The number of people imputing things they wanted to hear, seemingly so they could accuse you, but which you didn’t say, and/or not investing any curiosity in what you did actually point them at… was quite something.
It kind of brings home just how much is functionally invisible
Was it the suggestion that the political system could be in any way constrained by material reality, like global supply chains or ecological overshoot?
The underlying logic being that certain human societies in the distant past possibly formed cities without hierarchies, therefore it would be possible to maintain our current cities of millions, global supply chains and fossil-fuel powered industries with only voluntary cooperation.
Or was it challenging the belief that the ultimate source of our problems is political, and conversely that all our problems can be solved by political change?
It's hard not to see this as just another version of techno-optimism, just in the social domain. If only we teach everyone regenerative agriculture or abolish unjust hierarchies the problem of overshoot will solve itself.
Perhaps some of us were seeing this discussion as a debate on whether coercive power structures are justified or not.
I would prefer to live in a world free of such than in a world of institutionalized coercion, especially if civilization is going to collapse no matter what.
Regenerative agriculture and abolishing unjust hierarchies might not be enough to save us but it's still the right direction to struggle for IMO.
That's fascinating that it was this to you. First of all, a debate, instead of a conversation between friends. And second, the topic being the justification for coercive structures rather than an analysis of material conditions that make such structures arise.
Now I'm only left with a question how to communicate these ideas more clearly in a way that wouldn't lead to the "debate about justification for coercion."
To what end? Overshoot trumps everything, you've told us. Our suggestions are quaint and well-intended but naive, and there really isn't any way out.
The idea you want to communicate more clearly, is it basically just to prepare for the end?
I'm not saying that's not a valid communication. Maybe I missed something but if that idea had been presented as your position up front in that discussion, things might have gone differently. Maybe not. 🤷♂️
I haven't said overshoot trumps everything, only that it limits the possibility space. I wish we could freely mix and match the political systems we have, but the reality is that the political and the economic is influenced (and itself influences) the material reality.
The "end" we need to prepare for is the end of high-energy lifestyles, and that includes big cities. We can undergo this transition in an honest and humble manner (of which #degrowth is good first step) or we can close our eyes, dream of our hunter-gatherer past and let the collapse wreck havoc on society, giving rise to unspeakable suffering.
In the interest of not disrespecting any more of your time than I already did in a conversation you initiated in my mentions, I’d like you to know that sneering, dishonest, malign condescension like this:
“or we can close our eyes, dream of our hunter-gatherer past and let the collapse wreck havoc on society, giving rise to unspeakable suffering”
is why I’m blocking you. Considering that you said this whilst simultaneously whining about other people deliberately misinterpreting you, I’ll hazard a guess that you will leave this conversation imagining yourself a victim, without the ability or willingness to consider what role you played in creating this dynamic. I wish you lots of luck with your lack of introspection! Everyone is wrong and dumb but you; everyone is a jerk but you.
I just don’t have the time or energy to entertain assholes.
The main thing that still confuses me about this whole discussion is how what I write is being misread or ignored.
HP will say "Cities are not parasitic. I have no idea where this notion comes from." and I provide them with an answer and a link to the supporting research: https://mas.to/@jackofalltrades/112123858579083809
@jackofalltrades
This is also how I felt about the conversation. Like I'd think something had been established but then later in a thread you'd repeat a claim as if we hadn't already established it as inaccurate. @RD4Anarchy@urlyman
I want to be clear that in this specific example, I was not asking about his absurd claim that cities are colonial parasites, but his separate claim that rural areas were somehow more insulated from the systemic effects of overshoot.
Jack himself specifically acknowledged that overshoot is a function of systems, but couldn’t seem to connect this insight to his claims throughout the conversation. He was frequently sloppy like this about his own positions, which contributed significantly to the tone of the conversation.
It's hard not to take this as totally disrespectful of my time.
If you disagree with this research or its conclusions, fine, I'd be glad to talk about that. But instead people seem all too keen to just selectively ignore parts of my argument and hyperfixate on certain words, like "parasitic", even after I carefully explain what I mean.
If people don't seem to listen when I explain and clarify and instead cling to their preconceived notions about what they think I mean, what is to be done? I decided to end the discussion with them, and continue it with those that seemed more interested in... well, actual dialog, rather than monologue.
Everybody agreed that cities as they function now cannot continue sustainably. All the evidence you've presented about cities being parasitic or "colonial" is based on the way they are now, while we were all making suggestions about how different they could be based on various ideas both modern and reflecting on past human endeavors, and would be if the constraints and demands of capitalism were absent (which is really much more than just "employee - employer relations" and would have far-reaching fundamental affects on how things are done that I'm not sure you've acknowledged), and indeed would have to be in order to continue.
