Thread by @zineworkshop

"The state of global equilibrium could be designed so that the basic material needs of each person on earth are satisfied and each person has an equal opportunity to realize his individual human potential." The Limits to Growth, S. 24.
(#Oekoscifi)

#Ecoscifi (Ökoscifi or Oekoscifi), science plus fiction plus ecology draws political critique of economical discourse processes. Limits to Growth is part of that insofar as points out overall eco-economy topics.

Within the german context of the "socialist" east and capitalist west Wolfgang Harich has been part of discussions around the "Ökodiktatur" (Eco-Dictatorship), a ultra authoritarian government forcing subjects and objects, capital and production as

well as state driven production into a gerenal sustainable non-growth nature protecting modus operandi.

To me the "each person" individualist approach of the Limits is still crucial - as it were for Harich, as Hannes Hofbauer writes in "Wolfgang Harich and the Club of Rome"[1] since Harich was marxist
[1] "Wolfgang Harich und der Club of Rome". analyse & kritik 389, 4.4.1996.

and a "dreamer". Starting with idea of a neutral united Germany in 1956 he was dreaming of a _global Globe_ like the authors of Limits to Growth (LTG). Mankind and class were the different poles of these dreams though LTG does never talk of class and Marxism, which is not

equal to critique of polotical ecomomy, never talks of mankind it seems.

If this sort of crisis-Marxism talks of class first and humanity second the trouble starts with political economy and its practicality as critique. Class war is fact, and destructive production is ruled by a ruling class but enforced by conditions.

Ending and sublating the capitalist anti-naturalist mode of production would end ecological problems while ending overproduction. The other factor besides overproduction is time. Climate problems are urgent concerning a logic of capitalist "dictatorship" - a dictatorship without

a dictator except the rule of accumlation. My point is that this time crisis urges a "bourgeois" mankind-strategy first and a class strategy second, as the second is utopian dreaming while the first is the abstrac reality of global liberalism.

It does not mean accepting the liberalist epoch of capitalism (if there is any epoch within an epoch). An extended revolutionary theory Harich seems to prefer including humanity as such within the framework of (political, social, technological) revolution would certainly

change the substance of it. A revolution simply technological without ending a capitalis mechanism of value keeps the overproduction:accumulation system.

Once more, overproduction (OVP) is a must for accumulation and OVP causes destructive exploitation of ressources. Accumulation is not growth, since growth is a loose model for accumulation. Accumulation of capital causes economical growth but can end in a "reset" after a period

boom and crisis - with known effects to population, namely workers who as human workforce and as purchased workforce under price/unpaid make possible a chain of profit/capital as accumulation with a surplus value appropriated by capital as political group.

This political group, the not working capitalist block Gramsci would have said, would be the ally of the working class within the _strategy of humanity first, class second_. So, is it dreaming imagining a class ending nomological accumulation, the nature of capitalism, which is

the executor of this nature, this law?

"Each person" as LTG says divides into a question of pragmatic class collaboration in which the work's been done by "social groups" not _each_, and some illusionary political revolution dream that puts the LTG's "equilibrium" in its place of ecology only.

Matze Schmidt

@threadreaderapp unroll