sustainability can be an excuse for revolution

it is not unusual for bourgeouise to use intelilgentisia to rationalize profit maximization policies in the expense of lower class and the nature itself. the subject of sustainability is a different matter however, it is totally a gray area.

last weekend we were in a workshop where warner zittel, the publicizer of the peak oil concept joined us in for a weekend in frankonia to teach us all about non-sustainability non-renewable resources.

although his main area is oil and energy sector he talked about world models.

the main problem with the approach as all the data also points to, is the non-sustainability of the current idea of economic growth. patrick, god bless him noticed it right away in the beginning. the current ecological problem is a very core one, that was pointed out by marx and even before engels: the current concept of development is defined upon accumulation of wealth or simply capital. hence the bourgeoisie constantly searches for cheap resources, cheap labor, working longer hours with higher efficiency and new markets to sell their goods. due to the economy of scales, the more they produce, the cheaper it costs, hence they can raise their profits. this is the unending loop that we are pursuing in the current capitalist mode of production today in the expense of nature.

zittel showed us how we have reached the oil peak somewhere between 2007 and 2008 and from now on the production will be on a decline.



there is a more important point in all the analysis. there is such a thing called system analysis, in which world is taken as the system and the human factors are added on top, to see how does the economic activity of the man:



one of the shortcomings of the system analysis is that it does not take into account the national and class differences. which is not "very" interesting for the big picture.

the bottomline is that with declining resources, the world will overshoot its capacity of production and population. because of this, the simulations show that, production will decline, due to pollution and lack of resources to feed people, people will die population will decrease.

this is apparent even with an optimistic view on resources and resource extraction:



the solution offered by the limits of growth people is population and pollution control, productive equilibrium. this will generate not an exponentially increasing human growth but rather equilibrium in both economy, production and population. hence, the argument is, progress in technology can be harnessed for quality for human life, rather than growth:



these were all copyrights of meadows, randers and meadows work with world3 from "limits of growth."

my point is, this already been said more than a hundred years ago in the "manifesto of the communist party" anyway. but now the data even shows this and worries people. what needs to be done is to change the definition of what growth is and realize the problem itself cannot be solved without changing the core of the problem, the capitalist mode of production and the meta fetishism that drives the bourgeoisie to indefinitely "grow."

Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. (...) It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce.

The Manifesto of the Communist Party