Why Climate Change Is Necessary for the Leap to Socialism
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How Human Alienation Cripples Us and Fuel Climate Change
(cont'd from page 3)Popular thinking that humans are irrational is not incorrect. Humans in class society cannot be rational. If humans were rational the ruling class could not manipulate and control them. The irrationality of human beings can ultimately be observed in the human brain. In the last years scientists were able for the first time to look and understand how different parts of the brain “talk” with each other. Researchers found out that when people make decisions areas in the emotional parts of the brain (the limbic system) are activated. Researchers found out that most time the areas in the brain that are activated are related to “negative” feelings. It is normal that rational decisions can bring sadness or happiness. But the level of negative emotional components (anxiety, fear) for most people when they make decisions is staggering (when one looks at a typical person’s fMRI). For most people what is triggered when they think is the amygdala (fight or flight in the brain) and its associated networks. The amygdala is associated with fear, stress and depression. All of these feelings are epidemic today. I believe that it is not wrong to assume that they were the main feelings in all class societies. In a healthy society it is OK to have an emotional component in rational decisions. Emotions by themselves are not alien to rational thinking. One needs to be self-aware of his/her emotions which by themselves do not prevent one from being objective while making decisions. The ability to remain rational depends on the maturity of the person and his/her ability to use complex logic: the dialectics that reflects how matter in social life works.
Today’s economic crisis makes living conditions unbearable. The emotions of fear and anxiety are transforming into rage, anger and readiness to be active. Such emotions with the right political leadership and program could be a motor for a fundamental change: a social revolution. Here we have an intriguing contradiction. There are not enough revolutionaries to build a mature and strong revolutionary international. Yet climate change is already causing havoc around the world. Orthodox Marxism and Trotskyism tells us that we need to build a revolutionary international based on the 1938 transitional program and dialectical materialism to lead the socialist revolution. Yet we are today not any closer in building such a revolutionary leadership than we were in 1938. In fact we are pathetically much less advanced in building such a leadership. Thus the main contradiction of this period is that the effects of climate change is spreading much faster than the building of a revolutionary international. Unfortunately orthodox Trotskyism is too narrow minded and thus incapable to examine this contradiction seriously.
The difficulties for the birth of classless society shows that climate change is apparently a necessary catalyst for the leap to socialism as it was in past, when a leap in social development and the productive forces was necessary to adapt to harsh climate conditions. Our hope is that the combined suffering and anger from the deteriorating economic conditions and climate change should be a powerful impetus for social revolutions. Living with inadequate water or food will bring conditions of scarcity. The only way to adapt is to build a world social order based on collective planning that stops all aspects from a disastrous climate change. Ultimately this can be done with a society that re-connect people with nature without compromising the development of the productive forces, i.e. the clean “green” technology of an egalitarian socialist system. The alternative is a human race that descents to total barbarism or back to the stone age.
Our specie must start the biggest leap since agriculture. This is so because only in classless society human beings could for the first time give full expression to their humanity and positive potential. If humanistic communism that Marx described arrives, the human brain is likely to change after centuries of evolution. Under capitalism the amygdala and its networks are growing and growing because there is no outlet for the stress and depression that late capitalism forces people to endure. The amygdala and other very old parts of the brain are likely to become less relevant if the human race matures in the coming centuries.
Did Human History Start With the “Glory” of Class Warfare
Who said that today’s humans are fundamentally more advanced than the early homo sapiens who supposedly belongs to pre-history? Curiously, today we believe that human “history” started with the creation of the state that defends the interests of the ruling classes. So the first “civilization” according to bourgeois scholars was the Sumerian Civilization of Mesopotamia (in what is known today as Iraq) about 5000-6000 years ago. But the ruling classes then were as brutal as the ruling classes today. The features of class societies tells me that these are not civilized societies. They all share the greediness of the elite who oppressed the great majority . In all cases of class societies the masses are treated as slaves.
