The Refugee-Migrant Crisis of the EU -- Its Deeper Causes and Messages

The media are bubbling with the refugee-migrant crisis, the new great crisis of the EU, the significance of which dwarfs that of the Greek economic crisis. It may appear that everything that can be said on this subject has already been said and written. But it is not so. What is missing in the discussions till now is an in-depth understanding of the crisis, without which even highly competent and experienced politicians and administrators would not find a lasting solution to it. I am not going to tell them what they should immediately do in order to gain control of the crisis. But allow me to try to fill up the big gap between describing and really understanding the problem.

Some Facts and clarifications:

Let us begin by taking cognizance of some facts that usually remain unmentioned in the discussions. I do not however intend to repeat those that my readers can be expected to regularly get through TV and newspapers.

Three categories of "Refugees"

Let us first differentiate between three categories of "refugees". (1) Let us call those who were suffering political persecution in their native country and are therefore seeking asylum political refugees. (2) Those fleeing because of some kind of war or violent conflict should better be called war refugees. (3) Those who are leaving their native country in search of a better life or a better job in another country should be called (economic) migrants. They may be just poor people from un(der)developed countries or people who are unemployed for a long time. This categorization cannot be a clear-cut one, for people may have two or all of the above reasons to flee their native country. For the sake of convenience, let us use the term refugee-migrants.

It is a global Problem

Let us leave aside the legal migrants, who are more or less welcome or at least tolerated in the host countries.
    The refugee-migrant problem is a global one and exists since long. There are today worldwide 60 Million such people. Some 11 million Latino migrants are illegally living in the USA. It is not as if only rich countries like the USA and EU attract refugee-migrants. Even countries that are not really rich but are only perceived to be a little better off and having relatively better job opportunities (actually, only a little less unemployment) than the neighboring countries attract migrants from the latter. Thus India has an unknown number of illegal migrants from Bangladesh, Malaysia has a large number of legal and illegal migrants from Indonesia, the Republic of South Africa from the neighboring African countries. In Kenia, the largest refugee camp of the world (in Dadaab ) is the temporary home of half a million Somali war refugees. In the Sahel Zone too there is a regular – legal and just tolerated – intra-regional flow and outflow of migrant workers. Some years ago, I also read of illegal Chinese migrant workers in the UK. Russia has its legal and illegal migrants from central Asia – most of them Muslims.
    At several international borders, walls and fences have been built to keep unwelcome refugee-migrants away, e.g. between the USA and Mexico, between India and Bangladesh, and most recently between Hungary and its neighboring countries. The EU created the Frontex, a high-tech border police organization, to prevent illegal entry. Australia uses force to prevent all ships carrying illegal migrants from touching its shores. Those who succeed in illegally landing in Australia are immediately deported to the neighboring pacific island of Nauru. Malaysia expels illegal Indonesian workers and even legal ones who have lost their job. Sometimes, the poor ones among them, who generally take cheap and unsafe boats for returning home, die of drowning in the sea. So we can say that the present acute refugee-migrant crisis of the EU is only the latest manifestation of a long-standing global problem.

The Economic Pull Factor

The global refugee-migrant problem therefore forms the general background against which we should discuss about any particular refugee-migrant problem. That of the EU, particularly of Germany, is, at present, only the most conspicuous sign of the very bad general state of the world and of the current system of global governance. For many European officials it is outrageous that hundreds of thousands of foreigners are gate-crashing one European country after the other – openly, illegally and without being registered by any authority. As a Bavarian politician recently said, it is tantamount to capitulation of the state if it cannot protect its borders.
    They are mostly young men and women. There are hardly any purely political refugees among them. And not all are fleeing only because of some war or violent conflict in their native country. It is clear that most of them are, at least partly, migrants. They are in search of a better life in one of the rich countries of the world. They are simply trying their luck. Proportionately perhaps not many, but in absolute terms significant numbers of them are going to the emerging industrial countries, such as India, Brazil and South Africa. Those who are migrating from North Africa, the Sahel region, and central Africa are mostly poor and unemployed. Their hope is to get work, some work and income. In TV interviews they even say that openly, do not pretend to be a refugee. A young Ghanaian said: "I have no problem with my state, politics here is all right. But here there is no job for me." An elderly poor peasant couple in a Senegal village told the TV journalist in the presence of their twelve year old son: "We told him, son, there is no future for you in this country. Go to Europe, somehow, we shall give you the money." Even the refugees from Syria, where the strong push factor of war is operating, are not at all thinking of leaving Europe and going back home once peace has returned there. They too want to build up a better future for themselves and their children. One Syrian man with a child on his shoulders said after arriving in Lesbos: "Thank God, I have now arrived in Europe. Here I can live in safety. Here I can fulfill my ambition." Another man from Syria said he has studied economics in Aleppo. His wife and children would come later, after he has settled down here. His ambition is to do a doctorate in Germany. A young man from Lahore was asked why he left Pakistan; after all, no war is raging there. He answered, it is because of the Taliban, they are making living there very difficult. Contrast this with the Somali refugees in Kenia's Dadaab camp, who are very happy to be able to return home.
    Except for the huge numbers this time, there is nothing new in this. I remember having seen in the 1990s a fictional film – entitled "The March"¹ – on the same phenomenon. In 1991, we have seen photos of several thousand Albanian would-be migrants in a few chartered ocean-going ships arriving in Bari (Italy).² Even barbed wire fences we have seen before. In 2005, we have seen TV-pictures of hundreds of young Africans trying to scale those of Ceuta and Melilla³ , and in this way enter EU territory. We have seen TV-pictures of young Africans trying to reach the Canary Islands on flimsy fishing boats.