Likewise with data you presented on fertilizer use in modern industrial agriculture, data which resulted from the dysfunctional system we have now and all the unimaginable waste, inefficiencies, depletion and destruction it generates. This cannot continue, but I also don't think it represents any useful baseline for us to extrapolate from because it is so thoroughly a result of capitalist practices.
>>The "end" we need to prepare for is the end of high-energy lifestyles, and that includes big cities.<<
Absolutely agree about high-energy lifestyles, but am not convinced that cities necessarily have to be that way. Others have pointed out already that cities do present opportunities for more efficient use of energy and other resources in many cases (even if those aren't being exploited now as much as they could be).
For sure we could not expect to maintain cities in their current form, but to me this is because of many other considerations around capitalist technology and lifestyles, not about simple numbers of people gathered together (up to a point, of course). Every location will have a unique capacity. I don't know if cities could continue to be as large as many are now, probably not, but I'm not convinced they couldn't or shouldn't exist at all.
And always lurking in the back of my mind was to cut to the chase about coercion. If you also do not support the use of institutionalized coercion then what are you going to do about these cities that you think should not exist? How would you disperse them in a voluntary way?
@RD4Anarchy@jackofalltrades@urlyman isn't the point, rather, that if you remove the coercion that's directing such a high concentration of resources into megacities that they will tend to dissolve into the hinterland of their own accord over the years, as people stop moving there and some move out?
Yes, "the coercion that's directing such a high concentration of resources into megacities" has been a huge point I for one have tried to make. I don't know whether they would "tend to dissolve into the hinterland" always or not, but the point is that they would be very different "of their own accord" compared to under capitalism.
Everything you're saying is based on the assumption that overshoot is caused by capitalism.
All the sources I linked so far in this thread suggest otherwise: that it's the fault of particular technologies (internal combustion engines, artificial fertilizers, vaccines, etc), or industrialization in general.
I never argued cities would not exist at all. My whole point, going back to the beginning of this thread (again) is that the inevitable energy descent and ecological degradation will be the cause of conflict: https://mas.to/@jackofalltrades/112123741042451336
Too many people putting too much pressure on the environment. Neither will they be able to stay put nor dissolve into the hinterland.
@jackofalltrades@RD4Anarchy@urlyman What I don't like is how mechanical this description is. There's no such thing as conflict simply being 'caused' by contractions in resources. If you look at any situation where conflict happens it's always because of political decisions by groups that sought power through conflict. Conflict isn't some property that suddenly emerges in human society when resources contract at a certain rate.
@jackofalltrades@RD4Anarchy@urlyman I was going to say that this framing of conflict is apolitical, but I'd say it's actually implicitly political in the way it makes conflict seem inevitable. In the worst cases this kind of framing is used by those who want conflict, because it makes their preferred policy seem natural and unstoppable. I'm not saying this is your argument, but I'm saying why I don't like this framing.
My understanding is that the political is a reflection of the material. I can't think of a single conflict that wasn't about access to some land/resource. And what is power if not being able to control resources?
@jackofalltrades@RD4Anarchy@urlyman Yes, and it's that seeking of power over the resource which leads to conflict, not the fact a limited resource exists at all. There's lots of ways for humans to relate to resources and it is cultural and social factors that decide which ways are used.
Yes, it's going to be very easy for power elites to mobilise ordinary people against each other as the cake gets smaller. What I oppose is seeing this kind of fratricidal conflict as natural, because that's the kind of language the same elites are using to conceal their agendas.
At the same time I do endorse some kinds of conflict - but conflict against the extractivist system and conflict that frees up resources for human wellbeing.
Conflict against the extractivist system is a conflict against people whose lives depend on those extracted resources, be it a farmer that needs artificial fertilizer or a doctor that needs electronic devices and mass-produced medice to treat their patients.
Everything I know points to the fact that at least half of us would not even be here if not for this extractivist system. That's the irreconcilable tension I am referencing here, not some power-hungry elites.
You're jumping very quickly to a framing of these conflicts being imposed by objective natural limits, limits which therefore can't be politically challenged.
A farmer 'needs' those fossil inputs because of the surrounding social context, not because of the laws of physics.
There are ways to produce enough calories for all of us while at the same time dismantling extractivism. (Or dealing with its crumbling, which is more likely).
