The legacy
by Marge Piercy #poetry

What a world we’re leaving—
I want to apologize to every
child I see. Yes, we baked it,
poisoned it, gutted it, cooked

up new diseases from tropics,
wet markets, arrogance. How
can they ever forgive us,
we who remember oceans

with live fish in them, gardens
with butterflies and many birds,
savannas with lions, jungles
with tigers, elephant families.

We who could swim in clean
rivers, who remember when
hurricanes were occasional
when summers were bearable

in cities. We didn’t care enough
to leave you a livable world.
We were just too busy buying
and selling, polluting and burning.

We were just too greedy to care.

"The communist peasant and trade union leadership that was behind the BDS saw it as a social cooperative embedded in the political struggles of the agrarian classes that would prioritize the welfare of agrarian communities over profit. After the cooperative has covered its expenditure on raw materials, infrastructure, and marketing, it uses a democratic decision-making process to allocate a portion of the surplus to modernize agriculture and expand the cooperative market. The agricultural producers themselves share the remaining surplus in the form of higher prices and better wages.

The BDS has learned from previous experiences of Indian cooperative movements that became trapped in a mesh of state control and bureaucracy, with leadership positions monopolized by members of the dominant castes, rich farmers, and local political elites. It promotes horizontal forms of decision-making based on worker self-management, through which its members conduct their day-to-day affairs and make policy decisions. This facilitates positive change in the relations of production and promotes class solidarity at the workplace."

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/11/kerala-india-communist-party-farmers-cooperatives-bds-wayanad/

The challenge now is to democratize the American constitution while preserving its function as a framework that protects minorities and ensures their fundamental rights. A big part of the current problem is that the rise of corporate capital and its associated corruptions has generated a different set of interests to those of property holders. Moreover, corporations have used their power over Congress to impose their sectional interests on voters as a whole, for example preventing the protection of the environment. In January 2021, 69% of Americans agreed ‘that American democracy serves the interests of only the wealthy and powerful’. Seventy percent of Democrats believed this, as did 66% of Republicans. This is one measure of a significant loss of consent to the system as a whole.

There are therefore at least two, linked issues at stake in any effort to create a democratic polity in the US. The first is over who is included in the ‘we’ of ‘We, the people’. The second is over the role of big money and dark money in controlling policy outcomes. The latter uses divisions within the former to protect its influence. To turn the page on US constitutional exceptionalism, as Aziz Rana calls for, demands confronting both.

https://www.eurozine.com/the-decline-and-fall-of-american-exceptionalism/#

"The New York Times editorial board has warned that the reason Democrats lost the recent Virginia gubernatorial election is that the party is trying to do too much to solve the country’s problems. Its excessive ambition, the Times says, is off-putting to voters who prefer a government that does less, one that simply presides in quiet dignity rather than overstepping its role with such grandiose goals as ending poverty or providing paid family leave.

I am not kidding. The paper cautions that “polls show that many independents already think that the government is trying to do too much to deal with the nation’s problems,” and says that Joe Biden was elected “because he promised an exhausted nation a return to sanity, decency and competence,” not because he promised substantive policy agenda. The Times quotes Democratic representative Abigail Spanberger, who says “nobody elected him to be F.D.R., they elected him to be normal and stop the chaos.” The Times criticizes the more ambitious parts of the “Build Back Better” agenda, saying that parts of the “electorate are feeling leery of a sharp leftward push in the party, including on priorities like Build Back Better.”

The Times editorial should offer pretty definitive proof that the basic ideology of the U.S. media is right-wing, not left-wing. Here we have the great liberal Paper of Record taking the position that the Democratic Party is too aggressive in trying to pass transformative public policies, a position I cannot believe anyone really holds. In fact, the party has spent months scaling back its ambitions. It has failed to pass voting rights and police reform legislation. It has dropped attempts to add dental and vision coverage to Medicare, and dropped Biden’s clean power plan. Joe Biden has resisted pushes to cancel student loan debt. If there is one thing I rarely hear anyone accusing the Democratic Party of, it’s that they’re trying too hard."

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/11/why-democrats-fold-on-everything/

"The genesis of the futilitarian condition emerged precisely at the point where utility became sanctified under capitalism, because at that moment, the possibility of futilitarianism also came into existence. Under the conditions of capitalism, the greatest happiness principle cannot be realized, or, at least, only a perverted version of it can exist. The working class have always carried the burden of the labor of utility maximization — of producing the things that are useful and, ultimately, the money associated with utility.

But precisely because of the exploitative social relations of capitalism, it is only the capitalist class who can truly experience the pleasure associated with utility. The rise of a large middle class in the mid-20th century, backed up by a social democratic turn, created the illusion that the greatest happiness principle could be realized under capitalism, that the vast majority of people could live free and well, if only in the Global North.

But neoliberalism has put an end to that illusion. By dismantling the social state and valorizing competition between individuals, neoliberalism separates utility maximization from social well-being. In doing so, it makes futilitarianism the new moral philosophy of capitalism, by demanding utility maximization from individuals while simultaneously and repeatedly demolishing the social structures and institutions that could secure any sense of collective well-being. Futility flourishes under these conditions."

"Futility masked as utility is the essence of neoliberalism’s transformation of everyday life. At every turn, we are encouraged as individuals to take on greater personal responsibility, to invest in ourselves wisely and to wring every last drip of utility from any opportunity. At the same time, the social and economic structures that can facilitate such individual acts of utility maximization are repeatedly dismantled and denigrated. As a result, the futilitarian condition has become the dominant human condition in the early 21st century, where individual pursuits of utility maximization are used as examples to convince us all that we do not need strong social infrastructure or better economic safeguards."

https://roarmag.org/essays/futilitarianism-vallely-excerpt/

"the cost of phasing out fossil fuel production and expanding renewables is not large. Decarbonizing the world economy is technically and financially feasible. It would require committing approximately 2.5 percent of global GDP per year to investment spending in areas designed to improve energy efficiency standards across the board (buildings, automobiles, transportation systems, industrial production processes) and to massively expand the availability of clean energy sources for zero emissions to be realized by 2050. The IEA reckons the annual cost has now risen to $4trn a year because of the failure to invest since the Paris COP five years ago. But even that cost is nothing compared to the loss of incomes, employment, lives and living conditions for millions ahead.

But it won’t happen because, to be really effective, the fossil fuel industry would have to be phased out and replaced by clean energy sources. Workers relying for their livelihoods on fossil fuel activity would have to be retrained and diverted into environmentally friendly industries and services. That requires significant public investment and planning on a global scale.

A global plan could steer investments into things society does need, like renewable energy, organic farming, public transportation, public water systems, ecological remediation, public health, quality schools and other currently unmet needs. And it could equalize development the world over by shifting resources out of useless and harmful production in the North and into developing the South, building basic infrastructure, sanitation systems, public schools, health care. At the same time, a global plan could aim to provide equivalent jobs for workers displaced by the retrenchment or closure of unnecessary or harmful industries.

All this would depend first on bringing the fossil fuel companies into public ownership and under democratic control of the people wherever there is fossil fuel production. The energy industry needs to be integrated into a global plan to reduce emissions and expand superior renewable energy technology. This means building renewable energy capacity of 10x the current utility base. That is only possible through planned public investment that transfers the jobs in fossil fuel companies to green technology and environmental companies.

None of this is on the agenda at COP26."

https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/cop-out-26/