The real and Deeper Causes

Ecology, Economy and the Prosperity Gap

We should differentiate the immediate, i.e. the superficial, causes from the root causes. Most European politicians are saying the really effective solution of their current refugee-migrant crisis would require removing its root causes, which they identify as the civil wars in Syria and Iraq and poverty in Africa.
    But political persecution and civil wars, even poverty, are, generally speaking, the superficial causes of migration, only the symptoms or effects of a disease, not the disease itself. More often than not, particularly in such crisis conditions as are prevailing today in the EU, politicians cannot and do not take cognizance of the disease behind the symptoms, i.e. of that which makes political persecution necessary, of the root causes that give rise to conflicts and wars. Much less can they do something about them. They must first, so to speak, quickly suppress the fever. The root causes mostly lie at much deeper levels of reality, and they build up slowly over a long period. They are therefore imperceptible to ordinary people like politicians before they explode onto the surface creating the clearly visible crisis at any particular time.
    To my mind, the root causes of the refugee-migrant crisis can be summed up in the following words: the continuously growing demands, aspirations and ambitions (for short, DAAs) of a continuously growing population, while our resource base is continuously diminishing and the environment continuously degrading. Let me give an extreme example: Asked what he wants to become in future, a boy from a poor family going to an Indian slum school replied he wants to become like Bill Gates. None of his class mates said he wants to become a craftsman; even engine driver was nothing for them. These DAAs go so much beyond the really basic needs of any human being, namely satisfying hunger, quenching thirst, protection from adverse weather, sexual satisfaction, and belonging to a group in society. The continuous growth of DAAs are being propelled by, as it were, autonomously proceeding technological developments, which have their roots in human intelligence and greed, i.e. wanting to have more than one really needs. The catalogue of things the UN declared in 1948 to be universal human rights include "a standard of living adequate for the health and wellbeing … including food, clothing, housing and medical care, … necessary social services, … the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age, … education, … full development of the human personality " etc. (articles 25 and 26). In 1948, even these simple things were totally unrealistic for the greater part of humanity. Moreover, many expressions in this formulation are vague. How much is "adequate"? And what is "wellbeing"? And what is "full development of the human personality"? But this "holy" declaration and pictures and narratives transported by TV etc. from the rich countries of the West to the remotest corners of the undeveloped countries fired the aspirations and ambitions of all poor people of the world.
    Today, 67 years later, in the greater part of the world, they still remain largely unrealized. What is more, the hope that they would be realized in the near future has evaporated. Many scientists and general observers believe that things would become worse – for objective reasons, namely continuous population growth, deepening global ecological crisis, extreme weather events due to global warming, rapid resource depletion, spreading desertification etc. Even in Germany, one of the richest countries of the world, there are many citizens who are homeless; the number of the "working poor" is growing, i.e. they cannot make their living although they work fulltime, which is why they have to apply for social welfare doles.
    In the past, we leftists used to say this kind of poverty exists due to inequitable distribution of the global and/or national income in capitalism, imperialism etc. We also proffered lack of sufficient development or wrong kinds of development as explanation of the misery in the underdeveloped countries. That was and still is largely true. But today we must say that is not the whole story. As Otto Ullrich wrote:

 "... in a system that tries to satisfy needs through material products there will always be, for every attained level of material prosperity, new unsatisfied material basic needs, above all because this system is necessarily very ingenious in the production of new luxury goods, which then become models for new material 'basic needs'. This system will always be too poor … . What was day before yesterday the radio, was yesterday the black-and-white TV, is today the color TV and will tomorrow be the three-dimensional picture projector." (Ullrich 1979: 108).⁴

I agree. As we know, even the socialist system could not satisfy all the "basic needs" of all its citizens in countries where it held sway till 1989.
    Also managers, share holders, and ordinary employees of companies and corporations, even small shop owners, refuse to accept any upper limit to profit/income. Therefore, in globalised capitalism there will always be a prosperity gap. As we know, this gap is continuously growing, not only between the countries, but also within each country, even within the richest ones. We are also seeing a growing discrepancy between the great development promises made in the past by ideologues of both capitalism and cornucopian socialism on the one hand and the gloomy reality of the present and prospects of future catastrophes on the other.
    In middle school I learnt in physics lessons that if two containers standing on the same level contain water under different degrees of pressure, then, if they somehow get connected, water under higher pressure will automatically flow to the container having water under lower pressure. This law of physics can be metaphorically applied to migration of humans (and animals) from densely populated and/or poor countries, where the pressure of poverty is high, to sparsely populated and/or rich countries where poverty is not so acute. Now, we know that the various countries of the world are since long getting ever more connected. After all, we nowadays talk of the world having become a global village.
    If we now multiply the continuously growing DAAs by the continuously growing population in the poorer countries, then we will understand why the universal human rights were, already in 1948, doomed to remain unrealized. They were unrealizable, because also the carrying capacity of this planet has simultaneously and continuously been diminishing – in truth, since human civilization began, albeit very slowly at first. We shall then also understand why migration has been a more or less permanent feature of human history. Capitalism, feudalism, imperialism, inequitable distribution, particular famines, dictatorship, oppression, wars, civil wars, violent conflicts etc. are only superficial or secondary explanations of the phenomenon, sometimes only the immediate causes of particular waves of migration. The real and deeper causes of the permanent phenomenon of migration are what I have stated above. For some individuals, however, who are not really unbearably poor, the lure of greener foreign pastures in the relatively prosperous countries of the West is too great to resist.

Violent Conflicts and Civil Wars

To say that the civil wars in Syria and Iraq have caused the current refugee-migrant crisis is not very original. We also have to know what caused these wars.
    The state of affairs mentioned in the above section toward explaining poverty-related migration has also led, directly or indirectly, to many kinds of violent conflict over distribution of resources – both between nations and within nations. As we know, they too cause people to flee their native country. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait for oil (1991), Morocco's occupation of Western Sahara for phosphate, and the Jewish people's occupation of Palestinian land for founding their state Israel and subsequently for settlements building are some examples from our days.
    Within nations, in most countries, the ruling and dominant class(es), race(s), ethnie(s), regional population(s), religious and language group(s), that presently own (s), rake(s) in or claim(s) the lion's share of the nations resources and national income, must oppress, in one way or another, those below them who feel deprived and demand their fare share: ordinary workers, poor or landless peasants, the unemployed, and the underclass. But why must the former group(s) oppress the latter, who may (or may not) constitute the majority of the population? It is because in the greater part of the world there simply is not enough to satisfy all the demands and wishes of all groups of the nation. In the past we have seen and we are still seeing plenty of conflicts, more or less violent, arising from this state of affairs. So we can say that when some violent conflict appears to be the cause of a particular flow of refugees from a country, it is, in the final analysis, mainly, though not exclusively, the prosperity gap prevailing in that country that is the real and the deeper cause. Of course, cause-and-effect models of explanation are never that simple. Remember Tunisia in 2011? There, after 4 weeks of popular demonstrations the despotic ruler left the country and the matter took a good turn. But not so in Syria.
    It is logical to fear that in future there would be many more such conflicts and they would generate many more streams of refugees – especially if one considers that in the immediate future the on-going ecological and climate crises will further worsen.
    A special phenomenon in this category has been the renaissance of piracy on the high seas. At least Somali pirates said that they were originally fishermen by trade, and that they had no other alternative but to take to piracy when trawlers from distant rich countries began to empty their fishing grounds. At the same time the country's population has been growing at the rate of 3.48% (2002) to 2.81% (2011) per annum. More recent figures are not available or unreliable because of civil war and-large scale emigration. We read in the internet however that in "… 2014 population was estimated at 10.8 million, up from the 2013 estimate of 10 million. The country is rapidly expanding with almost 3% annual population growth and a high fertility rate of 6.26 children per woman, which is the 4th highest in the world." As for the size, Somalia is a very large country. Its population density is just 17.1 per km^2. But it is also a very arid country; arable land is just 1.64% of the whole. We can then imagine how the environmental situation might be. A Somali NGO activist writes: "I was born in 1947 and until I was seven years old I lived in an area that was savannah-like, … I first visited Somalia again about thirty years ago – the land that I had remembered as lush green savannah was total desert, with only huge sandstorms blowing." ⁵ In this and other texts there is also mention of overgrazing, deforestation, and production, even export, of charcoal, which surely contributed to desertification. Another Somali activist writes:

