Less is More Flashcards
Arc of industrilisation
Relative harmony with nature, then rapid industrilization after the 1950’s
Jason Moore on development of human systems:
Not the anthropocene, but the Capitalocene.
What makes capitalism unique from fuedalism?
Not markets, but organising it around perpetual growth and profit motive “take more than you give back”.
Narrative of capitalism:
Homo economicus; we are inherently selfish and have a tendency to accumulate.
Outcome of feudalism downfall:
Elite dissatisfaction with disaccumulation; Conquistador Hernan Cortes killed 100k indigenous people in Mexico and destroyed Aztec capital, awarded kingdoms highest honor
Trade fuelling capitalism from Latin America:
100 million kg of silver exported from Andes across 300 years - equates to $165 trillion in todays money
What did excessive trade allow?
Surplus investment in industrial revolution - key raw materials like sugar and cotton.
How mines and plantations were operated:
4 million indigenous Americans enslaved, 15 million from Africa - if paid at US minimum wage, add up to 97 trillion dollars.
Britain extraction from India:
45 trillion bought Iron, Tar, and timber.c
Britain surplus imports from India:
Somewehre to absorb output, so destroyed self-suffcient economies to create workers and consuemrs dependent on capital for necessities like food and clothes
The issue with exporting surplus capital?
Much outside of Europe own artisanal industires, not importing things they could make themselves.
How did Colonisers solve the lack of capacity to export trade?
Assymetric trade rules to destroy South’s domestic industries, thus capitve to European markets of mass-produced goods: South’s manufacturing collapsed from 77% in 1750to 13% in 1900
Mechanisms of changing global majority industry:
Britain heavy tax/criminlization of Indian textile industry whilst flooding with cheap British clothing
Raw materials extracted from colonies, finished product sold back to colony for profit.
Seixure of communal lands for cash cropping/low paid labor, monocropping.
Enslavement, like Indian sugar plantations in Caribbean or trans-atlantic slave trade.
Colonial banks fuelling wealth to Europe; locked intro trade policies benfiting imperial powers.
How Colonial economy restructuring is seen in Climate?
Loans to global majoirty, increasing sovreign debt burdens amplified by Strucutral Adjustment Programs already imposed by IMF and World Bank - instead of providing reparations
Structural Adjustment Programs
IMF and World Bank imposed economic policies that open nations to free trade, government spending, privatization.
How does Climate Finance mirror colonial relationships?
Welath extracted from Global South in raw materials and labor, dependency on Western finance with forced economic restructuring.
Example of Neoliberalising through climate finance:
Argentina $45 IMF loan at COP26 - carbon taxation, subsidy removals, increasing energy costs for public.
How the Market ensured intesnified agriculture:
Land allocated on a productivity basis ‘temporary leases’ - intensified agriculture, not satisfying needs.
How John Locke defines Enclosure?
‘A process of theft from the commons, but justified because output increased ‘contribution to greater good’ - the conversion of common lands into private property
How are new rounds of enclosure and colonization justified today?
Development or growth, anything justified so long as GDP growth increases - article of faith that growth benefits humanity.
‘Artifical Scarcity’
The illusion of scarcity allows fuelling economic growth without actual depletion of resources.
How poverty has been viewed relative to capitalism?
Poverty is an essential precondition for industrialization
How colonisers have impoverished people to fuel growth?
Pressure Indian peasants to cash crops for export, unwilling to do so, so British imposed heavy taxation for debt, leaving them no choice.
British East India company dismantling of communal agrarianism:
Privatised irrigation systems, destroyed granaries: idea welfare systems made people lazy - accumstomed to easy food and leisure, thus destroying them, thus inducing hunger increasing yields on lands.
the ‘Late Victorian Holocaust’:
Last quarter of 19th century death of 30 million Indians of famine, despite peak of famine being surplus of food ie artificual scarcity.
The contradiction of history of capitalism:
Capitalism system such excessive material productivity yet marked by such scarcity.
James Maitland 8th Earl of Lauderdale hypothesis on scarcity:
Inverse relation between private riches and public wealth - monopolising abundant necessity resource to profit, makes private riches go up and public wealth go down (Lauderdale Paradox).
Common example of Lauderdale Paradox:
Salt tax from Britain to India - salt freely available, yet British made pay the right to do this.
Necessary Pre-conditions for rise of European capitalism:
Enclosure and Coloinsation creating mass of cheap labor and artificial scarcity.
What did Capitalism require for its inception?
A new story of nature - sepearte ourselves from it.
The human relationship with nature historically:
Animisim - interconnected with rest of nature, no fundamental distinction. thus moral code prevent exploitation.
When did the Animist worldview begin dissolving:
Rise of empires - gods make us in his image - Platonic ‘transcendental realm’ of Truth and Reality, the ideal essence of things, with the material world a poor imitation.
When did animism Revive?
