Decriminalized Marijuana Reinvents Racism and Poisoning

 

Written by Don Fitz and Susan Armstrong and first published at Green Social Thought

An Attack on Black and Brown Cultures 

Spanish-speaking people, who have lived in the US since it stole half of Mexico’s land, have a tradition of smoking marijuana.  Amid a growing fear of Mexican immigrants in the early twentieth century, hysterical claims about the drug became widespread, such as allegations that it caused a “lust for blood.”   The term cannabis was largely replaced by the Anglicized marijuana, perhaps to suggest the foreignness of the drug.  Around this time many states began passing laws to ban pot.

In “Why Is Marijuana Illegal in the US?” Amy Tikkanen wrote that in the 1930s, Harry J. Anslinger, head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, turned the battle against marijuana into an all-out war.  He could have been motivated less by safety concerns—the vast majority of scientists he surveyed claimed that the drug was not dangerous—and more by a desire to promote his newly created department.  Anslinger sought a federal ban on the drug, and initiated a high-profile campaign that relied heavily on racism. Anslinger claimed that the majority of pot smokers were minorities, including African Americans, and that marijuana had a negative effect on these “degenerate races,” such as inducing violence or causing insanity.

Furthermore, he noted, “Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men.”  Anslinger oversaw the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937. Although that particular law was declared unconstitutional in 1969, it was augmented by the Controlled Substances Act the following year. That legislation classified marijuana—as well as heroin and LSD, among others—as a Schedule I drug.  Racism was also evident in the enforcement of the law.  African Americans in the early 21st century were nearly four times more likely than whites to be arrested on marijuana-related charges—despite both groups having similar usage rates.

In her 2016 film, 13th Amendment, producer, Ava Duvernay documented drug laws and policies which increased incarceration rates of Black and brown people over the last six decades. 

Year	US Prison Population
1970	300,000
1980	513,900
1985	759,100
1990	1,179,200
2000	2,015,300
2020	2,300,000

President Nixon’s “War on Crime” of the 1970s targeted protests by the anti-war movement as well as liberation movements by gays, women, and Blacks.  “Crime” became a code word for race.  Nixon’s Adviser, John Ehrlichman, admitted that the “War on Drugs” was all about throwing Black people into jail to disrupt those communities.  These efforts were to gain southern voters.

In the 1980’s, President Reagan’s “War on Drugs” portrayed drugs as an “inner city problem,” allowed for mandatory sentencing for crack cocaine, and tripled the federal spending on law enforcement.  The War on Drugs became a war against Black and Latino communities, with huge chunks of Black and brown men disappearing into prison for a “really long” time.  The exploding mass incarceration rates felt genocidal.  This was again pandering to racist voters.

In his effort to appear “tough on crime” during the 1990’s, President Bill Clinton pushed the $30 billion Federal Crime Bill which expanded prison sentences, incentivized law enforcement to do things we now consider abusive, and militarized local police forces.  Increased incarceration rates due to the Clinton administration included introduction of the terms “super predators,” Mandatory Minimum Sentences, “Truth in Sentencing” (which eliminated parole), and “three strikes and you’re out” laws whereby those convicted of three felonies were mandated to prison for life.  Such a criminal justice system needs constant feeding of young men and women of color. 

Racism during Marijuana Criminalization  

Poverty plays a central role in mass incarceration – people put in prison and jail are disproportionately poor.  The criminal justice system punishes poverty, beginning with the high price of money bail. The median felony bail bond amount ($10,000) is the equivalent of eight months’ income for the typical  defendant.  Those with low incomes are more likely to face the harms of pretrial detention.  Poverty is not only a predictor of incarceration – it is also frequently the outcome, as a criminal record and time spent in prison destroys wealth, creates debt, and decimates job opportunities.

It’s no surprise that people of color — who face much greater rates of poverty — are dramatically overrepresented in the nation’s prisons and jails. These racial disparities are particularly stark for Black Americans, who make up 38% of the incarcerated population despite representing only 12% of US residents.

Police, prosecutors, and judges continue to punish people harshly for nothing more than drug possession. Drug offenses still account for the incarceration of almost 400,000 people, and drug convictions remain a defining feature of the federal prison system. Police still make over one million drug possession arrests each year, many of which lead to prison sentences. Drug arrests continue to give residents of over-policed communities criminal records, hurting their employment prospects and increasing the likelihood of longer sentences for any future offenses.  The enormous churn in and out of  correctional facilities is 600,000 persons per year.  There are another 822,000 people on parole and a staggering 2.9 million people on probation – 79 million people have a criminal record; and 113 million adults have immediate family members who have been to prison.

One in five incarcerated people is locked up for a drug offense. Four out of five people in prison or jail are locked up for something other than a drug offense — either a more serious offense or a less serious one.  The terms “violent” and “nonviolent” crime are so widely misused that they are generally unhelpful in a policy context.  People typically use “violent” and “nonviolent” as substitutes for serious versus nonserious criminal acts. That alone is a fallacy, but worse, these terms are also used as coded (often racialized) language to label individuals as inherently dangerous versus non-dangerous. 

Decriminalization Reinvents Marijuana Racism 

The decriminalization which is sweeping across the US carries with it the obvious facts that (a) pot is not and never has been a dangerous drug, and (b) criminalizing drugs has never brought anything positive. This suggests that those who have been victimized were done so wrongfully and therefore should be compensated for the wrongs done to them.  However, victims have been predominantly people of color and American racism reappears during the decriminalization phase in the form of trivializing harms done and offering restitution that barely scratch the surface of what is needed.

Prior to addressing the shortcomings for wrongful damages for marijuana laws, the US should publicly apologize for the wrongheaded and thoroughly racist “War on Drugs” and pledge to compensate those who have suffered from it in ways that are comparable to cannabis-related issues below.

Victims should be compensated for time spent in jail.  Prisoners might receive compensation for labor performed in prison; but it can be as low as $0.86 to $3.45 per day for most common prison jobs.  At least five states pay nothing at all.  Private companies using prison labor are not the source of most prison jobs. Only about 5,000 people in prison — fewer than 1% — are employed by private companies through the federal PIECP (Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program), which requires them to pay at least minimum wage before deductions. (A larger portion work for state-owned “correctional industries,” which pay much less.  But this still only represents about 6% of people incarcerated in state prisons.)

There cannot be a serious discussion of compensating victims if many continue to rot in jail.  They must be release immediately, regardless of what state they are in.  Many of those released have not had records of their arrests, convictions and sentencing cleared (“expunged”).  According to Equity and Transformation Chicago, there is a 5-8 year wait for expunging records.  Records must be expunged as rapidly as would be done if it really affected people’s lives (because it does).

A core component of repairing harm done to those imprisoned would be prioritizing them (according to amount of jail time served) to receive licenses for growing, processing, transporting and dispensing marijuana.  Various states have taken baby steps in the right direction.  For example, Chicago’s Olive Harvey College is offering training in cannabis studies to those with past marijuana arrests.  Participants receive “free tuition, a $1,000 monthly stipend, academic support and help with child care, transportation and case management.”  As of March, 2022 there were 47 studying for jobs as growers, lab directors and lab or quality control technicians.  

Another effort pointing forward is New York’s program to grant licenses for marijuana storefronts for individual or family members who have been imprisoned for a marijuana-related offense.  An executive for the program expects 100-200 licenses to go to such victims.

Let’s put these model programs in perspective.  Nice as they are, 47 students receiving study grants in Chicago and 100-200 retail licenses in New York do not even make a dent in the over 867,000 who have been arrested.

While current programs are infinitesimally small, barriers to legal victims are enormous.  Missouri grants licenses only to those “having legal marijuana experience” (such as handling legal medical cannabis) to apply for licensing for growing, dispensing, and processing.  Illinois denies licenses and loans to felons, even though 1 in 3 Chicago adults have a criminal record.  Illinois also prevents those with cannabis-related convictions from entering the cannabis industry by its high application fees.

Financial barriers for marijuana victims to receive licenses seem insurmountable.  People and communities negatively impacted by the War on Drugs have high incarceration rates and low average salaries due to limited job opportunities by ex-felons. Therefore, they lack the financial resources for high non-refundable application fees ($10,000 to $50,000) awarded in lotteries to match the state-designated number of growers, dispensaries, processors, and transporters.  In Illinois, access to credit and small business loans are difficult for persons with criminal records to obtain.  Each dispensing organization applicant must have at least $400,000 in liquid assets.  That is why people of color cannot participate as owners of legalized marijuana businesses in Illinois. 

Industrial Agriculture Poisons Marijuana Cultivation. 

Unfortunately, even if all these barriers were to be overcome, there would be serious health issues throughout the marijuana industry, whether legal or illegal.  If people of color receive priority in all phases of the industry, then a new form of environmental racism will emerge.  People in that industry will become part of the environmental destruction to their communities while they experience damage to their own health from pesticide poisoning.

An excellent review of concerns with cultivation of cannabis by a team working with Zhonghua Zheng finds it heavily associated with environmental and health concerns whether it is grown outdoors or indoors.  Needing considerable water, cannabis requires twice as much water as wheat, soybeans and maize.  Diverting water to irrigate cannabis crops often results in dewatered streams affecting other vegetation.  Water quality is also worsened (especially by illegal growers) by use of herbicides, insecticides, rodenticides, fungucides and nematodes.

Human health problems which can be linked to chronic pesticide exposure include memory and respiratory issues as well as birth defects.  Other health effects are weakened muscle functioning, cancer and liver damage.  The organization Beyond Pesticides documents serious threats due to two factors: (a) “Pesticide residues in cannabis that has been dried and is inhaled have a direct pathway into the bloodstream;” and, (2) up to “69.5% of pesticide residues can remain in smoked marijuana.”

Perhaps the most overlooked source of pesticide poisoning is due to the synthetic piperonyl butoxide (PBO), which is a synergist, used to boost the effectiveness of active ingredients in pesticides.  PBO can itself damage health due to neurotoxicity, cancer and liver problems.

Fertilizers and pesticides make their way into surface water, groundwater and soil, where they threaten the food supply.  The high demand for weed affects watersheds, having damaging effects at least for endangered salmonid fish species and amphibians including the southern torrent salamander and coastal tailed frog.

Outdoor cannabis farms disturb fine-sediment adjacent to streams, thereby threatening other rare and endangered species.  Its cultivation can contribute to deforestation and forest fragmentation.  Fertilizers used for cannabis hurt air quality due to the release of nitrogen.  Excess nitrogen increases soil acidification and well as water eutrophication.

Growing cannabis indoors raises its own issues, most notably health risks from exposure to mold and pesticides.  Mold in damp indoor environments is associated with wheeze, cough, respiratory infections, and asthma symptoms in sensitized persons. 

Perhaps the most surprising problems with indoor cultivation of cannabis is its effects on climate change via electricity.  This is due to its annual $6 billion energy costs in the US, making it responsible for at least 1% of total electricity.  Inevitably, decriminalization will lead to increased use of energy.

The major sources of energy usage are lighting and microclimate control.  High-intensity lighting alone accounts for 86% of electricity use for indoor cannabis.  Dehumidification systems are used to create air exchanges, temperature, ventilation and humidity control 24 hours per day.  Due to the complexity of indoor requirements, growing one kilogram of processed marijuana can result in 4600 kilograms of CO2 emissions!

Environmental and health problems with growing marijuana will intensify greatly if decriminalization allows control by corporate agriculture.  The so-called “Green Revolution” emphasizes use of enormous monocultures which maximize ecological destruction from extreme use of irrigation and fertilizers.

As of early 2022, at least 36 US states have adopted some form of decrimalization of marijuana, adding to the explosion of businesses in every phase of its production.  In 2018, Bloomberg reported “Corona beer brewer Constellation Brands Inc. announced it will spend $3.8 billion to increase its stake in Canopy Growth Corp., the Canadian marijuana producer with a value that exceeds C$13 billion ($10 billion).”

Coca-Cola has been eyeing the market for drinks containing CBD which eases pain without getting the user high.  Pepsi may have jumped the gun on Coke.  A New Jersey hemp and marijuana producer, Hillview, has an agreement with Pepsi-Cola Bottling Co. of New York to makes CBD-infused seltzers which would sell for $40 per eight-pack.  The deal aims to cover Long Island, Westchester and all five New York boroughs.

With industrial giants like Coke and Pepsi jumping into the cannabis market, it is a sure bet that they will not be buying marijuana from thousands of mom-and-pop growers.  Look for big soft drink to seek contracts with big ag.

The commercial growth of crops based on monoculture (a single or very few crops grown) becomes a breeding ground for pests, creating an artificial need for control via chemical poisons.  A fundamental principle of organic agriculture is that growing 10, 15 more more plant species together reduces any need for chemicals.  In the corporate ag model, if the single species grown is invaded by pests, then the entire crop can be lost.  In the organic model the farmer anticipates that 1, 2 or 3 may be hurt by pests, but the majority will survive.

According to farmer Patrick Bennett, “for a fraction of the cost of a single bottle of synthetic liquid fertilizer, you can get the same, if not better yield, flavor, and cannabinoid content in your crop at home by simply using organic farming practices.”  Marijuana has been grown for centuries (or millennia) without pesticides. Current organic growers have found five plant-based insecticides that protect their crops well:

·        Neem oil is “extracted from the seeds and fruit of the tropical neem tree, [and] controls many insects, including mites, and prevents fungal infections, like powdery mildew.”

·       Azadirachtin controls “control over many insects, including mites, aphids, and thrips” but does not provide fungal protection.

·       Pyrethrums kills insects that attack cannabis plants, including thrips.  Pyrethrins, however, the synthetic version of pyrethrums, should not be used due to their environmental persistence. 

·       Bacillus Thurengensis (BT) is very effective in controlling larval insects and fungus gnats.

·       Beneficial Nematodes are microscopic organisms occurring naturally in soil, keeping it healthy while controlling soil-born pests such as fungus gnats. 

Techniques such as these have proven effective.  Mike Benziger told interviewer Nate Seltenrich that he grows fruits, vegetables and medicinal herbs along with cannabis.  He includes multiple plants that attract insects like ladybugs and lacewings that gobble up harmful mites and aphids.  Organic growers often rely on mulching and crop rotation.  Such methods are especially critical for protecting workers growing the plants, neighboring wildlife, farm owners, distributors and, of course, marijuana users.

As of 2015, Maine was prohibiting use of any pesticides. Yet, its is important to remember that legislation can be weakened or repealed by subsequent laws, making it critical to have enduring guidelines.  Such guidelines should include practices like those in Washington DC and Maine which require producers to demonstrate knowledge of organic growing methods. 

Moving Forward 

Since federal law classifies marijuana as a narcotic there are no federal guidelines for growing it.  This makes it tempting to demand that it be declassified and brought under the auspices of bodies like the Environmental Protection Agency.  This is a worthwhile goal, but the problem is that federal and state bodies are controlled by corporate powers seeking the weakest standards possible.  Goals such as the following should be stated to counter racism and have genuine environmental protection with real (not fake) organic standards:  

1. Restitution must begin with an apology which acknowledges that criminalization of marijuana included an attack on those cultures using it; was a part of a greater attack which used drugs as one of many weapons to destroy communities; and caused suffering for an enormous number of individuals.

2. All communities affected by criminalization of marijuana and the larger attack upon them should decide what financial and cultural restitution they should receive.

3. Individuals harmed by marijuana criminalization should receive financial compensation for any arrest, trial, incarceration and post-incarceration damages.  Funds for growing, preparing and dispensing legalized marijuana should be made in direct proportion to the harm that individuals have suffered – those who have been harmed the most should receive the greatest compensation.  In particular, the greater the harm an individual has suffered, the higher priority that individual should have for receiving a license related to dispensing marijuana.

4. Organic growing must be a core component of protecting the health of marijuana workers, producers and users.  All who grow marijuana must receive free education on how to do so without the use of chemical poisons (“pesticides”).  This must include how to intersperse marijuana with other crops so that pests are not as threatening as they are with monocultures.  All who grow, process and disperse marijuana must obtain certification that their product is free of chemical contaminants.  There should be no limitations on the number of marijuana plants an individual may grow, as long as those plants are grown with genuine organic principles. 

Prior to decriminalization, health and environmental damages of growing and using marijuana were more or less similar for all ethnic and cultural groups.  But that will not continue to be the case if restitution for damages from criminalization are put into place.  If those hurt most by harassment and incarceration for marijuana receive priority for licenses to produce and distribute cannabis, they will receive the most pesticide poisoning if organic methods are not required.  The only way to avoid continued harm to those previously victimized is to employ organic cultivation.

Abolition of exploitation of all agricultural workers requires similar restrictions on chemical use when growing all herbs, fruits and vegetables.  Organic growing of cannabis should become a model for transferring production via corporate megafarms using mono cropping, chemicals, and exploited labor to organic methods based on small farms, chemical-free growing for local communities and good treatment for workers encouraged to form strong unions for collective self-protection. 

[The Green Party of St. Louis adopted a marijuana perspective that synthesizes anti-racism with organic growing principles.  You can read it at: https://gateway-greens.org/content/decriminalization-marijuana-platform]

Don Fitz (fitzdon@aol.com) is on the Editorial Board of Green Social Thought, where a version of this article originally appeared.  He was the 2016 candidate of the Missouri Green Party for Governor. His articles on politics and the environment have appeared in Monthly Review, Z Magazine, and Green Social Thought, as well as several online publications. His book, Cuban Health Care: The Ongoing Revolution, has been available since June 2020.  

Susan Armstrong, PE, LEED-AP (susan@susansnaturalspringwaters.com) is a licensed Civil Engineer, whose specialty is Health Safety and Environmental Engineering (HSE).  Her life’s work is healthy sustainable systems in communities, workplaces, and environment – through science, engineering, policy, and activism.

Consumerism and Degrowth

Written by Paul-Martin Fearon-Hernandez and first published at In Our Nature

Our Actions Do Not Exist In a Vacuum

Between every blink of an eye, a hundred Amazon packages are shipped in a constant, ever growing barrage of internet consumerism. The past 20 years have been dominated by Amazon’s unwavering growth and revolution of the world’s shopping scene in never before seen ways. Their success thrives off capitalism's incessant gluttony for infinite growth, exploiting our biological hardwiring (by abusing our dopamine triggers to create a literal addiction to shopping) to draw dollar after dollar from our pockets.  Capitalism’s reliance on continuous growth (to power the cycle of surplus to reinvestment) creates a need for constantly increasing consumption, even when the basic needs of a society are already met.

As a result, modern ad campaigns aim to convert wants into needs by directly associating fulfillment with material goods (like a man finding love after wearing a certain cologne or a loving family exchanging gifts as a sign of affection) and solidifying this culture of consumption. Nowadays, companies don’t just sell you a product. By marketing certain aesthetics in fashion, music, lifestyles, advertising sells you an identity. Instead of saying what you could have with this product, it’s what you can be with that product. It’s gotten to a point where just watching people buy stuff has become a market in itself. Shouldn’t that alone raise some alarms?

What most consumers fail to realize, however, is the environmental price tag of their consumption habits. While it’s true that the individual carbon footprint was created to distract the public from the fact that 70% of greenhouse emissions are caused by just 100 companies, this isn’t to say consumers can shrug off all responsibility. The money spent on a Shein haul (a popular website where consumers can buy a variety of items, primarily clothing, for dirt cheap) still directly supports their unethical business practices and the larger system of fast fashion.

Ultimately, these industries survive on the wallets of consumers who dump their dollars into their unsustainable consumption habits. It’s a tricky relationship. Take fast fashion, for example. Recent years have shown an absurd increase in textile consumption and more importantly, textile waste. The U.S.’s textile waste has quintupled since 1980 despite the population only having increased 40%. To make it worse, current data shows over 80% of American clothing consumption ends up in landfills, which produce methane, toxic runoffs, and take up land. 

Fast fashion is just one industry, too. In even worse business practices, like overfishing, 40% of sea creatures caught aren’t even loaded off the boat, they’re just thrown back into the ocean after they’ve already died. After discarding 38 million tonnes of dead sea creatures a year, the industry then goes on to dump record-breaking levels of plastic into the ocean. Reckless, wasteful practices like these are what lead to the collapses of entire ecosystems at rates never before seen. Waste statistics like these—40%, 60%, 80%—should be a clear sign that we are producing far more than we could possibly need, and the environment and global proletariat are paying the price. 

Capitalism Isn’t the Answer (again)

What’s capitalism’s proposed solution to these problems? More consumption (but this time it's “green”)! The rise of greenwashing, a new marketing trend where products are advertised as more sustainable than they actually are, is a perfect example of capitalism proposing itself as a solution to the problems it created. Preying on consumers’ environmental concerns, companies advertise their products as more environmentally friendly in order to increase sales, despite their new production practices having similar environmental impacts as before. They tell us they can do this whole capitalism thing sustainably, we just have to give them enough time that we don’t have.

Though they continue to promise green capitalism through endless, dangerous pledges of net-zero emissions by 20XX, the current state of things has shown that we don’t have time to pray for capitalism to solve the problem. Some propose divorcing carbon emissions from economic growth often known as “decoupling,” which focuses on breaking the link between economic growth and environmental degradation through recycling, pollution standards, and “green” investment. While these policies may be beneficial, any attempt at decoupling is just putting a bandage on a bullet hole. In fact, decoupling attempts often make things worse, such as in South Korea’s 2009 green growth initiative that tried to revitalize the economy while reducing carbon emissions.

While the plan did stimulate the economy, it also spiked emissions, completely defeating the initial purpose. Needless to say, we are beyond the days of experimenting new ways to make capitalism work for us. It’s time we take steps to move beyond the system that destroys the environment in search of another dollar.

Degrowth 

Those next steps are nothing other than the process of degrowth. The days are over of Amazon reaching record breaking profits by perpetuating mass, environmentally destructive consumerism while neglecting worker’s needs and wages. Degrowth may sound intimidating, especially since we are conditioned as a society to a capitalist idea of progress. Isn’t growth what we should strive for? No. It’s clear that the positive growth of the modern economy is directly related to growth of global carbon emissions and barely linked to the average citizen’s wellbeing (caveat: economic prosperity barely touches the working class, but recessions decimate them. Funny how that works, huh?).

In fact, the only years in the past two decades we have noticeably reduced global carbon emissions has been during economic recessions, such as the 2008 financial crisis. That should tell you something. If we want to seriously reduce our global emissions, we have to be willing to prioritize it over economic profits. The only way we can do that without collapsing our entire society is if we deconstruct the capitalist framework focused on eternal growth of private profits and allow for a system that prioritizes social and ecological sustainability: ecosocialism. 

First, however, let’s talk more about degrowth itself. Ultimately, degrowth serves as an antithesis to the capitalist system that pursues infinite growth in spite of its ecological and social consequences. It calls for a descaling of production and consumption, enabling societies to live within their ecological means as determined by strong efforts in research and organization as opposed to private interests. Rather than organize societies efforts towards material accumulation and deal with the repercussions later, degrowth focuses on addressing real needs like resource equity. 

As a society, we prioritize turning resources into profits and waste. Degrowth aims to change that, focusing on the deprivatization of industry and reprioritizing necessary work over excessive work meant to derive a profit. It also aims to fix the fundamental issues with privatized resources, such as scarcity and upcharging. Oftentimes, communal resources are privatized and resold to the community with incredible upcharges. When these resources are essential to life, such as water or medicine, these upcharges can ruin—or even end—lives. However, this is amazing for business. Why? GDP is a measure of costs, not benefits. In our current economic structure, however, we can’t just not have growth.

Without growth, our economy would collapse, and the consequences of capitalist recessions always fall on the working class and the marginalized. Degrowth proposes a new economic structure. Rather than prioritize private profits, degrowth embraces local ownership of resources, often managed by a well researched agenda based on equitable distribution of resources. Not only that, but by prioritizing local needs over profits, only as much work as is needed to sustain society would be necessary, theoretically freeing much more time for the average worker.

Degrowth is not just a Western solution. Scholars are very aware of the global disparity in resources, and believe that by reducing consumption levels across Northern countries, we can improve material conditions in poorer countries. In fact, a new study models that by 2050, a global population of 10 billion could live comfortably at the consumption levels of the 1960s. That means citizens living in currently impoverished countries around the world who barely have enough to eat right now could live in the well-being of a post-WWII Europe.

However, the cost is there. Citizens of the Global North would have to accomodate to no more second homes, no more red meat 7 nights a week, and a generally resource-conscious lifestyle. However, the key is this would require the adamant rollout of new technologies in a planned, non-profit driven method. We cannot fall back into the trap of infinite growth, infinite consumption, and definite collapse. We need an economy where we no longer strive for material excess, but rather on the simple needs of ourselves and our neighbors. It would require a restructuring of the entire global system of resource allocation. If we can get used to living within our means, it can happen.

“The final energy requirements for providing decent living standards to the global population in 2050 could be over 60% lower than consumption today. In countries that are today’s highest per-capita consumers, cuts of ~95% appear possible while still providing decent living standards to all.” - Hopkins, Steinberger, Rao & Oswald 

Hope for the future

Ultimately, degrowth does not mean returning to the Middle Ages. It does, however, mean a drastic reduction in the Global North’s resource consumption and a restructuring of our entire economic system. It means a planned, equitable economic overhaul of the world’s wealthiest nations and a constant check on our resource consumption as a whole. Degrowth means prioritizing environmental and social well-being over profits by producing and consuming less — permanently. However, life within this system would still be comfortable. Wealthy countries could slash their energy consumption by over 90% and still provide a comfortable living to all their citizens.

In fact, it may be more fulfilling because work would revolve around social needs, not alienated profits. Rather than working to keep up with demand, we would only have to work to upkeep a low-consumption society. Even gruelling resource collection jobs, like coal-miners and field workers, would be drastically reduced due to lower demand, and those workers would be properly compensated for their labor rather than have it stripped of them and sent to the top.

Degrowth creates an economy based on mutual care, not material goods for fulfillment. However, it is crucial to remember degrowth cannot exist within capitalism. Without continuous growth, capitalism fails. If we tried, it would only resemble austerity measures (removing money from the economy, the consequences of which often fall on the working class). Now more than ever, we are faced with the dire evisceration of our planet's natural ecology as well as the boundless exploitation of our rights as workers.

Degrowth is only a pillar of ecosocialism, a greater system that aims to protect environmental and popular welfare beyond the capitalist agenda. In order to install this system, it must bubble up through democratic means, first by reclaiming control of the government and economy by the public. Now more than ever we are faced with the impending evisceration of our natural ecology as well as the boundless exploitation of our bodies and natural resources.

However, not all hope is lost. As a species, it is still well within our means to crawl out of this hole we’ve dug for ourselves and create a better world for those who come after us. Any moments of hesitation will be looked back upon with tremendous remorse as future generations ask why we didn’t do something while we had the chance. It’s for them that we organize, restructure, and free ourselves from the endless pursuit of profit.

Eco-Socialism: Should Socialists Argue for Degrowth?

Written by Stephan Kimmerle, Jess Spear and Paul Murphy and first published at Reform and Revolution

The latest IPCC report outlined again that stabilizing the climate will require rapid and dramatic  action. Emissions of greenhouse gases must peak by 2025 to have a chance of preventing global temperatures from rising more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial averages and to avoid the climate crisis from spiraling out of control. 

However, the facts that call for phasing out fossil fuels have been clear for decades — and still emissions continue to increase, not decrease. Capitalist governments lack any urgency beyond lip service about climate change. Corporations defend their profits based on fossil fuel infrastructure. The future of humanity depends on building a strong environmental movement to force the changes needed against the capitalists’ interests so we can put the planet over profits. 

How can eco-socialists contribute to this movement and what should we argue for? 

There is a debate among eco-socialists about whether we should use the term “degrowth” to describe (at least within the socialist movement) what we are fighting for. Here are two opposing viewpoints in this debate.   

Yes!

The Necessity of Eco-Socialist Degrowth

By Paul Murphy and Jess Spear

Capitalist growth is destroying our life support systems. Every single year the material taken from the Earth to feed the insatiable capitalist appetite for profits grows larger and larger and the waste spewing into the atmosphere, land, rivers, and sea grows bigger and bigger. Out of the nine planetary boundaries identified – which together delineate the “safe operating space for humanity” – four have been crossed.(1) Never has it been more clear that we face a choice between socialism and barbarism.

However, what socialists mean by “socialism” is not settled. It ranges from the “ecomodernists” and “fully automated luxury”(2) communists, who place an emphasis on technological solutions to the climate emergency, to the eco-socialists and “eco-socialist degrowthers”(3) focused on urgently reducing emissions and ecosystem destruction. 

We want to make the case for eco-socialist degrowth, which is “a planned downscaling of energy and resource use to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a safe, just and equitable way.”(4) As a guiding concept for the revolutionary left today, eco-socialist degrowth can help illuminate the ecologically-sustainable path forward. 

But don’t we need both degrowth and growth?

Yes. We need degrowth in industries ranging from armaments and advertising to fast fashion and fossil fuels, together with a dramatic reduction in consumption of the richest 1% who are responsible for 15% of emissions.(5)  We need growth in public services like healthcare, education, public transit, renewable energy, childcare, etc. (the list could go on), particularly in developing countries. 

In our view, though, this question is a red herring. It sidesteps the bigger question degrowth is seeking to address: does humanity need to reduce energy consumption and material throughput overall? 

We answer unambiguously – yes. 

Of course, that is not enough. The blame for climate change and environmental destruction is all too often placed on the shoulders of “humanity” as a whole, whether you’re a private jet-owning billionaire or a Ugandan subsistence farmer. This framing repels working-class people who, even in the wealthiest countries, struggle to secure even the basic necessities. So, as socialists we must go further and highlight all the wasteful production capitalism depends on, from which we don’t benefit (e.g. advertisement), and the class divide in consumption, within rich countries, but also between the global North and global South.(6) 

We have to immediately add that degrowth can and must be done in a way that improves the quality of life for almost everybody on the planet, but only on the basis of a rational and democratic plan of production. 

Won’t this turn off working-class people?

As a slogan, we agree that “degrowth” is too abstract, and it jars too sharply with the ‘common sense’ ideology of growth. We’re not advocating you show up with giant “DEGROWTH” banners at the next rally. 

As a concept, however, degrowth refocuses our attention on the growth imperative inherent to capitalism and its ever expanding energy requirements. It challenges us to reconsider how to build a powerful socialist movement on a solid ecological footing. 

An imprecise parallel would be Lenin’s concept of “smashing the state.” In State & Revolution, Lenin drew the conclusion, in line with what Marx already wrote in the wake of the Paris Commune of 1871, that the working class “cannot take possession of the capitalist state apparatus and put it to work at their service.”(7) They must smash it and build a radically different one that serves their interests.

“Smash the state” was not and is not a slogan to mobilize large numbers of working-class people. But it assists socialists in developing demands and slogans that point in the right direction and which have the potential to reach, and in certain circumstances, mobilize masses. For example, that essential concept informed the popular Bolshevik slogan “all power to the Soviets.”

It might be challenging to win car factory workers to degrow their industry, but we have to start from the needs of the working class as a whole. We cannot base ourselves on replacing combustion engine cars with electric cars. We must make the case for converting private car factories into producing public transport infrastructure, and for a democratic and just transition. The same is true for a whole suite of industries. Workers in armaments, fossil fuels, big agribusiness, air travel, etc. will understandably resist the loss of their existing jobs. Instead of just echoing that, we have to struggle within the trade union movement for a programme which challenges the hegemonic ideology of growth and outlines how these industries can be converted to socially useful production, with guaranteed jobs and improved conditions for all workers.(8) 

No more sacrifice zones

Degrowth also forces us to seriously consider the existing plans to replace fossil fuels with clean energy technology. Where will you get the material necessary to build all those solar panels, wind turbines, electric buses, trains, and batteries? What communities will be displaced and harmed by unearthing those minerals? How much do we need to ensure everyone has a good living standard? Socialists in the global North have a responsibility to raise awareness of the ecological crises, including not only the existence of technological solutions that the ruling elite have refused to deploy, but also the impact of such solutions on other peoples. 