"Environmental issues play a key role in conflicts in Somaliland [the northern province of Somalia]. I would go as far as to say such issues play a daily role in conflict situations across Somaliland. Confrontations frequently occur over disputes over grazing lands, watering holes and land that has been sealed off by individuals for private use."⁵

It is therefore not very meaningful to point only at the foreign trawlers to explain the phenomenon of piracy on Somalia's coast.
    I have shown elsewhere^5a how ecological degradation combined with population growth caused economic troubles, which in turn lent force to the popular revolts against oppressive and exploitative regimes (Egypt, Syria), and which, in Syria, ultimately led to the now over four years old civil war. In the meantime, some more information of this category has been made available by Agnès Sinai.⁶ Sinai, to quote just one example, writes about the rise of Boko Haram in Nigeria:

"In northern Nigeria soil degradation has destroyed the traditional way of life of peasants and cowherds, and impaired the paths of nomads. Several hundred villages have been given up. It resulted in migratory movements that have destabilized the region. In this way the ground was prepared for the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram."

Unfortunately, Sinai failed to point out that, in the meantime, the population of Nigeria has been growing at the annual rate of 2.67% (2000) to 2.47% (2014), a typical omission of most publicists on the subject. Sinai concludes:

"The great crush of refugees at the borders of the prosperity-island of Europe will become stronger in the 21^st century. For, at the time, at least as many people are fleeing the consequences of environmental destruction as from violence and wars."⁶

    In some cases, because in the popular media we hardly get any report on the state of the environment and resource base of the concerned country, it appears that the conflict there is only a power struggle between different religious and/or ethnic groups. Thus, to take another example, the current civil war in Yemen is often being depicted as a war between the Shia Huthis, the minority supported by Iran, and the Sunni majority supported by Saudi Arabia. In reality, however, the Huthis are fighting against the Sunni majority because they are not getting their fair share of power and resources. One also finds in the internet the following information: Between 2000 and 2008, Yemen's population grew at an annual rate of 3.36% to 3.46%. Then the rate started slightly falling. In 2014 the population was still growing at the rate of 2.72%. On the state of the environment we read: "Yemen's main environmental problems have long been scarcity of water, soil erosion, and desertification. Water pollution is a problem due to contaminates from the oil industry, untreated sewage, and salinization. Natural forests in mountainous areas have been destroyed by agricultural clearing and livestock overgrazing."
    This is, however, not to deny that the Shia-Sunni schism that took place in the 7^th century A.D. plays a big role in the current conflicts in the Middle East. But it would probably not cause such severe conflicts if the material conditions of life had not been deteriorating. That may be the reason why in the oil-rich Gulf countries, such as Saudi Arabia – despite the existence of the Shia-Sunni divide – no violent conflict between the two sects has come up. Bahrain is the only exception.
    I do not want to end this section without mentioning the case of Rwanda, where an ethnic conflict led to a genocidal massacre (1994) and ended in a large refugee outflow. Asked why they are killing the others, although both ethnies worship the same Christian God and whose holy scripture demands of them: "… thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself", one participant replied: "In Africa, blood (ethnic loyalty) is thicker (more important) than faith". But that was certainly only the superficial cause. The real and deeper cause was ecological degradation and dwindling resource availability. On Rwanda's environmental situation we read:

“...Rwanda’s mountainous topography and growing human population have resulted in increasingly severe environmental degradation: soil erosion from cultivation of steep slopes; pollution and sedimentation of water sources; and loss of forests, protected areas, and biodiversity to new human settlements.”⁷

On population growth in Rwanda we read: "…the population had increased from 1.5 million in 1930 to 2.1 million in 1952, 3.6 million in 1970, 4.8 million in 1978 and 7.5 million in 1993. Another doubling to 15 million is expected to take place in the next 21 years." ⁸That means, in 1993, the population was growing at the rate of 3.1% per annum. And the population density of Rwanda amounted to 271 inhabitants per square Kilometer.⁸  After the civil war ended, a huge number of Hutus fled to the DR Congo when their ethnic enemies, the Tutsis, conquered power. The greater part of them has still not returned to Rwanda.

