Surviving Capitalism (Not) : What if We Stopped Fighting For Preservation?

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Friday, January 28, 2011

What if We Stopped Fighting For Preservation?

by Tom Butler from CASSE.

Tim Murray’s essay “What If We Stopped Fighting for Preservation and Fought Economic Growth Instead?” is provocative for sure. Murray is a compelling writer, and I admire his unflinching focus on the root causes of ecological collapse including human overpopulation, consumerism, mass migration, and the religion of endless growth. He’ll get no argument from me about these factors as systemic drivers of biodiversity loss, and I share his frustration that many reform-minded environmentalists and large NGOs often are unwilling to acknowledge the fundamental contradiction between wild nature’s flourishing and the intrinsic logic of a techno-industrial growth society based on corporate capitalism.

This blogger, in contrast to Murray, correctly identifies the root problem of capitalism, but continues to support efforts to ameliorate the inexorable logic of capitalism--growth. Their disagreement is like two physicians arguing whether to treat pains due to cancer with aspirin or codeine, instead of removing the cancerous tumor. Too many activists in the US have bought into the neo-liberal notion that "there is no alternative" to capitalism.