The Revolutionary Socialist Network, Workers
Even new ways of combating climate change fail under capitalism
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Even new ways of combating climate change fail under capitalismTrotskyist Fraction, 2019 (“Capitalism Is Destroying the Planet – Let’s Destroy Capitalism!” September 15, 2019. https://www.leftvoice.org/capitalism-is-destroying-the-planet-lets-destroy-capitalism/ /// MF) Green Reformism and the Green New Deal On the spectrum of the defenders of green capitalism, there is a reformist variant that has gained a lot of attention recently: the Green New Deal, which calls for a program with hints of neo-Keynesianism in order to face the crisis. In the United States, this policy is supported by some candidates in the primaries of the Democratic Party, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and also by the self-styled democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The GND is also appearing in speeches and programs by European social-liberal parties like the PSOE or neoreformist tendencies like Podemos. According to Ocasio-Cortez, the GND would allow the U.S. to transition to 100% renewable energy within 10 years, while creating millions of jobs linked to the construction of an efficient electrical grid throughout the country based on renewable technology, among other measures. How? By subsidizing billion-dollar corporations, the ones responsible for the current ecological crisis, so they can develop infrastructure to get us out of it. For this, they are to receive massive subsidies from the state. The idea behind this perspective is that if the governments of the central industrialized countries in the world and the big multinational corporations become aware of the situation, they will be able to adopt measures to preserve the environment. Both the Green New Deal and similar proposals (like the UN Agenda 2020), which are reference points for many “progressive” forces around the planet, are based on the idea that “sustainable capitalism” is possible and that the corporations that created the crisis can become the saviors of the planet. But the illusion that the contradictions between capitalist interests and environmental preservation—affecting the lives of hundreds of millions of people—can be resolved is utopian and reactionary. The capitalist mode of production is in total contradiction with nature and its processes of development. For capital, the determining factor in this process is merely quantitative. Fierce competition forces each capitalist to constantly seek ways to replace workers with machines that increase the productivity of labor and the mass of goods thrown onto the market. This increases the amount of natural resources needed to produce them. The constant repetition of production and reproduction of capital ruthlessly eats up all resources, without taking into account the time required for their natural production and regeneration. The cause of this type of environmentally destructive development, rather than capitalist irrationality, is its inherent logic. It is the logical result of an economic system whose engine is the capitalists’ thirst for profit. Download 2.09 Mb. Share with your friends:
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