I know very little about this subject. I had someone I know tell me a few months ago that for socialism to be sustainable, and to solve the climate crisis, U.S.ians are going to need to give up almost all A/C. They pointed out the fact that Amerikans are crybabies and even most of Western Europe does not use A/C.
However, with Greece and Spain recently having caught on fire and with heat waves devouring the nations, as well as stories regarding people in hotter regions in the U.S. dying from heat stroke in their own homes because they couldn’t afford their electricity bills, this read as sort of Maoist-lite, petty-bourgeois radicalism to me shifting blame on individuals when there are so many systemic industries contributing astronomically to the worsening climate. I was wondering, is A/C usage so detrimental as to necessitate its destruction? Should not the focus be on larger, more destructive industries and actually increasing the availability and affordability of A/C to hotter regions? Should scientific focus be moreso on creating a green A/C?
Like I said, almost no knowledge. Feel free to roast my ass (pun slightly intended).
IMO the kind of rhetoric of the “comrade” is that of someone who lacks materialist analysis for the hills they choose to die on. Americans have HVAC because the US is hot, surprisingly. So hot it’s dangerous to be without some form of cooling, and with temperatures rising it’s only getting more dangerous.
There are many alternatives to the power-hungry HVAC units we use, like using the earth’s natural temperature to cool the coolant, thus reducing the inefficiency of current technology. But really, the best solution is simply renewable energy. HVAC units are only a problem to the environment because of their power draw, and that power draw is only an issue because of how electricity is generated. If we simply shift over to solar, wind, hydroelectric, and nuclear power - instead of the coal and fossil fuel plants that an uncomfortable amount of the country uses - much of the issue would be avoided.
Is housing perhaps another issue? With modern, multi-storied apartment buildings you can likely organize heat insulation effectively, lowering the need for active AC.
I agree. I had interpersonal issues with this individual that sort of led to the death of our friendship, but I also noticed our politics were beginning to diverge pretty dramatically as well, with me becoming more of a hardline Marxist-Leninist and them becoming more eclectic. I think the personal issues have maybe forbade me from interacting non-awkwardly with local organizers as well… so that sucks lol. Thanks for the points you’ve laid out though, comrade.
This is also reminiscent of the oft used Maoist / Third-Worldist line that things will have to become much much worse for the average Amerikan for things to get better around the world. Luxury will have to die. I am not sure I agree with this either, as the average Amerikan does not live in opulence but in squalor. The mathematically “average” Amerikan only witnesses such “luxury” because the numbers are so far skewed by billionaires with numerous giga-homes, boats, etc. (I think). Some things like the “luxury” of choice when it comes to different brands of cereal or whatever will fade with nationalization and socialization of industry, of course. But the “luxury” of A/C and heating seem much more crucial than those petty things.
I am also aware that Amerikans do still benefit from imperial exploitation, but in the era of further neoliberalism, monopolization and centralization of profit, the ostensible “labor aristocracy” is shrinking dramatically and settlers are becoming poorer and poorer as wealth becomes more and more concentrated at the top. I am not so sure that things will have to get worse for the average proletarian in Amerika to uplift the lives of proletarians everywhere. In point of fact, I would think they would get way, way better with things like socialization of medicine, guaranteed employment, free or cheap housing, etc.
I agree with the “settlers” opinion on the matter. The Ideology of white supremacy combined with being the Imperial core causes a zone of ideological whitewashing. America may never fall, not while it is united and believes itself to be at the top.
I concur with the presentation of the ideological, cultural and some material effects imperialism has on the imperial core. I think we are living in a new era beginning with the 1980s wherein austerity was brought home in the form of neoliberalism and monopolization and furthering the extreme centralization of wealth. There was a joke in an early Simpons episode where an Albanian exchange student noted wealth inequality: “how can you support a nation where 5% of people control 95% of the wealth?” Those were simpler times with a simpler labor aristocracy to point to. Generational wealth within the western “proletariat”, as in labor aristocracy, stolen off of the backs of global south slave laborers is trickling up, not down to their children. New generations are being born into a jobless and propertyless world where academic credentials, work experience, and even social connections mean very little anymore. Lottery systems like Robinhood and crypto as well as achieving celebrity status are some of the only ways the nouveau riche can be born, with the propertied old guard consolidating their and their children’s wealth at an unprecedented scale.
Some macro-benefits of imperialism are still being felt even among the poorest settlers, of course, with things like stolen gas being widely available as well as the mere existence of so many supermarkets with relatively cheap goods… but the price of bread is rising while the breadmakers, foreign and domestic, get screwed and their owners are making more and more and more. I just think that the labor aristocracy is thinning to such an extent that the bourgeois, imperial state is overexerting itself in undying service to capital accumulation and consolidation and that the poorest proletarians in the Imperial core are beginning more and more to live like the poorest proletarians in the global south. We see the power outages nationwide with no government stepping in to deal with people freezing and burning to death, for instance, when vast and trustworthy electrification in Amerika has historically been considered a luxury not afforded to the global south. Even the promise that Amerikan settlerism was founded on, land stolen from natives, is constantly consolidating into fewer and fewer hands. A new generation will know nothing but renting and subservience to petty tyrants – landlords and CEOs – for their entire lives.
