Brendan Cooney: Marxian Economics and Philosophy

Video: Capitalist Equilibrium?

Part 2

For quite some time I have been following the clear and rich explanations of Marxian concepts and ideas by Brendan Cooney. He is well versed in classical economics and Marxian value theory and very adapt in communicating these in such a way that most people can understand it. On top of that, he takes his time every few weeks to make a professional and engaging video using his own scripts to deal with another major perspective or concept using classic cartoons. The scripts and more can be found at http://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/. Brendan describes his motivation for making his video's in these words:

"In times of crisis the law of value asserts itself with violence. My videos deal with the nature of value in a capitalist society, how this value is expressed, and what contradictions grow from it."

I seriously recommend anyone who seeks a more profound understanding of the present economic systems to check out the resource Brendan is building up.

Tariq Ali at the Parkland Conference

Tariq Ali speaks at the Parkland Conference in Edmonton, Canada, on November 16, 2008. Amazing speech on The Dictatorship of Capital: Its Impact on Politics and Culture. With the fall of the Berlin Wall what happened to diversity and freedom of expression? How did market-realism establish its ascendancy in Western culture? He also quotes from and addresses the admirable culture of resistance that is an integral part of Arab poetry.

Paper on Heidegger and Social Philosophy

Even though it's quite academic and metaphysical, I thought this paper on Heidegger on historicality and social phenomenology might provoke some thought. It deals with a small piece of the question of what distinguishes real existential or social philosophy from Dr. Phil psychology on societal scale. In other words, how can you be sure your philosophical social or cultural analysis really strikes the core of the lifeforms you describe.

For the real philosophy fans I found the 1947 letter exchange between Marcuse and Heiddegger on the internet. These letters shed a great light on the pain thinkers like Marcuse, Arendt, and Sartre must have felt to see their philosophical mentor embrace Nazism.

Presentation: Ecological Critique of Market Society

I thought I'd post this presentation text I've written for a philosophy department course called 'Concerns of the Market'. It is aimed to be a short introduction into the ecological critique of, as the course called it, 'market societies'.

It refers to a power point presentation that can be downloaded here or viewed here.

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1 Introduction

In this presentation, my aim is to give a short summary of the critique of market society and neoliberalism from the perspective of environmentalists and ecologists like Dennis and Donella Meadows, the authors of ‘The Limits to Growth’. This presentation will require some scientific discussion that is instrumental for a philosophical perspective. I believe that any fruitful philosophical inquiry into the moral problems of sustainability will have to rely on recent scientific discourse in order to ask the right moral questions. For example, questions like future generations’ rights to oil resources are outdated when it seems unlikely that there will be much left for these future generations, even when there is a consistent political-economic move to sustainable consumption. Rights to energy resources more generally might be more appropriate in this case.

I will break down this critique in two parts; the first dealing with the use of ‘sources’, the other with disposal of waste and pollutants in ‘sinks’. [figure 1, 2, 3] By sources is meant all natural resources that are used in an economy, from fishing stock and arable land to water supply and fossil fuels. By sinks are meant the capacities of ecosystems to absorb pollution and waste, from bacteria in rivers that break down sewage to the adaptivity of atmosphere to greenhouse gas emissions.

Obviously central to this critique is the notion of sustainability. I use the word here as meaning natural-economic conditions of necessity for the realisation of any reasonable interpretation of human flourishing for most people over time. Sustainability is often mistaken as some kind of moral value by itself. But, as long as we can agree that human flourishing in the future should also be an aim of political morality, so I can skip a lengthy discussion of Derek Parfit, what other value should political action ultimately have in mind, if not sustained human flourishing for all? Sustainability, then, concerns the natural boundraries for the sustained possibility of this moral end.

The question is whether societies in which markets are the dominant mechanism of allocation of goods and services are, or can be made capable of dealing fairly and effectively with the problems of increasing scarcity of resources and pollution. In other words: is there a morally acceptable capitalist road to sustainability? As I am approaching this question through looking at natural resources and sinks, Herman Daly’s widely used criteria for sustainable use of resources and pollution I think hits the nail on the head [figure 4]. If there are no questions about this definition of sustainability, I would like to proceed with the overview of the ecological critique of market society.