The Strength of Identity Feelings

Although defending existing prosperity gaps and/or striving for (more) prosperity are the main reasons why individuals and ruling and dominant groups exploit and oppress the others and the others revolt, there is no denying that on both sides there are people who also enjoy having power itself. So they may also fight for power for the sake of power, i.e. without thereby intending to increase or defend their prosperity. Then also groups not defined purely by economic interests but, e.g., by race, ethnicity, nation, language, religion, sect etc. may do that. All kinds of liberation struggles fall under this category. In reality, however, what one finds in most cases is a contingent mixture of several motivations.
    In the process, a strong group identity, a we-feeling, comes into play. Then the fighters may not (only) be fighting for advancing or defending their economic interests or against usurpers, exploiters or oppressors; they may (also) be hating and/or fighting against the others because they are in some way different. In this way, the oppressed and the exploited of one group may be fighting against the oppressed and the exploited of the others. Thus white racists in the USA and their militant groups (e.g. the Ku Klux Klan) hate, oppress and persecute the blacks not because the latter somehow threaten their economic interests, but because they are different, black. In India, Hindus and Muslims may fight against each other because they worship different gods in different kinds of temples. Similar is the case in Myanmar, where the Rohingyas – who are dark-skinned and are, moreover, Muslims – are hated and persecuted by the fair-skinned and Buddhist Burmese majority. The fight of Al Qaida, IS and Al-Nusra against the West can be understood as the fight of the "faithful" against the "infidels". In this sense, the civil wars in Syria and Iraq can also be declared as a Shia-versus-Sunni conflict. We can then say that many violent conflicts – on-going and of the past – at least partly owe(d) their origin or intensification to non-economic identity conflicts.
    Such conflicts often get fed by historical memories. The Shias cannot forget nor forgive the murder of their religious leader and his followers by the Sunnis in Kerbela in the 7^th century AD. The Hindu-nationalists cannot forget that Hindu kings were defeated by and lost power to Muslim conquerors about one thousand years ago. The struggle of the Islamist Jihadists can also be seen as a process of taking revenge on the imperial West for the humiliations it inflicted upon the Muslims in the past. The Crusades have not been forgotten. That also may be one explanation for the persecution they are meting out to Christians, even Arab Christians. Such conflicts can be triggered off by the slightest provocation. The majority may then think of teaching the others a lesson, which then escalates into a big thing. Conflicts of this kind of origin too have often led to emigration of the underdogs or the defeated.
    Actually, this we versus the others feeling exists also among animals. Think of Chimpanzee groups. They do not allow any stranger from any other group to even approach the borders of their territory. Same is the case with street dog Groups in any Indian City. It belongs to our pristine biological inheritance. The gang wars in Los Angeles take place along borders of clearly divided territories. But in modern times, mostly, any identity group (we-group) is compelled to live in the same state with many other identity groups, thus together forming one mixed population without any group having an exclusive territory of its own. In such cases, identity groups are formed and conflicts break out on other lines, as enumerated above. 
    But in the process of our cultural evolution we humans have learnt to control this primitive feeling, though not fully. Success in controlling it and accepting the others in our community may have been aided by the fact that in advanced societies, human beings generally have more than one identity.⁹ A person can feel e.g. that she is a German and hence different from a Chinese. But she may also feel that she is a capitalist and hence make common cause with Chinese capitalists. So despite differences in nationality, there are international organizations of both capitalists and workers. Thus in the early 1990s, when xenophobic-racist attacks against Vietnamese immigrant workers were taking place in Eastern Germany, visitors from Japan, whom average Germans cannot distinguish from Vietnamese because of their similar looks, were advised to somehow mark themselves as Japanese. It was taken for granted that xenophobic-racist Germans would not attack Japanese visitors because they both belong to the First World.
    Such identity feelings become very strong, highly ingrained, almost indelible when they prove to be the only remaining means of mobilizing the masses against some perceived evil or injustice.¹⁰

Some Concluding Remarks. What can be done?

Since even top politicians and thinkers of the EU and Germany are at their wits' end to solve the crisis, it may be tolerated that I make a few general remarks and suggest some policies.
    The Europeans, particularly Germans, are divided in their sentiments and feelings. The volunteers, the so-called"good people" ("Gutmenschen"), are doing their best to help people in dire need, practicing "a humanitarian culture", "a welcoming culture", and showing a "friendly face". These noble sentiments and practices are invaluable. They show that we can still hope for a future in which all humans will think they belong to one humanity. But there are still many hurdles to overcome and much work to be done to realize such a vision. In the meantime, we cannot ignore the fact that most humans cannot yet jettison their basic animal instincts. Every animal and every animal group tends to defend its territory and other "vital" interests. That is what the so-called "bad people" are doing. The truth is that more than a half of the Germans are afraid they are losing territory, some think, to a foreign "invading" army. But also the "good people" in Germany know, and they are increasingly saying so, that there is a limit to what they and their native country can do, that they cannot help all the poor people of the world.
    This limit is, firstly, a matter of material resources. Captains of the German economy and their representatives in politics and media, but also many standard economists, are saying that the German economy needs about half a million more workers, that the refugee-migrants constitute, so to speak, a demographic dividend, and that they can and should soon be integrated in this aging society. They are expecting a new economic boom as in the 1960s, because the new immigrant-workers would produce new wealth. They are asserting that the immediate costs of integrating them would be manageable, that, after all, Germany could bear the costs of integrating the whole population (17 million) of the former GDR etc.
    This is utter nonsense; nothing can be more misleading. They are talking as if they have never heard of the climate crisis, the general ecological crisis, and the contradiction between ecology and economy. Moreover, they are not mentioning that the East Germans did not come to join West Germany empty-handed like the refugee-migrants of today, that they brought along their fertile land, buildings, highly developed infrastructure and advanced knowledge and know-how of the people. Particularly Germans in the lower strata of society are fearing more intensive competition for low level jobs and affordable rented accommodation. Captains of industry are already demanding that exceptions to the minimum wage law be allowed.
    Secondly, even for modern humans living in an era of globalization there is a psychological limit to tolerance of foreigners in their forecourt. It is not for nothing that radical rightist parties are gaining ground in all EU countries. And thirdly, social scientists know that, in many areas of life, there is also a "social-critical limit", after crossing which a social organization begins malfunctioning. Today, the EU seems to have crossed several such limits.
    All these have led to tensions between the member nations of the EU as well as cracks within some of them, even within parties. Recently, Marine Le Pen, leader of the French radical rightist party Front National, characterized the liberal German policy on the current refugee-migrant crisis as a project to recruit cheap slave labor for the country's economy. Some time back, a Greek woman asked some young male Syrian refugee-migrants: "Why don't you go back and fight against the IS at home?" The foreign affairs minister of the newly elected Polish government recently asked a German TV reporter (in the general sense): Do you think we should send our soldiers to Syria while young men from there let themselves be housed and fed by Germans and drink coffee in a Berlin restaurant? The East-European member states of the EU have totally refused to accept any refugee in their country. The Hungarian Prime Minister said bluntly: "It is not our problem. It is the problem of the Germans."
    I leave it to the politicians and administrators of the EU and Germany to define their immediate tasks and perform them. It is they who have competence in that area. But I know what must and should be done in the middle and long term: (a) help stop population growth where it is still growing, (b) tell people, also in the rich countries, to curtail their material aspirations and consumption desires, (c) regulate capitalism, if you do not want to overthrow it, and control international trade and investment in order to force capitalists to act in socially and ecologically responsible manner, and (d) start, already now, a publicity campaign for these long-term goals and corresponding policies.
    Recently, the EU leaders have shown readiness to give African countries more financial aid in order to enable them to motivate their young citizens to stay in their native country. This is a commendable idea. But, firstly, the purpose of this aid should not be to bribe the leaders of the concerned countries and demand in exchange that they somehow hold back the would-be migrants. The aid should be used to reduce the prosperity gap, which can also be achieved by reducing the consumption level of e.g. the Germans. As long as the present huge gap remains, no amount of aid to poor African countries will help stop migration to Europe. The youth of Africa and other poor countries do not just want to have enough to eat. They also want to have the good things of life. Secondly, at least this new aid should be given with a condition attached, namely that it should be used for programs to stop further population growth. And finally, the people of the rich countries must give up their policy of extracting as much profit as possible from the poor countries. An African refugee-migrant told European journalists: "We are here because you are (were) in our countries"
     Let me stop here for today. Those who are more interested in this line of thinking may read my book Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism? – A Critical Analysis of Humanity's Fundamental Choices¹¹, in which I have thoroughly discussed many of these and other related issues. It also appeared in German translation.¹²

Notes:

If not otherwise stated, statistical and other data are from the internet.

