Why capitalists fear plenty for all and want to maintain scarcity

1. Green Capitalism
Section 1
Green Capitalism 1

2. Green CapitalismManufacturing scarcity in an age of
abundance 2

3. The Age
of Plenty
3Green Capitalism

4. The global
elite is in
the grip of
a terrible
nightmare
4Green Capitalism

5. The global elite is in the grip of a
terrible nightmare
The
nightmare
is
plenty 5Green Capitalism

6. The global elite is in the grip of a
terrible nightmare
• For the ruling classes nothing is
more alarming than the steady
rise in mass consumerism
• Across the world they see the
advance of consumer power as a
drain on their precious resources
6Green Capitalism

7. The global elite is in the grip of a
terrible nightmare
They hate
the age of
plenty
7Green Capitalism

8. They fear
superstores, cheap
air travel, fat kids,
suburban sprawl…
8Green Capitalism

9. and
takeaway
food
9Green Capitalism

10. The global elite is in the grip of a
terrible nightmare…
•Their
biggest fear
is that the
Chinese will
start driving
cars 10Green Capitalism

11. The global elite is in the grip of a
terrible nightmare…
They dream instead
of restoring strict
limits on
consumption
11Green Capitalism

12. Scarcity can be
overcome…
But they want to
artificially recreate it!
12Green Capitalism

13. The tyranny of scarcity
• For thirty thousand years human beings lived
under the tyranny of scarcity
• The struggle to survive dominated human
experience
• Human beings were at the mercy of the
elements
• Droughts, famine, floods, and disease
threatened their extinction
13Green Capitalism

14. The tyranny of scarcity
• They were slaves to natural
cycles of night and day, high and
low tide, summer and winter
• The earth only gave up the
means by which they survived -
food, shelter, warmth - very
14Green Capitalism

15. Backbreaking toil has been the
lot of the small farmer since
humanity first settled the land 15Green Capitalism

16. Hardship
stunted
moral and
intellectual
growth
16Green Capitalism

17. The tyranny of scarcity
• Our ancestors were
obsessed with
imaginary spirits
• Their lives were full of
superstition and
strange customs
• They were ignorant
intellectually
17Green Capitalism

18. The tyranny of scarcity
There was
nothing
virtuous
about
poverty! 18Green Capitalism

19. The surplus makes us human!
• Only by industry, by
husbanding the soil, by
honing the tools, by storing
the grain, by re-routing the
waters, gathering the
wood, digging the coal,
drilling the oil, smelting the
iron and steel….
• Humanity got more from
the earth than it needed
19Green Capitalism

20. The surplus, over and
above bare existence, is
what makes us human 20Green Capitalism

21. The surplus makes us human!
• But the surplus was small for a
very long time
• Little more than a grain store, a
salted ham, a barrel of apples for
the winter
• More was hard to come by.
21Green Capitalism

22. Systems for rationing the surplus
• Without enough to go
around:
–all forms of
community
organisation
were little more
than systems for
rationing the
surplus
22Green Capitalism

23. Systems for rationing the surplus
• Monasteries
and castles,
temples and
parliaments,
long-halls and
pyramids:
23Green Capitalism
Grahamstown
Cathedral

24. Green Capitalism 24
These are the monuments
left by the great class
wars over the surplus
product that raged for
the last five thousand
years

25. Green Capitalism 25
British colonial
ruler on the
Eastern
Frontier:
Colonel John
Graham

26. Their civilisation was not much
more than an armed stockade
around the food store
26Green Capitalism

27. Systems for rationing the surplus
• Freedom from necessity
was so rare a commodity
that it was concentrated in
the hands of the privileged
few
• The leisured classes have
had to fight hard to defend
their privileges
27Green Capitalism

28. Green Capitalism 28
Freedom for the elite
meant subjugation of the
toiling masses

29. Systems for rationing the surplus
• Human civilisation blossomed in
the free time
won by the
few, on the
backs of the
many
29Green Capitalism

30. Scarcity made the human order into a
bitter war over social product
30Green Capitalism

31. 31Green Capitalism

32. Systems for rationing the surplus
• Throughout human history those
in power stood on the authority
of scarcity
• Authority has meant rationing
• Doling out the rations is the first
function of all authority
32Green Capitalism

33. Green Capitalism 33
Whether wages,
benefits, homes
or health-care,
the person in
control of the
rations has
always been the
one with the
whip

34. Capitalism as a system of rationing
• It rations scarce goods through the market
mechanism
• It disperses the weekly ration to families as
wages
• It recovers its costs by limiting access to goods
• It reduces us to wage slaves by controlling
access to the means of subsistence
• Capitalism cannot exist without scarcity
34Green Capitalism