2.1 Sources

In countries where the price of non-renewable resources and unsustainably used renewable resources are set by the market (or are even subsidised), there is a gap between the use value of that resource and its exchange value, the price. As any normal commodity, natural resources are traded in the market, where supply and demand determine price. According to a central justificatory thesis in neoclassical economics, which treats natural resources like any other commodity, the market mechanism ensures efficient allocation of goods; but, of course, in this case we are dealing with depleting natural resources. Once used, they are gone, and somewhere along the way of depletion, (where maximum supply exceeds demand) price is set no longer by supply, demand and marginal production cost, but by natural scarcity and shortage.

So in so far as there are good reasons to assume that the exchange value, as set by the market at times of relative abundance, is much lower than the real use value of the resource, the market mechanisms of supply and demand cannot be relied upon to allocate non-renewable resources and depleting renewable resources efficiently. It follows that a society that allocates non-renewable resources in this market-based way is, from this perspective, wasting the ‘bank account’ of elementary resources considerably.

But the critique can go more fundamental. Market-based societies are also ill-prepared to adapt to depletion and scarcity of vital resources like energy or food that its economy is reliant on. A political-economic tradition of leaving allocation of non-renewables to the market produces a dependent economic infrastructure with the high consumption patterns that result from market underpricing. These infrastructures are the aggregates of long term investment; it takes several decades to replenish without extra costs the stock of cars, ships, factory equipment, electricity plants and so on. A market-based society that finds one of its essential resources depleting can maybe change allocation systems quickly, but it is stuck with the economic infrastructure and capital stock that is accumulated over time. This kind of exposure to resource shocks combined with the highly discussed increase in worldwide inequality can have morally unacceptable consequences- think of stagflation after the oil shocks of the 70s, food or water shortages and even the collapse of civilisation like on the Easter Islands. These are results of what the authors of LtG call overshoot- when a (socio-economic) system passes its external limits.

My own literature research into the depletion of different non-renewable and depleting renewable resources has convinced me there is cause for concern in many cases; oil and natural gas production are in dangerous stages of decline considering the level of dependency of most societies on these resources. [figure 5 and 6] Potable water, fish stocks and soil fertility are, albeit in different ways, at more or less maximum sustainable levels of extraction or beyond these levels. Contrary to a still dominant academic consensus, I found that the models of the Club of Rome have been quite right so far.

The fundamental question for this course is whether sustainable use of these resources can be reached with ‘market based solutions’. My position here is a negative one. Sustainable use of resources seems to be contradictory to a central thesis in neoclassical economics and market-based politics: that supply and demand allocate resources through setting prices. This conclusion I see supported in historical economic and energy policy in capitalist countries. The countries that have made the most considerable steps towards resource sustainability, Sweden, Iceland and Cuba, have done this through direct government involvement and investment. But rather than expanding on my own political opinion now, I invite discussion on this topic after this presentation.

2.2 Sinks

The question of pollution and waste shares many characteristics with the one concerning (renewable and non-renewable) resource depletion. There are sustainable levels of pollution that can be absorbed by ecosystem sinks, but exceeding these levels for a longer time results in problems of overshoot.

The most global and well-known example of overshoot by polluting sinks is global warming. There are lower levels of greenhouse gas emissions that increase temperature, but will be corrected by the world ecosystems correction mechanisms. After a certain point, however, the ‘positive feedback loops’, or the ecosystem mechanisms that reinforce global warming, become stronger than the balancing correction mechanisms. The current scientific debate concerns when exactly this point is most likely reached. The debate ranges from 350 ppm, which was reached around 1985, to 450 ppm, which would be reached in 35 years at current rates of emission. [figure 7 and 8] This is a very serious issue: if greenhouse gas levels stay above this critical point for a longer time, the genie will be out of the bottle. Humans will have lost their grip on this potential global catastrophe.

Again, the question for this course is whether there is a credible market based road to sustainability on the pollution side of the ecology-economy system. There is one especially prominent market based scheme for reducing emissions, cap and trade. This is the system in place in the EU at the moment, and it is the one that is being proposed by the Obama administration as well. At first sight and with some generous reading of the institutional argument, it seems it could work. All that governments need to do is to set the amount of emission rights, and these can then be allocated by the market in these rights. That would mean that there is a limit for emission, while the market can efficiently decide how exactly these emission targets will be met.

