I recently discovered that an argument that I had presented
at the recent PEWS mtgs in California had been passed along to WSN
by my friend Timmons Roberts. The paper itself is a part of a larger
work. Here is a summary of the essential points of my argument for why
capitalism is pushing into its final contradiction:
The automation of the labor process has progressed so far that
it is causing 3 simultaneous crises:
(I) a fiscal crisis among the states of the core;
(II) an environmental crisis from global warming; and
(III) an agricultural/food crisis arising from the destruction
of arable land. Collectively, these crises--all linked by their
common cause--combine to form the what I'm sure will be the "final"
contradiction of capital, and have the capacity to depopulate the
planet down to c.30% of the projected peak of 10 billion expected
by the 2025.
2. The Fiscal crisis is the same as that predicted by
O'Connor (The Fiscal Crisis of the State, St Martin's Press,
c.1973): As automation in the monopoly sector has, since the
1960's, expelled ever more workers and middle-level managers, it
has also dramatically contracted the tax base. This has been
because the higher wages of that sector had provided a
disproportionate amount of the taxes powering the welfare state.
Hence the loss of these jobs cut out enough tax revenue to enable
and compell the dismantling of the welfare state throughout the
core, bringing in train the complete disenfranchisement of the
urban underclasses. The disappearance of jobs in the monopoly
sector has also directly fueled the "white male anger"/reaction,
(itself an important component of the militias in the western USA
along with a parallel revival of fascist movements throughout the
core), even as it has ALSO fueled minority rage from the
contraction of govt jobs and services. When combined with the
inflow of cheap "illegal" labor from the periphery, racist
sentiment throughout the core (e.g.--the National Front in France)
is an inevitable outcome. The stage is being set for civil wars of
ethnic cleansing.
(In the periphery, the fiscal crisis has been a structured
constant from decolonization, so the recent explosion of automation
has only compounded the pre-existing and chronic crisis of
unemployment without any additional fiscal effects.)
3. Global Warming is directly attributable to automation and
transportation, each powered by the fossil fuels that create the
warming. Known effects of the warming include the contraction of
arable land, more frequent and violent storms, rising sea levels,
and spread to the north of the area affected by major tropical
diseases. Disease flourishes and can become very virulent in high
population density areas, precisely the conditions in inner cities
everywhere.
4. Contraction of arable land has also resulted from
automation, this time in its application to agriculture.
Agricultural mechanization has depopulated the land, the machinery
also accelerating the loss of topsoil. The degradation of land
from topsoil loss has been compensated for by the more intensive
application of fertilizers, pesticides, and well water, each
depending in turn on cheap fossil fuels. The inclusion of
ever-more marginal land has likewise required geometrically
increasing use of these chemicals, which in their turn have been
discovered responsible for a wide array of environmental toxins.
5. BOTTOM LINE: The combination of these factors reveals how
the inevitable increases in the price of fossil fuels will rapidly
destabilise the world-economy. Food prices will necessarily
increase, even as the area now economically viable for farming
contracts. Global warming will accelerate the scarcity as
desertification eats up marginal land. Food shortages will work
with the collapse of the welfare state (already largely complete)
to de-legitimate authority. Urban riots become more likely along
with the spread of areas totally free of any governmental
authority. Starvation, ethnic cleansing, and disease will spread
out of the periphery to become global. Hence the prediction of
depopulation.
Cheers, Peter Grimes