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Topic: Some critical comments to Daniel Tanuro’s “Foundations of an ecosocialist strategy ”
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Some critical comments to Daniel Tanuro’s “Foundations of an ecosocialist strategy ”
on: January 12, 2014, 22:44

Some critical comments to Daniel Tanuro’s

“Foundations of an ecosocialist strategy ”


Anders Ekeland,

anders.ekeland@online.no


1. Introduction

Let me make it clear from the start that I agree with most of Tanuro’s analysis, in particular his analysis of the ecological crisis, his view on productivism, his critique of attempts to solve the problem by commodifying nature in emission trading systems etc. But in my opinion this document does not create the foundations of an operative political strategy.

The key issue that is missing in the document, is the problem of “climate justice” on an international and a national level. The question of “climate justice” has been the stumbling stone in all international climate negotiations. It is the obvious reason why there have been no substantial reductions in the CO2-emissions because the rich and poor countries cannot agree on how to share that burden. They cannot agree on how to distribute in a fair way that part of the “carbon budget” that is left .


Behind the disagreement between countries lies the disagreement between the rulers and the ruled in each country. The bourgeoisie do not dare to send the climate bill to the working classes even if they wanted to. The workers will not accept that the rich continue their waste-full life-style while forcing others to a “protestant ethic” green life-style. So we are in a pat situation, in the stalemate of business as usual.


This means that the question of climate justice between rich and poor countries, between rich and poor in a country, has to be posed very sharply and the strategy has to address this basic problem.


Ecosocialists therefore cannot avoid this issue. To argue that “Green capitalism” cannot work, that emission trading is no solution, that the problem must be solved by democratic planning etc. will not be seen as a real answer to the problem, neither by the labour nor the environmental movement, not even by large sections of the far left.


What is needed is a strategy that can get the workers of the world to unite to work towards a common goal – a dramatically reduced consumption of fossil fuel.


For ecosocialists the question of “climate justice” this is not a question of speculating about what abstract principle of fairness is the correct one. The correct principle is the one that mobilizes ordinary people, because they will only be mobilised for a goal, for a society, for a new economic world order that they conceive as fair. In short the correct “climate justice” principle is the one that ordinary people see as an acceptable sharing of the transition costs to a sustainable world order , the correct strategy is the one that gets them take the first steps in that direction.


2. James Hansen’s “fee and dividend” proposal as the key issue of an “exit strategy”.

The well known climate scientist and activist James Hansen (JH) proposed in 2009 what John Bellamy Foster in Monthly review called a climate change “exit strategy” . The man point of that strategy is to put a price on carbon (not Nature!) by means of a carbon fee (tax), where the tax revenue is redistributed to the citizens directly. The basic principles of the “fee and dividend” system are, as summed up by Bellamy Foster:

• Fossil-fuel companies would be charged an easily implemented carbon fee imposed at the well head, mine shaft, or point of entry. The carbon fee would be a single, uniform number in the form of dollars per ton of carbon dioxide that would be emitted from the fuel.

• 100 percent of the revenue collected being distributed monthly to the population on a per capita basis as dividends; with up to two half shares for children per family.

• Dividends would be sent directly via electronic transfers to bank accounts or debit cards.

• The carbon fee would then gradually and predictably be ramped up so as to achieve the necessary carbon reductions. (Accompanying this would be the elimination of the current subsidies to the fossil-fuel industry.)

As a starting point for a political strategy that will mobilise, that will lead to real reductions in CO2-emissions Hansen’s proposal is a progressive, not a regressive tax for the majority of the population – having a smaller carbon footprint than the rich. According to Bellamy-Foster an adoption of a Hansen-tax in the US would: imply a fossil-fuel carbon fee of $115 for every ton of carbon dioxide emitted from fossil fuel which is estimated to be equivalent to a $1 increase per gallon of gasoline, or about 8 cents per kilowatt hour in electricity charges) would generate $670 billion in dividends.

Each adult “legal resident” would receive one share equal to $3,000 a year. A family with two children would receive around $9,000 a year, with $750 a month deposited into its bank account. Some 60 percent of the population would receive net economic benefits, i.e., the dividends they received back would exceed the increased prices paid. These net benefits would of course increase if they were to reduce their carbon footprints further.

Could such a proposal gather political support from ordinary people in the US and other rich countries? I think so. Even in countries like Brazil, India and China – where there also are enormous income and carbon consumption differences –the poor would gain and the rich will loose.

Hansen’s proposal in its first version lacked an explicit international climate justice dimension, more about the international dimension below. But another problem is that the tax would make US export more expensive, that is less competitive on the world market, so it must be complemented by the implementation of import taxes, often called “border tax adjustments”, so that countries that have not implemented a carbon tax will face trade barriers and get economic motives for implementing a “fee and dividend” system itsel. For a large and in potentially “self-sufficient” economy like the US this is not that problematic. For small countries with an open economy it would a greater challenge, but by no means an impossible one. In Europe the carbon tax would probably rapidly become an EU-wide carbon tax, but implemented nationally, that is collected and distributed by national authorities.

John Bellamy-Foster (JBF) writes on this question:


“No nation will impose an internal fee that seriously disadvantages itself in international commerce. But an internal fee-and-dividend system, with a modest initial carbon price, will be a boon to the nation that leads, and provide a framework for international discussion. Current World Trade Organization rules allow a nation that imposes a carbon fee to levy duties on products from other nations that do not have a carbon equivalent fee or tax, making it relatively easy to generate a global carbon fee/tax system.”


Even if one thinks that “relatively easy” is an understatement of the problems, what is essential is that it is not impossible. A carbon based protectionism would probably function progressively compared to today’s laissez-faire. This is an area where progressive international organizations like the Fourth International, trade union, environmental NGO’s etc. really have a role to play in defining what border tax adjustments fair.


3. Hansen’s fee and dividend proposal is not commodifying nature

This author is a long-standing critic of emission trading systems (ETS) of commodifying nature, giving capitalist for free “property rights” which they then can sell. There is a huge literature pointing out that ETS, especially the “Clean Development Mechanism” is a fraud, just a way legitimate doing nothing that effectively reduces emissions, while giving the impression that something is done.


I agree completely with DT’s critique of ETS, but in my opinion DT makes a mistake when he sees a carbon tax as a way of commodifying nature: “The impasse of commodity calculation appears clearly in the proposal for a carbon tax to make fossil energies more expensive than renewables and consequently reduce carbon gas emissions.”


First of all a carbon tax is not commodifying nature, it is a politically (democratically) planned change in price in order to change behaviour. Many countries have taxes on tobacco and alcohol – aimed at reducing the consumption (behaviour), not primarily generating tax revenue. In the case of fossil fuel, it is not a question of just keeping the consumption a certain level, it is the question of practically stopping using fossil fuel, so one can just gradually increase the tax until that goal is achieved.


DT has a series of other arguments against a carbon tax:


“In fact, the scope of the reductions to be achieved, given the urgency and the size of the difference in cost between fossils and renewables, is such that even a tax of $600 a ton would not suffice (it would simply allow a reduction in global emissions by one-half by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency. Since the combustion of a thousand litres of fuel oil produces 2.7 tons of CO2, it is understandable that such a measure would be socially inapplicable in reality: employers could accept this only if it were wholly transferred to the ultimate consumers, while the majority of the population, infuriated by the austerity that has prevailed for 30 years, will obviously oppose any such deterioration in its conditions of existence.

That is why, in practice, and notwithstanding all the sophisticated theories of ecological economics, the policy proposals for internalization of the costs of pollution are both ecologically insufficient and socially unsustainable.”


First of all DT does not even mention the use, the possible redistribution of the carbon tax revenue, although it is quite obvious that if there is a just (progressive) distribution of the income from the carbon tax it might very well not only be socially sustainable, it might be socially desireable for ordinary people. I’ll return to that point below.


But let me first discuss the hidden premise, that direct regulation or rationing – or a combination of regulation and rationing would not be a way of “internalising” the costs of pollution, that direct “bureaucratic” regulation would be more socially acceptable because it would not be “such a deterioration of its conditions of existence” of a population “infuriated by the austerity that has prevailed for 30 years”.