35. Green Capitalism 35
Scarcity is
capitalism’s means
of social control

36. Green Capitalism 36
The
abolition
of scarcity

37. Green Capitalism 37
But
capitalism
also
abolished
scarcity

38. But capitalism also abolished scarcity
• It is also the system that over
time abolished scarcity
• As well as a system of social
control, it is a system for
producing goods
• To create an ever-greater
surplus, it has revolutionised
technology, so reducing costs
• The profit system drove people
to create abundance
38Green Capitalism

39. Green Capitalism 39
In doing so
capitalism has
abolished the basis
for its own control

40. Industrial revolution
• It turned the world upside down
• Because it aimed to cut wage costs, it set in
motion the single
greatest
transformation
in human history
40Green Capitalism

41. Industrial revolution
• At last a system arose that
rewarded the abbreviation
of working time: the
factory system
• Begun in 1721, the factory
system expanded to
embrace the world
• It greedily swallowed up
labour power and had to
be reined in by trade
unions and the law
Green Capitalism 41
Child labour in an
English cotton mill

42. The gains of the factory system
• As it grew, output grew faster than the
number of people
• Result: happiness
• In Britain 1801 – 1911, population grew
from 10.5 million to 41.8 million, an
annual increase of 1.25 per cent
• Output grew by 2 - 2.25 per cent a year
42Green Capitalism

43. Green Capitalism 43
In the 20th
Century: world
population grew more
than it did in the previous
30 000 years.
But world output
increased faster

44. Green Capitalism 44
Output per
head grew
nearly ten
times, from
$679 to $6539
between 1900
and 2000

45. The gains of the factory system
Only because of this can
more than four billion
new
people
survive
45Green Capitalism

46. The gains of the factory system
To do the
same thing
over and
again is not
just boredom,
it is slavery
Heraclitus
46Green Capitalism

47. Technology can set us free
- Technology, substituting for routine
work can set us free
- The division of labour made dull but
efficient work out of mysterious
craftsmanship
- Once isolated, routine could be
mechanised.
47Green Capitalism

48. The gains of the factory system
• Because industry isolates the repetitive from
the creative side of work, it is driven by
standardisation
• Modern technology levels things out
• It prefers purer energy sources like oil, and
electricity because of their universality of
application, to bulky and unpredictable wood,
wind and coal
48Green Capitalism

49. Green Capitalism 49
•Technology has not
tended to develop the
universal worker, the
Robot
•Instead it has developed
the universal machine, the
computer
•Computers substitute
more effectively for
routines that lie far
beyond the calculating
capacities of people

50. The age of plenty
• The future is here. We are largely
free from the direct domination
of nature
• For most people absolute
scarcity is a thing of the past −
thanks to the revolution in
technique.
50Green Capitalism

51. Green Capitalism 51
• 1.7 billion
people now
earn enough
to be part of
the
consumer
society

52. The ‘consumer class’
• But only in West Europe and
America, does the ‘consumer class’
approach to the whole population
• 29% - 494 million - are in East Asia
• 10% in East Europe
• 10% in Latin America.
Green Capitalism 52

53. Green Capitalism 53
• There is no basis for scarcity
today
• Food output has outstripped
population
• This should be good news for
most of us.

54. “End of scarcity is an outrage”
•But for some, the end of
scarcity is an outrage
•Some people can’t accept
that everyone can enjoy
the good life
54Green Capitalism

55. Green Capitalism 55
• For them, the very sight of other
people eating, drinking, enjoying
themselves is disgusting
• The
puritan
ethos
persists

56. Green Capitalism 56
They
demand
a return
to
rationing
Second World War
ration book

57. The demand for rationing
• But the demand for rationing is
not just a cultural reaction
• Controlling access to the means
of subsistence has been the way
that society was organised since
the dawn of human settlements
57Green Capitalism

58. Green Capitalism 58
Scarcity was never just scarcity –
it was also a weapon in the
struggle to establish mastery
Georgia plantation-
made slave whip
measuring 4m plus
the handle

59. The basis of authority
• The bread-and-water diet
• Doling out the ship’s biscuits
• Taxing peasants
• Land distribution
• The ration-book
• Wage negotiations
Were
the
ways
that the
ruling
class
ruled
Were
the
ways
that the
ruling
class
ruled
59Green Capitalism

60. Abundance calls their authority into
question
•The super-abundance
generated by modern
industry calls the
authority of the powers-
that-be into question
60Green Capitalism