: The former view ["Vulgar" Marxists (& Maoists)] holds that it is NOT technology that is the problem, but the social relations created by the Capitalist's ownership of the means of production...: One poster put it this way: : "But conserving the existing balance between man and nature - or still worse going backwards - is the exact opposite of Marx's socialism. Marx aims to accelerate the utilization of nature by man, for the express purpose of abolishing want..."
[emphasis mine.]
'Abolishing want' is actually inconsistent with Marx's own explanation of 'historically developed social needs,'* in which he explains the process whereby the luxuries of yesterday become the necessities of tomorrow. 'Abolishing want' is a popular platform (the capitalists also rely on it) but not much of a credible possibility. (Diderot Effect.) To insist (as Marxists often do) that seizing the means of production and placing them into the hands of the proletariat will result in more long-term consideration (such as pollution) than at present is to deny the demotic urge for revolution in the first place, i.e. for impoverished and exploited people to 'raise their living standards.'
Here we can appreciate that what is needed is a psychological approach, not (merely) a political one. When behaviorists, such as B.F. Skinner, say '[w]e need to consider the possibility that strength of behavior is more important than the receipt or possession of goods,'(1) what is being posited is the radical notion that 'working toward' something is potentially as important as the goal. Consider the 'Premack Principle,' the study that a person, under certain schedules of reinforcement, will work at a certain task in order to be able to move onto another, more preferred task.** We cannot abolish want (certainly not by piling up the goods!***) but we can begin to change it with a technology of incentive already at our disposal.
: The problem is not scarcity, but distribution.
It's not quite that simple. Pre-Marxist socialists (such as Thomas More) asserted that an equitable leveling (coupled with the insistence that all members of society 'pitch in' with the work) would provide all with necessities enough, but Veblen (followed by Galbraith, followed by Schor) have disabused modern socialists of such comforting nostrums. Here's a disturbing example: the 19th century (Western) proletariat would have risked life and limb for a world where he and his family could have had electric ovens, telephones, automobiles, abundant staple foods, mass-produced entertainment---yet our 20th century proletariat, having received all these things, now finds new desires and new sources of complaint...(To blame increased consumption, and standards of living, solely on advertising, as many Marxists do, is to fail to account for many centuries' worth of historically determined social needs...)
'To each according to need' was originally St. Augustine's injunction. It is a utopian proposition, a popular platform. In the real world, pollution has intimated that only by curbing the 'historically determined social needs' of our culture (and the 'Third World' certainly wants to share our destructive 'standard of living'****) can we live according to 'need.' Need is culturally assigned---therefore it is the province of psychology, not more technology, and certainly not more political 'solutions' based on more technology (to come).
* See Marx, Capital, vol III, chapter 50 (International, 1967), p. 859.
** See D. Premack, 'Toward Empirical Behavioral Laws,' Psychological Review, 66, 1959, pp. 219-33; and 'Reversibility of the Reinforcement Relation,' Science, 136, 1962, pp. 255-27.
*** See Tibor Scitovsky's study of 'Rankhappiness' in The Joyless Economy (Oxford, 1992 edition), pp. 134-40. A survey spanning over two generations demonstrated that increased material goods (post-War affluence) failed to increase the 'happiness' of the recipients over those of the poorer (Depression-era) generation. Scitovsky concluded: 'Our economic welfare is forever rising, but we are no happier as a result.'
**** The problem of international socialism is even more formidable. Because some countries have higher living standards than others, a global equitable redistribution will infer (a) a lowering of Western standards (hardly a program to inspire a revolutionary movement), or (b) cranking up production in all countries to match the living standards of the West, which as Marx pointed out, can only increase. Pollution, obviously, places proposition binto an indefensible position.
Note:
1. Skinner, 'The Ethics of Helping People,' Reflections on Behaviorism and Society (Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1978), p. 36.
