資本主義已經途窮，前路通往何方？（三）_風聞

美國社會主義雜誌《每月評論》網站2月1日刊登俄勒岡大學社會學教授約翰·貝拉米·福斯特文章《資本主義失敗了，接下來呢？》，由於篇幅較長分為三部分，今天推送第三部分：“路在何方？”

點擊此處閲讀第一部分

點擊此處閲讀第二部分：資本主義的失敗與新自由主義

文：John Bellamy Foster

譯：由冠羣

馬克思主義歷史學家艾瑞克·霍布斯鮑姆在他的《極端的年代：1914～1991》一書中指出，有理由擔心，在新世紀人類面臨的威脅可能比之前的“極端的年代”更大。20世紀爆發了兩次世界大戰，帝國主義衝突不斷，經濟蕭條接二連三，人類頭一遭面臨着自我毀滅的危險。然而，霍布斯鮑姆在展望未來時總結道，新世紀（和新千年）將帶來更大的危機。

霍布斯鮑姆在1994年評論道：

“資本主義發展主導了過去兩三個世紀，隨之而來的經濟和科技巨大進步顛覆和改造了我們所生活的世界。我們知道，或者至少可以合理的假設：資本主義不能無窮無盡地發展下去。未來不會僅僅是過去的延續，外部和內部跡象都顯示，我們已經達到了歷史性危機的臨界點。科技經濟所產生的力量現在足以破壞我們生存的環境，摧毀人類生存的物質基礎。我們正在繼承了前人對社會的侵蝕，即將破壞人類社會本身的結構，甚至包括資本主義經濟賴以存在的一些社會基礎。我們的世界既有外爆的危險，也有內爆的危險（譯註：外爆是一種現代性過程，指商品生產、科學技術、國家疆界、資本等不斷擴張，以及社會、話語和價值的不斷分化；內爆則是消除所有的界限，地域區隔或差異的後現代性過程）。這種狀況必須改變。

“我們不知道要去往何方，只知道把歷史把我們帶到了當前的節點上，以及——如果你認同本書觀點的話——為什麼會走到這個地步。然而，有一件事是顯而易見的。如果人類要走向清晰可辨的未來，就不能只是延續過去或現在。如果我們試圖在現有基礎上建設第三個千年，那我們終將失敗。而失敗的代價，即維持社會一成不變的後果，是黑暗的深淵。”

霍布斯鮑姆毫不含糊地指出目前的主要危險是“對市場經濟的神學信仰，堅信在無限競爭的條件下，全部資源都應由完全不受限制的市場分配”，而分配行為的主體則是越來越集中化的大型企業。這個制度最大的風險是“可能對這個星球的自然環境，包括屬於自然環境一部分的人類種羣，造成不可逆轉的災難性後果。”

霍布斯鮑姆的立場在當時受到了嚴厲批評，即便許多左翼人士也不贊同他的觀點，認為他對資本主義發展進程過於“悲觀”。然而今天看來，很明顯他的評論切中了要害，因為他當時擔憂的情況今天更加明顯。饒是如此，富裕國家的左派知識分子仍然很少能夠以如此現實的態度直面資本主義制度的失敗——哪怕經過新自由主義數十年肆虐，經濟停滯、金融化、不平等加劇和環境惡化等種種惡果早已顯露出來。一種常見的回應是搬出波蘭尼的“雙重運動”理論，即一個神話般的能自我調節的市場化社會將不可避免地引發防禦性運動來保護社會和環境。這使人們把希望寄託於鐘擺向回擺動，產生一個更積極的自由主義或社會民主主義社會。這種理論使人產生一種信念，即通過迴歸受管制的資本主義（regulated capitalism）可以彌補不受管制的資本主義（unregulated capitalism）的失敗，也就是進入新的凱恩斯主義時代——在這些人眼裏，歷史彷彿是停滯的。

寄希望於這種雙重運動的人，實際上是在四個方面否認現實。首先，只有在西方受到社會主義社會的威脅並且工會力量持續施壓時，社會民主才得以出現和存續，一旦前兩者消失，社會民主便立刻褪色。第二，今天的新自由主義高度內嵌於資本主義制度，已經進入壟斷-金融資本主義階段，工業-資本占主導地位的早期資本主義階段已經一去不復返了，而那卻是凱恩斯經濟學的基礎。第三，西方社會民主在實踐中依賴於帝國主義體系，而後者踐踏了人類絕大多數成員的利益。第四，自由主義民主國家與所謂開明的、願意與勞工階層達成社會協議的主導型工業資產階級，在很大程度上已經成為一種歷史陳跡，其社會結構基礎現在幾乎已經消失殆盡。

在這種情況下，即使是社會民主主義政黨掌權並承諾在資本主義制度框架內進行改造，使資本主義更仁慈、更温和，他們也會不可避免的受制於資本主義當前階段的運行規律。正如邁克爾·耶茨在資本主義失敗的背景下所寫的：“工會和政黨曾經取得了一番經濟和政治成就，但今天我們實在無法相信社會還能朝那個方向哪怕邁出一小步。”

在所謂的自由主義左派當中，某些人採取了一種寬泛的技術-現代化方式來看待問題，在很大程度上忽視了社會關係。在他們看來，數字技術、社會工程和明智的自由化管理將主導一切，這是一種隱晦的技術決定論。這些思想家認為，新自由主義的資本主義絕對論確實會導致無盡的災難，但資本主義是可以被改造的，它可能會從頂層以自上而下的方式進行改造以適應任何緊急情況，甚至會放棄利潤和資本積累來順應當前的技術必要性。這種觀點認為，資本主義制度最終只會剩下由企業和市場組成的骨骼，再也沒有任何階級或者貪念，從而成為提高效率的引擎。

長篇報告《增長的極限》作者之一喬爾根·蘭德斯在他2012年預測未來40年的《2052年》一書中提出，本世紀中葉出現的“改良資本主義（modified capitalism）”將是“一個把集體福祉置於個人獲益之上的制度”。改良資本主義將獲得由技術官僚主持的“明智政府”的指導，其特徵是“民主和市場自由的成分較少”。儘管蘭德斯預計主要經濟大國將經歷40年的經濟停滯，而“其餘國家”將繼續陷於貧窮，但他不肯直接承認資本主義制度的失敗，而是認為此類問題與他心目中2052年的世界沒有什麼關係。他預測，未來最可能出現的情況是當代資本主義世界的升級版，它或許會有更多現實限制，但會變得更高效和更可持續。

然而，在此書付梓僅七年之後，已經可以看出蘭德斯的預測在各個方面都是錯誤的。當今世界面臨的形勢在性質上比2012年更為嚴峻，當時甚至許多左翼人士都認為可以採取漸進式的、技術官僚式的辦法解決氣候變化問題，而且當時自由民主國家顯得非常穩定。今天，在氣候變化加劇、經濟持續停滯、政治動盪和地緣政治日益失穩的時代背景下，世界面臨的挑戰顯然比蘭德斯等進步主義生態現代化論者預期的更具有災難性和劃時代意義。我們現在面臨的抉擇要艱難的多。

實際上，任何言之鑿鑿的預言，尤其是那些僅僅延伸當前趨勢，卻不把人類社會大多數成員和他們的鬥爭考慮在未來之內的預言，統統會遭到歷史的嘲笑。因此，採用辯證法看待問題才顯得如此重要。歷史發展的實際路線是無法預測的。在歷史變遷當中，唯一確定的事是鬥爭的存在，是它驅動着歷史前進並保持其間斷性特點。內爆和外爆最終都會不可避免地成為現實，使新一代人繼承的世界不同於舊一代人。歷史上曾有過很多社會制度，其社會關係的適應能力達到了極限，無法合理且可持續地利用發展中的生產力。因此人類歷史不乏社會倒退時期，繼之而起的則是席捲一切的革命性加速。正如19世紀保守主義歷史學家雅各布·布克哈特所宣稱的那樣，“當一場危機觸及社會的方方面面，牽涉到整個時代以及同一個文明內部的所有人或很多人時，便會造成歷史性危機。”歷史進程以一種可怕的方式突然加速。原本需要幾百年才能完成的過程如同幽靈般在幾個月或者幾周的時間內便一掠而過。布克哈特將這個現象稱作“歷史進程的加速”。

布克哈特主要考慮的是社會革命，比如1789年的法國大革命。根據法國現代歷史學家喬治·勒費弗爾的闡釋，法國大革命是對歷史的加速，它最初是一系列以駭人速度變異，並不斷擴大的革命，從貴族革命到資產階級革命，再到大眾革命，再到農民革命，最終呈現出歷史性的“集團、單一體”特徵，彷彿無法征服。法國大革命極大改寫了世界歷史。

21世紀能否迎來一場規模遠比法國大革命還要宏大的革命性歷史加速？世界帝國主義體系中霸權國家的大多數建制派評論員都會根據自己狹隘的經驗和有限的歷史觀來否認這一可能。然而，革命持續在世界體系邊緣爆發，至今只是暫時受到帝國主義經濟、政治和軍事幹預行為的鎮壓。當下資本主義在全球範圍內的失敗威脅着我們認識中的全部文明和生命。如果不進行重大改變，全球温度將在本世紀內較前工業時代上升4至6攝氏度，這將會危及全人類的生存條件。同時，現在的極端資本主義正試圖徵用和圈佔物質存在的一切基礎，吸乾幾乎全部的社會淨盈餘，為極少數人的直接利益而對自然環境進行掠奪。

資本主義社會關係的直接結果是，人類現在面臨的物質挑戰比以往任何時候都要大，這意味着隨着資本的積累，災難也在積累。在這種情況下，幾億人被迫與這個制度展開鬥爭，為世界範圍內一場全新的社會主義運動奠定了基礎。耶茨在《工人階級能改變世界嗎？》一書中這樣回答道：“是的，它可以”。但要改變世界，工人和人民必須團結起來，為真正的社會主義事業而共同奮鬥。有人可能會反對，説社會主義道路已經被嘗試過了，走不通，因此不再是一種可選方案。但正如中世紀晚期某些最早嘗試資本主義的意大利城邦一樣，它們還沒有強大到足以在封建社會的包圍下生存。同樣，社會主義最初試驗的失敗也説明不了什麼，經過檢討和吸取教訓，社會主義最終會以一種新的、更具革命性的、更具普適性的形式重生。即使歷史上社會主義遭遇了失敗，它有一點仍然比資本主義有優勢：它的動機來自對“一般自由”的需求，這種需求根植於實質性平等和人類可持續發展，它準確反映了集體性社會關係，承載着歷史必然性以及人類對自由的不懈鬥爭，對我們這個時代的人類生存至關重要。

偉大的保守主義經濟學家約瑟夫·熊彼特是奧地利“紅色維也納”時期的財政部長，他一度與社會主義政府結盟卻發現自己面臨來自各方的攻擊，他曾寫道，資本主義滅亡的原因不來自“經濟失敗的重壓”，而來自它在追求狹隘經濟利益時的“異常成功”，因為這種成功會破壞其賴以存在的社會學基礎。熊彼特驚呼，資本主義“不可避免地創造了一些條件，而這些條件將使它無法生存，並鮮明地指向社會主義作為其接班人。”事實證明，熊彼特在許多方面説對了，儘管事情並沒有完全按他預期的方式發生。壟斷資本主義和經濟金融化在全球的蔓延是以新自由主義為先導的，新自由主義的誕生最初是對戰間期“紅色維也納”（當時熊彼特曾扮演過重要角色）的反革命回應，如今它破壞着資本主義本身乃至全球社會和生態環境的物質基礎。其結果是導致當前社會的主流秩序遭到“幾乎普遍的敵視”，儘管在目前混亂的語境下，這種敵視與其説是針對資本主義，不如説是針對新自由主義。

資本主義破壞了人類生存的基礎，最終迫使全世界的工人和人民尋找新的前進道路。本世紀一場全納的（inclusive）、以階級為基礎的社會主義運動將為全新的發展帶來可能性。這是以壟斷競爭、極端不平等和制度化貪婪為特徵的資本主義-市場社會造成的無政府狀態所不能提供的。這一運動還包括髮展社會主義技術，無論是技術的形式還是它要達到的目的都是為全社會服務的，而不是為了個人和階級謀取私利。它有希望讓社會各階層參與進行長期民主規劃，跳出金錢關係的邏輯進行決策和分配。最徹底的社會主義要實現實質平等、社羣團結，以及生態可持續性；其目的是勞動合作，而不是簡單的勞動分工。

一旦以可持續的人類發展（sustainable human development）——即不根據交換價值，而是以使用價值和人類真實需要為基礎——來衡量歷史進步，現在看似封閉的未來就以無數種方式重新開放，產生全新的、更重質量的和集體的發展形式。這體現在人類可以採取的各種必要的切實措施當中，但在當前的生產方式下它們被完全排除在外。現在導致我們無法民主地控制投資，所有人的基本需要——包括清潔的空氣和水、食品、衣物、住房、教育、醫療、交通和有用的工作——無法得到滿足的原因，不是客觀條件不允許，或者經濟沒有盈餘（其實大部分財富都被浪費掉了）。導致我們無法在生態上邁出必要的一步、向可持續能源轉型的原因，不是我們缺少技術訣竅或物質手段。導致我們無法組建屬於工人和人民的“新的英特耐雄耐爾”，並依靠它與資本主義、帝國主義和戰爭作鬥爭的原因，不是人性存在固有的分歧。所有這一切都在我們力所能及的範圍內，但需要我們採用與資本主義背道而馳的邏輯。

卡爾·馬克思寫道：“人類始終只提出自己能夠解決的任務，因為只要仔細考察就可以發現，任務本身，只有在解決它的物質條件已經存在或者至少是在生成過程中的時候，才會產生。”當今壟斷-金融資本主義造成了巨大的浪費和過剩，通訊手段的發展允許人類進行更大規模的協調、規劃和民主行動，這表明世界一旦擺脱資本的束縛，將有無數條道路通往一個實質性平等和生態可持續的未來。

我們面臨的危機需要用社會的和生態的方法去解決。這就要求人類在聯合控制下，對人與自然之間的新陳代謝進行合理的調節，根據整個人類世代發展的需要，重啓並維持健康的、地方的、地區的和全球的生態系統（以及物種棲息地）的流動、循環和其他重要過程。歷史上人類行動的主要動力來自以鬥爭爭取自由和掌控我們與世界的關係。要實現人類的自由就需要平等和共同體；而要掌控人類與世界的關係，則需要人類發展和可持續性。如果人類還想有未來，我們最終還是要依靠這些以集體進步為目標的鬥爭。

（全文完，略去原文註釋與引用共106條）

Capitalism Has Failed—What Next? (Part III)

What’s Next?

In his magisterial The Age of Extremes: A History of the World 1914–1991, Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, viewing the approach of the twenty-first century, indicated that there were reasons to be concerned that the new century might be even more threatening to humanity than the “age of extremes” that had preceded it, a century that had been punctuated by world wars, imperial conflicts, and economic depressions—and in which humanity was confronted for the first time with the possibility of its own self-annihilation. Yet, looking forward, he concluded, the new century (and millennium) offered even greater dangers.

“We live in a world,” Hobsbawm observed in 1994,

uprooted and transformed by the titanic economic and the techno-scientific process of the development of capitalism, which has dominated the past two or three centuries. We know, or at least it is reasonable to suppose, that it cannot go on ad infinitum. The future cannot be a continuation of the past, and there are signs, both externally, and, as it were, internally, that we have reached a point of historic crisis. The forces generated by the techno-scientific economy are now great enough to destroy the environment, that is to say, the material foundations of human life. The structures of human societies themselves, including even some of the social foundations of the capitalist economy, are on the point of being destroyed by the erosion of what we have inherited from the human past. Our world risks both explosion and implosion. It must change.

We do not know where we are going. We only know that history has brought us to this point and—if readers share the argument of this book—why. However, one thing is plain. If humanity is to have a recognizable future, it cannot be by prolonging the past or the present. If we try to build the third millennium on that basis, we shall fail. And the price of failure, that is to say, the alternative to a changed society, is darkness.85

Hobsbawm left little doubt as to what the principal danger was at present, namely “the theological faith in an economy in which resources were allocated entirely by the totally unrestricted market, under conditions of unlimited competition,” carried out by evermore-concentrated corporations. Chief among the dangers of such a system was the likelihood of “irreversible and catastrophic consequences for the natural environment of this planet, including the human race which is part of it.”86

Hobsbawm’s position was roundly criticized at the time, even by many on the left, as overly “pessimistic” with regard to the course of capitalist development.87 Today, however, a quarter-century later, it is clear that he hit the mark, as the concerns that he voiced then are even more evident today. Nevertheless, such realism in approaching the failure of capitalism in our time is still rare on the part of left intellectuals in the wealthy countries, even in the face of decades of neoliberal assault combined with economic stagnation, financialization, growing inequality, and environmental decline. One common response is to refer to Polanyi’s notion of a double movement, in which the recurring myth of a self-regulating market society inevitably gives rise to defensive movements to protect society and the environment.88 This has fed the hope that the pendulum will swing back again, leading to a more affirmative-style liberalism or social democracy. This sustains the belief that the failures of unregulated capitalism can be countered by a return to regulated capitalism, a new Keynesian age—as if history had stood still.

Pinning hopes on a double movement of this kind, however, denies four material realities. First, social democracy came about and persisted only as long as the threat of actually existing socialist societies was present and union strength endured, and faded immediately with the demise of both. Second, neoliberalism today is ingrained in capitalism itself, in the phase of monopoly-financial capital. The earlier age of industrial-capital dominance, on which Keynesian economics was based, is now gone. Third, social democracy was in practice reliant on an imperialist system that was opposed to the interests of the vast majority of humankind. Fourth, the liberal-democratic state and the dominance of a purportedly enlightened industrial-capitalist class willing to engage in a social accord with labor is largely a relic of the past, with its structural bases having all but disappeared.

Even when social democratic parties come to power in these circumstances, promising to work within the system and create a kinder and gentler capitalism, they invariably fall prey to the laws of motion of capitalism in this phase. As Michael Yates writes, in the context of a failed capitalism: “Today, it is impossible to believe that there will be a recovery of even the modest political and economic project that labor unions and political parties once embraced and helped bring to fruition.”89

On the so-called liberal-left, some have adopted a broad technological-modernization approach, largely disregarding social relations. Here, in an implicit technological determinism, digital technology, social engineering, and wise liberal management are expected to reign supreme. It is true, such thinkers argue, that the capitalist absolutism of neoliberalism points to unending disaster. But capitalism can be altered, presumably from above, to fit any exigency, even the sidelining of profits and accumulation, conforming to current technological imperatives. What will remain of the system, in this conception, will be the bare frames of corporations and markets now devoid of any class or acquisitive drive, mere engines of efficiency.

As Jørgen Randers, one of the original Limits to Growth authors, declares in 2052—his forecast (in 2012) of the world society forty years into the future—that the “modified capitalism” that will emerge mid–point in this century “will be a system wherein collective well-being is set above the return of the individual.” Modified capitalism will be subject to the guidance of “wise government,” directed by technocrats, while being characterized by “less democracy and less market freedom.” Rather than directly facing up to the failures of capitalism—though he projects forty years of economic stagnation for the major economic powers and continued poverty in the “rest of the world”—Randers sees such questions as largely irrelevant to his vision of the world in 2052. The dominant reality, he predicts, will be a more efficient and sustainable, if more physically constrained, version of the present-day capitalist world.90

Yet, in the barely seven years since his book was written, it is already clear that Randers’s predictions were wrong in every respect. The situation confronting the world is qualitatively more serious than it was in 2012, at a time when gradualist, technocratic solutions to climate change still seemed feasible to many even among those on the left and when the liberal-democratic state appeared perfectly stable. Today, in the context of accelerated climate change, continuing economic stagnation, political upheaval, and growing geopolitical instability, it is clear that the challenges that the world is facing will be both more cataclysmic and epoch-making than progressive ecological modernizers like Randers envisioned. The choices confronting us are now much harder.

Indeed, history has been unkind to all such attempts to provide detailed forecasts of the future, particularly if they simply extend current trends and leave the bulk of humanity and their struggles out of the picture. It is for this reason that a dialectical view is so important. The actual course of history can never be predicted. The only thing certain about historical change is the existence of the struggles that drive it forward and that guarantee its discontinuous character. Both implosions and explosions inevitably materialize, rendering the world for new generations different than that of the old. History points to numerous social systems that have reached the limits of their ability to adapt their social relations to allow for the rational and sustainable use of developing productive forces. Hence, the human past is dotted by periods of regression, followed by revolutionary accelerations that sweep all before them. As the conservative historian Jacob Burckhardt declared in the nineteenth century, “a historical crisis” occurs when “a crisis in the whole state of things is produced, involving whole epochs and all or many peoples of the same civilization.… The historical process is suddenly accelerated in terrifying fashion. Developments which otherwise take centuries seem to flit by like phantoms in months or weeks, and are fulfilled.” He called this the “acceleration of historical processes.”91

Burckhardt principally had in mind social revolutions, like the French Revolution of 1789. This was an acceleration of history that, as the modern French historian Georges Lefebvre explained, commenced as a series of widening revolutions, mutating with terrifying speed, from an aristocratic revolution to a bourgeois revolution to a popular revolution and then a peasant revolution—finally taking on the character of a historic “bloc, a single thing,” seemingly unconquerable, which reshaped much of world history.92

Could such a revolutionary acceleration of history, though on an incomparably greater scale, happen in the twenty-first century? Most establishment commentators in the hegemonic countries of the world imperialist system would say no, based on their own narrow experience and limited view of history. Nevertheless, revolutions continue to break out in the periphery of the world system and are, even now, only put down by imperialist economic, political, and military interventions. Moreover, the failure of capitalism on a planetary scale today threatens all of civilization and life on the planet as we know it. If drastic changes are not made, global temperature this century will increase by 4° or even 6°C from preindustrial times, leading to conditions that will imperil humankind as a whole. Meanwhile, the extreme capitalism of today seeks to expropriate and enclose all the bases of material existence, siphoning off almost the entire net social surplus and robbing the natural environment for the direct benefit of a miniscule few.

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As a direct result of capitalist social relations, the material challenges now facing humanity are greater than anything ever seen before, pointing to an accumulation of catastrophe along with the accumulation of capital.93 Hundreds of millions of people under these circumstances are already being drawn into struggles with the system, creating the basis of a new worldwide movement toward socialism. In his book Can the Working Class Change the World? Yates answers yes, it can. But it can only do so through a unifying struggle by workers and peoples aimed at genuine socialism.94

It may be objected that socialism has been tried and has failed and hence no longer exists as an alternative. However, like the earliest attempts at capitalism in the Italian city-states of the late Middle Ages, which were not strong enough to survive amongst the feudal societies that surrounded them, the failure of the first experiments at socialism presage nothing but its eventual rebirth in a new, more revolutionary, more universal form, which examines and learns from the failures.95 Even in failure, socialism has this advantage over capitalism: it is motivated by the demand for “freedom in general,” rooted in substantive equality and sustainable human development—reflecting precisely those collective social relations, borne of historical necessity and the unending struggle for human freedom, crucial to human survival in our time.96

The great conservative economist Joseph Schumpeter, who, as Austrian finance minister in Red Vienna, had allied himself for a time with the socialist government and found himself attacked on all sides, once wrote that capitalism would perish not because of “the weight of economic failure,” but rather because its “very success” in pursuing its narrow economic ends, had undermined the sociological foundations of its existence. Capitalism, Schumpeter exclaimed, “‘inevitably’ creates conditions in which it will not be able to live and which strongly point to socialism as its heir apparent.”97 He was, it turns out, in many ways correct, though not entirely in the way he expected. The global development of monopoly capitalism and financialization spearheaded by the very same counterrevolutionary neoliberalism that first arose in response to Red Vienna in the interwar years—at a time when Schumpeter himself was a major actor—has now undermined the material bases, not so much of capitalism itself, but of global society and planetary ecology. The result has been the emergence of an “atmosphere of almost universal hostility” to the prevailing social order, though, playing out in the confused context of the present, less as opposition to capitalism itself than to neoliberalism.98

It is capitalism’s undermining of the very basis of human existence that will eventually compel the world’s workers and peoples to seek new roads forward. An inclusive, class-based movement toward socialism in this century will open up the possibility of qualitative new developments that the anarchy of the capitalist-market society with its monopolistic competition, extreme inequality, and institutionalized greed cannot possibly offer.99 This includes the development of a socialist technology, in which both the forms of technology utilized and the purposes to which they are put are channeled in social directions, as opposed to individual and class gain.100 It introduces the prospect of long-term democratic planning at all levels of society, allowing decisions to be made and distributions to occur outside the logic of the cash nexus.101 Socialism, in its most radical form, is about substantive equality, community solidarity, and ecological sustainability; it is aimed at the unification—not simply division—of labor.

Once sustainable human development, rooted not in exchange values, but in use values and genuine human needs, comes to define historical advance, the future, which now seems closed, will open up in a myriad ways, allowing for entirely new, more qualitative, and collective forms of development.102 This can be seen in the kinds of needed practical measures that could be taken up, but which are completely excluded under the present mode of production. It is not physical impossibility, or lack of economic surplus, most of which is currently squandered, that stands in the way of the democratic control of investment, or the satisfaction of basic needs—clean air and water, food, clothing, housing, education, health care, transportation, and useful work—for all. It is not the shortage of technological know-how or of material means that prevents the necessary ecological conversion to more sustainable forms of energy.103 It is not some inherent division of humanity that obstructs the construction of a New International of workers and peoples directed against capitalism, imperialism, and war.104 All of this is within our reach, but requires pursuing a logic that runs counter to that of capitalism.

Humanity, Karl Marx wrote, “inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation.”105 The very waste and excess of today’s monopoly-finance capitalism, together with the development of new means of communication that allow for greater human coordination, planning, and democratic action than ever before, suggest that there are countless paths forward to a world of substantive equality and ecological sustainability once the world is freed from the fetters of capital.106

The answers to the crises before us are both social and ecological. They require the rational regulation of the metabolism between human beings and nature under the control of associated humanity—regenerating and maintaining the flows, cycles, and other vital processes of healthy, local, regional, and global ecosystems (and species habitats)—in accord with the needs of the entire chain of human generations. The mainsprings of human action throughout history lie in the drive for human freedom and the struggle to master our relation to the world. The first of these ultimately demands equality and community; the second, human development and sustainability. It is on these struggles for collective advancement that we must ultimately rely if humanity is to have a future at all.

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