- I found this recently published book by Melbourne academic, editor and journalist Jeff Sparrow fascinating, but also frustrating and rather naive. The word 'capitalism' gives it away.
- You could be forgiven for thinking the book is simply a tirade against commerce, against the rise of the West, against inevitable population growth, against the progression over the last few centuries of science, medicine, trade and globalisation. Nature and its gifts to life and community has been virtually destroyed and Sparrow identifies the overarching reason for this as capitalism, the very alienating and destructive trading of goods and services for profit. He refers to a pre-capitalist world, where artisans mastered every element of their craft and were not simply labour beaten down by low wages and poor working conditions. Animals change nature without conscious decision. Humans change and destroy nature by deliberate exploitation.
- We have to wait until the final chapter for his ideal economic, social and political system to become clear. It's Central Planning of course. One can only imagine the local, national and international groups of saintly geniuses directing all human enterprise. So the individual chapters, while insightful and persuasive in them themselves, don't add up to a convincing whole. It's a radical naïveté.
- But nevertheless there is so much interesting and informative detail in Sparrow's thesis. He takes us on a journey from the early foundations of capitalist invention and enterprise, starting with Henry Ford and the rise of the motor car in the US. There were other choices, including electric vehicles and streetcars, but the powerful petrol car lobby won. Ford’s production line destroyed artisan skilled workers and gave origin to the prominence of the consumer. ‘Planned obsolescence’ was widely adopted, as were disposable and non-recyclable plastics.
- In Australia the arrival of colonists devastated the indigenous lands, grasses, plants and animals. The capitalist economic system with wage workers producing commodities for export and sale radically changed the productive relationship with the land.
- The rapid growth of corporate power and its antagonism to any trend or movement that might inhibit profitable growth was relentless. The PR (Public Relations) industry went into overdrive. Cigarettes needed to be sold to women; the fear of lung cancer had to be destroyed; the concept of industry ‘research’ was manufactured to defend corporate interests; anti-pollution messages blamed individuals, as did the ‘carbon footprint’ concept.
- Sparrow populates the book with loads of interesting stories of movements and trends that have defined our relationship with nature and the environment over the last half century in particular - conservation movements and their early link to eugenics and racism, and the anti-population growth controversy and its denunciation of immigration from the ‘third world’, for example.
- In more recent times things have changed. Global warming has become far more alarming, as Australia’s severe bushfires in 2019/20 demonstrated; citizens are organising and their power is increasing. Amazon's ill-treated workers are unionising and fighting back. Corporate malfeasance is less tolerated.
- Sparrow attempts to articulate his alternative to our destructive economic system in the final chapter.
In the twenty-first century, we remain unable to imagine a coherent alternative to a capitalist system that is, quite literally, killing us...We could instead devote our massive resources and technological capabilities to staunching the wounds already inflicted on the planet. We could begin systematic decarbonisation…Each year the world spends over $1,917 billion on guns, bombs, and other military equipment. The comparable figure on advertising is some $325 billion. Those staggering figures represent a mere fraction of what we could direct immediately to environmental programs on land, sea, and air....[but] we're impeded by the imperatives of capital and insistence on blind, mathematical and destructive growth.
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