The Revolutionary Socialist Network, Workers

Capitalism is uniquely key to promoting public and private good

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• No spill-up, individuals don’t have enough power

Capitalism is uniquely key to promoting public and private good. Jim Balsillie, 21 [Jim Balsillie, 12-15-2021, "The Capitalist Manifesto: Capitalism allows the individual to shape society for the better and it needs to be protected," financialpost, https://financialpost.com/technology/the-capitalist-manifesto-capitalism-allows-the-individual-to-shape-society-for-the-better-and-it-needs-to-be-protected, smarx, HHW] Capitalism has created more prosperity and progress for more people than any system in human history. On the 30th anniversary of the official end of the Soviet Union, join the National Post and Financial Post in a series saluting the unfashionable yet awesome power of the free-market system. I believe that capitalism in a liberal democratic society is by far the best system to promote human flourishing. It’s the best economic system for the generation of new wealth, which is why even authoritarian states like China have embraced it. The generation of new wealth is a critical first step for any debate on redistribution or expanding publicly funded social services. As a tech entrepreneur who did not come from economic privilege, capitalism has provided me with opportunities to generate public and private wealth on a global stage. The shift 40 years ago from an industrialized, production-based economy to a knowledge-based economy provided innovative individuals with more power to assert into existing markets or to create new markets. When entrepreneurs have access to capital, they can channel their ideas into products and services that can improve the lives of fellow citizens, industry and even governments. No other economic system allows a single individual to profoundly shape society for the better and to simultaneously create public and private good — this is why capitalism is worth protecting. No spill-up, individuals don’t have enough power Trotskyist 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) In broad sectors of the movement, the dominant logic is that the key to solving the ecological crisis is changes in individual consumption, focusing their attention on “irresponsible consumption.” Obviously, capitalist production, which generates consumption cycles that span the globe, molds “consumers.” In this way, individual human behavior contributes to the ecological crisis, and it is desirable to encourage new forms of consumption by creating environmental consciousness. Yet changing individual behavior often has only a negligible effect on capitalism’s environmental consequences. Its effect is, moreover, highly unequal. An Oxfam report from 2015 showed that the richest 10% of the planet causes half of CO2 emissions, while the poorest 50% (3.5 billion people) is responsible for only 10%. The logic of focusing the environmental movement on changes in individual behavior implies two strategic problems. First, it encourages an individualist conception, blurring or directly obscuring the “center of gravity” that needs to be attacked, namely imperialist capitalism, the big corporations and the capitalist states. Second, it strengthens the reactionary argument that “the people are responsible for the crisis,” which leads to measures that force the working class and the poorest sectors of society to pay for the environmental crisis. This argument preserves the system and benefits the capitalists, and it prevents the one social force that could confront capitalism from joining the struggle. One of the lessons provided by the Yellow Vest movement in France—an immense social movement triggered by an increase in the gasoline tax—is that the “ecological transition” cannot fall on the shoulders of the working class and poor masses. In the context of the ecological crisis, the central problem is not the “division” between those who pollute and those who do not, but rather between the social majority that is already paying the costs of the crisis and the capitalists that caused it. The only way to confront the global environmental crisis caused by capitalism is for the majority of the population to join the struggle, with the working class at the forefront. This is because the contradiction between capital and labor is not just one of capitalism’s many contradictions; it is the contradiction that structures capitalism itself. If the relationship between society and nature is mediated by production, it is only by revolutionizing production that the metabolism with nature can be rationally regulated. That is why the working class, which is the only authentically productive class in society, can knit together a social alliance that can pull the “emergency break” on the coming disaster. There are important examples of unity between the environmental movement and sectors of the working class. That was the case with the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Ireland, where the Titanic was built. That shipyard was declared bankrupt, but the workers took over the plant demanding its nationalization in order to produce clean energy. There have also been calls by workers for the unions to call a climate strike, for example, in Portugal, Germany and Spain. These initiatives are extremely important. In an intuitive yet correct way, they point to the “social subject” that can hegemonize the struggle for an alternative to environmental destruction: the working class. The need for the working class to join this movement with its own demands and its own methods of struggle (strikes, blockades and pickets) is vital for developing the movement. It is necessary to help break down the prejudices that exist in wide sectors of the working class about the environmental movement—prejudices often justified by policies supposedly in “defense of the environment” that attack the working class, equating it with the polluting bosses and worsening its living conditions. Above all, it is necessary to confront the reactionary role played by the majority of the bureaucratized trade unions. Especially in the sectors of heavy industry and energy, the union bureaucracies act as the capitalists’ best partners. Many times they oppose any measures for ecological transition, however superficial they may be, under the slogan of “saving jobs.” What they are really saving is the capitalists’ profits, tying the destiny of the working class to the success of the bosses. Facing the Climate Strike, the unions in Europe and the United States mostly oppose it—or in some cases, such as in Germany, they support it demagogically while refusing to organize any actions that would supposedly be “illegal.” That is why, alongside the broadest self-organization of the youth, it is necessary to denounce the reactionary positions of the bureaucratic unions, which for decades have ignored or played down ecological problems. We must demand that they call a strike and put their organizations in the service of the struggle against the capitalists responsible for the looming catastrophe that threatens us all. The declaration in Germany by a group of rank-and-file trade union activists called ver.di aktiv (which is supported by RIO, the Revolutionary Internationalist Organization) has received more than 500 signatures from trade unionists across the country and from different sectors. It demands that the large trade unions call for a strike. This is a small but significant expression of that policy. Download 2.09 Mb. Share with your friends: