Alternative paradigms of production
By: Steven Welzer
Tags: Green Politics, Communitarian Alternative, Capitalism, Socialism

Under industrial capitalism most production is carried out under the auspices of teams of profit-seeking private individuals. The teams are comprised of the Boards of Directors, controlling shareholders, and upper-management tiers of the large corporations. The personal, potentially very lucrative proceeds makes them highly motivated.

Under true socialism (not Bernie Sanders’ social democracy) most production would be carried out under the auspices of either (a) a government entity (could be national, state, municipal), or (b) a worker-owned-and-run cooperative. In other words, General Motors or Microsoft, for example, would not be privately owned and controlled. At that scale of production they would probably be public enterprises run by the national government.

Private or public? Capitalism or socialism? They both are theorized in terms of ideals (read von Mises or Harrington), but which works better in the real world? Are private profit-oriented enterprises too bottom-line oriented? too exploitative? too ecologically and socially irresponsible? Does a nationally planned socialized economy tend to be too centralized? too bureaucratic? Do worker-owned cooperatives tend to lack motivation or wind up operating too much like private enterprises when they compete against the latter in the market?

Nationalization of productive assets has been anathema in the US, but Europeans debate it all the time. The debate has been going on for about 150 years. Socialism doesn’t seem to be winning the debate, but socialists would say that’s a function of the capitalists dominating the public discourse (via funding the politicians, plus the fact that most media is owned by private enterprises). Noam Chomsky calls it “manufacturing consent.”

Great Britain does have socialized medicine. Has it proven superior to the US system? If the answer was clearcut I think you’d see a clamor for such here. But the answer has not been so clearcut. So the debate goes on.

My interest in Green politics is that it potentially can present alternative viewpoints relative to all the old ideologies (capitalism, socialism, nationalism, social democracy, libertarianism). The original Ten Key Values suggested an eco-communitarian alternative: Community-based Economics. It needs to be conceived of as part and parcel of a transformation toward re-localized lifeways in general. It flows from a critique that finds both industrial capitalism and industrial socialism to be unsatisfactory. It says that a community can decide which enterprises should be private and which should be public . . . but, either way, the enterprises must be localized, accountable/responsible to the community, and subject to community oversight.

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When talking about a full economy, the term “community” can’t be limited to just a neighborhood or a village. That’s where the conception of bioregionalism comes in. A community encompassing a bioregion could support a full economy. Not, of course, the kind of hyper-developed, overly-complex, industrial-statist type of economy that currently is stressing people and the planet. Rather, a green economy that would entail a downscaling of production and consumption within the context of a radical simplification of institutions and technologies.

On this basis I think that the ultimate Green vision should be bioregionalist instead of socialist. Nonetheless, I’m supportive of those who contend that a period of eco-socialism will be needed in order to transition away from capitalism, institute a liberatory and just process of degrowth, and forge the pathways that can lead toward the bioregionalist greening of society.