks necessary for canal management dwindle and evaporate away.

  While twentieth century emissions of GHGs generated by “capitalist” industrial economies no doubt constitute a larger proportion of the global accumulation, “socialist” industrial economies (even those enamored with “state capitalism”) were piously committed to inflicting exactly the same kinds of environmental degradation upon the planet and upon their own citizenries.

  We arrive now at the promised second point: the similar dynamics of political economy and the identical global industrial commitments to technological ambition and gratuitous GHG emissions apply (mutatis mutandis) with respect to the advent of “tech totalitarianism”, the enforced and imposed ubiquity of tech gadgetry and tech apps (and tech surveillance, visible and concealed) that has already turned Earth into a planet-sized treadwheel, spinning 24/7/365 (366), engineered to keep all economies (nominally capitalist, nominally socialist) and their flywheels spinning without cease.

  —which leads us to this subsequent third point: the political and economic choices all residents of the globe now face are these—which style of political economy is equipped to forestall the further acceleration of Technogenic Climate Change with its anticipated outbreaks of cascading and self-amplifying feedback loops and which style of political economy is equipped to forestall the further unconstrained ascendancy of ubiquitous tech totalitarianism.

  (It remains possible that neither capitalism nor socialism in their contemporary iterations is capable of addressing these two distinct but interrelated threats—the enormous pressures brought to bear upon our two dominant styles of political economy could well exceed their respective capacities for substantive response.)

  Decisions, decisions. Even for those still trapped there: we no longer live in the twentieth century.

  -END-

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