The way out is not increased mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chile, and South Africa to build solar panels and wind turbines for cities in the global North, destroying local environments and communities. The bridge we build from here to an eco-socialist future cannot be built by stepping on the backs of workers, women, and peasants in the global South. Therefore, we must make the case for ramping up renewable energy production while simultaneously reducing overall energy needs, starting with the luxury consumption of the 1% and unnecessary production (ie, planned obsolescence). 

What does it mean for us?

Utilizing the concept of degrowth means breaking free from the ideology of growth which has wrapped its tentacles around not only the reformists, but also the revolutionaries. 

Instead of advocating for ‘sustainable’ growth, we should describe our aim as delivering a good life for every person on the planet. As part of that, we should reject the aim of a superabundance of material private goods. On a finite planet, there cannot be infinite goods. Instead, socialists should advocate the provision of high-quality public goods, the decommodification of the commons and all aspects of life, and the healing of the rift between humanity and nature.

Adopting degrowth as a concept means emphasizing slogans, demands, and potential struggles which help to mobilize working-class and oppressed people in a struggle against capital’s destruction of life, but which point towards a better life. 

Some demands to raise include:

• A four-day or 30-hour week without loss of pay, which would result in a significant decrease in energy consumption and give workers more leisure time.
• Mass retrofitting of people’s homes, slashing energy consumption while cutting bills for families and creating millions of green jobs.
• An expansion of ‘care jobs’ – in childcare, education, and healthcare. These are high impact jobs in terms of quality of life for all, while adding very few carbon emissions.
• Free, green, and frequent public transit so that people can move away from individual cars.
• Break the cycle of consumption and waste of consumer goods by banning advertisement, implementing mandatory extended warranties, outlawing planned obsolescence, and introducing a ‘right to repair,’ ensuring that they are repairable at low cost.

These positive demands need to be combined with negative demands to eliminate the emissions of the capitalist class and the personal luxury consumption of the rich. For example, in Ireland we in People Before Profit put forward a bill to ban the future development of data centers and fossil fuel infrastructure. These data centers are projected to use nearly 30% of our electricity by 2028.(9) By and large, they are not performing useful work from the point of view of the majority. Instead, they are running algorithms to target people with advertising (which we all hate!)

Fossil fuels should be expropriated from the oil companies and left in the ground. The armaments industry and the military industrial complex must be put out of business. Private jets should be banned, as should the production of SUVs, which should be banned from cities immediately. 

In addition, our demands for progressive taxation on the rich have a vital position in a programme inspired by degrowth. Taking wealth out of the hands of the energy and resource wasting ultra-rich and investing in public services is the simplest way to reduce carbon emissions. 

The crowning demands of an eco-socialist programme informed by degrowth has to be the nationalization and democratic public ownership of the key sections of the economy in order to allow a rapid and just reduction in energy usage and shift to renewable energy. Only on the basis of a globally planned system will it be possible to rationally reduce the overall envelope of energy and material usage, while ensuring big leaps forward in the quality of life for everyone.  

This article is a shortened and edited version of a much longer piece which appeared in Rupture (the eco-socialist quarterly) Issue 7. It’s available online at www.rupture.ie

Jess Spear is National Organizer for RISE, a revolutionary Marxist network of the Irish eco-socialist party People Before Profit. Paul Murphy is a TD (Member of Parliament) in Ireland for the eco-socialist party People Before Profit and a member of the revolutionary socialist network, RISE.

No!

For a Socialist Green New Deal

By Stephan Kimmerle

The climate catastrophe, pollution of the oceans, microplastics in animal and human bodies, the threat of pandemics, and many more large and small disasters threaten human existence. The environmental movement feels the urgency to act but has many different political trends within it. It’s essential that we work together and unite wherever possible. However, the different strategies, demands, and proposals deserve an open, democratic debate in solidarity and respect for each other. Reform & Revolution sees itself as part of the eco-socialist movement. The degrowth movement, coming from a tradition from the 1960s and especially in the early 2000s, is a different trend. In my view, it’s better not to confuse the two trends; we should respect our differences in order to fully clarify the best way forward for the movement.

So, what is eco-socialism, and what is the idea of the degrowth movement? What do we have in common, and what are the differences?

The Two Inseparable Parts of Eco-Socialism

The Green New Deal summarizes many of the aspirations of left-wing environmental activists. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey might not have had abolishing capitalism in mind; however, the Green New Deal they presented included:

•     A carbon neutral economy in ten years
•     Medicare for All
•     Food security for all
•     Affordable housing for all
•     Guaranteed jobs for all — a just transition for workers in polluting industries
•     Expanding workers and union rights
•     A focus on marginalized communities within a just transition

Mass struggles for such a program will win reforms.  This will buy us time (but not much) to achieve our overarching goal. Such struggles will also expose the limits of what capitalism can offer and create opportunities to win people over to a program for socialism. People engaged in struggle will see very clearly that it’s much easier to achieve all these reforms by abolishing capitalism than trying to implement them within the framework of capitalism. This is the task of eco-socialists — mobilize working-class people into these struggles and link them to the need to abolish capitalism.

Eco-socialism is a political trend within the environmental movement with two major features:

a) Within the socialist movement, eco-socialism is unique in emphasizing the environmental crisis within the fight against capitalism.

b) Within the environmental movement, eco-socialism is unique in emphasizing the power of the working class and the need for a socialist transformation of society . Mobilizing the working class to take power to save the planet for human existence is key for eco-socialists. The key force for change, the source of power to fundamentally change the way production and consumption is organized, is the global, multiracial working class.

An eco-socialist program of a Green New Deal — linked to taking the top 500 corporations under democratic, public ownership and developing a plan to reorganize society and production — has, in our view, a fighting chance to inspire working-class people to take the necessary action to solve the environmental crisis.

We can win over the working class to fight for a sustainable future, even if workers are currently working in polluting industries, because we can make the case that we actually need them, their skills and their contributions to change society. Car factory workers know that their jobs are not secure. The question is whether we offer to fight alongside them for a future where they will still have highly skilled jobs, where union rights will be defended and expanded, where living wages will be guaranteed. We do not want to drive them into the arms of their bosses and managers where they continue working in the destructive industries that capitalism created.

A Socialist Transition under the Lens of Degrowth

The first thing that workers will understand if you talk about growth and degrowth is whether the economy is expanding or contracting.  This is often measured by the GDP, a monetary expression of all goods and services produced in a specific time period.

Measuring the GDP is a tool that capitalists like. The endless need to accumulate capital, AKA growth, is built into the current mode of production, capitalism.

However, I believe that the GDP is scientifically useless to describe the change we need to put people over profit and defend the ability for humans to live on this planet. This becomes apparent, when we ask: Will a program like the Green New Deal, linked to a socialist transformation of society, lead to growth or to degrowth? In a transition to a society based on economic, gender, and racial justice internationally, there is a need for a massive investment program: reforestation, dismantling nuclear power plants as safely as possible, building affordable green housing, massively expanding public transit and reducing transit needs through redesigning how we work and live in cities, expanding  healthcare, providing clean water (think of cities like Flint, Michigan) and healthy sewage systems, massively improving education, nursing, and elderly care, retooling and reorganizing production, etc. Why would we call this “degrowth”?

An eco-socialist transformation of society will also need to center marginalized communities and peoples oppressed by racism and nationalism for centuries. This requires mobilizing resources to overcome these historic injustices. Such a transformation will also reorganize social reproduction (care for children, the sick, and the elderly, the material and psychological reproduction of the workforce) which is currently based on gender inequality. Basically, we need to radically reconfigure how humans live on this planet. Calling for degrowth does not help us explain the massive expansion of resources that will be required to uproot the legacies of racism and patriarchy.

On the other hand, we need dramatically less military spending, advertising, individualized transportation, and production of cheap goods that are designed to break in order to sell more stuff. We can reduce a lot of this waste immediately.

On balance, it still looks like a socialist society will increase the factors with which economic activity is measured, the GDP. However, growth or degrowth of the GDP tells us nothing about the changes we are fighting for.

For this reason, instead of using GDP, some in the degrowth movement want to use the material “throughput” to measure growth and degrowth. “Throughput refers to the materials and energy a society extracts, processes, transports and distributes, to consume and return back to the environment as waste,” writes Giorgos Kallis, one of the principal advocates of degrowth. Following this advice — will a Green New Deal reduce the material throughput, energy consumption, and use of raw materials? Most likely not immediately, but definitely and significantly in the medium term. However, the “throughput” is not a great way to measure the environmental movement’s success either. It does not tell us if “throughput” was used to build long lasting, affordable green housing (which is needed around the globe) or to build another highway. In addition, “throughput” is not what people understand when socialists talk about “growth” or “degrowth.”

Socialists need to talk about quality, not quantity. A socialist Green New Deal will dramatically improve the living standards of the overwhelming majority in the Global South and in the advanced capitalist countries. The socialist Green New Deal is not a program to reduce global production measured in money or in a quantity of “throughput.” It’s a program for a democratic, eco-socialist transformation of society, a program for a completely different way of producing and consuming goods and services.

Some acknowledge that degrowth is not a good slogan to use in public. But they maintain that it is a useful term to use internally among fellow socialists. Does this term help clarify what we are fighting for? If you can freely choose what words you want to use, why would you use “degrowth” to describe a qualitative rather than a quantitative change? In reality, some socialists try to use the word degrowth because it has a certain amount of support and a certain meaning among environmental activists. However, the meaning of that word – especially if you want to use it in a scientific context – is then coined by those who use it in a certain field of science and activism.

Degrowth in the Eyes of the Degrowth Movement

The degrowth movement centers on the reduction of either production and consumption in general or at least the reduction of “throughput” — defined as the mass of energy and material used in the economy — in order to achieve a sustainable way of human life.

The movement for degrowth has its roots in the student movements of the 1960s. Even then, far-sighted eco-socialists like André Gorz were more influenced by  anti-consumerism (a critique of the artificial needs created by capitalism and commodity fetishism) and arguments for a simpler life than on mobilizing the working class.

Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen heavily influenced the degrowth movement that formed in France and Italy in the early 2000s . He argued that there is a finite limit of resources on the planet and every use of material resources downgrades them. From that perspective he argued that endless growth is impossible. Given the ongoing lack of resources, Georgescu-Roegen was convinced that social conflict would develop under any human system, whether it was capitalist or socialist.

That is why at least a significant part of the degrowth movement is deeply pessimistic about the possibility of a future without capitalism, oppression, and exploitation. When the degrowth movement refers to the growth-driven capitalist society, the alternative is not a socialist transformation based on environmentally sustainable struggles of the working class, but either a voluntary individual reduction or a state regulated decrease measured in quantitative throughput.

There is obviously some overlap of the ideas of the political trend of the degrowth movement and the vast majority of the environmental movement. Most trends within the environmental movement acknowledge the need to reduce energy production and consumption and to end the predatory use of raw materials including the brutal working conditions of extraction of those materials out of the environment.

However, the response to a capitalist society based on the need for endless growth of capital, is a) in the eyes of the degrowth movement to abolish growth and b) in the eyes of the eco-socialist movement to abolish capital.  

Michael Löwy, a French-Brazilian Marxist professor and activist, writes carefully: “What could be the relations between eco-socialists and the degrowth movement? In spite of the disagreements, can there be an active alliance around common objectives?” Löwy wants to “achieve, without hiding the inevitable disagreements, a ‘political composition’ of all those who have understood that the survival of life on the planet and of humanity in particular are contradictory to capitalism and productivism, and therefore look for the way out of this destructive and inhumane system.”

I agree. Let’s work together, but let’s not hide our differences.

Endnotes

(1) These are climate change, biodiversity loss, nitrogen removed from the atmosphere, and chemical pollution (see The Tipping Point in the latest issue of Rupture).

(2) Aaron Bastani, Fully Automated Luxury Communism (Verso Books, 2018).

(3) Michael Löwy, Benji Akbulut, Sabrina Fernandes, and Giorgos Kallis, ‘For an Ecosocialist Degrowth’, Globalecosocialistnetwork.net, April 8, 2022.

(4) Jason Hickel, Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save The World (Random House, 2020) p. 29.

(5) Oxfam, ‘Confronting Carbon Inequality’ (September 2020)

(6) “Global North” is the “IMF’s ‘advanced economies’ grouping (as of 2015), which includes the USA, Canada, Western and Northern Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Israel and Japan, plus South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, and a number of small island territories” from Jason Hickel et al., ‘Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015’, Global Environmental Change, Volume 73, March 2022.

(7) Lenin, ‘The State and Revolution’ (1917) quoting Marx’s 1872 preface to The Communist Manifesto.

(8) The Lucas Plan developed by workers at Lucas Aerospace in Britain 1976 gives a glimpse of how this could be done.

(9) Eirgrid Report, ‘All-Island Generation Capacity Statement 2019-2028’

Stephan Kimmerle is a Seattle DSA activist and a Co-convener of its District 2 group. He's been involved in the labor and socialist movement internationally—from being a shop steward in the public sector in Germany to organizing Marxists on an international level. He is working part-time jobs while being a stay-at-home dad of two wonderful children.

