Ecosocialism

Environmental devastation will not be stopped in conference rooms and treaty negotiations: only mass action can make a difference.

Polluters are not compelled to reduce their carbon emissions, but allowed to use their power over money to control the carbon market for their own ends, which include the devastating exploration for yet more carbon-based fuels.

It is no surprise that the dominant global system which is responsible for the ecological crisis also sets the terms of the debate about this crisis, for capital commands the means of production of knowledge, as much as that of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

There is no lack of proposed strategies for contending with ecological ruin, including the crisis of global warming looming as a result of the reckless increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The great majority of these strategies share one common feature: they are devised by and on behalf of the dominant global system, capitalism.

From the side of humanity, with its requirements for self-determination, community, and a meaningful existence, capital reduces the majority of the world’s people to a mere reservoir of labor power while discarding much of the remainder as useless nuisances.

the past few years, the one that seems to have the widest acceptance is kawsay sumak or buen vivir (living well). This is a qualitative conception of the “good life” based on the satisfaction of real social needs and respect for nature as opposed to the capitalist cult of growth, expansion, and “development,” accompanied by the consumer obsession of “always more.” The concepts of the “rights of Mother Earth” and buen vivir rapidly spread not only to Indigenous and ecological currents, but also to the entire global justice movement. Eventually, they were included in the constitutions of Bolivia and Ecuador by the progressive governments of these two countries.

values of these communities and the “spirit of capitalism” as Max Weber defined it: the subjection of all activity to profit calculations, profitability as the sole criterion, and the quantification and reification (Versachlichung) of all social relations.

Capitalism and advertising, inseparably intertwined, are the authors and active promoters of the commodification of the world, of the commercialization of social relations, of the monetization of the soul.

Advertising pollutes the mental landscape, just like it does the urban and rural landscapes; it stuffs the skull like it stuffs the mailbox.

The criterion for distinguishing an authentic need from an artificial one would be its persistence after the suppression of advertising.