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Mary Mellor
© Mary Mellor 2007
I would define socialism as a materialist analysis of the human condition and a material politics based on a collective commitment to the wellbeing of all existents. This is not a fixed perspective, as understanding of the human condition changes and the definition of wellbeing and what would achieve it is open to debate. I say existents because post green, the socialist perspective needs to expand to embrace all that lives, as well as inert natural forms. This does not imply a mindless preservationism but means that socialists need to be reflexive about human interaction with non human nature.
Expanding materialist
analysis
The Marxian materialist analysis also needs to be expanded through the
addition of ecofeminist materialism. This argues that humans are both
embodied and embedded: human existence occurs in relation to the ecological
whole. This is not a mystical idea, rather it argues that human beings
must always take account of the whole: all human activities, the whole
life, the whole process from creation to destruction. This would take
seriously the life and care of the body, traditionally represented as
women's work, and take socialism beyond its productivist obsession with
the formal (patriarchal/capitalist) economy.
This is not to deny the importance of challenges to capitalism and the demand for collective ownership and control of economic systems, but these must not be seen as the end of the process of change. Ecofeminists argue that modern economies are so destructive because they have lost touch with the overall reality of human existence in nature. Economies are fundamentally gendered in a way that externalises the life of the body, together with the rest of nature. As a result of this gendered division of labour, activities that represent only a very partial aspect of human existence have become the driving force and focus of modern economies.
The Provisioning
Economy
Feminist economists use the concept of provisioning to describe the
economy in its widest sense. Provisioning embraces both paid and unpaid
work covering the full range of activities, from love and care to food,
shelter and social and leisure activities. The concept also opens up
the distinction between wants and needs, and helps to focus economic
decision-making on the needs of human beings in all aspects of their
lives.
In meeting human needs the environment is also a provisioning system and there is necessarily a conflict between human needs, the needs of other species and the need of the environment to re-provision itself. A recognition of ecological limits can strengthen the socialist critique of capitalism: it makes private ownership and control of the resources that are necessary for human wellbeing much more difficult to justify, and brings to the fore questions of socio-economic justice, the responsible use of resources and human relation to other species.
Creating an
Alternative
The problem for socialists in the twenty-first century is how an alternative
can be created that will not make the mistakes of earlier attempts to
socialise the economy. Concentrating on the failure of soviet communism
tends to obscure the huge success of the British Co-operative Movement
over 150 years. Although it lost its domination of working class provisioning
from the 1950s, until recently the Co-op was (and still is?) the largest
farmer in Britain. While more recent attempts to create new systems
such as LETS have been small scale, it is comforting to know that the
Co-op shows that a hugely successful provisioning system can be built
from scratch very quickly. There are many other examples of non-capitalist
provisioning systems from mutuals to municipalities.
Challenging
Capitalism
Socialists have often sought to conquer the productive power of capitalism,
but a feature of late capitalism is financial trading. The statistic
is often quoted that 90-95% of global trade is purely financial and
there is evidence that much of this, as much as 70% in some areas, is
being run electronically through computer programmes, making catastrophic
failure a possibility. In addition, the 'unacceptable face of capitalism'
is back in the form of private equity firms taking over huge swathes
of the economy, largely on credit. Private firms have also been invading
and privatising the public sector. Like David Harvey I see this as a
form of primitive accumulation and the role of credit is important here.
One of the most important forms of state privilege throughout history has been its ability to issue money. In the last few decades this right has been given away to the private sector through the use of credit as the main form of money issue (97%). One of the main results in Britain is hugely inflated house values. I would argue that an important campaign for socialists is to reclaim social control over the issue of money, particularly as most credit is conjured out of thin air by the commercial banks. If credit is to be conjured out of thin air, let it be in socially owned and controlled banks where priorities can be based on provisioning needs. Let the private sector (if it is to still exist) earn its money through responding to those priorities. New circulation money/credit could also be issued directly to the poor as Citizen's Income.
The capitalist economy has provided some freedoms, developments and benefits for some people, but socially necessary work has been caught up with the unsustainable activities of the capitalist market. Wants and needs cannot be untangled and people have little choice about engaging in unnecessary employment. Furthermore, profit-based market production and consumption bears little relation to the sustainability of the human body or the natural environment. Socialists must build on these weaknesses and particularly the overwhelming domination of finance capitalism to argue for a socially responsive economy that would be able to provision people adequately and provide a good quality of life with minimal damage to the environment or intrusion on the needs of other species.
Mary Mellor is a member of several red green and ecofeminist networks. She teaches at Northumbria University and is writing a book on Money, Credit and Debt.
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