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

Call to the Proletariat of the Space

Rocket take off is not a spectator sport but still not only thousands watched it live[0] on 14th of May but also it was broadcasted as such. With such informative intermissions, state of the art visual effects and split screens with qualitatively instructive graphs. The dream of any real geek, it was the perfect combination of decade second long attention span with the deliverance of such specialized information that can only be accumulated from years of introversion. The arianespace live feed programme delivered the entertainment, the message and most importantly built the tension up till the climax, in which two old white males hug. Yes you guessed incorrectly these two white men were hyper managers of space/science/industry; ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain and Arianespace Chairman/CEO Jean-Yves Le Gall[1].

What is the problem, and what is the message that was conveyed. Our scientific discovery and exploration goals and aspiration of our society is in the hands of the industrial type managers, which end up in their position just because an ambiguous system of meritocracy dictated so. But what happened to the workers who put their labor into the construction of the scientific probe and the rocket, whatever happened to the software developers who designed and coded painstakingly the data acquisition, telemetry and even preliminary data analysis software. Even the Star Trek movies start with Enterprise being built in the Space dock, with the friendly worker in space waving hands.

Of course this question begs another one, why should the objectification of labor be any more apparent in space related labor than in any other industrial production? First of all, even with the highly specialized mode of production the commodity is not mass produced. Years of labor is spent on designing, testing and perfecting one specific part of the final product, be it the detector, impulse nozzle or trajectory correction software. This kind of collective labor towards the individual commodity, especially with the input not only from the producers but the "consumers" i.e. the scientists, most closely resembles the pre fordist mode of production. This reality is evidence for the dichotomy inside the space industry. This interplay of industrial hierarchical structure with knowledge/research development is very much apparent through the very special alienation that happens in this industry but nevertheless these issues are outshined by an even bigger problem that is the fact that research related production is motivated by exploitation.

Only when the laborers take control of the production, the science itself can be the main goal rather than natural resource exploitation to fuel conspicuous consumption in the world of economy of scales. "The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere[2]." And now the natural course of events dictates the expansion of this chase out of the globe and unleash it to the outer space. This shameless ideology of exploitation is embedded into the discourse of space flight guru and mogul Burt Rutan[3], and even in the hype behind the exo planet research. The public debate on space exploration circles around the resources (e.g. water) on Moon and Mars hidden as the discourse on logistics, but not scientific incentive.



A closer view on a capitalist distopia in the near future about space production and exploitation is surely the widely acclaimed Planetes manga and later anime series[3], which tells the story of the crew of the DS-12 "Toy Box." The crew works on the Space Debris Section of a corporation, to clean the orbit of earth and moon to prevent possible damage or destruction of satellites, space stations and spacecraft. The plot progresses towards the latest flight to Jupiter for future possibilities of Helium extraction for energy. The series describe a society which is very much alike ourselves, with socially stratified, multiple tiered structure and corporate driven.

For most of us(you?) capital driven science is a good thing. Science should bring prosperity and profit. But as most of us(this time us) know, the surplus generated by the "efficient" production goes nowhere else than the pockets of the bourgeoisie. Even if we put this fact aside, science is not a commodity and is not a property. It is a human activity that by self definition is an important aspect of "humanization[4]" as Paulo Freire would put it. If I could obscenely simplify Freire's concept of humanization as to have the ability of and the freedom for critical thinking, we could say science is the most concrete form of this activity. To criticize the contemporary view of nature and reality is the core of scientific discourse. The attempts of privatizing and corporatizing the science and the institutions of science (which are unchallenged hence successful[5]) is destroying this critical core of it. Science is moving from being the base of change to maintaining and supporting the dominating exploitative market oriented ideology.

This regression is rationalized by pseudo scientific lingo such as information society[6], and knowledge management. Which these concepts help further the myth that orthodox definition classes did cease to exist. This commodification of knowledge as information, and application of industrial/corporate hierarchical system inside university is the attack on the last bastion of critical thought and education.

But as the cliche goes, the best defence is offense. The space and research industry is as i have discussed, where the usual labor/capital/commodity relations do not apply and human activity of exploration and science dominate over these relations. It also constitutes a great danger for the future of our society as it aims to expand the boundaries of resource exploitation obscenely. Both of these facts and prospects, call for only one action that is the organization of the workers in the space and science related research industry, the space laborers. Only through controlling the means of production, the workers can implement the environment of critical thought of science into the space industry and stop the exploitation inside the workplace and start producing and creating for pursuit of knowledge rather than profit and conspicuous consumption.

This, more importantly, includes the scientists with flexible labor contract, devoid of any kind of organization and class consciousness. They live with the hope of one day becoming a bourgeoisie of the science (i.e. directors)themselves, while their labor constitute the main source of scientific production.

Hence welcome to my popular culture infested world of science and politics, to the perspective of a near Ph.D. astrophysicist. But more importantly:

Proletariat of the space, unite!

[0] My ass, 2009, Springer, Heidelberg
[1] 3:33 of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGCylzbZRHM&feature=related
[2] Marx Karl, Engels Friedrich, The Communist Manifesto.
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes
[4] Freire Paulo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
[5] Of course i mean the Bologna Process.
[6] The concept knowledge society, ironically, goes back to a Czech Marxist Radovan Richta, and Richta report of 1971.