But if one looks a little further into the range of institutions that are involved in these schemes, there are a lot of practical problems with such a solution that I would argue are not just accidental, but institutional and necessary. Emissions can be reduced by all kinds of administrative mechanisms (fe offsetting emissions in seperate projects abroad). Furthermore, markets in emissions rights create a secondary derivative market with its speculative bubbles, and corporations always have an interest in expanding the amount of rights that are actually issued. When the system was just introduced in the EU, for example, the market and lobbying power of big corporations like the German automobile industry was so strong it even accomplished to create rights for more emissions than are produced to begin with. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, emitting corporations universally denied global warming, in a fashion rather like the tobacco industry that denied smoking caused cancer. The history does make one suspect there is a logic in this so called 'partnership of the state and the private sector'. Most environmentalists, and myself included, would argue this is because corporations always have an interest in externalising costs and internalising profits, and will use their resources to obtain their end. This market power of corporations is an institutional fact that directly contradicts any credible move towards sustainability. As long as the market is at the centre stage of environmental policy, this policy will be the result of a tug of war between even the most well-meaning governments and international governmental bodies on the one side, and corporations that externalise the cost of battling against their pollution on the other.

3 Conclusion

If one tries to imagine a credible integrated road to sustainability on all the vital topics adressed and more there seems very little room for market dominance. The most market-based ideas that aim to address these issues in cohesion all emphasise a need for stable and unjeopardised move on the different fronts, requiring price stability for long term investment. A good introduction into these arguments is supplied by Richard Heinberg in 'The Oil Depletion Protocol'. This necessity implies a government setting prices and pushing the market in a sustainable direction. But such a scheme will have to fight the same battle with contradicting economic institutions and mechanisms, like corporate lobbying and externalising of costs. Therefore, considering the actual scientific debates and economic-political practice, I am led to the more philosophical conclusion that capitalism is inherently unsustainable. Real solutions for the problems of an overshooting ecologic-economic system necessarily lie outside market thinking and market practice. Whether this should be a reformist taming of the forces of the market or a radical overcoming of its logic I leave up for discussion. In any case, it seems only a fool could expect that forces from within capitalism itself will save it from its own overshoot.

Slavoj Žižek in Roda Viva

In this excellent interview with Slavoj Žižek, the thinking of this fascinating philosopher is nicely introduced as Žižek is confronted with questions from different sides; he explains why he is a marxist in political economy and Freudian, Lacanian and Hegelian in matters of ideology.

Books by Slavoj Žižek

The Anarchist FAQ

As i was watching one of mr. 1001 Nights' video discussions on the labour theory of value, by the same guy who made the documentary "The Evilness of Power", I saw he reffered to an FAQ page on anarchism. It turned out to be quite a nice and above all, orderly overview of answers to a broad range of philosophical and scientific subjects that come up in debates on capitalism, ideology, and authority. It spans the board across ecology, authority and statism, neoclassical economics, history of the russian revolution, dissemination of the different kinds of anarchism, human nature arguments; you name it, it's there. So click on the link above if it piqued your curiosity as well.

The Evilness of Power - A Documentary on Authority

Few, if any documentaries I have come across go as deep into what motivates people to commit acts that our conscience normally would never allow. Montageing commentary from a host of intellectuals and shards of history, recent politics and popular culture to back them up, this film makes a powerful case that the evil people do to each other is not inherent in human nature: it requires authority and hierarchy to come about.

On www.anarchy.net, the creator of the film had this to say about his montage documentary:
"My motivations for creating The Evilness of Power are varied. I wanted to clarify the ideas and channel the strong emotions I'd been internalizing since I became an activist in 2004 and which I had been sketchily trying to articulate in my youtube channel since late 2006. I also realized that there weren't that many documentaries dealing exclusively with the concept of hierarchy--perhaps none at all--. I noticed how relatively easy and effective it would be to weave together some of my youtube videos with parts of programs, films, documentaries etc to offer a more comprehensive examination of hierarchy and hopefully contribute to revolutionary change."

