[Van-Parecon] ParEcon & the Environment: an interview with Robin Hahnel

[vancouverparecon at resist.ca]

Hello,

We'd like to bring your attention to our latest feature, "Participatory
Economics & the Environment": an interview with Robin Hahnel. This is a
four part series, four questions and four answers. We will e-mail one part
each week over the next four weeks. Or, you can skip ahead and visit the
series on our web site. See links at the bottom of this e-mail.


The Vancouver ParEcon Collective interviews Robin Hahnel (Pt. 1)

Robin Hahnel has taught political economy at American University for over
25 years. He has co-authored, along with Michael Albert, numerous books on
participatory economics. His forthcoming book is "Economic Justice and
Democracy: From Competition to Cooperation" published by Routledge. Chris
Spannos is a member of the Vancouver Parecon Collective.


Spannos: Participatory Economics is an economic vision, just one part of
society. What role do environmental considerations have in visions of a
future society?


Hahnel: I think you raise two important issues in your question that I
would like to address separately. One issue has to do with the fact that
historically, most leftists have proposed economic visions as if they were
sufficient visions for all spheres of social life. The second issue has to
do with environmental vision and how that relates to economic vision.

I believe that by conflating economic vision with social vision in
general, most left visionaries have been guilty of unwarranted
"economism." However, in this regard, I do not think Michael Albert and I
were guilty when we wrote about participatory economics. Participatory
economics was proposed as an economic vision -- not as a substitute for
political and cultural visions, nor for a vision of non-patriarchal gender
relations. Moreover, Michael Albert and I never presumed that economic
vision was more important than visions for new and better social
institutions in other spheres of social life -- quite the contrary -- and
I think we made that very clear in everything we ever wrote about
participatory economics.

It is true that we wrote much more about economic vision than visions for
other spheres of social life. But we did so only because we thought that
we, personally, had more insights to offer regarding economic vision, not
because we ever believed that emancipatory visions for other spheres of
social life were any less important than economic vision. Even in this
regard, when we wrote about what we called at the time "socialism
tomorrow" in Part III of Socialism Today and Tomorrow (South End Press,
1981), we wrote separate chapters on "socialist politics," "socialist
economics," "socialist kinship," and "socialist community" because we did
not want to conflate vision for a truly socialist economy with vision for
a desirable society in general -- which we, like everyone else at that
time, called "socialism." In short, since the two of us were already
sensitive to economistic biases on the left before we ever wrote about
economic vision, I think we did manage to avoid the mistake of conflating
economic vision with social vision.

However, regarding the relationship between our vision of a participatory
economy and the environment, I'm afraid I must plead guilty. As a whole
the left was a "Johnny-come-lately" to environmental awareness. That
includes not only the old left, but much of the new left as well -- which
is where Michael Albert and I both grew to political awareness in the
1960s. As a result, I believe most economic visions coming out of the left
-- including ours -- have failed to adequately address environmental
concerns.

When we first wrote about participatory economics we believed that a
participatory economy would treat the environment far more wisely than
capitalist, communist, or market socialist economies, and we briefly
pointed out why we believed that was the case in broad generalities. We
mentioned that externalities, such as pollution, and public goods, such as
environmental preservation, would be more efficiently accounted for by
participatory planning than by markets, but we did not propose specific
procedures to protect the environment, or explain concretely how
particular features of a participatory economy could be expected to lead
to a more judicious relationship with the natural environment. In other
words, we failed to address serious questions about participatory
economics and the environment when we first published The Political
Economy of Participatory Economics (Princeton University Press) and
Looking Forward: Participatory Economics for the Twenty-First Century
(South End Press) in 1991.

Therefore, it was not surprising that serious environmentalists took us to
task at the time, and remained skeptical of claims that remained vague.
Carl Boggs wrote: "It is unclear precisely how Albert and Hahnel's
participatory economy establishes mechanisms for determining overall
ecological impacts, for setting limits to the production of harmful goods,
or for ascertaining how much industrial growth is desirable. (Carl Boggs,
"A New Economy," The Progressive (May, 1992): 40.) And Howard Hawkins
reported: "One Left Green who read Looking Forward scoffed at it as
'industrialism with a human face.' He wondered how in the world -- given
our contemporary situation of ozone depletion, greenhouse effect,
radioactive and toxic poisoning, and general ecological breakdown -- can
one lay out an economic vision without going into some detail on
ecological issues? (Howard Hawkins, "Review of Looking Forward and The
Political Economy of Participatory Economics," Left Green Notes
(August-September 1991): 14.) Boggs and Hawkins were completely justified
in demanding to know what "mechanisms" would determine ecological impacts
and set limits on harmful production and growth.