Jack is really struggling with the idea that you can critique the idea of conflict as a mechanical product of biophysical limits without denying the existence of those biophysical limits.
Indeed, I see those as objective natural limits. Earth's systems cannot absorb excess CO2 that we're pumping out, we're destroying biodiversity, disturbing biogeochemical cycles, etc. That's what overshoot means: exceeding physical limits of Earth's capability to regenerate.
"There are ways to produce enough calories for all of us while at the same time dismantling extractivism."
@jackofalltrades@RD4Anarchy@urlyman Yes, but all of those objective measurements of overshoot are happening because of extractivism, so it follows that they are not fixed, unless you take for granted the present system.
Ways of feeding people using less extractive methods have been researched and written about a lot. One crass method would be the ending of intensive animal agriculture. It would mean conflict against agribusiness interests, but that's not the same thing as against farmers.
@jackofalltrades@RD4Anarchy@urlyman Apart from you saying "that's not the case", I don't see how your post is a reply to me. I've not said anything about capitalism at all.
I'm sorry for not being more clear, had to trim it down to 500 characters.
My "that's not the case" was in response to you saying that ending intensive animal agriculture would be a conflict against agribusiness interests and not the farmers. I disagree with this. Consumers want to eat meat (and continue their high energy lifestyles in general) and farmers want to produce it. I provided you with links that I hoped would paint a fuller picture of why I think this.
ok, but I'm not going to assemble a jigsaw puzzle based on following links to hazard a guess as to what you're actually saying :) thank you for explaining.
I'd say again that I think you're jumping too fast to accepting such consumer and producer desires and (group) interests as natural and hence unchanging rather than contingent on cultural and social factors, and as containing inner tensions.
We know the status quo is manufactured, it's not natural.
I don't want to get into an appeal to nature argument, but the system we have now is a result of physical and evolutionary processes that first got supercharged by agriculture and then more so with fossil fuels. There was never an architect that set up the system this way. Even billionaires are part of the system and would be powerless to stop it.
Cultural factors play a role, but it's unclear if these can be steered away from overshoot.
@jackofalltrades@RD4Anarchy@urlyman Sure, I largely agree with your description of the current state of affairs, and how we got here. But I don't see that as an argument against my points.
I'm simply warning against a description that accepts the status quo as somehow a given, and as deeply embedded in basic things like farmers and consumers' desires.
Things are going to be nasty and messy, but if we look for the cracks in this seemingly natural state of affairs we can make the best of it.
>>The idea that without capitalism we will become less wasteful and more mindful of our global predicament sounds implausible to me.<<
I don't know why 🤷♂️
Unless you really just don't see how capitalism drives so much waste, depletion and destruction, or if you think capitalism is an entirely voluntary system, not coercive.
I mean look at just one tiny and very limited example and think about the potential ramifications: police defending dumpsters of expired food from being utilized by hungry people, and retailers intentionally fouling such food to prevent people from eating it. This is a very simple, direct example. Others are more deeply embedded into the way things work now; the motivations and constraints capitalism injects everywhere.
The narrative you're pushing here is that capitalism is not to blame and removing it won't change anything, but the evidence and arguments you keep presenting are all based on conditions that were created by capitalism and have to be constantly maintained through great effort and violence.
I guess we have a huge disagreement over how capitalism affects people's behavior and circumstances.
As for megafauna extinction, it is not conclusive that humans were the main driver but even if true, it is not by itself a defining picture of our species, in fact there are many counter-examples:
I'm not saying that capitalism is not to blame and removing it won't change anything. It would certainly help with issues of democracy and inequality. But it won't do much about overshoot is all I'm saying.
The USSR was state capitalism, it is not an example of another system, or of anything happening outside capitalism. Since at least the early 20th century all states have inextricably part of the global capitalist system. I recommend the book "State Capitalism: The Wages System Under New Management" by Adam Buick and John Crump https://files.libcom.org/files/State%20Capitalism.pdf
All the examples you give continue to reflect the conditions and conditioning embedded in the world-wide capitalist system, not examples of people acting outside of its influence (both material and mental).
>>Societies all around the world tried different systems and due to material pressures and historical contingencies we've arrived at this point.<<
I do not believe this narrative at all. Nobody voted for capitalism, nobody "arrived at it" after everything else failed. It did not arise spontaneously around the globe. Capitalism was violently forced upon the world, continuing on the heels of colonialism.
I absolutely reject the notion that it is a natural inevitable result of any kind of "evolution" and frankly I find no legitimate use in applying the word "evolution" beyond it's strict biological meaning. I can put up with casual usage, but not in a serious discussion when it gets used as a sort of authoritative shorthand.
