Ecological socialist debate
“Project for a 21st century democratic ecological socialism.”
This draft Essay on the Search website elaborates the policy position adopted by the SEARCH Foundation.
The incoming Committee on December 6 decided that the comments made in debate at the 2009 AGM on the draft essay be compiled and sent out requesting suggestions for improvements, by Monday February 1, 2010.
With further amendments based on all these inputs, the draft essay be finalised by the Committee meeting on February 13, 2010, and then published for circulation to our lists from Roundtables, InspirActivism and solidarity groups, to help promote the national left renewal conference.
In solidarity, Peter Murphy
SEARCH Foundation
Introduction
Australians together with the whole global community are faced with very big challenges. We need a new approach to solving all the obvious problems that currently face the world.
We need to look for the common good rather than narrow interests, consider the long term rather than the “quick fix”, and draw on all the capacities of humanity and nature.
To do this we must enfranchise all kinds of people in a deeper form of democracy in Australia and in all societies.
This essay aims to set out just such an approach, by looking at the challenges facing us and at appropriate responses to those challenges, taking into account the history of previous efforts, and the values which should sustain and inform our decisions.
Social and Environmental Challenges
Our beautiful blue planet looks more and more like a world in deep trouble, and Australia is as much involved as any nation in contributing to economic and environmental problems and wars.
We live in a western culture of affluence, constant innovation and promise of unlimited choice and self-fulfillment, yet at the same time are cynical about manipulation by powerful vested interests.
Many Australians cannot meet the ideals they set for themselves, and for others, particularly Indigenous Australians, life is a real struggle.
Carbon dioxide equivalent emissions per person in Australia were 28.1 tonnes per year, nearly twice the average for rich countries and more than four times the world average.
Many Australians are looking for positive ideas and an effective community leadership to advance solutions that will make a real difference.
Less than twenty years ago we witnessed the end of the Cold War, eagerly anticipated a “peace dividend” and were promised real global co-operation.
In 1997 the Kyoto Protocol on the 1992 United Nations Climate Change Convention promised global action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In 1999 the poor nations and peoples’ movements at the Seattle World Trade Organisation Summit said “NO” to unbridled corporate control of world trade and investment. In 2000 the United Nations Millennium Summit in Copenhagen issued its Millennium Development Goals to really deliver social justice and reduce poverty world-wide by 2015.
Our hopes for a better world have been set back by the continuing wars and threats of wars in reaction to the September 2001 terrorist attacks in the USA, in the blockage of the Kyoto Protocol process, and in the massive global debt binge and ensuing Great Recession of 2008-09.
Despite the euphoria of capitalists at the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, unbridled capitalism clearly threatens the global environment, and cannot deliver decent work and a good life for all, either nationally or globally.
The Great Recession has increased unemployment and homelessness everywhere.
While the Cold War from 1945-1991 was bloody and hugely dangerous, having the US as the sole economic, political and military superpower also turned out to be a scourge with truly devastating impact in former Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yet until the global financial crash became so great in late 2008 that it could no longer be ignored, Australia’s two main political parties were in the one chorus, singing the praises of capitalist globalisation. Even today the policy of support for US military aggression continues in Canberra.
While the Rudd Labor government finally ratified the Kyoto Protocol at the end of 2007, its proposal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions has been captured by politically powerful corporate energy and financial interests. And the Coalition’s proposals would make Australia a sheltered workshop for polluters – the Government should reject them.
Struggling with Capitalism
In the mid-1970s, a major global capitalist crisis increased uncertainty and instability. The profits of major corporations fell; both unemployment and inflation surged.
Almost full employment had given workers more confidence, the state was taking a larger share of income to support welfare programs, competition between capitalist countries drove down profits, and spending on the US military-industrial complex during the Cold War, and particularly for the Vietnam War, became unsustainable.
The dominant economic and political elites in the USA, Europe and Japan responded to these challenges and the ensuing economic crisis by organising an assault on the welfare state, and the democratic rights and living standards of working people. Led by Anglo-Saxon capitalism-the UK under Thatcher, the US under Reagan, and later Australia under Hawke and Keating and New Zealand under Lange and Douglas-a new global economic framework known as neo-liberalism or the “Washington Consensus” emerged.
Neo-liberal policies had their first trial run in Chile in 1973, when the fascist Pinochet dictatorship, with US neo-liberal advisers, destroyed democracy and workers’ organisations, and privatised key national assets to the benefit of large US corporations.
These neo-liberal policies were then imposed on poor countries by international institutions dominated by the US, specifically the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and later the World Trade Organisation. Poor countries trying to borrow funds or repay international loans were required to reduce social spending and to open up their markets for foreign investment.
The essence of neo-liberalism is to promote the expansion of US capital, regardless of the consequences for employment, social well-being and the global environment.
The neo-liberal project destroyed the consensus approach of the social democratic state, even though social democracy had also emphasised a central role for the private sector while supporting employment, health, education and social safety nets. Even essential services like health, education, public housing, power, water, public transport, prisons, garbage collections and social welfare were privatized or contracted out for profit, with the state retaining or subsidising residual services for those on low incomes.
Neo-liberalism places economic motives at the centre of all human relationships.
The neo-liberal view is that markets can work without regulation. Government intervention, workers organised in trade unions, and community and environmental organisations allegedly impede the efficient functioning of the market. It is alleged that it is these democratic institutions, not the normal operation of capitalism, “the markets”, which cause crises.
Individuals are “on their own” and must look after themselves. Neo-liberals claim their policies will accelerate economic growth and innovation, and funds will flow to the area where they get the highest rate of return. This theory says that state intervention makes things worse, hence it advocates the selling of government assets and reduction of the government role in economic management.
Key elements of neo-liberalism include:
* laws to suppress workers’ rights,
* reduction in social programs,
* dominance of financial institutions through de-regulation,
* tax minimisation for powerful corporations and wealthy individuals, and increased taxes for those on low incomes through regressive consumption taxes like the GST,
* privatisation,
* liberalisation of trade and capital flows, and
* increasing integration of all economies into global markets dominated by large transnational corporations.
Neo-liberalism succeeded as a political project, becoming the “conventional wisdom” of almost all governments and political parties world-wide. Hence the great sense of popular alienation.
The capitalist interests promoting neo-liberalism were able to build political alliances between businesses, the middle class and better-off working class citizens seeking a stake in a “home-owning and shareholder democracy”, where asset prices were continually rising. Culturally they linked up with conservative and fundamentalist religious groups, advocating the importance of self-interest, the nuclear family and consumerism.
Labour shortages in the rich countries were met with an explosion of temporary migrant workers, with fewer rights than local workers, who were eagerly exploited by employers, and often the victims of racism, promoted by white supremacist and fascist movements.
The Failure of Neo-Liberalism
As an economic and social project, neo-liberalism had major negative consequences and has ultimately failed.
What to put in its place?
A 21st century democratic ecological socialism.”
read on…
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