Edward Said on 'The Clash of Civilizations' and Cultural Imperialism

In 1993 Harvard Professor Samuel P. Huntington wrote an essay titled "The Clash of Civilizations?" and later he expanded into a book with the same title, but without the question mark. Edward Said, late Columbia professor rips Huntington's thesis to shreds, and with it, the kind of reductionist, 'realist' world view that 'The Clash of Civilizations' is an expression and symbol of. Literary theorist and activist Edward Said has provided indispensable insight into the cultural side of contemporary imperialism.

Orientalism and other books by Edward Said

I've found this two hour but very instructive lecture on how to read 'Das Kapital', by one of the world's foremost Marx interpreter professor David Harvey. After decades of experience with the text he has an unique ability to understand what exactly Marx was doing in its entirety.
He is the world's most cited academic geographer (according to Andrew Bodman, see Transactions of the IBG, 1991,1992), and the author of many books and essays that have been prominent in the development of modern geography as a discipline. His work has contributed greatly to broad social and political debate, most recently he has been credited with helping to bring back social class and Marxist methods as serious methodological tools in the critique of global capitalism, particularly in its neoliberal form.

Marx's Capital with David Harvey
An open course consisting of a close reading of the text of Volume I of Marx's Capital in 13 two-hour video lectures by Professor David Harvey.



He appeared today in an interview at Democracy Now to analyse the G20 summit and the state of the economy. See the interview here.

His latest books:

An Introduction to Capital (forthcoming 2009)
The Communist Manifesto- New Introduction Pluto Press (2008)
The Limits to Capital New Edition (2006)
Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical Development (2006)
A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005)
Paris, Capital of Modernity (2003)
The New Imperialism (2003)

Philosopher Manuel DeLanda gives a presentation that challenges some commonly held beliefs in the realm of political theory. Challenging systems-thinking and the essentialising of institutions, he argues that the military during peacetime has had a large influence on the structure of modern industrial societies, for example, the ways in which factories, schools, and hospitals continually manage the activities of humans. He traces the developments of European military techniques to their use in micromanaging the movements of humans in various institutions.

Even if I wouldn't discard nearly as much of Marx' theory as DeLanda, I found this speech to be a healthy reminder of the pitfalls that Marxists and systems thinkers in general too easily fall for.

On Science, Philosophy, and Public Debate

Philosophers are fond of saying that the way you conceive of a problem, theoretically or practically, already determines a range of solutions you might end up proposing. This is often considered the domain and 'practical use' of philosophy; not to answer questions but figuring out which questions to ask. Empirical science, then, deals in actual knowledge of the world around us, and is therefore able to answer questions that one formulates for some practical sake. Economists can tell us what happens when the Fed prints money to help banks, ecologists can tell us when a particular patch of sea is fished beyond its carrying capacity, and physicists can tell us how to produce energy in new ways.
So lets apply this distinction to what we are doing here; to figure out from which perspective(s) we can meaningfully analyse the moral problems posed by the economical, ecological, and political crises we read about all the time. It should be quite clear that figuring out which questions to ask is not just the job of the philosopher. In most cases you don't just need the analytical training of the philosopher to formulate the right questions and points-of-view, you also need to know something of the object-field you're talking about to find out whether the concepts you use apply well enough to the problems at hand. For example; depending on which economist you take seriously, the current worldwide recession could be a problem of failed regulation of the financial markets, it can also be a problem of greed, maybe the crisis stems from the inherent contradictions of capitalism itself, or according to others it's the free markets' self-cleansing process. Depending on your beliefs on technology and energy resources, whether these beliefs are considered and well-argued or complete faith, you will have a different idea of the possible futures for the real economy.
These scientific problems, or at least problems of applied philosophy of science, show that you need to have some sort of understanding of the matters of fact you are talking about to make a judgment about the ethical side of the topic at hand. And as it is my goal on this blog to find the right moral questions to ask, this kind of philosophy needs science just as science needs philosophy. Without a critical understanding of disputes within the sciences we cannot possibly decide which narrative to cast our moral discussions in. To put it in a simpler way; differences of opinion on the scientific level (do CO2 emissions lead to increased worldwide temperatures?) so often lead to disagreement on the moral level (Should we make a serious effort to reduce our CO2 emissions?).
This realisation is especially relevant for people who are, like me, convinced that main stream science cannot give us a satisfactory analysis of some deep crises that confront today's societies. If you are dealing with peak oil, the limits to growth more generally, trying to revive discussions about economic democracy, or understand the current economic collapse in terms like Richard Wolff's analysis (in systemic terms of unsustainability of lending workers' money in stead of increasing wages), you first need to convince people that your theoretical approach to the topic is legitimate. Only after that can you start an ethical discussion based on acceptance of a new analysis. So if we are going to understand, let alone raise awareness of the moral imperatives in this relatively new world of scarcity, climate change, and collapse of the debt bubble that allowed so much concentration of wealth, we have to fight on both these fronts.
But something is happening; the old free market narrative that was held up to disguise a system of state support for big corporations has now become so unbelievable that a lot of critical people are trying to reorient themselves. In these times there is an opportunity for ideas that are developed in the margins to enter the main stream. If we get this right, we might just be able to build the foundations to have public discussions about some real issues at last.