Yes, that's the point. It was violently forced upon the world and that's how it won, just like agricultural societies violently drove away hunter gatherer societies before that.
It wasn't inevitable, but that's the world we live in.
>>...just like agricultural societies violently drove away hunter gatherer societies before that.<<
I suspect this may be an overly broad generalization and oversimplification.
"Actually, what happened [in the Middle East] after the invention of agriculture around 10,000 years ago, is a long period of around another 4,000 years in which villages largely remained villages.
And actually there's very little evidence for the emergence of rigid social classes, which is not to say that nothing happened.
Over those 4,000 years, technological change actually proceeded apace. Without kings, without bureaucracies, without standing armies, these early farming populations fostered the development of mathematical knowledge, advanced metallurgy. They learned to cultivate olives, vines and date palms. They invented leavened bread, beer, and they developed textile technologies: the potter's wheel, the sail. And they spread all of these innovations far and wide, from the shores of the eastern Mediterranean, up to the Black Sea, and from the Persian Gulf, all the way over to the mountains of Kurdistan..."
Yes, it is a generalization, but it captures the bird's-eye view. Of course there are hunter-gatherer communities to this day, but overall agricultural societies replaced / displaced hunter-gatherers. It doesn't mean it was inevitable, but that's how history unraveled.
If a robber knocks you down and leaves you bleeding and penniless we don't say "well that's just survival of the fittest". We see this violence as an aberration, and as ultimately destructive of the society which even robbers depend on.
It's easy to see industrialisation and colonialism as similarly temporary and (self) destructive, rather than some kind of stable end state, but only if your perspective is broader than just this recent crime scene.
In the context of this discussion, we could say that agricultural communities would not survive if they allowed nomads to "forage" the land that they cultivated. That was actually true of any community that heavily depended on specific resources for survival, e.g. the Haida would fiercely defend their territory, capture slaves, etc.
Who is the "robber" is not as clear here. Just different groups of people competing for limited resources.
@jackofalltrades@RD4Anarchy@urlyman In the context of our discussion about the present state of global extractivism the robber is the global hegemony of extractivism. I don't think it's helpful to see the current extreme situation as the same as any kind of local conflict as that is a way of rooting it in - again - an ahistorical and naturalised human characteristic.
@jackofalltrades@RD4Anarchy@urlyman I think there's a big difference in how people participate and benefit, depending on their relationship to power and to control of resources, and that's where political possibilities come from.
>>The present state of global extractivism that majority of human population participates in and benefits from, I would add.<<
I'm tempted to just straight up block you for this statement because it is incredibly superficial and naive, yet you don't strike me as superficial and naive.
"capitalism has lifted billions out of poverty!!1!!" 😬
People in the imperial core are dying of heart disease linked to microplastic accumulation in their blood vessels. Climate change is a consequence that will affect everyone. Capitalism has utterly warped and damaged many people who are affluent beneficiaries.
People participate because they have no choice. Many benefits are dubious and all have costs, often not reckoned yet.
If we're all participating voluntarily and truly benefit then everything is ok, why are we even having this discussion? I get social security benefits, I have a car and a place to live, I eat cookies and drink beer, I should just STFU, what do I have to complain about?
If people get something from a system, even at a net loss, we can pretend that they’re “benefiting” from that system, and therefore the system must be good or those people must desire that system.
See also: wages as a “benefit” of capitalism as if they come as a gift from the capitalist, rather than representing the net product of the worker’s labor minus the capitalist’s rents.
Graeber & Wengrow don't seem the most reliable source. Based on the criticism I've read some of their work is based on conjecture, cherry-picking and total disregard for the effects of biological evolution or material conditions. Criticism, including one from the left:
There are criticisms of their work, sure, there are also criticisms of those criticisms, and there are also defenders of their work.
Is there any reference from anyone that can ever be made that absolutely nobody has criticisms of?
So I reject your attempt to write them off entirely and conveniently!
I've actually still not read "Dawn of Everything" yet. If you have specific facts to counter the specific information that I was sharing from Wengrow specifically, then by all means present it.
4,000 years of history in the middle east doesn't strike me as "cherry-picking".
"total disregard for the effects of biological evolution"? Where does that come from? Specifically what biological changes are you referring to that have occurred in humans over the last 10,000 years or so?
"I've actually still not read "Dawn of Everything" yet. If you have specific facts to counter the specific information that I was sharing from Wengrow specifically, then by all means present it."