This is also all different depending on where you are of course. Imperial extraction in the less neoliberal-minded economies such as the Nordic ones still benefits the average worker there greatly, with their free healthcare, university, and access to goods existing thanks entirely to the slavery of foreign proles. But neoliberal forces are winning in those nations, and austerity is already taking place with growing IMF influence. It won’t be long until their destitute looks like Amerika’s destitute, and Amerika’s destitute looks like the imperialized. The ones who don’t already, like black people and indigenous people living in completely discarded ghettos and slums. Discarded barring the overwhelming fascist police presence, of course.
(I argue these points in good faith. I welcome contradiction, just so everyone’s clear. I’m not an expert.)
Degrowth is probably essential, but in the sense that it is already built in to Marxist thinking. Degrowth has recently been used more and more in a liberal sense, which should be rejected.
Examples of industries that can and should be degrowthed (sic) because we derive very little benefit from their constant growth and that growth causes so many problems:
- automobile industry
- mobile phone and tablet industries
- laptop and desktop computer industries
- home improvement industries
When I say degrowth, here, I mean we do not need any of these industries to be fuelled by the desire to keep introducing new products that are marginally ‘better’ than their previous iteration.
We do not need Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo to keep bringing out next gen consoles. Nor does Apple or Google need to keep bringing out new phones with ‘better’ cameras. They only do this so they can sell us something new. If we only ever bought one device, which could be repaired and which did not become obsolete with a software update, all these tech companies would go bankrupt.
There are 7 billion people on the planet, and roughly 1 billion in the global north. Almost every person aged over 40 will already have unnecessarily bought and used between 5 and 15 mobile phones (tariffs encourage users to change every 12-24 months, and mobiles have been ubiquitous for 20 years). (I know some of those old phones were not smart phones, and I know that people in the South do have access to new technology, so these figures aren’t perfect.)
That suggests we’ve produced enough mobile phones for almost everyone on the planet to have one, but they’re improperly distributed. Managed right, the whole industry could be minimised to maintain those existing phones for everyone. That is far less resource intensive than the current model: if we do not change the current model, within the next 20 years, manufacturers will likely produce another several billion smartphones for consumers in the North, and round we go.
If we decoupled the mobile phone industry from the commodity form, we could raise the standard of living of everyone in the world and the people in the global north would barely notice. So yes, degrow, but not for the sake of reducing everyone to the same level of misery. (I’m not suggesting a smartphone is enough or even the basis of an enjoyable life.) Degrow to ensure an equitable distribution of resources and stop wasting resources by pursuing profit.
Another example. Putting half the resources that currently go into car manufacturing instead into public transport would free up so many resources and would decrease carbon emissions (even without green energy). So degrowth of the individual transport sector does not mean worse transport. In fact, it means improved transport. This also requires a decoupling of the transport sectors from the commodity form.
Agree wholeheartedly. I think where I get hung up with a lot of ostensible degrowth advocates is their focus on disincentivizing use of already existing things rather than incentivizing use of alternatives.
For instance, wrt automobiles I am 100% in favor of dismantling the car industry and creating vast public transport infrastructure. What I am not in favor of is imposing hefty gas tax on the working poor to disincentivize car use (as pseudo-socialist liberals like John Green suggest) as we need our cars in a nation where living without one is a near impossibility in most places. The rich will still use their private airplanes to get from point A to point B, the climate will still be destroyed and the only ones to suffer will be us.
Similar but not a perfect comparison with cell phones. I haven’t seen anyone suggesting that raising the prices exponentially is the solution, but the problem here is planned obsolescence and the further creation of less practical and more prone to break devices in order to generate more and more profit from new phones. We should create a use and needs based economy rather than one built on profit, for sure, and find incentives to utilize alternatives rather than disincentivize workers from using what is given to them. The same can be said of computers and gaming consoles – these companies have technology that would allow them to utterly shift the paradigm as we know it, cheaply made and affordable to the poor gaming and work rigs beyond our (those outside the industry’s) technological comprehension – it just isn’t feasible to release this tech to the public when the motive is exponential growth rather than what the public actually wants or needs, or what would be most beneficial to society writ large. As with green energy. People know how to create it to be sustainable and even more powerful than current shitty electric grids, there’s just no incentive to use it. Many degrowth advocates, I feel, would say to disincentivize workers from using their electricity in a bid to get them to individually plant solar panels on their roof or whatever. The state could very easily subsidize this shift instead without shifting any of the suffering and labor onto the working poor, it just isn’t profitable. I’m out of my depth like I said, but these are my thoughts from experience and research.
Capitalist growth is reckless, socialist growth doesn’t have to be. The degrowth advocates, imo, are half-assing their theory and end up contradictory since they don’t push for the end of capitalist production but at the same time they want to destroy its fundamental driving force. Anyway that would never be done because of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
Great points. I prefer an optimistic and constructive socialism with focuses on innovation and tool-creation to deal with an ever-changing world than a destructive socialism with an emphasis on completely discarding many of the tools we have created. More proactive than reactive, if you will.
They confuse cause with effect because they cannot think outside capitalism, despite efforts.
