[R-G] The mission statement at http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green

[Tom Wayburn]

Rad-Green: Radical anti-capitalist environmental discussion

Welcome to the homepage of Rad Green, sometimes referred to as "Radical
Green". This list exists for several reasons, and it is constantly evolving.

1: Capitalism and imperialism are environmentally unsustainable, due in
part, to their systemic need for growth;

2: War and late imperialism are the greatest environmental threats that
human existence has ever known and must be stopped;

3: Environmentalism, when it speaks against war, has for far too long been
wed to notions of reforming capitalism in a "green" way;

4: We do not have the time to spend endlessly fighting over how to stop the
dieoff. We must start working with a plan, and we must do so quickly.

The list has evolved into overwhelmingly news-based postings, as can be seen
in the archives below. The selection of items among our many list members
(from all over the world) continues to be among the very best.

I wonder if the group can tolerate one more departure from the news format
and hear the discussion of a blueprint for a new society, which might be
useful for "working with a plan, and [doing]so quickly.  In any case, I have
no intention to argue in favor of my plan as opposed to another plan.

Communism v. Capitalism and Marxism v. Demateralism and Hyperlinks to Papers
on a Natural Political Economy 




Communism v. Capitalism and Marxism v. Demateralism

Tom Wayburn


Let us review the steps whereby capitalism was defeated by communism in
logical argument:

I don't know if any of the latest statements about deaths and ruined lives
under so-called communist rule are true or merely another salvo in an
endless war against Communism waged by both branches of the American
Capitalist Party; but, this much is certain: Communism is sustainable and
Capitalism, because it requires perpetual economic growth in a finite world,
is not.  Capitalism requires growth to retire debt incurred by fractional
reserve banking, to justify economic inequality by telling the poor they
will not grow poorer as the rich grow richer, to provide new jobs for
workers displaced by improvements in productivity due to technological
progress, and to finance industry in a stock market that would collapse if
it did not grow.  None of these is necessary in a communist economy despite
the undeniable fact that many regimes that call themselves communist whether
they are or not have encouraged economic growth.   (Of course, many
(undeveloped) nations should grow economically, but new growth in the poor
nations must be accompanied by even greater shrinkage in the rich nations to
more than compensate for it.)

It is necessary to divide the community dividend equally among the members
of the community for a number of reasons:

1.         Whatever advantages of intelligence, strength, ability,
character, appearance, breeding, or connections one is able to exploit to
acquire wealth, they are accidents of birth that are normally disallowed as
justifications for worldly success.

2.         It is impossible to evaluate a person's contribution to the
community until hundreds of years after that person's death, if then.

3.         Suppose that one potato in the Mark I Economy  represents the
amount of emergy that is required to keep one person alive for one day.  The
ability of the earth to provide emergy for consumption is already so limited
that people are starving to death because we do not share wealth. 

Thus, wealth sharing is reasonable, beautiful, and practical.  However,
without wealth sharing society is vulnerable to very serious problems:

1.         Differences in wealth create covetousness, envy, resentment,
anger, and, finally, revolution if they grow sufficiently steep or if they
are perceived as patently unfair.

2.         If there are differences in wealth, we have materialism with all
of the horrible things people do to acquire greater wealth because of greed,
because of fear of losing what one has, or to remedy personal poverty.  In
Chapter 9 of On the Preservation of Species, I showed that materialism is
Pandora's Box.

Materialism is the perfect transition from the debate between communism and
capitalism to the debate between Dematerialism and Marxism:
Let us examine the reasons why Dematerialism has supplanted Marxism:

Marxism was supposed to have remedied the problems caused by differences in
wealth; but, inasmuch as it requires people to work to earn a living, it
still permits competition for wealth.  Also, it does not address competition
for power except by preventing huge concentrations of wealth that make fair
competition unnecessary for many aspirants to political power.  Even
supposing a meritocracy in the distribution of jobs, political positions,
and incomes, almost all of the problems of materialism will arise. 

1.         Dematerialism requires each person to have an equal share of the
community dividend regardless of what he does or doesn't do, which prevents
all of the evils of materialism discussed in Appendix II of On the
Preservation of Species.

2.         It is important that people who do not work be compensated the
same as those who do because most of the workforce will have to be
furloughed to reduce the energy budget to that which can be supplied by
renewable energy technologies only.  Please see the three energy papers
hyperlinked to http://dematerialism.net/ where this is explained and proved.

3.         Dematerialism avoids punishment of misbehavior as well as
punishment of sloth.  People will do something interesting and/or useful
because they need to be effective to be happy.  Since Dostoevsky wrote Crime
and Punishment 150 years ago, we have suspected that punishment exacerbates
conflicts in living.  Dematerialism lets go of punishment and revenge as
well as other irrational and maladaptive behavior peculiar to Western
culture or learned during out Era of Evolutionary Adaptedness.

Indeed, Marx, apparently was not familiar with the Sermon on the Mount and
the many fine sentiments expressed there by Jesus.  We could say that
Dematerialism is the New Testament of Communism and Marxism is the Old
Testament. 


Hyperlinks to other papers


http://www.dematerialism.net/wiki.htm#_Toc170283591

http://dematerialism.net/demise.htm 

http://dematerialism.net/CwC.html

http://dematerialism.net/ne.htm

http://www.dematerialism.net/Mark-II-Economy.html beginning with
http://dematerialism.net/Mark-II-Summary.html .

Tom Wayburn, Houston, Texas
http://dematerialism.net/