I have, and I've read the criticisms - some of which are pretty fair.
What they don't do is take away from the overall point, which is that over the course of several thousand years, it's very, very daft to assume that in every single society we went "hunter-gather>agriculture/pastoralism>surplus>states" narrative, and that it was inevitable.
G&W are not the only people to point out the silliness of that narrative.
Agriculture did not violently push out hunter-gatherer societies unless violence was already part of that society.
Plenty of civilisations moved seamlessly from one to another, either seasonally or otherwise.
Point being, it wasn't the development of agriculture necessarily that foretold it, it was other influences.
Jack hasn’t read Wengrow and Graeber and is only holding up the critiques so he doesn’t have to consider any of their arguments. This is pure evidence-as-totem, holding up one evidence to shield himself from the power of rival evidence.
Some of it as well is...Dawn Of Everything wasn't meant to be the be-all and end-all of the series. There were, apparently, more books planned.
Whilst - sure - they didn't cover off everything absolutely possible to cover off in one book, who knows what they might have covered in further books? Not me, that's for sure. Not you either!
Unfortunately - David Graeber is no longer with us, so we're left with what we have.
I think it's a bit unreasonable to critique both him and David Wengrow on what they didn't include.
I'm comfortable on critiquing what they did, and I've not yet seen a critique that makes me change my mind on the substantive point of the book.
I don’t think their work is perfect and without fault, but it feels like a cottage industry of critiques leapt up in the wake of its publication as if refuting it was somehow critically important…
No-one should be above criticism, of course. I've been very critical about, I dunno, Debt, myself, whilst agreeing with most of what he's said elsewhere.
But the point is that they're substantively correct, and niggling at the details is along the lines of the old "so you don't like waffles no bitch that's a whole new sentence" meme.
I looked at some of the links provided, and it's bit like "alright, not being funny, but I've got food to cook and rooms to hoover. I've not the time to do this. Just tell me the overall point, don't ask me to do homework, please"
Jack said capitalism did not have an architect, yet he continues to fall back on the carefully crafted narrative that has been developed to justify it, a narrative that goes way back to men like Hobbes and Locke and has been maintained and reinforced ever since by the status quo who find it very convenient. The tragedy of the commons is an example of this, though disproven it still carries authority and it is basically Jack's argument throughout this whole episode.
I'm sympathetic to the view that "capitalism did not have an architect". I once felt that way, too!
We've been told all of our lives (including in school, certainly in the UK) that it just...kind of happened, due to evolution of ideas or whatever, and it's the bestest and most fairest system that we arrived at through much experimentation.
That tale is...well, it's bollocks, but it takes some learning to understand that.
The idea that capitalism was violently forced upon us against our will - welp, that hurts, I suspect.
We wouldn't stand for that, not here! Not in Engerland, surely!
@neonsnake@RD4Anarchy@HeavenlyPossum@urlyman@jackofalltrades I think there isa an important truth in that statement, though. The system usually referred to as western capitalism is absolutely the result of a dialectical process - often involving and absorbing anti-capitalist forces. That's why 'western capitalism' has been so much more resilient than other recent systems that are more of a single-party project, or that have a pure ideological basis.
"The system usually referred to as western capitalism is absolutely the result of a dialectical process - often involving and absorbing anti-capitalist forces"
(this is on me - I have brain freeze around the word "dialectical", and am not clear what you mean)
Sure. To take that one terminology: when I say dialectical I mean the historical events where you had two sides that hated each other, and by fighting they create a third state of affairs neither intended.
For example how liberal democracy in Europe is the result of clashes between socialists and conservatives; neither of whom really loved liberalism, but 'liberalism' was the result of them being unable to beat each other.
In England (or the UK?) at least, liberalism still has a sense of "classical liberalism" - Locke, Smith, Bentham, JS MIll, rule of law etc.
I think we're - in the UK - being more influenced by the US version (Democrat liberalism) - in the same way as I would have once been comfortable describing myself as libertarian (with the by-product that it "obviously" meant back then that bigots get punched), but am no longer so, due to US influences on the word.
Who needs an architect when you have a triumphant and all-powerful god?
I refer to capital, and I haven't mentioned it for a while but one of my personal perspectives is that capital is like a form of AI that has been given autonomous authority over us. Hidden conspiracies, while not entirely absent are no longer necessary to drive things. Everyone is on the same page under capital, everyone knows the rules and is subject to the same demands and constraints.
These demands and constraints also serve the function of allowing our institutions and leaders to wash their hands of absolutely horrendous crimes against humanity and nature.
Ideologically driven attempts at other systems never even really tried to overthrow this god and as a result they were ideological in name only, and trying to implement these ideologies without eliminating capital only resulted in even worse atrocities.
I should add in light of the other comments re: "dialectical" that when there are conflicts now, they serve capital. Whichever side wins, capital wins.
@RD4Anarchy@neonsnake@HeavenlyPossum@urlyman@jackofalltrades This teleological description of capital sounds to me uncomfortably like those 'natural' ecological limits in earlier arguments, by being something that exists over and beyond the discussion and which isn't problematised.
Does it work better for you if I say I'm talking about capital as a concept that has infected our minds and social relations? A concept that does not serve us well, in fact we all serve this concept to our own detriment.
But it is not a natural concept and not one that was developed for good reasons by people of good will.
Not really, mate. 'Capital' as a useful tool of analysis can't just be something that exists as a brain virus. Reason being, it causes dialectical outcomes because people often further the logic of capitalism while not having pro-capital ideas at all.
I'm not trying to be a knob, just saying I don't find that earlier statement about capital as useful to engage with.
Regarding people working in ways that further capital without being themselves 'capitalists' you can think about conservative aristocrats who turned to making agricultural commodities, and hence undermined the manorial system, despite their aim simply being to maintain their power as lords of the manor.
>>in a general discussion like this I would probably talk about specific things and relate them to interactions with capital.<<
The discussion had turned to the notion that capitalism is not created or maintained by an "architect", yet we know that it has some very specific and consistent characteristics and that we are all subject to them. I think our interactions with capital show that capital is power. More specifically it's a measure of social relations of power.
Individual people or institutions have power thanks to capital. But if they perish, or capital is taken from them, they no longer have that power but the capital still exists, at least in our collective records.
>>...conservative aristocrats who turned to making agricultural commodities, and hence undermined the manorial system, despite their aim simply being to maintain their power as lords of the manor.<<
We're talking about transitional times here though right? Capital predates capitalism, but it didn't rule the world yet.
Anyway, it's just an idiosyncratic perspective of mine, I don't need to put any more energy into defending it for this discussion, it's pretty tangential to it.
@RD4Anarchy@neonsnake@HeavenlyPossum@urlyman@jackofalltrades Yes, it's easiest to describe the activities of capital during transitional times, because there is a not-capital that can throws its characteristics into sharper relief. But I'd say this phenomenon is central to capital and always persists.
@RD4Anarchy@Loukas@neonsnake@HeavenlyPossum@urlyman@jackofalltrades I don't presume to speak for Loukas, but their description of capital resulting from a dialectical process really resonates with me and I think I can make sense of it, at least in my own head, through an analogy and some specific examples.
Analogically I think of dog breeding as another example of a directed process without an architect. Dog breeders have a set of overlapping goals, not the same for every one of them but most of the goals are shared by many breeders. This puts each in a position to adopt the innovations of the others for what might be slightly different but still related purposes, and over hundreds or thousands of years this leads to dogs that look like they're the result of a single designer with an intention but they're not. Capitalism seems to me to evolve this way as well, although I don't think dog breeding is dialectical since dogs don't really have a say in the process.
Capitalists also share a set of overlapping goals, and tools one capitalist finds useful will be adopted and modified by others. As with dog breeding the end result of this after a few centuries is a state of affairs that looks intelligently designed but there's no single designer.
So for instance, New York real estate developers invented the modern city park in the mid 19th century. This allowed them to crush commoning in Manhattan, to force former commoners into wage labor, to hypercharge real estate values, and a whole host of other things. What a useful polyvalent tool! Thus we see capitalists all over the US in the next 50 years or so adopting and modifying this innovation to serve their related but not always identical purposes.
For me the dialectical aspect of this process arises from the fact that both capitalists and their victims have power of various kinds, but capitalists have much, much more on a daily basis. Victims can resist, forcing capitalists to adapt to resistance and fueling a dialectic process.
So for instance when modern parks were first invented they didn't necessarily have laws against grazing cattle in them, fishing in their lakes, and so on. But people resisted the semi-enclosure of their formerly common land by continuing to carry out commoning activities, forcing capitalists to pass specific laws against this, to invent park rangers, park fencing, and so on. In some cities they built housing right on the park border, which not only let the park amplify real estate values even more efficiently, but effectively created a class of "park people"* to provide political support for ever more repressive park control measures. This is dialectics!
There are plenty other much more consequential examples of this process, but this post is already too long.
Not my phrase but I can't remember whose phrase it is.
@AdrianRiskin@RD4Anarchy@neonsnake@HeavenlyPossum@urlyman@jackofalltrades I love these kinds of real examples, thank you. It makes me think of the area of upper-class housing in Nottingham which is called The Park, and which was formed by one of the local nobles turning their ancient land assets into more fungible property.
I don’t think Jack is a crypto-ecofascist, but he definitely leans in that direction in an incipient sense, and I’m surprised by myself for letting him spend so much time in the fringes of my awareness without recognizing him for what he’s doing.
@HeavenlyPossum@neonsnake@RD4Anarchy The framing of the problem in this way - objective natural limits, general human collusion in overshoot, groups with corporate interests - leads to eco-fascistic conclusions whether or not the person framing is themselves ideologically fascistic. It underlines a fear of mine that we will end up with 'common sense eco-fascism' as dominant state policy in the West.
I’d add to that good summary: a faith in the effectiveness of violent centralization and in the inevitability of violent conflict between those corporate groups, and a sense of the unquenchable greed of people (except for the speaker).
@HeavenlyPossum@RD4Anarchy@neonsnake Yes, I think that kind of moralistic approach needs to bec countered with a straightforward class-based analysis that emphasises peoples autonomy from and resistance to power structures. It's why I've become less of a green/primitivist anarchist and more of a classic socialist anarchist.
@Loukas@neonsnake@RD4Anarchy@HeavenlyPossum I share this fear, and am beginning to regret not having fought harder to keep the green-brown fusion material in “Lifehouse.” : . (
I think what you described the editor wanting to do, to keep it accessible, sounds great for the aims of the book being public-facing.
Maybe your deep dynamiting of the dark mountains could be made into a journal article instead? Or made available as DLC for those who have made it through the book?
@HeavenlyPossum@RD4Anarchy@neonsnake@Loukas Heh. You know I’m torn down the middle of my soul – it should either look like “Search & Destroy” or like Müller-Brockmann did it his ownself.
Right, I agree with you. I never claimed that every single society went through a linear path of development like in a game of Civilization.
My only claim is that we arrived at this point due to environmental pressures (local climate, available resources, etc) and historical contingencies (certain people making certain decisions or discoveries), and that similarly our future is constrained by these factors, most notably the fact of overshoot.
@jackofalltrades@neonsnake@RD4Anarchy@urlyman In general I agree with this framing, but I am wary of how political decisions have been and will be justified with reference to supposedly objective environmental pressures.
They say things with invisible brackets. "We need to raise taxes on the general population to deal with climate change [because we rule out redistribution of wealth]" for example.
Well, I think we arrived at this point (as we sit here in 2024) not strictly due to environmental pressures (do you mean scarcity?) - however, I'm aware that you've noted "and historical contingencies" and I am not dismissing that you've mentioned it.
I do think those are more important than environmental pressures.
I think that the historical contingencies are more important, on a practical level, than any sense of actual scarcity, and contribute more to inequality than any sense of overshoot - this isn't to say that overshoot isn't a real thing, it very obviously is. But it's largely down to state intervention in favour of the capitalist class.
Sure, the current system is hierarchical and channels wealth to the top. However, even though production is organized by top-down decrees, it does by many measures improve lives of the majority. If you look at the level of education, or life expectancy, or even the sheer number of people alive today, all these lines go up since industrialization.
This is a global perspective BTW. Obviously, if you just look at the last few decades in the US it's easy to argue how bad the system is. But Finland or China or Nigeria are all part of the global system, and each found their own path with their unique pros and cons.
Now, I understand this is ultimately a philosophical question of what is "good". Is more people living longer lives "good"? Is it still good if that life is spent in cities full of concrete working 9-to-5 every day? Is it still good if it means future generations are condemned to a climate catastrophe as a result?
It well may be that historical contingencies matter more in the short term and have a bigger effect on the lives of people living at that time, while the environment puts bounds on the long term outlook of civilization.
For example, the world would look very different without the climate stability of the Holocene or without fossils storing millions of years worth of sunlight energy via geological processes.
OTOH, in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter that penicillin was discovered in 1928 and not a hundred years later, or that Petrov decided there was a computer malfunction in 1983, and at the same time it is undeniable both saved countless lives.
I say it's impossible to reverse overshoot even if we abolish capitalism and they interpret that as me saying that it doesn't matter at all what we do politically. Which is not what I think at all.
