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The thing is that by being owned by a government, it doesn't stop being "capitalism" in the eyes of the proponents of anti-capitalism. For them, the core featur

The thing is that by being owned by a government, it doesn't stop being "capitalism" in the eyes of the proponents of anti-capitalism. For them, the core feature of capitalism is freedom to buy and sell labour, employment of wage labour and accumulation of capital. They may even argue that companies such as PDVSA are private - because they are not under direct democratic control of the labourers who work with those means of production. I see no reason to believe that capitalism is "the most sustainable" environmentally speaking. Just because it's hard to see big incidents such as Chernobyl or the drying of the Aral sea under capitalism, that doesn't mean that its effects are any less pernicious. In fact, it just means its actions are more transparent and insidious - in the words of a famous author, dystopia without a despot. Nevertheless, it's worth reading up on socialist critiques of the environmental policy of previous socialist states. Eco-socialism[0] is actually one of the most researched areas of normative social philosophy this decade. They likely explain the points better than the article linked in OP. [0] https://climateandcapitalism.com/2019/07/27/20-essential-books-on-marxist-ecology/ https://climateandcapitalism.com/2019/07/27/20-essential-boo...

meerita 7y ago
Is not capitalism what you mention. It's called Corporatism, the theory and practice of organizing society into "corporations" subordinate to the state. It is also known as prebender companies. Companies that operate thanks to the arrangements they have with the State, without the pressure of the institutions of capitalism: competition, rules, etc. And yes, the people who think "it's capitalism anyways" don't realize this fact.
- hybrids 7y ago
  "Corporatism," "corporatocracy," "crony capitalism," etc. are right-wing buzzwords intended to piggyback on the contemporary resurgence in capital-critical thought, esp. after Occupy and more recently with Trump. The issue is that "corporatism" is less of a theory and more just an echo of the same things libertarians have been saying for many years: to libertarians, the state and its relationship to capital looks "accidental" and seeks to return to an Adam Smith-era of development that you can't actually turn back to. To Marxists the construction of the state (the 1848 moment) was unconscious but happened for a reason - new contradictions in society emerged, creating a bourgeois necessity for a state to "keep order" as it were, to "destroy capitalism" in the name of preserving capitalism. As capitalism's contradiction translates from one position to the other, the apparent relationship of the state to capital seems to ebb and flow in ways without getting to the actual root of the manner - both market liberalization and Keynesian state intervention can appear valid in capitalism. What you call "corporatism" - the apparent abject deterioration of capitalism - Lenin called "imperialism" or "the monopoly stage of capitalism" a century prior, and he correctly pointed out that it was an an actual inevitability of capitalism due to the heightened concentration of capital.
  - meerita 7y ago
    I call corporativisim or prebendary, to those non-capitalists forms of enterprises, where some intermediaries ally with goverments. People always cite these examples when they want to point out about capitalism, but they're totally wrong about it. That's not capitalism, that's just another form of socialism where the State is not yet deep root in it and they're buying time while others profit, until everything is owned by the state "in favor of the people".
    - hybrids 7y ago
      Socialism is not "the state doing things" or "state intervention" or "state ownership." Of course these can be aspects of an implementation of socialism, but they are not socialism in itself - the "how" and "why" actually matters. This is a conflation that historically came to prominence during the Cold War to make the difference between capitalism and socialism "digestible." Even young modern socialists believe this now, no longer understanding socialism as a historical tendency towards emancipation, which attests to the current pitiful state of the Left. You want actual evidence of what actual major socialist thinkers thought of the state during the time when socialism was most relevant, read Marx's 18th Brumaire or read Lenin's State and Revolution and come to your own conclusions.
      - meerita 7y ago
        I've read Marx, Engels and other marxists. Socialism is the phase 1 that any goverment must implement in order to achieve the proletary ditactorship and after that, achieve communism utopia. Once people is molded into one single line of thoughs, objectives and all property will be abolished through destruction or State ownership, after all that, as Marx said, the human would become interestless to the point it will never think for itself. Absurd. They've concluded that Phase 1 is needed, without questioning, and using force by all means, even killing people, lying or forcing into slavery. Lenin also said this in several publications: > “We should have taken to arms more resolutely, energetically and aggressively; we should have explained to the masses that it was impossible to confine things to a peaceful strike and that a fearless and relentless armed fight was necessary. And now we must at last openly and publicly admit that political strikes are inadequate; we must carry on the widest agitation among the masses in favour of an armed uprising and make no attempt to obscure this question by talk about "preliminary stages", or to befog it in any way. We would be deceiving both ourselves and the people if we concealed from the masses the necessity of a desperate, bloody war of extermination, as the immediate task of the coming revolutionary action. The problem with socialists states is, they cannot plan everything, so they rely on the worst corporativism or prebendary, and that is not capitalism, not the classic view, not the modern one. Young people of today is so fooled that they wear a rainbow shirt with the face of Che Guevara. Capitalism is not perfect, but it is the best system we know and the only system who took the entire population of earth out of poverty.
Excel_Wizard 7y ago
How would you propose organizing society such that it is environmentally sustainable?
esarbe 7y ago
Don't know why this is getting downvoted. This is Marx's core definition of Capitalism; the ability to buy and sell labour, employment of wage labour and accumulation of capital. That means that those who own the means of production extract more value from those who labour than what they pay for that labour. That's Capitalism. 'Rent taking' is missing, that's no reason for a downvote.
- hybrids 7y ago
  Adam Smith observed rent-seeking in his own time, and had some harsh words to say about it (first volume of Wealth of Nations) "The ability to buy and sell labor" is not really part of Marx's definition of capitalism - while LTV is important to Marxism, Marx's critique was that LTV is no longer clear because of Capital. Anti-marxists like to try and disprove LTV because it's the first thing in Das Kapital but they miss the point completely (Marx got it from Smith anyway).
  - claudiawerner 7y ago
    >"The ability to buy and sell labor" is not really part of Marx's definition of capitalism It absolutely is, and that's part of what distinguishes the capitalist mode of production from any other. Marx speaks of the "double freedom" workers under capitalism must have. Liberal property relations are what allows capitalism to survive, and free trade in labour is its precondition.
    - hybrids 7y ago
      The selling of labor applies more to the greater bourgeois revolution (or humanity in general aspiring to it) than capitalism specifically (which is what the bourgeois revolution evolved to). This is why "people selling their labor" appears true for Adam Smith prior the state (and capitalism in general, in spite of what so many people think about Smith's time) being really formed; for Marx and Engels, capitalism truly was there into existence with the rise of the state - (Lenin identifies it thus as "special bodies of armed men"), and this is why the repurposement and eventual "withering away" of the state becomes so important to Marxist theory. LTV leads to capital, but then it became distorted by capital. Capitalism became "locked in" once you had a new public entity to arise and preside over the growing clash between the classes (which were newly formed). Lenin gives a detailed analysis of Marx & Engels on this point in the first chapter of State & Revolution.