For advanced Marxists who use the mega perspective of history(meaning history started when we became bi-pedal), class societies in all their forms and evolutions are still part of pre-history because the great majority of the human race (due to severe oppression and exploitation and great pressure to conform) can use very little of their human potential. The life of a worker who need two jobs to survive is not that different, from the mega point of view, from the life of the peasant in feudal society who had to work from sunrise to sunset to survive. The roughly 6000 years of societies based on surplus value is just a historical bloc in pre-history. Real human history will begin in classless society’s culture: when each person could develop human values based on love, compassion and the rest of the positive feelings and culture that we all talk about but are clueless in regard to how to achieve them. In reality we remain a primitive society that put its head in the sand, ignoring the coming disaster from climate change.
From the point of view of evolution it makes perfect sense that we need climate change. As climate change is gripping our planet it will be giving us a kick in the butt, forcing us to overthrow the latest version of primitive class society: capitalism, or face dire consequences. It appears to be an evolutionary necessity to make the leap that homo sapiens need once again, this time from 6000 years of class society to a truly humanistic classless society or socialism.
We must remember that the industrial “revolution” was a necessary evolutionary change from Feudalism. Capitalism was needed to develop the productive forces to the point where they stood in contradictions to human needs and now possibly human existence. Since capitalism is based on maximum profit and the competition for it at the expense of everything that is alive, it could not have developed differently, without destroying the environment and without causing climate change. So we can say that climate change and the rest of the environmental disasters from capitalism are just a necessary “products” from the last stage of class societies. To change primitive (socially speaking) class societies to classless society the human race apparently needs the shocks from climate change. This is so because the change to egalitarian classless world order is so fundamental that we simply cannot compare it to the change from one stage of class society to a higher form of it. It is more like a change from hunters gatherers to class society; or it may be even a greater leap: like the evolution from apes to bi-pedal hominids. The leap is so fundamental because for the first times under socialism humans will no longer will be (wage) slaves or suffer from other severe oppressions which are all standard in class society. The change is so profound because people will have their basic material needs satisfied so that they will be free for the first time to pursue their potential.
Can Climate Change Bring Social Revolutions? (And the Other Possibilities From Climate Change)
We cannot be certain how intense will climate change will be. Climate change is interacting with dozens of other major damages to the environment by homo sapiens. The complexity is such that it is almost impossible to predict what will happen. Climate change can be relatively mild. It can also becomes “moderate” or severe. We could not discount the possibility that it could become severe. Unfortunately data from previous eras of major climate change do not support nice ending for the human race if it is severe. An increase of over 5C since the industrial revolution is now discussed as a “realistic” increase by bourgeois politicians. But earth history shows that such an increase started an unstoppable cycle that wiped out 95% of life from the planet about 250 million years ago. It was a turning point after which the oceans released enormous amount of methane that accelerated global warming by another 5C. Thus increase of 10C was enough to wipe out most life from the planet. The rise of 5 degrees C 250 million years ago took place slowly, in a natural way, over tens of thousands of years. Now we may be seeing a change of 5 degrees in a mere 200 years(!), something unprecedented in nature. Recent research observes nervously the rise of methane from the Arctic ocean and Siberia in Russia. We know now that about 700 million years ago there was a switch in climate that was very fast. Massive amount of methane rose from the Arctic Ocean. This rise of methane from the warm arctic (the arctic ocean was much warmer than today) transformed the world into cold ice. Today scientists are nervously watching the rise of methane bubbles from the arctic ocean and Siberia. They are scared because the bubbles can suddenly rise dramatically. The above information does not look good. If we allow capitalism to continue this century we will see many if not most life forms gone and the human race will be in extreme danger. (For more info see my article “A Dire Emergency Regarding Climate Change” on this website.)
I can only laugh at the climate computers and scientists who every so often upgrade the severity of climate change as new data shows that climate change is progressing more rapidly than the computers “thought” it ought to proceed. The truth is that nobody has a clue about the severity of the climate change. So I can only talk about a number of scenarios.