DT does not at all sketch how he intends to implement his regulative measures, but we know from war-time conditions quite a bit about how such non-market allocation of resources function. The major instrument is of course rationing for example of petrol with each person/family getting smaller and smaller quotas each year. Very rapidly this would create a “black” market in petrol, gas etc. with speculation, wildly fluctuating prices etc.

The prices per ton of CO2 would – if the rationing was going to have any effect – be of the same level as a carbon tax in order to have the same effect. The price would probably be even higher given the constant uncertainty about the (black) market price.


Would a direct ban on the use of cars be any more socially acceptable than petrol getting more expensive while the revenue from the carbon tax came directly into your account?


So regulation and/or rationing is just another way of internalising the fact that society must use dramatically less fossil fuel. To me it is very doubtful if they are more socially acceptable than a carbon tax with a socially just redistribution of the tax revenue, which would be a large scale redistribution of income. In fact I am convinced that they are not. Ordinary people have more political influence over the level of and the distribution of the carbon tax revenue than over the income from “rationing card” trade, that always emerges together with rationing.


Trade with rationing cards turns people’s attention to individual “black” market transactions and away from political action to get to social justice. The market could be “white”, that is organised and regulated by public authorities, but since most people do not have time to be traders there would soon grow up a wasteful business of professional traders/speculators.


4. Challenging capitalism in a concrete or abstract way?

JBF writes about Hansen’s proposal:


All of this suggests, however, that the Hansen exit strategy for all of its strengths is itself insufficient. Its weakness is that it does not go far enough in addressing the social-systemic contradictions generated by the power structure of today’s monopoly-finance capital. What is needed under present circumstances is an acceleration of history involving a reconstitution of society. The kinds of changes to be considered in the context of a planetary emergency cannot be confined within the narrow channels that the ruling class and its political power elite will accept. Rather an effective climate-change exit strategy must rely on the much larger social transformation that can only be unleashed by means of mass-democratic mobilization.

In DT’s book “Green capitalism” one will find a very similar attitude to what an “exit strategy” must consist of. But what is striking with JBF’s formulations and DT’s is how abstract they are. Neither JBF nor DT has concrete examples of everyday problems that people will try to solve and that will lead them to question the continued existence of capitalism.

In my opinion Hansen’s proposal has such an transitional dimension. First of all because it show that people must be political active in order to get the progressive tax implemented. It will be the political system (“democracy”) that will regulate the level, the rate of increase and the distribution of the income – not the market. The increasing petrol prices will rise all the question related to public transport, urban planning etc. It will stimulate decentralised, renewable energy production, solar panels, small wind-mills, the use of wood etc.


5. Climate justice – the international dimension

As argued above the foundations of an ecosocialists strategy must be a vision of what “climate justice” concretely means. Should the sharing out of the necessarily drastic reductions take the historic emissions into consideration? Should the working class of the rich countries really take responsibility for emissions they did not know was harmful? When they lived under authoritarian or dictatorial regimes? Should we just converge from the present level of emissions to a situation where each individual has an equal level of green house gas emissions? When should this happen – and at what speed?


Even the egalitarian solution where we converge to an equal amount of emissions per capital implies that the “North” will continue to emit significantly more for decades to come. Of course it will emit much more if we just continue with business as usual.


Although DT does not directly formulate the question of climate justice in the usual terms, he of course is well aware that there is a “dilemma”:


• On the one hand, three billion people live in disgraceful conditions. Their legitimate needs can only be met by increasing material production, and thus processing resources removed from the environment. This means consuming energy, 80% of which is of fossil origin today, a source of greenhouse gas;

• On the other hand, the climate system is on the verge of a heart attack. If we are to avoid irreversible catastrophes (the major victims of which will be among the three billion people aspiring to a dignified existence), greenhouse gas emissions must be radically reduced. This means reducing the consumption of the fossil energies now needed for the processing of the resources taken from the environment, and reducing material production.


And what is DT’s solution to this dilemma? It is as follows:


The strategic choice is therefore the following:


• either we leave capitalism behind by radically restricting the sphere and volume of capitalist production and transportation, and it is possible to limit to the maximum the damages of global warming while guaranteeing a quality human development based exclusively on renewable energies within the perspective of a society based on some other economy of time;

• or we remain within the capitalist accumulation logic, and climate deregulation radically limits the right to existence of hundreds of millions of human beings, while future generations are condemned to cope with the problems originating in the project creep of some dangerous technologies.


