Ecology, Economics and the Future

A comment on David McKnight’s Autumn “Green Magazine" article --- by Max Bound April 2006

I agree that the struggle to save our physical environment and develop a sustainable economy is central to any human future. But also believe David is profoundly mistaken when he divides this issue off from equity issues by writing at the beginning of his third last paragraph “The economic battle is not to redistribute wealth to create equality nor to abolish the market but to make the economy sustainable.”

My comment on this advice of David’s for a direction is - first about the market issue. - What we need is a market controlled by legislation which protects ordinary people and curbs the near absolute power of the powerful corporations. This will of necessity require pressure from people’s movements and legislative action by Governments to intervene against those who currently control ‘the market’ and thus enable curbs on the power and greed of these grossly rich and over powerful few.

Such an approach does not rule out, but actually requires, policies and legislative action by Governments which facilitate the use of market mechanisms to help move us in the direction of developing a sustainable economy. However to imagine that the ‘market’, largely controlled by people with interests in profit, from the armaments industry for example, want to or are even capable of seriously tackling these issues is to render ourselves impotent in the face of their power and greed.

To achieve a less disastrous and more equitable and sustainable society we need to end the drive to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. AND to restore and vastly expand and improve that in the political process which once gave people some control via elected Governments. Further we need to develop a situation in which people have some control of their own lives via mechanisms which give us a say in what is produced and how it is produced and distributed.

The eminent Canadian writer John R. Saul, in his last book, * highlights many aspects of similarity in present day capitalism to the unbridled exploitation which characterised early capitalist societies. As former Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, Paul Hellyer, said on the ABC Program, "Background Briefing," 30th May 1999 -: "... you're seeing the big transnational corporations attempting and succeeding, and turning the social clock back 100 years to Dicksenian times,...” .

The current struggle to defeat Howard’s moves to minimise, and if possible destroy, the role of unions in Industrial Relations is really about defending workplace rights and conditions won in many bitter struggles. Another example of the destructive character of modern capitalism was there to be seen in an SBS Television program Science: “Battle For The Amazon” shown on 23/4/06. Here the drive for short term profits at the expense of Amazon forests continues to add to greenhouse gas on a tremendous scale.

I agree with David’s point that there is positive value in recognising that a great many people want “to conserve what exists.” However we also need to remember that the great majority of humanity never have, in the life of capitalist societies, enjoyed the positive advantages which many, not all, ordinary people have won in the developed countries. As indicated above these ‘positive advantages’ are now under serious attack by ‘business friendly’ governments.

David writes well in describing the New Right's position as being belief “... in the endless expansion of the economy and of production of commodities.” He explains how this fixation impacts negatively on “human relations”. And he makes the point that “it is an amoral force” which clashes with “... many human values such as altruism and care for the community which are still entrenched in spite of years of cultivation of competition and self interest.”

These are well based criticisms of the basic ideas behind the policies of powerful forces which seriously challenge and threaten the social fabric of human society and simultaneously the material base for a decent human society, namely our physical environment. The big question is what directions do we need to take in order to move off and away from the current road to increasing human and ecological disasters?

Discussing this question Dr Peter Hay 2002 P. 206 quotes H. E. Daly:-'unless the underlying growth paradigm and its supporting values are altered, all the technical prowess and manipulative cleverness in the world will not solve our problems and, in fact will make them worse' (Daly 1977: 2) Hay also argues "... the market cannot adequately value ecological goods, ... because it cannot recognise ecological imperatives" (p204) ***

We are witnessing the early stages of a situation in which two Asian countries, namely China and India, are becoming key production centres in the world. Vast inequities continue to exist in both of these countries. However if we recognise the fact that the current consumption of most of the world's natural resources by a few is a very real ecological, as well as a moral, problem, we have to end the vast inequities that currently plague us and are on the increase. Consumerism drives the modern capitalist system and unless arrested will consume humanity itself.

The private motor car - important as it has been made to become to many people - is, in fact, in mass usage, although not as damaging as modern war and the production of modern means to main and to kill people, one of the most ecologically dangerous commodities in production.

In his last book **, Nugget Coombs, Australia’s most outstanding economist of the last century, was spot on when he wrote - “Let me conclude. We face, I fear, a future dominated by increasing scarcities in which the logic of the economic system (capitalism) will tend to concentrate even further wealth, income and power with the few and to polarise those who hold and control them from the rest of the community. ... But we are not inescapably dependent on this flood of commodities which our economic system is designed to produce. There are conceivable lifestyles more modest in their material demands, less destructive of the physical environment- ...”

David McKnight's argument has some similarities to that of Coombs. The important difference is that Coombs recognises the damaging logic of an economic system driven and governed by the drive for private profit. The logic of these priorities has been/is in practice an all out attack on the living and working conditions of ordinary people, to wit the current campaign to destroy conditions of work by the Howard Government. There is a simultaneous attack on the physical environment, for example the refusal to tackle the greenhouse gas issue.

The corporations are promoted and protected by mass media owned and controlled by ever fewer and more powerful corporations. Their behests are carried out by governments made up of political parties to which they donate huge sums of money . To say it again, my point is that the distribution of wealth, the curbing of the power of the corporations and a more equitable society are central issues in the struggle to preserve human society, and to protect the physical environment which makes a human society possible. We need to change our culture as part of changing our social/economic direction.

** H. C. (Nugget) Coombs The Return of Scarcity, Cambridge University Press 1990

*** Hay Peter, Main Currents in Western Environmental Thought, UNSW Press 2002

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