1. The March is a movie that was aired by BBC One for "One World Week" in 1990. The plot concerns a charismatic Muslim leader from the Sudan who leads 250,000 Africans on a 3,000 miles (4,800 km) march towards Europe
with the slogan, "We are poor because you are rich."

The story is about an indefinite future in which, due to climate change, large parts of Africa have become uninhabitable and in Europe racial tensions have increased. What was in those days thought to be the future scenario has today unexpectedly become reality (Source for both passages:Wikipedia)
 2. Twenty years ago, on 8 August 1991, several ships carrying approximately 15,000 Albanian migrants succeeded in entering the port of Bari, Italy. The Italian government’s response was harsh.  Most of the Albanians were detained in a sports stadium without adequate food, water, or access to bathrooms.  Italian authorities dropped supplies to the detained migrants by helicopter.  Within several weeks most of the migrants were deported to Albania.  Their harsh treatment was criticised by human rights organisations and the Pope, but was justified by the Italian government as necessary to deter further irregular migration from Albania. (Source Wikipedia)

3.Ceuta und Melilla: Europas Hightech-Festung in Afrika
Von Katharina Graça Peters

"The distance between Poverty and a new start is only a few meters: The Spanish exclaves Ceuta and Melilla are parts of Europe, but they are situated in Africa. Ever since, six years ago, refugees stormed the fences in large numbers, the two cities have shielded themselves off more strongly by means of high-tech equipment." (Source Wikipedia)
 ^{http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/ceuta-und-melilla-europas-hightech-festung-in-afrika-a-778304.html}
4. Ullrich, Otto (1979) Weltniveau – In der Sackgasse des Industriesystems. Berlin: Rotbuch.

5. Bandare, Shukhri Haji Ismail and Jibrell, Fatima (2015) "Women, Conflict and the Environment in Somali Society". In
Hawley, Jenny (ed.) (2015)Why Women Will Save the Planet. London: Zed Books. PP. 141, 144.

5a.Sarkar, Saral: The Tragedy of Lampedusa – What to Do?
http://eco-socialist.blogspot.de/2013/10/the-tragedy-of-lampedusa-what-to-do.html

6. Sinai, Agnès: "Verwüstung. – Wie der Klimawandel  Konflikte anheizt." In: Le Monde Diplomatiqe. September 2015. (This journal also has an English edition).

7. Thaxton, Melissa (february 2009) Integrating Population, Health, and Environment in Rwanda (Source Wikipedia)
http://www.prb.org/pdf09/phe-rwanda.pdf )

8. Diessenbacher, Hartmut (1998) Kriege der Zukunft – Die Bevölkerungsexplosion gefährdet den Frieden. Munich & Vienna: Carl Hanser. Pp 67-68.

9. See: Sen, Amartya (2006) Identity and Violence – The Illusion of Destiny. London: Penguin (Allen Lane)

10. See: Sarkar, Saral (2012)"The Power of the Religions and the Helplessness of the Leftists"
http://eco-socialist.blogspot.de/2012/08/the-power-of-religions-and-helplessness.html

11.Sarkar, Saral (1999) Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism? – A Critical Analysis of Humanity's Fundamental Choices. London: Zed Books.

12. Sarkar, Saral (2001) Die Nachhaltige Gesellschaft – Eine kritische Analyse der Systemalternativen. Zürich: Rotpunkt (vergriffen), and Saarbrücken: SVH (as book on demand).

A Debate on Socialism and Socialist Revolution

Dear friends,

I recently had a debate with a renowned Marxist scholar about socialism and socialist revolution. His name is Prof. Paresh Chattopadhyay – Indian by birth, teaches political economy at the University of Montreal, Canada. He may not be so well known among political activists; but among Marxist scholars, he is very well known and very highly respected as an authority on the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin etc. The debate has appeared in Frontier, a weekly political journal published (in print and online) from Kolkata, India. I want to make the three texts – two by Chattopadhyay and one by me – available to the readers of this blog:

(1) Chattopadhyay published a short critical comment on an article, the content of which was an adulatory appreciation of the contribution of Che Guevara to socialist revolution. Chattopadhyay opined that Cuban socialism of Che and Fidel Castro was not Marxian socialism.Here is the link.

http://www.frontierweekly.com/articles/vol-47/47-3/47-3-Che%20Guevara.html

(2) I criticized Chattopadhyay for not telling us what revolutionaries like Lenin, Mao and Che should and could have done other than what they did in the absence in their respective countries of an industrial proletariat that formed the majority of the population. I also expressed doubt about the validity of Marxian socialism in the 21^st century. Here is the link.

http://www.frontierweekly.com/articles/vol-47/47-7/47-7-PCs%20Critique%20of%20Socialism.html

(3) Chattopadhyay responded to my criticism. Here is the link.

http://www.frontierweekly.com/views/sep-14/7-9-14-On%20Saral%20Sarkars%20Socialism.html

Below I am reproducing only the second and the third text.

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What is to be done?

PC’s Critique of ‘Socialism’

Saral Sarkar

Paresh Chattopadhyay (PC) is right in almost all points [Frontier, August 3-9, 2014]. The question that must now be asked is: Does it make any sense at all to still try to create socialist society that Marx and Engels had envisioned? I do not know whether PC has somewhere written on this question. If not, then it is essential that he does. For it is too simple to criticize every socialist of the 20th century—from Lenin to Mao and Che Guevara—without saying what they should and could have done to build a socialist society that would have gotten Marx's approval, whom they all regarded as their Guru—something other or more than what they did in order to create a socialist society. Also, PC's awe-inspiring scholarship is of little use unless he presents his conclusion as to the question "what is to be done today".

I think Marx's vision of revolution and socialism was flawed from the very beginning. But it was and it still is too difficult for Lenin and all socialists up until today to say that openly. The monumental analytical and theoretical work of Marx and Engels had achieved such a overwhelming intellectual hegemony among the radical and anti-capitalist educated people that hardly anybody dared to do so. And those few who did dare to criticize Marxist theory, even mildly, was denounced as traitor, deviationist, reformist, revisionist etc. etc. And they never had a chance to get a fair hearing. That is the normal effect of hegemony.

But today it is easier to realize and say without being persecuted or denounced that Marx and Engels had erred on several questions:

(1) The most important of them is the agency question. The great majority of workers did not and still do not have the ability to understand, let alone analyze, the complex ways in which the world functions and the direction in which it is moving (there are of course some exceptions). The majority of them has been and still are totally worn down in the process of earning money to feed themselves and their family. That has been and is the reality. It has therefore always been nonsensical, untruthful and only fashionable to assert that the revolution will happen under the leadership of the proletariat. The leadership necessarily had to come from the educated revolutionary middle class, from people like Lenin, Mao, and Guevara, and they had to be the vanguard.

