Ghost in the Wire

One of the problems that I have with those brave souls longing for the Revolution, the moment when the workers rise up and utopia begins its long march toward realization, is that so much of the discourse of socialism vs. capitalism requires a homogeneity to the latter that simply does not obtain in the world around us. American capitalism is vastly different from Japanese capitalism; both are radically different from the German version, and so on. Even within the U.S., we have different versions going on in different places, and I suspect we lose something fairly fundamental when, for the sake of critical lubrication, we pretend as if the commonalities between capitalist systems are sufficient enough to warrant scant attention and engagement with their differences.

When it comes to environmental policy this lack of attention poses some difficulties. The choice becomes something like "revolutionary consciousness" or apathy towards capitalist structures. In capitalism, so the argument goes, economic interests have trumped environmental interests - as if the two are somehow such ontologically different animals that the relation between them must be one of distinction, wherein one will triumph over the other. As Aenesidemus puts it: "Having bred generations of well-adjusted capitalists, we find them incapable of adjusting their accounting tables for externalities."

This is, of course, total nonsense. We have bred generations of inbred, poorly adjusted capitalists, who are thus unable to account properly for externalities. The great trick of American capitalism has been to produce a system of externalities for which the company controlling the means of production and distribution are not responsible, and then to wed this system with a naturalized belief that those externalities must now be solved or confronted by governments and the taxes that help them function. Let me note one obvious example: packaging. Packaging is one of the many ways in which a company sells its product. It is a semiotic system that provides a clear and convincing benefit (indeed, much money is spent to ensure that this benefit will correspond with maximized profit and sales), be it the simple designs of the iPod packaging or the colorful, convoluted cardboard and styrofoam wonders that house infant ExerSaucers. And although companies are responsible for (i.e. they must internalize the cost of) the production and shipping of these packages to various sales venues, they are not responsible for the elimination of those packages. Instead, publically funded landfills shoulder the responsibility for that elimination, in effect levying a general tax that supplements corporate income by excusing them from fully being responsible for the objects or services a company produces. Sure, many of the individuals that comprise that public may not own iPods and may never buy ExerSaucers, but they will still, each in their own way, pay to have that company's packages stored as trash.

For environmental activists, then, the solution may not be to fight or retard capitalism, but rather to celebrate a capitalism that is more capitalist, more free market, than the leading capitalists would like. Make Apple responsible for their packaging (Apple has great design values, but their packages are ridiculously wasteful). Make developers pay for the cost of subsequent road widenings and sewer system expansion (which would raise the price of new developments, thus slowing sprawl). Provide a way to assess the costs of this current externality and leverage those costs in such a way that they must be internalized (which would make cradle to cradle technology extremely attractive).

I'll return to this theme in a bit.