While a severe climate change does not give us a chance of survival, this is not the case for a mild to moderate climate change. The human race survived mild to moderate climate changes a number of times. In fact such changes brought leaps in human evolution (as we saw earlier). I am not a prophet and it is ridiculous to attempt long-term predictions. Yet I could deal here with a number of possibilities of what will happen if climate change is mild to moderate. The flooding of Thailand and its major city Bangkok, the flooding of large parts of Pakistan in 2011 as well as many areas in Asia, and the severe drought in the horn of Africa this year (2011) gives us a good idea of what will happen as the above tragics intensify dramatically throughout the world. Even under the best circumstances, civilization as we know it will be gone. Global climate change will bring more starvation and death as millions cannot find food and water. We know that massive droughts and flooding, the rise of the ocean that will bury many cities, and the disappearance of glaciers and logged rain forests, will result in mass starvations, sickness and death. Unfortunately this is what may trigger the world revolution against capitalism. The mass struggles are already intensifying because of capitalism’s worse economic crisis. Thus what may kick the massive evolutionary leap will be the combination of the struggles against capitalist economic and social evils combined with the dramatic climate change (I still mean mild to moderate climate change which is dramatic to humans). If we will build a revolutionary international within the next 1 to 3 decades it may not be too late for a successful world revolution provided that climate change is mild to moderate. The oppressed and the working class will need a leadership. If this leadership will be there on the international scale the human race could eventually march forward and make the necessary leap.
Why eventually? Because the dictatorship of the proletariat may have to persist for a long time before classless society will emerge. Conditions of scarcity will last for a long time. Planned economy is without a doubt the best way to deal with it. As technological advances are preserved it will be possible to covert to green energy and stop the complete rout. But scarcity means that everybody will have ration of food and water; and millions could still die from the trauma of climate change. With such conditions the state that defends the collective productive forces may stay for a longer time than desired because counterrevolutionary forces will try to take advantage of the scarcity to overthrow planned economy and the proletarian state. It is difficult to go further as far as predictions are concerned. At some point conditions should stabilize (due to planning and possibly the thawing of the climate change) and scarcity will diminished. Neither Marx, Lenin or Trotsky had to worry about building the transition to socialism under conditions of scarcity. Yet I am certain that now this is already a given.
Marxism so far failed in its prime task, that is, to build a revolutionary international that would have led the world-wide socialist revolution. Here in 2011, we have few Marxists and revolutionaries and nothing that resembles a revolutionary international. Thus we missed the train for socialism without climate change. Any successful socialist revolution will have to deal with massive climate change. The reader should remember that by mild to moderate I don’t mean short and easy climate change, but massive and disastrous. Yet not strong enough to eliminate the human race.
Without a successful socialist revolution, humanity is certain to decent into total barbarism. Civilization will fall apart. Billions could die from lack of water, food and diseases. In Asia alone the complete melting of the Himalaya glaciers will put at risk billions of people who depend on the water from the glaciers. Those who will survive under the regimes of profit will fight for water and food, with possible many small states or bands competing and waging wars against each other. Eventually something new could emerge. How long will this dark era will last depends on the severity of climate change. As we recall Europe had dark ages after the collapse of the Roman empire. It took about 500 hundreds years before a “stable” feudalism spread in Europe. With the effects of climate change it could take thousands of years if not tens of thousands of years before the human race will re-emerge from the crisis. It all depends on the duration of the climate change, its severity and many other factors that I do not dare to predict. It is not out of the question that the human race will retreat to the stone age. On the other hand if the memory of technology will be retained we may not have to re-start building civilization again from the stone age.
We hope that mild to moderate climate change will be a factor in triggering a socialist revolution and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat. We still have to go through many years of hardship before egalitarian socialism will be established. From the logic of evolution or more accurately the mega picture of human evolution this may be normal because the transition from capitalism to socialism is the most difficult and dramatic leap in human evolution.
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