: If we do not switch to communism the rich will keep getting richer and the poor poorer? I think your forecasting a nonexistent, irrelevant crisis that you mention only to further your cause of imprisoning the world. Show me the evidence of this depressing future.
: Like whatever...: Mike
The best-documented evidence of crisis tendencies in late capitalism is not in any literature on political economy, but rather in Meadows, Meadows, and Randers' BEYOND THE LIMITS. This is a theory not of economic but of ecological crisis. BEYOND THE LIMITS predicts a catastrophe as a result of ideas of "growth" that deplete resources faster than these same resources can renew themselves. This book offers plenty of statistics that may compel governments and corporations (esp. the World Bank, IMF etc.) to implement resource conservation efforts everywhere.
The fact that BEYOND THE LIMITS is thin on an economic analysis of how economic systems currently operate to produce a reality headed toward ecological crisis. This is probably because its authors are too enculturated in the "business world," with two of them having PhD.s "from a major business school." They try to get at political economy by saying that the "standard of living" projected by governments and corporations under our current models of "growth" creates a system where the resource demands of human systems "overshoot" the ability of the Earth's crust to produce resources. For instance, overfishing has depleted the oceans of 94% of their bluefin tuna, and thus the value of the remaining 6% goes up because of the way the economic supply curve works. So unrestrained exploitation under capitalism creates chronic resources shortages, everywhere. Technology also creates problems such as the thinning of the Earth's ozone layer due to human CFC use, and the greenhouse effect due to increased atmospheric CO2.
Meadows et al. do produce this sobering analysis of today's faith in the virtues of the "free market":
"Technology and markets operate only with delays and only with imperfect information; they are themselves negative feedback processes with response delays that enhance the economy's tendency to overshoot."
They continue with a realistic assessment of the social dilemma:
"Once the population and economy have overshot the physical limits of the earth, there are only two ways back: involuntary collapse caused by escalating shortages and crises, or controlled reduction of throughput by deliberate social choice." (189)
So the main problem with capitalism is that, because it overproduces and overconsumes, it also creates shortages. The problem with BEYOND THE LIMITS' take on this is that a corresponding analysis of institutions of social choice is not done.
A way of beginning this analysis might be with John Dryzek's book RATIONAL ECOLOGY, although I'm sure Marxists, anarchists, apologists for the World Bank, perhaps even libertarians will be all too willing to adopt the analysis of BEYOND THE LIMITS to their ways of thinking. (I'm sure, at least, that stuff like this has forced the World Bank to address its complicity in the destruction of the Amazon rainforest, for instance.) The earlier version of BEYOND THE LIMITS, the "Club of Rome" report, was criticized by the author Jerry Pournelle in right-wing science fiction publications like the now-defunct GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION in the 70s along the lines of "when we use up this planet, we can go to the next one and use it up." So merely applying your favorite ideology to this stuff won't address the problem, unless the problem is the one your ego feels when it notices this book has implicated you in a possible eco-crisis.
The important thing to notice, in this regard, is the current climate for "social choice." Who are we to count on, for "controlled reduction of throughput by deliberate social choice?" Governments? Corporations? Perhaps the people will get tired of sh*tting in the nest and design something new?
None.