Even if collapse is inevitable I believe we can cushion the blow under the right conditions. But I don't believe it's possible to do so everywhere for everyone, let alone keep our industrial civ of 8b going.
@jackofalltrades@neonsnake@RD4Anarchy@urlyman You're saying: whatever we do lots of people will die, because there's just too many people. And because you keep repeating that every one of these surplus moribund teeming masses participates and benefits from the system, the predicted die-off comes with a strong overtone of 'serve them right.' I'm not sure if this is what you intend to express, but I think it's what people are getting.
Wow, where do you pull these interpretations from?
Not everyone benefits or participates in the system. Uncontacted people of the Amazon obviously do not, yet will be greatly affected when the rainforest flips into a savannah.
When it comes to climate change generally the most vulnerable are the least responsible. Benefits are not equally distributed, and neither are damages. There is no justice in this.
@jackofalltrades@neonsnake@RD4Anarchy@urlyman If we change 'every one' to 'the majority' then I think the overall point remains the same. I'm not saying this is what you intend to express, I'm just saying these are the reasons why people are getting this from what you're saying.
Your consistent message is about mass human complicity in our own destruction.
For those who have a political approach based on seeing humans as having antagonistic class interests that message seems corporativist and hence tending towards the (eco)fascistic.
He keeps falling back on the idea that his critics are “energy blind,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. It allows him to believe that the criticisms levied against him are purely the product of naive, idealistic ignorance about energy usage and the environment, because he can’t or won’t acknowledge that his beliefs are toxic totally separate from any claim about biophysics.
@HeavenlyPossum@neonsnake@RD4Anarchy I fear that in a few decades governments will transition from saying "sorry you have to suffer but the economy demands it" to saying "sorry you have to suffer but the planetary limits demand it." In both cases objective assertions are used to hide political decisions.
@jackofalltrades@neonsnake@RD4Anarchy@urlyman NB I'm not saying you're motivated by fascist politics or using fascist ideology. The ideas I see articulated by you are very widespread and often seen as common sense. What I'm saying is that, in the context of civilizational collapse, these ideas tend towards fostering eco-fascistic outcomes.
Jack continues to ignore power dynamics and structures.
>>We're not burning fossil fuels because we're stupid or because capitalism made us do it, but because they provide us with great benefits.<<
This completely ignores the process whereby fossil fuels became so readily available and their use so encouraged; it ignores the massive coercion that was necessary, it ignores the real motivations behind the extraction, it ignores the institutional motivations behind the fossil-dependent infrastructures we've been stuck with. It ignores the fact that states run the show, not "us".
It ignores capitalist realism and cultural hegemony.
It's that damn tragedy of the commons shit again and I reject it.
@RD4Anarchy@jackofalltrades@neonsnake@urlyman Fun fact, the first really big user of oil was...the British imperial fleet. By the early 20th century UK empire absolutely depended on access to plentiful crude. Hence the creation of what was to become BP, as the Anglo-Persian oil company. An example of the many ways the paths to fossil fuel dependence were blazed by state violence.
@urlyman@RD4Anarchy@jackofalltrades@neonsnake Finding oil in an area rich with oil fields isn't really an example of luck. If he'd given up, someone else would have found it. Gulbenkian and others had already proven ten years earlier that the Mesopotamia area had lots of untapped oil.
@urlyman@RD4Anarchy@jackofalltrades@neonsnake There's an Oscar Wilde quote that the British empire was acquired in a fit of absence of mind. No, if an energy-hungry empire is interested in looking for hydrocarbons it's not about random gentleman having random discoveries, otherwise it would have been someone else. The British already de facto controlled that part of the world and was the empire that had both interests and resources to exploit it.
@urlyman@RD4Anarchy@jackofalltrades@neonsnake History is always multicausal. What was to become the Gulf States had already been conquered by the British fleet, 100 years before anything about oil was known, just because they were strategically valuable little ports near to India and Egypt. So this non-oil interest set up the later oil interest.
The cradles of the oil industry, Texas and Mesopotamia, are places where oil under high pressure has literally been squirting up into the surface for thousands of years.
Petra olaum, rock oil, was what the Romans called it because it came from rocky ground. Just like so many other 'discoveries' (see also, the steam engine) it was an ancient phenomenon that a modern partner adopted. In this case the already existing British fleet.
@urlyman@RD4Anarchy@jackofalltrades@neonsnake Sorry about my unconstructive tone but I really dislike this butterfly wings theory of history because it doesn't fit with how historical causality proceeds but it lends itself to a dramatic framing of events that gets disproportionate attention.
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