Renaissance - material world animated, Earth a living and nurtuting ‘mother’ -
What is growth a process of:
Appropriation slave trade, colonization, enclosure, dispossession.
Technology and Growth:
Capitalism drives technological innovation, driving acceleration of growth: this only neables capital expansion/intensification.
Example of technological fuelling appropriation:
Invention of wind-powered pumps to drain Europe wetlands for agricultural expansion.
Faster iron smelting in blast furnances = more mining with more logging to fuel furnaces.
Fossil fuels and efficiency:
Single barrel of crude oil perform 1700Kwh of work, or 4.5 years of human labor - supercharged appropriation - deeper mining, trawlers for deep-sea fishing, tractors, combine harvesters.
How economies historically organised around ‘use-value’;
We go into shops and buy things that are useful to us: we use money to buy a commodity, for a function.
How does capitalism use the ‘use-value’?
The goal isn’t to fulfill a necessary function, but to make profit - exchange value not use value.
How does capitalism then self-propagate?
The profit is reinvested to expand production process to generate more of it.
Distinguishing capital-based companies:
A local comrestraunt makes enough to fulfill use’values, a corporation buys out competitors, expands companies, imperialising.
Conceptualising individuals within capitalism:
Subject to structural imperative for growth, CEO’s just willing cogs in a bigger mahcnie
Why are CEO’s subject to capitalism?
Investors require profit for interest, so where profit falls, investors abandon; companies put under pressure to do whatever to grow or lose to competitors.
Why do investors chase growth?
Capital loses value when it ‘sits still’, so pressure for growth, with the more capital accumulates, the more pressure builds up.
Compound Growth
Exponential growth when earnings from investment and reinvested.
Exemplify Compound Growth in capitalism:
3% annual growth rates means doubling every 23 years, or 20x by end of century.
How does Compound Growth become violent?
Hits barriers to growth like saturated markets or environmental protections, plunging into new sources of growth.
How does Compound Growth respond to barriers?
Fixes, like coloinsation, Enclosure movement, opium wars in China,
Analogise how dangerous Compound Growth is:
Current global economy 450 trillion, 4% increase on average will add 20 trillion, or 10x the wealth of all of Africa.
What does the compound growth drive?
Opioid crisis in US, beef companies in Amazon, arms companies lobbying against gun control, oil company climate denialism, retail firm aggressive advertising.
How infrastructure over last 500 years facilitates capital:
Limited liability, corporate personhood, stock markets, shareholder value rules, fractional reserve banking, credit ratings…
Why did the Great Depression fuel growth imperative of states?
Creation of GDP by Simon Kuznets to reveal monetary value of all goods and services - to intervene with whats going wrong in an economy.
Issue with GDP:
Tallies economic value regardless of its usefullness or destructivity: cutting down a forest increases GDP, if hospital visits rise, so does GDP
Doesn’t include necessities - food grown to feed self
Why did GDP become engrained as what it is?
WW2 shadowed Kuznets crtiques, required more aggressive versions of GDP - Bretton Woods Conferences enshrined GDP as indicator of economic progress.
How OECD changed GDP approach?
in 1960, top charter to promote policies designed to achieve the highest sustainable rate of economic growth’ - no longer output, focused on highest rate.
What did GDP overshadow?
Great depression policies to improve social outcomes - higher wages, labor unions, investment in public health/education, as better well-being meant better labor standards - less profit.
How GDP became an attack on working conditions?
Late 70’s Western economy slow down meant gutting labor laws and attacking unions to drive down wages, privatizing public assets previously off limits to capital(mines, railways, energy, water, healthcare) - creating opportunities for private investors
Post colonial economies:
Reversing colonial extractivism: tariffs and subsidies protecting domestic industries, improved labour standards and raising workers wages
How did developing nation growth hinder western ideology:
Lose access to cheap labor, raw materials, and captive markets
How did western powers intervene with growth in the Global South?
80’s debt crises, used creditor power (WB and IMF) to impose SAP across global south, liberalising the economies: destroying protective tariffs and capital controls, cutting wages, slashing social spending, privatizing public goods.
Outcomes of SAP’s on global majority:
Increased Western growth rates, enabling record profits for multinational companies.
What are global governments bound to?
Not to achieve adequate social protective output, but growth for the sake of growth.
Ultimately, what is GDP:
Indicatory of the welfare for capitalism, growth for the sake of growth.
The Productivity Trap
Labour productivity increases, thus fewer workers, thus unemployment, homelessness, poverty - generate more growth for more jobs
Social Service government Traps:
Invest in public healthcare, tax the rich, moneyed interests, thus growth.
Debt Trap
Finance activities by borrowing money using bonds with interest(compound function), to payback requires revenue, more growth.
Cant pay debts, slash barriers to growth like labor laws, environmental protections, capital controls.
Implications of these traps:
Growth is an imperative, we’re all hostage - cant survive without it.