But when it comes to outlining how, after twenty years when no substantial reductions have been made are we going to “leave capitalism behind by radically restricting….” this is not foundations for a political strategy aimed at mobilising ordinary people, this is a declaration of intention, of the obvious fact that the long tem solution to environmental problems demands the abolition of a system with an endogenous drive for profit, for accumulation, for eternal growth. But such declarations are not a foundation of strategy for political mobilisation. It is a credo.


In the recent climate negotiation rounds, that is since Copenhagen, the “North” has promised to offer 100 billions in support for technology transfer etc. to the “South”, but it would be much more efficient to demand that the carbon tax from international air and sea transport should be paid to the United Nations, to be distributed to the South in support of renewable energy construction. Complete halt to the fraudulent “Clean Development Mechanism”. In fact there could be a special and higher tax rate on international transport in order to encourage local production.


6. Unions regulating the market – mobilising against the anarchy of the market in a concrete way.

In order to get rid of the wasteful product differentiation, the irrationalities of capitalist competition ecosocialists should in their unions try to get the unions to regulate the market in cooperation with other unions organising workers producing the same products. Take for example the production of cars. First of all car-workers unions should argue for a planned transition to electric vehicles, argue for common R&D, testing and production of electric cars, scooters and bikes in order to avoid the artificial and wasteful product differentiation so typical of capitalism, where each capitalist tries to “lock in” customers to their product instead of establishing open and common standards. The unions could cooperate in order to plan the number of workers needed for the social need for electric vehicles, where to produce them etc.


Similarly workers in air transport should meet and try to produce the social need for air transport in the most rational way. As everybody knows competition forces air companies to fly almost at the same time to the same destinations, leading to much unused capacity, waste of fuel, very long working hours for air transport workers.


The same goes for retail trade – where lot of shops selling the same goods are forced by competition to have very long opening hours all days a week – with way too few customers. In a planned economy this would not happen.


The possibilities for unions to engage in getting the socially needed production done in a rational (and energy saving way) are many. But of course they would be dramatically stimulated if fossil fuel was taxed heavily, since this would send a strong stimulus of change.


If one for example want to get out of today’s industrial agriculture and into sustainable agriculture ecologically produced products one could campaign for a ban on using anti-biotics in the production of chicken and pigs, and strict regulation of the number of square meters that livestock animals should have at their disposal – again clearly favouring ecologically sustainable agriculture. And just to repeat – a carbon tax would favour eco-products and local production in a very general way since industrial agriculture is much more based and dependent on fossil fuels.


7. The demand for a healthy life must be turned into transitional demands

Part of an ecosocialists strategy is also to turn peoples worry about the environment an their personal health into an anti-capitalist sentiment. Ecosocialists must demand that all foods are biological. To achieve this one must impose standards, no anti-biotics in meat or fish, one must demand that ecological agricultural products are subsidized – by taxing the non-ecological products – so that they never are more expensive than “industrially” produced food.

Such concrete demands are not limited to only environmental and health dangers. Many irrational aspects of capitalist competition; one example being the plethora of different chargers for mobile phones and lap-tops (as opposed to stationary PC’s) – a sheer waste and chronic source of frustration in everyday life. The unions in the mobile phone and lap-top industries should cooperate in order to stop this. They should ally themselves with consumer’s organisations, users of the product. In this way the fight for sustainability will challenge the ideology that competion is purely beneficial, that production cannot be organised in a cooperative way. The open source movement has had such a function.

Of course such struggles do not lead to socialism, but they illustrate concretely that cut-throat competition is not the only efficient way of production, on the contrary it is wasteful. The left should raise demands for worker’s and consumer’s right to regulate in order to reduce this kind of waste.


8. Summing up

In my opinion redistributed carbon tax is the key to any ecosocialist strategy, on the national and the international level. People with a small carbon footprint – the poorest in society, youth, students, low-wage earners would gain. For many in today’s crisis ridden world this is the most realistic hope of getting richer, of making the rich pay, making society more egalitarian – and at the same time contributing to reduced emissions.


Such a system would make people who do not care that much about the climate, “red-necks” not caring about climate change would get tax revenue into their account each month, and would not fight that hard against the “crazy” carbon tax.


When it comes to “climate justice” on a global scale it is clear that Hansens’s proposal means a convergence to an equal carbon footprint hopefully within two or three decades. Given accumulated emissions of the rich countries this is unjust seen from an abstract notion of justice. But any prolongation of status quo is radically more unjust – and will push all of us over the climate cliff.


Appendix I


The “Transitional programme” and the long term prospects of capitalism.


9. The productive forces and the “death agony of capitalism”

Daniel Tanuro (DT)writes:


The ‘Transitional Program’ written by Leon Trotsky in 1938 begins with the statement that “The economic prerequisite for the proletarian revolution has already in general achieved the highest point of fruition that can be reached under capitalism.” It concludes that “The objective prerequisites… have not only ‘ripened’; they have begun to get somewhat rotten. Without a socialist revolution, in the next historical period at that, a catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind.”


But in my opinion DT is not critical enough of the perspective that the Transitional Program outline for capitalism. For was it true that the economic prerequisite for revolution had already reached “the highest point of fruition” and started to “rot” in 1938? How shall we then describe the development of the prerequisites for proletarian revolution in the last 75 years? Was Trotsky’s prognosis correct in 1938?


The answer to that question is found in the next couple of sentences in the transitional programme – sentences that DT does not quote. They are as follows: “Mankind’s productive forces stagnate. Already new inventions and improvements fail to raise the level of material wealth.”


But this both was and is clearly wrong. It was completely obvious by the late thirties that:


• competition constantly revolutionises the forces of production, thereby …

• constantly raising the level of material wealth, and at the same time…

• stimulating/forcing the workers to organise themselves in order to survive and get a fair share of the productivity gains and simultaneously…

• stimulating aggregate demand – the best cure for any capitalist crisis.

These interrelated, dynamic processes meant that the level of material wealth was rising, only interrupted by wars and/or crisis, this mean that reformism could work, capitalism could deliver the “American way of life”, combined in some countries with a welfare state, with nationalised, health, education, public transport, state rail-, air-, post companies.


The reason why Trotsky wrote this was clearly that he – as any well-educated Marxist – knew that Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto:


“At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.”


This is the general, historical materialist law regarding when a society is ripe for revolution. It is when the relations of production become fetters on the development of the productive forces. The key question then becomes – when will capitalist relations of production become a “fetter” on the development of the productive forces? The answer is never, capitalist competition has an endogenous innovative dynamic .


Why is it important to discuss the historic perspectives of capitalism? It’s because Tanuro does not seem to be willing to recognise that Marx, Engels, Trotsky and Mandel were not willing to admit that the capitalist system would never become a fetter to the development of the productive forces. They did not think that capitalism could be compatible with a welfare state for a half century. They – for understandable reasons – underestimated the flexibility of the system.


This insight has implications for the discussion of “Green Capitalism”. One could ask – could Tsarism have reformed itself? Theoretically probably yes, but as as the concrete historical dynamic process unfolded – clearly not. Can green capitalism work? In principle the answer is yes. Will capitalism be able to green itself rapidly enough faced with the demands from a strong “climate justice” movement? Probably not – but the real problem is how to get a movement that will demand climate justice going. The problem is to create a movement that will demand a transition in society’s energy base needed to avoid catastrophic climate change.


It is not very much use now to have an “academic” debate about the possibility of green capitalism. As in the case of welfare state capitalism – only a very strong labour movement can force capitalism to create a welfare state, to nationalise the railways, nationalise the health system etc. In a similar way – only a strong popular movement can force capitalism to become greener. How flexible real existing capitalism is – let’s see. In any case the movement will only abolish capitalism if it does not satisfy its basic demands. What is dangerous – when the task is to get people fighting for emission cuts – is to have “this is impossible without a system change”, without socialism – as ones first and default answer.


Especially, since the vision of socialism (“communism”) is completely scandalised by the experiences of “real existing socialism” and the support for these regimes by the majority of the hard left. What the majority people will have as their goal when they become active is green capitalism.


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