Why bother?

In many ways, what this page is all about is a combination of a positive perspective of advancing the plight of common people with a negative acknowledgment of the limits to growth. This combination is a contradiction in terms to many people, and so, most of the time, political debates keep to one topic or the other. That's why, on the one side, 'Malthusianism' is a derogatory term for misanthropes who really want a 'cleansing' of our overpopulated planet. (Texas radio host and New World Order conspiracy theorist Alex Jones actually puts Henry Kissinger and the Club of Rome in one and the same category.) On the other side it explains why 'peakniks' often find Chavez' use of oil revenues to create a welfare state naive in the extreme.

Issues like peak oil, the current world wide economic collapse and climate change tell us about how life has become harder and will become much harder still in the future. Looking through all the literature and information it seems like the era following the second world war was a friendly time of rising prosperity and the consolidation of the middle class, accomplished by pushing problems into the future, with the future beginning just about now. From this perspective, many people discard the aspiration for a good life for all people on this planet as a tragic wild goose chase, reminiscent of Tantalus' eternal torment in Hades.

It is very understandable that the limits to growth have turned precisely those committed people with a social conscience into utter fatalists. How can humanity possibly improve its fate when at a peak of prosperity inequality has spiraled out of control, leaving half of the world population in dire poverty and lacking the most basic of necessities? In a desperate attempt for some kind of hope and meaning, these environmental (and/or Marxist) determinists retreat into a more soothing geological timescale. They hope that even if we are not able to stop the ongoing collapses of the economy and ecology and the societies that depend on them, wiser future generations will scavenge a sustainable economy out of the corpse of industry and the natural resources it left unscathed.

I have been, and in darker moods still am one of those fatalists who retreat in their impotent determinism. The scarce forces that point in the good direction are so often so lacking in coherence and determination. But even if our darkest fears will play out as predicted, it would be good to know that someone tried to do something. You probably heard that one before, so let me put the argument another way; I also know that there are more than one or two possible futures, even if there are increasing natural boundaries to what is possible. As anyone who traced back the contingencies of his birth knows, the present world is the result of an infinite number of causes, both natural and human. Like ripples in a pond, actions that seem insignificant might change the world incrementally in unexpected ways, and you never know what is possible unless you take the initiative to find out.

What I have become increasingly convinced of is that as scarcity, climate chaos and economic collapse become ever more frightfully real, we should least of all abandon our social ideals. To many of us in the West solidarity has a quite abstract meaning; it means softening the sharp edges of the market, or giving a coins to charity. We have quite forgotten to practice the moral convictions that now seem like intellectual allegiances. As life gets tougher, we might actually have to make some more concrete life choices; we might have to share our food even if that means that we have no desert ourselves. We might have to start really opposing the international trade regime that has so systematically kept the third world underdeveloped to stimulate overconsumption in the West, in stead of just bandaging the results of this scandal with our charity money. To take seriously the imperatives of ethics, to do something for the other will only gain in its already critical importance, in small scale daily life or in grand scale international politics.

Theodor Adorno, the Frankfurter theorist and co-writer of the profound 'Dialektik der Aufklärung' is famous for saying that ethics should not be about individuals solving dilemmas in concrete life situations, but about avoiding that individuals find themselves in those situations. In other words, it should be a philosophy of social systems, not of the actions of the morally autonomous individual. I believe we need both. If we just do systems ethics, the now disappears as a moment of action and ethics becomes an interesting but ultimately pointless battle of ideology, while actual politics is left to the usual players. On the other hand, if we just do dilemma ethics, we get things like the hypocritical and shallow practical ethics that Peter Singer has been trying to escape from.