In the 19th century, maybe, the proletariat formed the majority of the population in England, Germany, and France. But not in Russia (not to speak of China or India). But, in Russia, there were people like Lenin; and in the early 20th century, in China there were people like Mao. Should they have sat back and waited until the industrial proletariat became the majority? If Marx and Engels had lived longer, would they have advised Lenin and Mao to sit back and wait?

(2) Marx and Engels could not have known in their days what we know since after their death, particularly what we know today. That is why they also erred in thinking that the proletariat will be farther revolutionized through their growing impoverishment. The opposite happened in history.

(3) They had little knowledge of human nature. They erred in thinking that the proletariat had no fatherland. The First World War proved them thoroughly wrong. The colonialists and imperialists of Europe and America enabled their own proletariats to enjoy a share in the plunder of the colonies, which they gladly did.

(4) In the 19th century, Marx and Engels, and in the greater part of the 20th century Lenin, Mao, Guevara and all rank and file socialists were justified in believing in eternal development of science and technology, and hence in eternal development of productive forces. We know today that there are limits to growth, limits to the development of science, technology and productive forces. We cannot blame the masters and their followers for not knowing what we know today. But we must severely criticize the die-hard Marxists of our times for still stubbornly refusing to see these limits.

To sum up, the analysis of reality and the vision of socialism we have received from Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao, Guevara etc. have largely become obsolete. But since capitalism will definitely ruin the whole world unless overcome, some newly conceived socialism must become the goal of all radical people's movements of today. This new socialism—which should be called the scientific socialism of the 21st century (the Marxian socialism being the Utopian)—must be based on the knowledge and understanding of the world that we have acquired since the publication of the book Limits to Growth (1972). This knowledge and understanding is a call for a paradigm shift in our thinking and activity.

As for revolution, I would like to quote Walter Benjamin. He wrote:

"Marx says revolutions are the locomotive of world history. But perhaps it is entirely different. Revolutions are perhaps the attempt of humanity travelling in a train to pull the emergency brake."

If it was not true when Benjamin wrote this, it is true roday. In the same sense, another German author, Carl Amery, wrote, in the general sense: Political activists have till now tried to change the world in various ways. The point however is to preserve it.

What is to be done? Our task is to preserve the biosphere and change the world.

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On Saral Sarkar’s Socialism

Paresh Chattopadhyay

We feel greatly honoured that such an eminent individual as Saral Sarkar (SS for short) living far away from India has taken notice of my humble work on socialism appearing in a Kolkata weekly. In the following lines we try to deal with what we consider as the most important points of his important contribution.

First a summary account of what he says. In his view we have criticized every socialist of the twentieth century – most prominently, Lenin,Mao and Che (LMC for short) – for building socialism without the approval of  Karl Marx. SS faults us for not saying what else they should have done. We are asked to show   what  is to be done to-day.

Marx’s vision was flawed from the start, he continues, but LMC were inhibited to declare it openly. Those who differed –the revisionists- had never a chance to do that. Now is the chance to show the errors of Marx.

What errors are these? These are: (1) workers lack the ability to understand and analyse how the world functions. They are too worn down by their effort to earn money and and support their families. It has been always “nonsensical, untruthful, and only fashionable” to assert that revolution will happen under the leadership of the proletariat. The leadership has to come from the educated revolutionary middleclass, people like LMC forming the vanguard. In the backward countries like Russia and China should Lenin and Mao have waited till the workers get the majority?

(2)Mistaken in believing that the proletariat will be further revolutionized through growing impoverishment. The opposite has
happened.

(3) Marx had little knowledge of human nature. The colonialists and imperialists enabled the proletariat a share in the plunder.

(4) Finally he does not spare LMC also, who are faulted for believing in eternal development of science and technology, and productive forces. But there are limits to growth. Due to the then ignorance, these revolutionaries could be exonerated, but not their die-hard Marxist followers. Now is the time for a new socialism, the true scientific socialism - not utopian à la Marx-Engels. This will preserve the biosphere in a desirable way.

We may now be allowed to intervene. In SS’s narrative there are at least two factual problems. First, it is not true that nobody among people like LMC dared to express opposition to the “flawed vision” of Marx. Lenin while declaring that a socialist revolution could begin in a backward land, also said that this idea was outside the vision of Marx and Engels, which in effect meant that their vision was too narrow to envisage the total historical perspective of socialist revolution, (and hence “flawed”).

The second concerns Marx’s perspective of proletarian revolution being propelled by workers’ increasing impoverishment according to the author. This is the thesis of so-called “absolute impoverishment “ of the workers under  capitalism ascribed to Marx. Now, it is undeniable that Marx for a brief period had the tendency to adhere to this idea.The origin of this idea, however, goes back to Engels in his earliest writings on the English workers, as Engels himself wrote many years later. In those early writings on the workers’ situation Engels maintained that workers’ wage, as the exchange value of their labour(power), translated into the absolutely necessary subsistence for the life and reproduction of their labour. Marx, coming later to his study of political economy, followed Engels in this regard. Lassalle took it over and formulated what is called the “iron law of wages”. But this idea of absolute impoverishment had a very short existence in Marx. By the time he started his more mature works, culminating in CAPITAL, it vanished altogether. Already in his 1847 lectures to the German workers, Marx observes that in a period of rapid accumulation of capital wages may  rise, though capital’s profit rises more rapidly. Capitalists will “allow the working class to take a portion of the increasing capitalist wealth, and remain content with forging for itself the golden chain by which the bourgeoisie drags it in its train”.   In CAPITAL vol.1, in the chapter on  ‘buying and selling of labour power’ he declares that “labour power contains, from the point of view of value, a moral and historical element, which differentiates it from other commodities”.

Leaving this aspect of impoverishment of the workers, this poverty has another and more profound meaning in Marx, ignored by most of Marx’s readers. In his 1857-58 notebooks Marx holds “living labour as the complete denudation of all objectivity, bare, purely subjective existence, labour as absolute poverty, poverty not as shortage, but as  complete exclusion from objective wealth”.(This reminds one of an image which Rabindranath had created in one of his musical compositions which with some modification could be stated thus: seated in front of  a vast sea of nectar these labourers are allowed to drink only poison).  In other words, wage/salaried  labour excluded from the means of production  is as such in  absolute poverty . In his very first 1861-63 manuscript Marx calls wage/salaried labourers (manual or mental) “pauper”, whatever the level of remuneration. The very fact that you have to sell your only ‘property’ labour power in order to survive, is sufficient to qualify you as absolutely poor, a pauper..Very aptly Marx cites Shakespear in his master work:” you take my life when you take the means whereby I live”. This aspect of wage or salaried labour, this wage slavery escapes the notice of most of us. This is a part of mind set imbibed through the capitalist relations. As an illustration, we bring in the justly famous humanist, the economist Amartya Sen, a rare bird in the profession. Sen justly considers market relation, that is,  commodity production playing a liberating  role in a conservative society such as India. But wage labour as a specific form of slavery does not appear in his otherwise  valuable  work on human freedom.Like most of us he seems to accept it  as normal. In ancient Greece, even Aristotle, generally considered to be the greatest thinker of European antiquity, thought human slavery as normal.  He called slave an animated tool. Indeed, as the young Marx and Engels wrote, “the ideas of each epoch are the ideas of the ruling class”.

Now it is clear that SS at least implicitly considers the correctness of the revolutionary undertakings of LMC for building socialism and Marx wrong. As  regards the prototype of these endeavours, the October revolution followed by  the establishment of Russian socialism in a backward land, his views, he should be glad to know,were initially shared by some of the most informed   minds of the last century- E. H. Carr, I. Deutscher and P. M. Sweezy  all of whom pronounced Lenin  right , and  Marx wrong in his prognostication of socialist revolution taking place only in a situation where certain objective and subjective conditions exist , and those conditions can exist only  in advanced capitalist lands. (We return to those conditions in a moment). Then what happened in fact is well known. The evaporation of the house that Lenin built, followed by those who followed him, showed at least one thing: a clear refutation of his position. Marx remains to be tested.

It is clear, here we have two very different notions of socialism, LMC’s and Marx’s, with an unbridgeable gap in between. The first type is a system imposed on the society at large by a hierarchically formed vanguard who claims to know the real interest of the rest of society, mainly the labouring people, better than the affected. The very basis of the second type is exactly the opposite. It  is the self emancipation of the labouring people  : “Emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves”  , so Marx (1864). If the working class is incapable of fulfilling this task,so much the worse. “The working class is either revolutionary or it is nothing” so Marx in a letter to a friend(1865). Equally, there is irreconcilable difference between the very meaning of socialism held by  the first group and that held by Marx and Engels. Socialism of the first group signifies and has shown in practice  a society ruled by a strong state with standing army and bureaucracy, headed by a single party with central planning, with no individual (private) property in the means of production, but with commodity production and wage labour intact. Because of the continuing production based on wage/salaried labour,(which automatically implies the existence of commodity production) this society as a matter of fact is a form of state capitalism. And politically, in spite of big talks by Lenin about following  the Paris Commune model of free election  and recall of all officials, the very opposite has turned out to be the case. In these single party strictly controlled  societies there is no really free election , not to speak of  recall, and no dissenting political view is tolerated. The opposite is the case with the second meaning of socialism. In this meaning socialism or communism (no distinction in Marx and Engels)signifies,in terms of the new society after capital(ism), a society of free individuals or an association of free and equal individuals with collective ownership of means of production along with the disappearance of all the instruments of exploitation and repression such as state, commodity, wage/salaried labour.

A socialist revolution does not come about by any body’s order, or desire of a Lenin, or even Marx’s. A social revolution like the great French Revolution of 1789-93, which is epochal and not something momentary, requires over a long period, a certain maturity of the social conditions preparing the ground. In Marx’s classic statement, too dismissively abandoned by instant revolutionaries, no social formation ever disappears before having exhausted all the possibilities of development of  its productive forces, and new , higher relations of production  do not appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself. In their absence all attempts at social revolution will be Don Quixotism. It would be like trying to ripen a green jackfruit by repeatedly boxing it.  In the absence of such conditions any attempt to change society could only be undertaken by a determined group of ‘professional revolutionaries’ as the self-anointed ‘vanguard’, independently of the will of the society’s great majority, a kind of Blanqui-ism. And indeed all the so-called socialist revolutions of the last century,highly approved by SS, have been minority revolutions.  Towards the end of his life, Engels summed up the past revolutionary experiences: “ All revolutions up till now were minority revolutions. Even when the majority took part , it did so – wittingly or unwittingly – only in the service of a minority; but because of this, or simply because of the passive, unresisting attitude of the majority , this minority  acquired the appearance of being the representative of the whole society.”  Here we are speaking exclusively of socialist revolution followed by socialism since SS’s discourse is on these subjects.

As regards the point raised by SS that workers lack the ability to understand and analyse how the world functions, and that they are too worn down by their effort to earn money and support their families, we can only say that a social revolution is not an every day event.A revolution cannot be summoned at will.Revolutions arise spontaneously in moments of crisis, when the situation becomes unbearable, and the same worn down ordinary people become revolutionaries.   Trotsky in his great “History of the Russian Revolution” vividly describes the spontaneous beginning of the Russian Revolution  in February 1917,initiated not by any party or leader, but by the most downtrodden  and oppressed  section of the proletariat of Petrograd – the women textile workers.

As a matter of fact twentieth century socialism is a great myth. There has been no socialist revolution and no socialism in an emancipatory sense.  Those lands were just not ready at all for the rise of such a society. They were ready only for bourgeois revolution destroying  all the pre-capitalist relations along with freeing themselves from colonialism and imperialism,  and thus preparing for the advent of  a totally new society.The Russian Revolution was the last bourgeois revolution in Europe.

Regarding SS’s hasty dismissal of Marx, let us cite the following lines from  an  eminent Dutch scholar  Mark Blaug:”Marx has been reassessed ,revised, refuted and buried a thousand times but he refuses to be relegated to intellectual history .For better or worse , his ideas have become part of the climate of opinion within which we all think”.

However, Marx is not indispensable for a social revolution. Marx or no Marx, social revolutions have taken place and will take place springing from the very soil of a society divided into antagonistic classes. How many revolutionaries knew even the name of Marx in the Paris Commune, ditto for the uprising of the millions of labouring people in February, 1917 in Russia?

Sep 07 2014

Eco-Socialism or Barbarism -- 11 Theses

 1. The history of capitalism has always been also the history of its crises. This has been so because of its self-contradictory nature, which by itself generates crises and undermines its own conditions of successful functioning. Till now, capitalism has always proved flexible enough to ensure that these crises did not lead to its end, although the price that humans and nature had to pay for its survival has been high. Today however, all over the world, capitalism is facing for the first time an insurmountable barrier, which has been set from "outside", is of geological and physical nature and is, therefore, final. This barrier consists in the limits to growth set by (1) depletion of the non-renewable resources and (2) the declining ecological carrying capacity of the earth, both of which are limited in any case. This is, so to speak, a "pincer-grip crisis," from which there is no escape.

2. The ultimate cause of the current financial, debt and economic crisis is precisely this: In many countries, growth has come to an end. In others, the growth rate is declining. The financial system as a whole rests on the expectation of steady growth. As soon as it becomes apparent that this growth expectation cannot be met, the financial system inevitably begins to falter. The conventional crisis theories (also those of Marxist, Keynesian or Schumpeterian provenance) are no longer sufficient to explain the crisis. Their recipes too are no longer effective. Those who, for example, want to cope with the current debt crisis by means of Keynesian stimulus policies – as an alternative to the prevailing austerity measures – overlook the objective limits to growth, overlook that there is little unexploited growth potential left that could be exploited.

3. In particular with the catchword "green new deal", some people are spreading the illusion that capitalist growth could be continued as before with other technical means. It is being suggested that, through the use of renewable energies and efficiency increasing technologies, "decoupling" of economic growth and resource and energy consumption could be achieved to a sufficiently high degree. This is one of the most dangerous illusions of "eco-capitalism". In all technologies, potential for efficiency increase is limited and subject to the law of diminishing marginal returns. Likewise, the potential of renewable energies is not inexhaustible. The energy density that has until now been available to us with the now dwindling fossil energy sources¹, cannot even be approximately achieved with the renewable energy sources. That is, although we indeed have to use some "green technologies", at the final count, significantly less net energy will be available to us than today.

4. Not only global capitalism – which, as we know, is dependent on continuous capital accumulation on an ever higher scale and on a globally functioning strongly differentiated division of labor – but also industrial society as a whole has reached a crisis point! Viewed from the perspective of human history, industrial society is a singularity that cannot be generalized – an exceptional situation of short duration enjoyable only for a minority of humanity. It has only been possible on the basis of massive exploitation of fossil fuels – first coal, then oil and gas. Future sustainable societies will have to manage with a very modest resource base. Mass motorized individual travel, the commonness of long-haul flights, etc. will then no longer be possible. With renewable energies much fewer blast furnaces can be fired, much less cement and aluminum can be produced etc. etc.

5. A major difference between a Marxist understanding of socialism and that of "Initiative Eco-Socialism" is: While Marx and Engels saw the world-historic role of capitalism in the highest possible development of productive forces, on the basis of which alone building a socialist (or communist) society is possible, the "Initiative Eco-Socialism" says: exactly the opposite is the case. A socialist (solidarity-based, egalitarian) society is independent of any particular level of development of productive forces. Indeed, a high level thereof can even be a hindrance to the purpose.

6. In future, the economy will not only not grow any more, but it will inevitably shrink! Politically, we are facing the choice between letting the shrinking process chaotically descend upon us or to control and shape it consciously. In our sense, that would mean to control and shape it in a just way and in the spirit of solidarity. The economy will have to shrink until it has reached a state of stable equilibrium ("steady state").

7. Such a shrinking process cannot however be managed within the framework of capitalist relations. In standard economic terms, as we know, it would be tantamount to a deep depression. That is, there would be large-scale destruction of capital, whole industries would decline, and falling profit rates would prevent private investment. A shrinking economy is in contradiction to the immanent growth imperative of capitalism. That is, the process of gradual dismantling of the industrial structure could only be organized beyond capitalism – and probably defying its expected resistance.

8. Under the condition of scarce and dwindling resources, market mechanisms no longer work effectively. A market economy works effectively – if at all – only on condition that all market participants can react flexibly and adequately to market signals. But dwindling resource availability would entail that, in this area, we would have to do with sellers’ markets. Then there would be serious misallocation of resources. Scarce resources would not then flow to areas of the economy we as society consider to be essential and desirable, but to those where sufficient purchasing power exists. Under scarcity conditions, the market would not be able to ensure a minimum level of social justice. This means that we would need, instead of market mechanisms, conscious planning, quantitative controls, price controls, a quota system etc.

9. In the first phase of transformation of the economy – the shrinking phase – the state must necessarily be a strong player. This is of course not an ideal solution. Ideally, planning should be as decentralized as possible, with maximum participation of the stakeholders, and it should aim at a high degree of self-sufficiency of local communities. That is why bottom-up approaches in the sense of a solidarity-based economy would be of central importance for the transition period.

10. An eco-socialist economy would be characterized by a strong emphasis on the local and the regional, and it would strongly restrict long-distance trade.² It would be characterized by a much higher use of labor-intensive technologies (today's high labor productivity is essentially the result of undesirably high resource consumption in capital-intensive technologies)³, a much lower level of division of labor,⁴ and a high degree of self-sufficiency.

11. In the light of this perspective on the future, what is important now is (a) to develop concrete exit strategies. That is, to see with which political steps a future eco-socialist government could begin the process of dismantling the industrial structure in a spirit of solidarity. (b) In this connection, we have to examine whether some popular "leftist" policy proposals (such as a guaranteed basic income paid out to all without condition) are compatible with an eco-socialist perspective.

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Bruno Kern
Initiative Eco-Socialism
(translated by Saral Sarkar)

Our website: www.oekosozialismus.net; our e-mail: info@oekosozialismus.net;
Contact: Initiative Eco-Socialism, c / o Bruno Kern, Mombacher Straße 75 A, 55122, Mainz.

The following publications can be downloaded from our website or can be purchased from the contact address:

Saral Sarkar, Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism? – A Critical Analysis of Humanity’s Fundamental Choices. London: Zed Books. 1999.

Saral Sarkar, The Crises of Capitalism – A Different Study of Political Economy. Berkeley: Counterpoint. 2012.

Saral Sarkar and Bruno Kern, Eco-Socialism or Barbarism – An Up-to-date Critique of Capitalism. Cologne and Mainz: 2008. (brochure)

Bruno Kern, “It Is Not Too Much To Tell The People The Truth” (Ingeborg Bachmann) – Energy Transition Between Infantile Fantasies and Disillusionment. Mainz: 2012. (Paper)

Saral Sarkar, Understanding the Present-day World Economic Crisis – An Eco-Socialist Approach. Cologne: 2012. (brochure)

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Some notes added by Saral Sarkar:

1. When we say fossil energy sources are dwindling, we should also note the recent surge in oil and gas production in the USA made possible by fracking technology. However, fossil energy obtained in this way is also nonrenewable. Many experts think that the fracking boom will be over in six to seven years.
2. That would be necessary (a) because long-distance trade excessively pollutes the environment and (b) because goods imported from distant places elude control.
3. Moreover, labor-intensive technologies would be favored because they generate more jobs – a consideration that is very important in times when many jobs would necessarily and deliberately be destroyed through a policy of economic contraction.
4. A lower level of division of labor also results in more need for labor power.