meerita 7y ago

Is not capitalism what you mention. It's called Corporatism, the theory and practice of organizing society into "corporations" subordinate to the state. It is also known as prebender companies. Companies that operate thanks to the arrangements they have with the State, without the pressure of the institutions of capitalism: competition, rules, etc. And yes, the people who think "it's capitalism anyways" don't realize this fact.

hybrids 7y ago
"Corporatism," "corporatocracy," "crony capitalism," etc. are right-wing buzzwords intended to piggyback on the contemporary resurgence in capital-critical thought, esp. after Occupy and more recently with Trump. The issue is that "corporatism" is less of a theory and more just an echo of the same things libertarians have been saying for many years: to libertarians, the state and its relationship to capital looks "accidental" and seeks to return to an Adam Smith-era of development that you can't actually turn back to. To Marxists the construction of the state (the 1848 moment) was unconscious but happened for a reason - new contradictions in society emerged, creating a bourgeois necessity for a state to "keep order" as it were, to "destroy capitalism" in the name of preserving capitalism. As capitalism's contradiction translates from one position to the other, the apparent relationship of the state to capital seems to ebb and flow in ways without getting to the actual root of the manner - both market liberalization and Keynesian state intervention can appear valid in capitalism. What you call "corporatism" - the apparent abject deterioration of capitalism - Lenin called "imperialism" or "the monopoly stage of capitalism" a century prior, and he correctly pointed out that it was an an actual inevitability of capitalism due to the heightened concentration of capital.
- meerita 7y ago
  I call corporativisim or prebendary, to those non-capitalists forms of enterprises, where some intermediaries ally with goverments. People always cite these examples when they want to point out about capitalism, but they're totally wrong about it. That's not capitalism, that's just another form of socialism where the State is not yet deep root in it and they're buying time while others profit, until everything is owned by the state "in favor of the people".
  - hybrids 7y ago
    Socialism is not "the state doing things" or "state intervention" or "state ownership." Of course these can be aspects of an implementation of socialism, but they are not socialism in itself - the "how" and "why" actually matters. This is a conflation that historically came to prominence during the Cold War to make the difference between capitalism and socialism "digestible." Even young modern socialists believe this now, no longer understanding socialism as a historical tendency towards emancipation, which attests to the current pitiful state of the Left. You want actual evidence of what actual major socialist thinkers thought of the state during the time when socialism was most relevant, read Marx's 18th Brumaire or read Lenin's State and Revolution and come to your own conclusions.
    - meerita 7y ago
      I've read Marx, Engels and other marxists. Socialism is the phase 1 that any goverment must implement in order to achieve the proletary ditactorship and after that, achieve communism utopia. Once people is molded into one single line of thoughs, objectives and all property will be abolished through destruction or State ownership, after all that, as Marx said, the human would become interestless to the point it will never think for itself. Absurd. They've concluded that Phase 1 is needed, without questioning, and using force by all means, even killing people, lying or forcing into slavery. Lenin also said this in several publications: > “We should have taken to arms more resolutely, energetically and aggressively; we should have explained to the masses that it was impossible to confine things to a peaceful strike and that a fearless and relentless armed fight was necessary. And now we must at last openly and publicly admit that political strikes are inadequate; we must carry on the widest agitation among the masses in favour of an armed uprising and make no attempt to obscure this question by talk about "preliminary stages", or to befog it in any way. We would be deceiving both ourselves and the people if we concealed from the masses the necessity of a desperate, bloody war of extermination, as the immediate task of the coming revolutionary action. The problem with socialists states is, they cannot plan everything, so they rely on the worst corporativism or prebendary, and that is not capitalism, not the classic view, not the modern one. Young people of today is so fooled that they wear a rainbow shirt with the face of Che Guevara. Capitalism is not perfect, but it is the best system we know and the only system who took the entire population of earth out of poverty.

Excel_Wizard 7y ago

How would you propose organizing society such that it is environmentally sustainable?

esarbe 7y ago

Don't know why this is getting downvoted. This is Marx's core definition of Capitalism; the ability to buy and sell labour, employment of wage labour and accumulation of capital. That means that those who own the means of production extract more value from those who labour than what they pay for that labour. That's Capitalism. 'Rent taking' is missing, that's no reason for a downvote.

hybrids 7y ago
Adam Smith observed rent-seeking in his own time, and had some harsh words to say about it (first volume of Wealth of Nations) "The ability to buy and sell labor" is not really part of Marx's definition of capitalism - while LTV is important to Marxism, Marx's critique was that LTV is no longer clear because of Capital. Anti-marxists like to try and disprove LTV because it's the first thing in Das Kapital but they miss the point completely (Marx got it from Smith anyway).
- claudiawerner 7y ago
  >"The ability to buy and sell labor" is not really part of Marx's definition of capitalism It absolutely is, and that's part of what distinguishes the capitalist mode of production from any other. Marx speaks of the "double freedom" workers under capitalism must have. Liberal property relations are what allows capitalism to survive, and free trade in labour is its precondition.
  - hybrids 7y ago
    The selling of labor applies more to the greater bourgeois revolution (or humanity in general aspiring to it) than capitalism specifically (which is what the bourgeois revolution evolved to). This is why "people selling their labor" appears true for Adam Smith prior the state (and capitalism in general, in spite of what so many people think about Smith's time) being really formed; for Marx and Engels, capitalism truly was there into existence with the rise of the state - (Lenin identifies it thus as "special bodies of armed men"), and this is why the repurposement and eventual "withering away" of the state becomes so important to Marxist theory. LTV leads to capital, but then it became distorted by capital. Capitalism became "locked in" once you had a new public entity to arise and preside over the growing clash between the classes (which were newly formed). Lenin gives a detailed analysis of Marx & Engels on this point in the first chapter of State & Revolution.