It took over ten years, but I think we now have some concrete answers for
environmentalists about precisely how the environment can be protected in
a participatory economy. However, these answers are just getting out
there. Don Fitz and the editorial board of Synthesis/Regeneration: A
Magazine of Green Social Thought were kind enough to publish a short piece
on a rush basis in their most recent issue, number 34, spring 2004. I
believe a longer version of "Protecting the Environment in a Participatory
Economy" is also available on their web site, www.greens.org/s-r/. I also
propose and discuss concrete procedures to protect the environment in a
participatory economy in chapter eight of my forthcoming book with
Routledge Press, Economic Justice and Democracy: From Competition to
Cooperation. But that will not be available until the end of this year at
the earliest.

While I look forward to reactions from environmental activists and
scholars to what we now propose about how a participatory economy can
handle environmental issues, I hasten to point out that we have not
proposed an environmental vision as that is usually understood. Explaining
how decisions regarding the environment can be made in a participatory
economy is not the same as describing what wise interaction with the
natural environment will actually look like. In other words, there is
nothing forthcoming that will satisfy environmentalists who want to know
what specific technologies will be chosen or banned in a participatory
economy, what the rate of growth of production will be, or how great the
division of labor between different communities and regions will be in a
participatory economy.

In their great nineteenth century utopian novels Looking Backward and News
from Nowhere Edward Bellamy and William Morris each attempted to motivate
a desirable alternative to capitalism not only by describing new economic
institutions and patterns of behavior, but also by describing new products
and technologies they presumed their post capitalist economies would
feature. In that regard, Bellamy and Morris did provide a technological
and environmental vision as part of their attempt to motivate readers to
think positively beyond capitalism. I think greens who research and write
about new products and technologies that are more environmentally friendly
in the energy, transportation, agricultural, and industrial sectors are
doing crucial intellectual work. I think activists who experiment with
environmentally friendly modes of production, consumption, and living in
an economy hostile to their efforts are an important part of the hope for
the future. But I am neither an expert on green technologies, nor
competent to judge which ideas about environmentally friendly technologies
and products are more fruitful, and which will prove to be less so. I must
leave the job of pointing out the advantages of particular technologies
and products to scientists and engineers, and the task of conveying what
life might be like in ecotopia to more talented novelists and science
fiction writers than I am. I think this work -- offering environmental
vision -- is very important. I'm just ill-equipped to do it myself.

Instead the focus of my attention is on whether or not basic economic
institutions afford creative ideas and proposals about how we relate to
the natural environment a fair and friendly hearing. In that vein, in the
past I have tried to explain why the profit motive ignores crucial
environmental effects unmeasured in the commercial nexus, why markets are
biased in favor of economic activities that pollute and biased against
activities that preserve and restore valuable ecological systems, and why
capitalism promotes private consumption over social consumption and
leisure to the detriment of the environment. In other words, I have tried
to explain why capitalism is incapable of granting ideas about how to
better relate to the natural environment a fair and friendly hearing. Now
I am trying to explain, more concretely than a decade ago, how particular
features and procedures in a participatory economy can create an
institutional setting and incentives that promote judicious relations with
our natural environment. In other words, when ideas that environmentalists
(and I) think are promising -- ideas like recycling, organic farming,
locally grown produce, smart growth, de-automobilization, solar and wind
power, and more leisure instead of more consumption -- are proposed in a
participatory economy, why is there good reason to believe they will
receive a friendly hearing rather than be discarded as they are in
capitalist economies today.

Let me state my views regarding the environment clearly. I do not believe
environmentalists should ever be satisfied that any proposal for how to
conduct human activities will adequately protect the environment. Unlike
other species, we humans proved so adept at shifting from preying on one
species to others, that even before we invented agriculture we were
already a bull in the ecological china closet for whom the normal
ecological constraints on over hunting and grazing were largely absent.
The agricultural and industrial revolutions greatly compounded the damage
we have wreaked on the natural environment. And as we enter the third
millennium AD, none should doubt that the six billion humans on earth can
damage the biosphere irreparably in a number of different ways, and that
most of us are still blissfully ignorant of the havoc we create and the
dangers we court.

But environmentalists must be satisfied with something less than zero
pollution and no depletion of non-renewable resources. