I'm always pleased to see arguments against capitalism,
an unjust travesty, a plague gone global, an immoral curse.

The most prescient point in this article is from Foster's book

"The immense danger now facing the human species ... is not due principally to the constraints of the natural environment, but arises from a deranged social system wheeling out of control, and more specifically US imperialism." (p 105)

Deranged it is; acceptance of state power over individual rights, rendition, torture, the multiple miseries of perpetual war, and the blind eye to open air massive theft.

But, Ghosh offered no solutions.
The u.s. government isn't broken, it's rotten to the core,
always has been, and its citizenry reflects it.

Paine and others thought government should be fluid, flexible to accommodate changing times and conditions to serve the people's needs.
The time is now to toss this mess into the garbage heap of history and start over.

Professor Ghosh,

Thank you for the courage to state the unthinkable. The irrational growth paradigm inherent in capitalism is at odds with reason and the realities of a finite resource base, as well as, a death sentence for the living planet. So, now, do we just vote this system out, legislating for generations, or is it important to radically and rapidly destroy this cancer?

"US imperialism" is too narrow. I believe China and India are rapidly becoming imperialist, now only by behind-the-scenes economic manipulation, but soon by more overt military threats and confrontation. The problem lies in the nature of capitalism, not in the special viciousness of the United States government. Ghosh forgets that China is now doing far more than the United States in fostering unsustainable policies of global economic expansion. Either leave out individual nations in describing the impact of capitalism on the world ecosystem or name the countries (all of them) that are raising havoc.

The economies of the developed and developing worlds have seen vast increases in worker productivity during the fourth quarter of the 20th century. Foremost was the introduction of the computer to the workplace, early in the fourth quarter of the 20th century cumbersome mainframes were added to the work environment of major corporations and these computers began to replace many of middle management’s functions. With the development of the Personal Computer in the last decade of the 20th century to route was on. PCs replaced virtually all of the functions of middle management excluding those of human relationships between management and the workforce.

Other technological advancements including the bar code scanner, communications technology like fax machines, cell phones, materials handling technology and robotics all served to increase worker productivity even more. Finally the internet revolutionized communications beyond the imaginations of all but a few science fiction writers.

Unlike the industrial innovations of earlier eras virtually all of the economic gains from increased worker productivity during the last quarter of the 20th century went to increased stock prices and huge increases in executive pay instead of increasing worker’s pay. This imbalance has created the huge gap in incomes now seen in most of the economies of the developed and developing world.

It is this imbalance of the fruits of technological advancements that capitalism and the governments of capitalistic nations have failed to address. The questions now become; will this imbalance be addressed within the existing system, or, will these imbalances lead to social pressures too great for the existing economic and governmental framework to cope with?

My guess, the latter, the current power structure will seek to maintain the status quo well beyond the point where social pressures will exceed the boiling point and massive social unrest will be unleashed within many of the developed societies of planet Earth; The outcome? You’re guess is as good as mine.

Switching to non-fossil fuels while keeping the auto and sprawl is a good example of a solution that is a waste of time due to Jevons' principle. On the other hand, free public transport, is a qualitative change that leads to the elimination of the auto and sprawl. For more, search on twitter for #freepubtrans.

The crux of the matter is straightforward: the logic of capitalism can no longer be permitted to guide our economies, and this logic must therefore be REPLACED. To understand what I mean by this, see the book and recent videos at needsandlimits.org. Academics like Dr. Ghosh, rather than giving us yet another jeremiad about our perilous situation, should be assisting in the development of these concepts.

John Foster Bellamy, by the way, has no clue about the way forward. He's highly articulate in his critique of capitalism, but his solution (socialism) is suffocatingly conventional. In his book "Marx's Ecology" he admitted that Marx largely ignored "nature's own wider evolution" (p. 114), but now that nature has evolved to the edge of collapse, Bellamy still supports Marx's political prescriptions. We need original thinkers, not erudite followers of dated dogmas.

Oops - John Bellamy Foster. Mea culpa.

On the role of capitalism in the current crisis:

Drosera – I would like to point out that there are different styles and stages of capitalism and though all have basic, unsurmountable contradictions in common, the social and ecological impacts are not the same.

European capitalism was gradually transformed from a cruel exploitation regime (witnessed by Marx in the second half of the 19th century) into a lighter, more benign version with some form of social and environmental responsibility, as the negotiating power shifted to unions and social-democratic governments. By contrast, in the US a witch-hunt for “communists” in the 1950s and later propaganda & PR-spin ensured that no social-democratic party ever saw the light of day (for Europeans, it is amazing how the word “socialist” still creates hysteria in the US media – i.e. health care “reform”) and today the US is a shocking example of a quasi-fascist corporatocracy.