Toward building a “New World”

Written by Victor Wallis and published at Green Horizon and MR Online

The aspiration to “build a new world within the shell of the old” has a long history. It is typically associated with the traditions of cooperativism and anarchism. But it is also part of the socialist/communist tradition, as articulated by Marx himself. Marx characterized communist society, in Capital, as the society of “associated producers.” Although he did not delineate this vision in detail, he explicitly situated its embryo in the cooperative movements of his time.

Viewing producer cooperatives as a dimension of the labor movement, he argued that their role in ultimately empowering the “associated producers” depended on their embracing, along with their workplace practices, the wider class struggle against the power of capital.

The tension between the tasks of transforming one’s immediate surroundings and restructuring the larger society has never abated. It reflects a duality that is present in all living creatures. We are at once separate beings and units of a collectivity. In the case of humans, especially, the collectivity exists at multiple levels, with links of reciprocity not only between individuals and their immediate communities, but also between any such local entities (as well as individuals) and wider regional/national/global structures. 

This observation draws us back to recent arguments in Green Horizon, where a certain impatience if not exasperation is expressed in regard to socialist agendas, and it is suggested that our movement might more fruitfully focus on transforming our immediate surroundings rather than aiming at state power. More broadly, it is argued that socialism shares with capitalism a top-down and productivist orientation that we should firmly reject, in favor of a supposed Third Way that is neither capitalist nor socialist, but Green. 

The inspirational model for this non- and even anti-socialist approach lies principally in the beliefs and practices of Indigenous peoples. I share the appreciation of Indigenous societies, as I explain in a whole section of my book on ecosocialism, in which I discuss the conditions under which the priorities of those societies might come to gain wider acceptance. The view that socialism or Marxism necessarily clashes with such an approach derives from particular 20th-century experiences of revolution as interpreted through a capitalist ideological prism.

The stereotype of Marxism as inherently developmentalist, however, has been thoroughly refuted, over the last three decades, in the writings of Richard Levins, John Bellamy Foster, Paul Burkett, Kohei Saito, and Michael Lebowitz. The common thread in their arguments is that the anti-Marxists attribute to Marx a perspective–as with the labor theory of value–that Marx treats as belonging (on the contrary) to the dynamics of capital, which he seeks to undercut. As he puts it (contrary to widespread misconceptions about his position), "Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values… as is labor."

Marx’s approach, in its refusal to view Nature through the eyes of capital, i.e., as a resource which, like workers, can be used up and cast off at will, clashes frontally with capital’s developmentalist stance. Thinkers who fail to see this then fall easily into the “plague on both your houses” attitude expressed in many Green Horizon articles that touch on capitalism and socialism. 

These articles consider capitalism and socialism side-by-side as if we were simply shopping for our preferred system (including “neither of the above”). But there’s a problem here, in that, without our having had any say in the matter, we are actually living under capitalism. This is so obvious that one easily forgets it. What it means, however, is that if we want to adopt any other way of organizing our lives, the alternative does not just offer itself to us on an even playing field with capitalism. In order to attain it, we must first get out from capitalist domination; we must strip away the power of capital!

No matter what our ultimate goal might look like, this is the sine qua non. We can have endless discussions about the precise contours of the society we want to achieve, and I share with Green Horizon writers a preference for as biodiverse, decentralized, and democratic an arrangement as possible. But the framework for whatever arrangement we seek will be set by the process through which we initially escape the claws of capital.

Given, then, that our starting point is the rejection of capitalism, what we face is not an either/or between socialism and a “green economy.” Our task instead is to envisage the general contours of what we want and then assess the various possible ways of getting there. While certain elements of a green or localized economy can be introduced directly, the complete liberation it envisages cannot be reached without dissolving the core institutions of capitalist power, including its aggressive/competitive/exhibitionistic culture.

This has been, and remains, the historic task of socialism. After all, what can replace the power of a minuscule profit-driven propertied class if not the power of the organized majority (whatever precise form this power might take)? And what is it that can weld this majority into a political force, if not a common class interest?

The reason so many Green writers seem to balk at this conclusion is that, echoing the surrounding capitalist consensus, they identify socialism by definition with the harshest of its first-epoch manifestations (e.g., the Soviet Union under Stalin), thereby refusing to challenge the negative impression of socialism that they encounter in workers socialized by corporate media.

Lifting actual socialist revolutions out of their historical context, they turn the outcomes of particular mixes of national and conjunctural traits into ironclad axioms as to what socialism entails. They see socialism as being inherently bureaucratic and top-down, whereas in fact the revolutionary process brings numerous impulses and tendencies to the fore, making for a range of possible outcomes. 

What drives the frequent negative or repressive traits is a mix of factors, which vary in character and importance from one country or set of conditions to the next. Some aspects of the prerevolutionary culture–e.g., patterns of hierarchy–may be difficult to shake, especially under conditions of scarcity. Probably the biggest adverse factor, however, is the drive of capitalist interests–whether internal or external–to disrupt and destroy the revolution, even (or especially) if it has wide popular support and could serve as an inspiration to others.

To the extent that a revolutionary process begins on a note of hope (for example with an election victory by a socialist-oriented party or coalition), globally imposed U.S. sanctions can be counted on to bring it grief, compromising its achievements and giving corporate media and politicians a pretext to call its leadership dictatorial (as in the present case of Venezuela).

Those with “green” goals who seek to avoid such unpleasantness tout the scenario of local grassroots organizing, including a multiplicity of diverse institutions. I do not reject any of this; it plays a necessary role in drawing people into activism and also in eventually running the society that we aspire to. The problem, however, is that it does not address the current persistence of the monster in the room, namely, overarching capitalist power.

Political action to confront that power requires a unified movement. The view that such unity precludes concern for the diversity of popular needs reflects precisely the negative stereotype of socialism–and of revolution–that the capitalist ruling class invokes to preserve its own legitimacy.

The point is not to deny instances where revolutionary parties or regimes have done the wrong thing; the point is to understand those moments and to recognize that socialist movements and socialist-oriented governments are “works in progress,” with conscious protagonists who have every reason to try to avoid the consequent disappointments in the future. 

If you really want changes requiring the dismantling of capitalism–and this does include the changes necessary to the imagined “green economy,”–then you will join in these efforts rather than condemning the project that inspires them.

Victor Wallis is a former associate professor of political science, Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis and a former director of study programs in Peru and five European countries. He is the author of numerous articles, book chapters, and books, including Red-Green Revolution: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism (Political Animal Press, 2018), Democracy Denied: Five Lectures on U.S. Politics (Africa World Press, 2019), and Socialist Practice: Histories and Theories (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)