In stead, we need an ethics that is visionary enough to imagine all kinds of ways to advance the plight of common people that are now still unthinkable or politically impossible. We need that kind of broad understanding and orientation now, and in the dire years to come, to shape better societies than the ones existing now. But a better society has always been a long way away. For the shorter term and more limited scope we also need to think seriously about the moral choices that we face while we are still living in the self-destructive and often cruel systems that are in place at the moment. And, to use a rhetorical trick again, even if everything goes wrong, I would still prefer to live in a broken society in which people share their scarcities than in one where people fight each other over them. The point is that only by taking seriously both of these dimensions of ethics, both Singer and Adorno, can we profoundly make sense of what we should do to curb and to mitigate the tide of the collapse of economies, ecosystems, and societies that we are very concretely facing.

So to retreat into a deterministic analysis of capitalism, population growth, and environmental destruction I think is a mistake. Not because the analyses are wrong, but because it denies the present of its importance, being the only sliver of history over which we have any kind of influence. Capitalism may be inherently expansionist and self-reinforcing, poverty and population growth may be locked in the most cruel of positive feedback loops, and we may be too late to stop both serious climate change and the peak oil worst case scenario, but never will I give up on the only thing that can prove the predictions wrong; action by conscientious and strategically savvy people in the here and now. And I hope that anyone kind enough to read this article to the end won't, either.

Sociologist and Philosopher Slavoj Žižek on objective violence or violence inherent in systems. Double click on the video for the whole intruiging interview in which Žižek talks about ideology, psychoanalyses the (liberal) left, and necessity of radical thinking.

The Ethics of Climate Change and Peak Oil

Download paper on climate change and peak oil

Download paper on climate change and peak oil

What can ethics say about the different limits to growth that we are beginning to experience? In beginning to explore this question, I presented this 6000 word paper at a conference on the ethics and politics of climate change this January. I am still busy expanding and reviewing it. All commentary welcome as usual.

Review: Contemporary Political Philosophy

If you are interested in acquainting yourself with the field of political philosophy this is one of the best starting points to do so. For many students of political philosophy Will Kymlicka is a household name. One of the reasons is this clearly written book, which outlays many different schools of thought that are influential in today's political philosophy. It provided me a very interesting perspectives on what exactly sets a Rawlsian liberal apart from a socialist, or what is the domain of the political and how feminists, for example, have expanded that notion to make visible power relations within the 'private sphere'. Kymlicka also convinced me that market-libertarian Robert Nozick actually makes little sense at all.

The book illuminates how moral principles have to be informed with an analysis of what are society's essential problems and how society works to give a fully rounded political philosophical theory. The Rawlsian liberal, for example, is not philosophically wedded to capitalism, but normally thinks that it works. Therefore he allows inequality in his theory of distributive justice, if that inequality in the end allows for the biggest 'piece of pie' for the worst-off.

'Contemporary Political Philosophy' has a definite analytical style, which makes comparing different theories in the book easier. This also means that as an introduction to more continental (German and French) political philosophers, even Hannah Arendt, you need to read other books. But the advantage of this particular set-up is that it allows Kymlicka to figure out whether these different political philosophical theories all start from another point of view, another principle, or whether they can all be reduced to essentially coming from the principle of equality. If that were so, there would be a common ground on which philosophers could discuss which theory has made the best account or interpretation of this communal value. Has this been succesful? Is political difference of opinion really fundamentally just a difference in ideas of how to interpret the value of equality? If you would like to know the answer to this question, or if you would like to be armed with the basics in political philosophical theory, go read this book!

Tip: The website Book Finder automatically finds the cheapest copies including shipping to your country of residence.

Documentary on Frankfurt School Critical Theorist Herbert Marcuse as a figure in the American student activist movements.

Paper on Philosophical Anarchism

Download Paper on Philosophical Anarchism

What if states cannot be legitimate? That is, what if we don't have a moral obligation to obey our states? Would that justify a 'war of all against all', as Hobbes would have it, or would states still be justified in their everyday coercion? This 3500 word paper of mine deals with the consequences of philosophical anarchism, and is followed up by a 2500 word discussion between me and my teacher dr. Mokrosinska.