Michael Ballard schrieb im Blog von Michael Roberts:
We should socially own and democratically manage the wealth we produce and that which lies in natural resources so that we can have the power to distribute it on the basis of need and live in harmony with the Earth. The problem is that we aren’t in motion to establish production for use and need based on living in an ecologically sustainable way. The immense majority are socialised to think inside the box of the social relation of Capital. Few, very, very few are saying that we need to change the mode of production from the wage system to a system without the buying and selling involved with the commodification of wealth. Note how all the authorities measure doing something about global warming using the abstraction of money. The market realists will always complain about how much doing something to actually stop the planet from warming is going to cost some astronomical pile of cash. This is a major cop-out brought to you by bourgeois thinking, the ruling mindset of our time no matter where you live on the Earth.
What is money anyway? Isn’t it just a crude measure for the amount of socially necessary labour time embodied in a commodity? Didn’t we all learn and digest that observation after reading the first chapter of Volume I of CAPITAL?
Why can’t we apply socially necessary labour time to establish ways to produce the energy we need without producing CO2? We passed the point of no return, 350 ppm, back in 1987. We’re at 418 ppm now and growing. Clearly, we are on a toboggan ride to ecocidal collapse. And still we argue about market solutions to the problem. Talk about social amnesia, we’ve got it bad and that ain’t good.
Good arguments – but…
our capitalists also have strong “arguments”: they provide us with wages – the basis for our existence, even if we ourselves have created these products that we get back as “wages”.
What arguments do leftists, anarchists, socialists and communists have? Lots of words – but they can’t even tell who is enemy and who is (potential) friend. There is slashing and stabbing everywhere among leftists, anarchists, socialists and communists. As long as that remains, our “arguments” are not convincing.
If we few folks cannot agree on a few essential questions with those who think differently, how can we then convince the mass of wage earners that they can decide for themselves, without economic and political coercion, on their own responsibility and voluntarily, what and how much should be produced and what not?
Wal Buchenberg, Hannover
