capitalism » TripleCrisis

Why the Climate Crisis Is Also the Crisis of Capitalism

By Ying Chen and Güney Işikara (guest post)

Many people are wary of bringing a critique of capitalism into the discussion of climate change, even if they are genuinely concerned about the crisis and actively looking for effective solutions. All it takes is the mention of any word ending with “-ism,” and skeptics will conclude that the discussion is unnecessarily ideological.

However, looking at the climate crisis through a Marxist lens can give us greater insight into the political inertia that has stalled the implementation of any kind of coordinated national response to climate change. The way capitalism operates in the United States, with its all-encompassing forces that have played a major role in creating today’s environmental disaster, is also standing in the way of the implementation of a comprehensive solution. We can only understand the impact of capitalism on the current crisis by viewing capitalism as a specific economic system and assessing its historical impact—as well as its limits and contradictions.

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Not With a Bang But With a (Prolonged) Whimper

Jayati Ghosh

It is probably obvious to everyone that global capitalism is in dire straits, notwithstanding the brave talking up of output recovery that now characterises almost every meeting of the international governing elite. Even so, discussions of the end of capitalism still typically seem overstated and futile, not least because those hoping and mobilising for bringing in an alternative system are everywhere so scattered, weak and demoralised. In effect, capitalism is the only game in town, which is why even in its current debilitated and even decrepit state, it fears no rivals.

But maybe that is really not the point. Maybe economic systems can die without actually being killed by other competing systems. “How will capitalism end?” is the title of a brilliant book by the German thinker Wolfgang Streeck. (Verso, London 2016, published in India by Juggernaut Books.) It provides a cogent and persuasive critique of the nature of contemporary capitalism, and describes its ongoing extended demise, without surrendering to any optimism that as it fails to deliver even in terms of its own logic, all the nastiness and injustice it has generated must inevitably change for the better.

As may be fitting for a work with this combination of scope and profundity, it is difficult to pigeonhole either the author or the book into simple disciplinary categories. It straddles economics, politics and sociology, with forays into moral philosophy: in other words, political economy at its best. But even if it is beautifully written, it makes for tough reading – simply because the message is so stark, at once depressingly dystopic and terrifyingly plausible.

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Reading Capital 150 Years Hence

Erinç Yeldan

Karl Marx published the first volume of Capital one hundred and fifty years ago. The writing of Capital was aimed at uncovering the operational laws of capitalism, as well as providing a theoretical weapon for the working class in its historical struggle for freedom and equality against the bourgeoisie. We have to remember that the main motivation behind this Herculean theoretical effort was not limited only to a realistic depiction of the conditions of the working class under capitalist accumulation, but to unearth the intrinsic elements of these iron laws in their sheer brutality.

If we are to read Capital once again hundred and fifty years after its publication, we ought to distinguish between Marx’s efforts to understand the logic of capital in its abstract form and his efforts concerning the realization of this logic in terms of class struggle. In other words, if we were to interpret Marx’s writings in a deterministic and mechanical fashion, we would not be able to understand the dynamics of the evolving “new international division of labor” between different countries, different geographies, and the new forms of capital and working classes.

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Mexican Capitalism Today, Part 2

The Power of Mexico’s Capitalists

Dan La Botz, Guest Blogger

Dan La Botz is co-editor of New Politics and editor of Mexican Labor News and Analysis. This is the second part of a two-part series. The first part is available here.

Mexico’s capitalist class is wealthy, well organized, and politically powerful. Mexican businesspeople have for many decades been organized in the Employers Confederation of the Mexican Republic (COPARMEX) which brings together “more than 36,000 member companies across the country are responsible for 30% of GDP and 4.8 million formal jobs.” COPARMEX, and other business organizations, such as the National Chamber of the Manufacturing Industry (CANACINTRA), have worked for years, principally through the PAN but also with the PRI to develop policies, write legislation, and to lobby for their political agenda.

The Mexican capitalists brought neoliberal government to power in two stages: First, the victory within the PRI of the so-called “Technocrats” over the “Dinosaurs” (that is, the neoliberals over the economic nationalists) in the 1980s and 1990s. Second, the electoral victory of the PAN. The two PAN administrations—under Vicente Fox (2000-2006) and Felipe Calderón (2006-2012)—demonstrated that the party was incapable of governing Mexico. Fox’s administration failed to deliver on its promises to the business class, while Calderón initiated the disastrous war on drugs with the tens of thousands of dead and forcibly disappeared as well as widespread police and army human rights violations.

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Understanding Contemporary Capitalism, Part 1

David Kotz, Guest Blogger

David Kotz is a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and the author of The Rise and Fall of Neoliberal Capitalism (Harvard University Press, 2015). This is the first installment of a two-part series based on his book.

Part 1: What is Neoliberal Capitalism?

“Neoliberalism,” or more accurately neoliberal capitalism, is a form of capitalism in which market relations and market forces operate relatively freely and play the predominant role in the economy. That is, neoliberalism is not just a set of ideas, or an ideology, as it is typically interpreted by those analysts who doubt the relevance or importance of this concept for explaining contemporary capitalism. Under neoliberalism, non-market institutions – such as the state, trade unions, and corporate bureaucracies – play a limited role. By contrast, in “regulated capitalism” such as prevailed in the post-World War II decades – in the United States and other industrial capitalist economies – states, trade unions, and corporate bureaucracies played a major role in regulating economic activity, confining market forces to a lesser role.

A few clarifications are in order. First, capitalism cannot function without a state. After all, private property is a creation of the state, and market exchange requires contract law and associated enforcement that can only be provided by a state. However, in neoliberal capitalism the state economic role tends to be largely confined to protection of private property and enforcement of contracts. In regulated capitalism the state’s economic role expands significantly beyond those core functions of the capitalist state.

Second, the dominant role of market relations and market forces in neoliberal capitalism is embodied in a set of institutions and reinforced by particular dominant ideas. The transition from regulated capitalism to neoliberal capitalism starting in the 1970s was marked by major changes in economic and political institutions. This will be explored below.

Third, the institutions of neoliberal capitalism, while promoting an expanded role in the economy for market relations and market forces, simultaneously transform the form of the main class relations of capitalism. Most importantly, the capital-labor relation assumes the form of relatively full capitalist domination of labor. This contrasts with the capital-labor compromise that characterized the regulated capitalism of the post-World War II decades. Neoliberalism also brought change in the relation between financial and non-financial capital, as will be considered below.

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Change the System, Not the Climate

Erinç Yeldan

A. Erinç Yeldan, a regular Triple Crisis contributor, is Professor of Economics at the Bilkent University, Ankara. He holds a PhD from the University of Minnesota, and is one of the Executive Committee members of the International Development Economics Associates, IDEAs.

The above title is from the article “We Need System change to stop climate Change” from The Bullet, the online newsletter of the Socialist Project (Toronto, Canada). The call to “change the system” was made following UN Secretary General Ban-ki Moon’s initiation of a summit—to draw attention to the threat of global climate change—in late September.

The call was already resonated by similar pleas, in particular by the global labor movement. IndustriALL Global Union declared in May 2014, for instance, that “there will be no jobs on a dead planet.” “The same people that try to avoid action on climate change have repressed workers for decades,” the union continued. “A Just Transition into greener jobs is the key to unlock the door to a sustainable future.”

It is estimated that, since the industrial revolution, the surface temperature of our planet has increased by an average of 1.5 to 2.2°C. This is attributed mostly to the concentration of the CO₂ and other greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere. World Wildlife Fund (WWF) warns that life forms on our planet can tolerate only up to an additional increase of 2°C until the end of the current century.

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