乔治·蒙比奥特 乔治·蒙比奥特，《卫报》专栏作家，2019年4月25日
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/25/capitalism-economic-system-survival-earth
现行的经济体系与地球生命的生存格格不入。是时候设计一个新的体系了。
在我成年后的大部分时间里，我一直在抨击“公司资本主义”、“消费资本主义”和“裙带资本主义”。我花了很长时间才明白，问题不在于形容词本身，而在于名词本身。有些人欣然而迅速地拒绝了资本主义，而我却缓慢而勉强地拒绝。部分原因是我看不到明确的替代方案：与一些反资本主义者不同，我从来都不是国家共产主义的狂热支持者。它的宗教地位也让我感到局限。在21世纪说“资本主义正在衰败”就如同在19世纪说“上帝已死”：这是对世俗的亵渎。它需要我所不具备的一定程度的自信。
但随着年龄的增长，我逐渐认识到两件事。首先，是这个体系，而不是这个体系的任何变体，将我们无情地推向灾难。其次，你不必提出一个明确的替代方案就能说资本主义正在衰败。这个说法本身就很有道理。但它也要求我们付出另一种不同的努力来构建一个新的体系。
在有限的星球上永续增长必然导致环境灾难
资本主义的失败源于其两个决定性因素。首先是永续增长。经济增长是追求积累资本和攫取利润的累积效应。没有增长，资本主义就会崩溃，然而在有限的星球上永续增长必然导致环境灾难。
资本主义的捍卫者认为，随着消费从商品转向服务，经济增长可以与物质资源的使用脱钩。上周，杰森·希克尔和乔治·卡利斯在《新政治经济学》杂志上发表了一篇论文，探讨了这一前提。他们发现，虽然20世纪出现了一些相对的脱钩（物质资源消耗有所增长，但速度不如经济增长快），但在21世纪，却出现了重新挂钩：迄今为止，资源消耗的增长速度已赶上甚至超过了经济增长速度。避免环境灾难所需的绝对脱钩（减少物质资源的使用）从未实现，而且在经济持续增长的情况下似乎也是不可能的。绿色增长只是一种幻想。
一个基于永久增长的体系如果没有边缘和外部性就无法运转。必须始终存在一个开采区——在那里可以无偿开采材料——以及一个处置区，在那里，成本以废物和污染的形式被倾倒。随着经济活动规模不断扩大，直至资本主义影响到从大气层到深海海底的一切，整个地球都变成了牺牲区：我们都生活在这台盈利机器的边缘。
这将我们推向一场大多数人无法想象的灾难。我们生命维持系统崩溃的威胁远比战争、饥荒、瘟疫或经济危机更为严重，尽管它可能同时包含这四种情况。社会可以从这些末日般的事件中恢复，但无法从土壤、丰富的生物圈和宜居气候的丧失中恢复。
第二个决定性因素是一个荒诞的假设，即一个人有权获得其金钱所能买到的尽可能多的世界自然财富份额。这种对公共物品的攫取导致了进一步的三种混乱。首先，争夺不可再生资产的独家控制权，这意味着要么使用暴力，要么通过立法剥夺他人的权利。第二，建立在跨越时空的掠夺基础上的经济，导致他人陷入贫困。第三，经济权力转化为政治权力，因为对重要资源的控制会导致对其周围社会关系的控制。
诺贝尔经济学奖得主约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨周日在《纽约时报》上试图区分好的资本主义（他称之为“创造财富”）和坏的资本主义（他称之为“攫取财富”（榨取租金）。我理解他的区分。但从环境角度来看，创造财富就是攫取财富。经济增长本质上与物质资源的不断利用息息相关，意味着从生物系统和子孙后代手中攫取自然财富。
指出这些问题会招致一连串的指责，其中许多都基于这样的前提：资本主义已经将数亿人从贫困中解救出来——现在你又想让他们再次陷入贫困。确实，资本主义及其推动的经济增长从根本上改善了广大人民的繁荣，但同时也摧毁了许多其他人的繁荣：那些
劳动力和资源被掠夺，用于推动其他地方的增长。富裕国家的大部分财富过去和现在都建立在奴隶制和殖民征用之上。
像煤炭一样，资本主义带来了许多好处。但如今，它也弊大于利。正如我们找到了比煤炭更好、危害更小的生产有用能源的方法一样，我们也需要找到比资本主义更好、危害更小的创造人类福祉的方法。
回头路已不可走：资本主义的替代方案既不是封建主义，也不是国家共产主义。苏联共产主义与资本主义的共同点比这两种制度的倡导者愿意承认的还要多。这两种制度都（或曾经）痴迷于促进经济增长。为了追求这个和其他目标，两者都愿意造成惊人的伤害。两者都承诺未来我们每周只需工作几个小时，但却要求我们无休止的残酷劳动。两者都是非人性的。两者都是绝对主义者，坚称只有他们的才是唯一的真神。
那么，一个更好的体系是什么样的呢？我没有完整的答案，也不相信任何人有。但我认为我看到一个粗略的框架正在浮现。部分框架由当代最伟大的思想家之一杰里米·伦特提出的生态文明体系提供。其他元素则来自凯特·拉沃斯的甜甜圈经济学，以及娜奥米·克莱因、阿米塔夫·戈什、安甘加克·安加科苏阿克、拉杰·帕特尔和比尔·麦吉本的环境思想。部分答案在于“私人自给自足，公共奢侈”的理念。另一部分答案源于基于这一简单原则的全新正义观的创立：世界各地的每一代人都应享有平等的自然财富享用权。
我认为，我们的任务是从众多??思想家的方案中甄选出最佳方案，并将它们整合成一个连贯的替代方案。因为任何经济体系都不仅仅是一个经济体系，而是渗透到我们生活的方方面面，我们需要来自经济、环境、政治、文化、社会和后勤等各个领域的众多人才齐心协力，共同创造一种更好的组织方式，既能满足我们的需求，又不会破坏我们的家园。
我们的选择归结于此。是停止生活以允许资本主义继续存在，还是停止资本主义以允许生??活继续存在？
Dare to declare capitalism dead – before it takes us all down with it
George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist, 25 Apr 2019,The economic system is incompatible with the survival of life on Earth. It is time to design a new one
For most of my adult life I’ve railed against “corporate capitalism”, “consumer capitalism” and “crony capitalism”. It took me a long time to see that the problem is not the adjective but the noun. While some people have rejected capitalism gladly and swiftly, I’ve done so slowly and reluctantly. Part of the reason was that I could see no clear alternative: unlike some anti-capitalists, I have never been an enthusiast for state communism. I was also inhibited by its religious status. To say “capitalism is failing” in the 21st century is like saying “God is dead” in the 19th: it is secular blasphemy. It requires a degree of self-confidence I did not possess.
But as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to recognise two things. First, that it is the system, rather than any variant of the system, that drives us inexorably towards disaster. Second, that you do not have to produce a definitive alternative to say that capitalism is failing. The statement stands in its own right. But it also demands another, and different, effort to develop a new system.
Capitalism’s failures arise from two of its defining elements. The first is perpetual growth. Economic growth is the aggregate effect of the quest to accumulate capital and extract profit. Capitalism collapses without growth, yet perpetual growth on a finite planet leads inexorably to environmental calamity.
Those who defend capitalism argue that, as consumption switches from goods to services, economic growth can be decoupled from the use of material resources. Last week a paper in the journal New Political Economy, by Jason Hickel and Giorgos Kallis, examined this premise. They found that while some relative decoupling took place in the 20th century (material resource consumption grew, but not as quickly as economic growth), in the 21st century there has been a recoupling: rising resource consumption has so far matched or exceeded the rate of economic growth. The absolute decoupling needed to avert environmental catastrophe (a reduction in material resource use) has never been achieved, and appears impossible while economic growth continues. Green growth is an illusion.
A system based on perpetual growth cannot function without peripheries and externalities. There must always be an extraction zone – from which materials are taken without full payment – and a disposal zone, where costs are dumped in the form of waste and pollution. As the scale of economic activity increases until capitalism affects everything, from the atmosphere to the deep ocean floor, the entire planet becomes a sacrifice zone: we all inhabit the periphery of the profit-making machine.
This drives us towards cataclysm on such a scale that most people have no means of imagining it. The threatened collapse of our life-support systems is bigger by far than war, famine, pestilence or economic crisis, though it is likely to incorporate all four. Societies can recover from these apocalyptic events, but not from the loss of soil, an abundant biosphere and a habitable climate.
The second defining element is the bizarre assumption that a person is entitled to as great a share of the world’s natural wealth as their money can buy. This seizure of common goods causes three further dislocations. First, the scramble for exclusive control of non-reproducible assets, which implies either violence or legislative truncations of other people’s rights. Second, the immiseration of other people by an economy based on looting across both space and time. Third, the translation of economic power into political power, as control over essential resources leads to control over the social relations that surround them.
In the New York Times on Sunday, the Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz sought to distinguish between good capitalism, which he called “wealth creation”, and bad capitalism, which he called “wealth grabbing” (extracting rent). I understand his distinction. But from the environmental point of view, wealth creation is wealth grabbing. Economic growth, intrinsically linked to the increasing use of material resources, means seizing natural wealth from both living systems and future generations.
To point to such problems is to invite a barrage of accusations, many of which are based on this premise: capitalism has rescued hundreds of millions of people from poverty – now you want to impoverish them again. It is true that capitalism, and the economic growth it drives, has radically improved the prosperity of vast numbers of people, while simultaneously destroying the prosperity of many others: those whose land, labour and resources were seized to fuel growth elsewhere. Much of the wealth of the rich nations was – and is – built on slavery and colonial expropriation.
Like coal, capitalism has brought many benefits. But, like coal, it now causes more harm than good. Just as we have found means of generating useful energy that are better and less damaging than coal, so we need to find means of generating human wellbeing that are better and less damaging than capitalism.
There is no going back: the alternative to capitalism is neither feudalism nor state communism. Soviet communism had more in common with capitalism than the advocates of either system would care to admit. Both systems are (or were) obsessed with generating economic growth. Both are willing to inflict astonishing levels of harm in pursuit of this and other ends. Both promised a future in which we would need to work for only a few hours a week, but instead demand endless, brutal labour. Both are dehumanising. Both are absolutist, insisting that theirs and theirs alone is the one true God.
So what does a better system look like? I don’t have a complete answer, and I don’t believe any one person does. But I think I see a rough framework emerging. Part of it is provided by the ecological civilisation proposed by Jeremy Lent, one of the greatest thinkers of our age. Other elements come from Kate Raworth’s doughnut economics and the environmental thinking of Naomi Klein, Amitav Ghosh, Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq, Raj Patel and Bill McKibben. Part of the answer lies in the notion of “private sufficiency, public luxury”. Another part arises from the creation of a new conception of justice based on this simple principle: every generation, everywhere, shall have an equal right to the enjoyment of natural wealth.
I believe our task is to identify the best proposals from many different thinkers and shape them into a coherent alternative. Because no economic system is only an economic system but intrudes into every aspect of our lives, we need many minds from various disciplines – economic, environmental, political, cultural, social and logistical – working collaboratively to create a better way of organising ourselves that meets our needs without destroying our home.
Our choice comes down to this. Do we stop life to allow capitalism to continue, or stop capitalism to allow life to continue?
But as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to recognise two things. First, that it is the system, rather than any variant of the system, that drives us inexorably towards disaster. Second, that you do not have to produce a definitive alternative to say that capitalism is failing. The statement stands in its own right. But it also demands another, and different, effort to develop a new system.
Capitalism’s failures arise from two of its defining elements. The first is perpetual growth. Economic growth is the aggregate effect of the quest to accumulate capital and extract profit. Capitalism collapses without growth, yet perpetual growth on a finite planet leads inexorably to environmental calamity.
Those who defend capitalism argue that, as consumption switches from goods to services, economic growth can be decoupled from the use of material resources. Last week a paper in the journal New Political Economy, by Jason Hickel and Giorgos Kallis, examined this premise. They found that while some relative decoupling took place in the 20th century (material resource consumption grew, but not as quickly as economic growth), in the 21st century there has been a recoupling: rising resource consumption has so far matched or exceeded the rate of economic growth. The absolute decoupling needed to avert environmental catastrophe (a reduction in material resource use) has never been achieved, and appears impossible while economic growth continues. Green growth is an illusion.
A system based on perpetual growth cannot function without peripheries and externalities. There must always be an extraction zone – from which materials are taken without full payment – and a disposal zone, where costs are dumped in the form of waste and pollution. As the scale of economic activity increases until capitalism affects everything, from the atmosphere to the deep ocean floor, the entire planet becomes a sacrifice zone: we all inhabit the periphery of the profit-making machine.
This drives us towards cataclysm on such a scale that most people have no means of imagining it. The threatened collapse of our life-support systems is bigger by far than war, famine, pestilence or economic crisis, though it is likely to incorporate all four. Societies can recover from these apocalyptic events, but not from the loss of soil, an abundant biosphere and a habitable climate.
The second defining element is the bizarre assumption that a person is entitled to as great a share of the world’s natural wealth as their money can buy. This seizure of common goods causes three further dislocations. First, the scramble for exclusive control of non-reproducible assets, which implies either violence or legislative truncations of other people’s rights. Second, the immiseration of other people by an economy based on looting across both space and time. Third, the translation of economic power into political power, as control over essential resources leads to control over the social relations that surround them.
In the New York Times on Sunday, the Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz sought to distinguish between good capitalism, which he called “wealth creation”, and bad capitalism, which he called “wealth grabbing” (extracting rent). I understand his distinction. But from the environmental point of view, wealth creation is wealth grabbing. Economic growth, intrinsically linked to the increasing use of material resources, means seizing natural wealth from both living systems and future generations.
To point to such problems is to invite a barrage of accusations, many of which are based on this premise: capitalism has rescued hundreds of millions of people from poverty – now you want to impoverish them again. It is true that capitalism, and the economic growth it drives, has radically improved the prosperity of vast numbers of people, while simultaneously destroying the prosperity of many others: those whose land, labour and resources were seized to fuel growth elsewhere. Much of the wealth of the rich nations was – and is – built on slavery and colonial expropriation.
Like coal, capitalism has brought many benefits. But, like coal, it now causes more harm than good. Just as we have found means of generating useful energy that are better and less damaging than coal, so we need to find means of generating human wellbeing that are better and less damaging than capitalism.
There is no going back: the alternative to capitalism is neither feudalism nor state communism. Soviet communism had more in common with capitalism than the advocates of either system would care to admit. Both systems are (or were) obsessed with generating economic growth. Both are willing to inflict astonishing levels of harm in pursuit of this and other ends. Both promised a future in which we would need to work for only a few hours a week, but instead demand endless, brutal labour. Both are dehumanising. Both are absolutist, insisting that theirs and theirs alone is the one true God.
So what does a better system look like? I don’t have a complete answer, and I don’t believe any one person does. But I think I see a rough framework emerging. Part of it is provided by the ecological civilisation proposed by Jeremy Lent, one of the greatest thinkers of our age. Other elements come from Kate Raworth’s doughnut economics and the environmental thinking of Naomi Klein, Amitav Ghosh, Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq, Raj Patel and Bill McKibben. Part of the answer lies in the notion of “private sufficiency, public luxury”. Another part arises from the creation of a new conception of justice based on this simple principle: every generation, everywhere, shall have an equal right to the enjoyment of natural wealth.
I believe our task is to identify the best proposals from many different thinkers and shape them into a coherent alternative. Because no economic system is only an economic system but intrudes into every aspect of our lives, we need many minds from various disciplines – economic, environmental, political, cultural, social and logistical – working collaboratively to create a better way of organising ourselves that meets our needs without destroying our home.
Our choice comes down to this. Do we stop life to allow capitalism to continue, or stop capitalism to allow life to continue?