Of course the reactionary measures of the corporate elites have also affected Europe. With an army of “think-tanks”, front groups and other influential “experts” they managed to turn the tide in the power relations between “labour & capital”: In the 1960s they plotted and schemed how to curtail the power of unions and left-wing governments and in the late 1970 they began their huge and successful societal transformation program with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan as the figureheads for the neoliberal counter-reformation.

The recipe is simple: first starve the government of taxes (tax-cuts for the rich and wealthy), deregulate everything (let the “market” do its magic, read: enable massive organized fraud and business oligarchies), reduce the state to a provider for “corporate welfare” (arms, energy, banking, etc.) and when the budget deficit soars, blame it on social expenditure and the incompetence of the “government” to run anything ...

Here in Europe, we have "pro-business”-parties and social democratic parties but in the US, there are ONLY business-parties ("with two right wings", as Noam Chomsky so aptly remarked)

US capitalism is the worst kind (especially since Milton Friedman) because it was never moderated by left-wing, social-democratic or green countermovements who demanded more social and economic justice and environmental responsibility. Social darwinism served as an excuse for a policy that increased inequality and wealth disparity by design ....

Another factor for the pathological development of US capitalism (and US foreign policy) is the strange concept of US exceptionalism (“manifest destiny”, “God’s own country”, “the greatest force for good” and other absurd self-delusional notions (which culminated in insane concepts like "Full Spectrum Dominance")

I read recently here on CD, that the latest Wall Street bonus (for one person) equals the average income of 500 American families, so not only were the productivity gains in other fields not distributed fairly (as “Madhoosier” rightly pointed out) but those who do not produce anything at all, who extract public wealth and run a virtual, global casino, get astronomical rewards for looting society.

The other huge problem of capitalist production is of course massive environmental destruction and exponential “growth” (waste of resources). As Evo Morales said in Kopenhagen, the root cause for the climate dilemma is capitalism because its artificial greed for resources, energy and money can never be satisfied.

Man-made production is embedded in an natural production system “(known as “nature”). Sustainable living systems are self-regulating and they must have an inbuilt limiting principle to avoid self-destruction. “Growth” is a biological term and means a (self-regulating) cycle of birth, maturity, ageing and death. Economic theory accepts no limits to growth and concerns itself only with capital and labour, “nature” – if mentioned at all, is regarded as “income” ... that is the great fallacy ..

Classical or neoclassical economic theory is – at closer inspection – really a load of BS because its premises are false (they do not work in the real world). But as often happens, humans (especially politicians and their “advisors”) are very unwilling to admit they have been following charlatans, crooks and liars and that the old recipes (more growth means more jobs, etc.) have been disproved many times ....What we are seeing is capitalism as a form of religion ...

We need not “only” a new economic paradigm (quality of life NOT growth and material abundance) but a new way of systemic thinking (we are a humble part of nature, not her ruler). Everything we do has repercussions in other parts of the living system we inhabit and the old way of doing business (empty-headed production and consumption patterns) is no longer feasable.

Nature (functioning ecosystems) is the basis for our lives, not the “economy”. (A simple, but forgotten truth)

The goals of production must be re-defined: endless growth (as in cancer) is madness and self-destructive; we must organize production according to ecological principles (highest possible energy- and material efficiency, practically no waste, etc.) but most importantly the following questions must be answered:

Who decides what is going to be produced?
What will the longterm environmental impacts be?
Who determines the direction of scientific research?
Who will profit / suffer from new technologies?
Who will gain enormous power by applying (patenting) a new technology?

http://www.etcgroup.org/upload/publication/687/03/etcgroupclimategenesfinal05_08.pdf

Who decides how our food is being produced?
Who is responsible for environmental damage and health risks?
What role do investors have in determining these crucial policies?
("venture capital", bank loans, the World Bank, the IMF, the treasury, etc?)
Can be become citizens again, not just passive consumers?
Can the political apathy and feeling of helplessness be overcome?

In ancient Greece the word “economy” meant production FOR USE not production FOR GAIN. The latter was considered “against nature” by Aristotle, and he was certainly right, don’t you think?

maybe all the communist flags flying everywhere soured the deal. Kind of hard to hide the real agenda with all that communism in everyone's face!

tocqueville22 - most excellent analysis. Indeed, as has been pointed out by many - Infinite Growth on a Finite Planet is just plain impossible. Assumption(0) of Capitalism is worse than stupid, it is pathological insanity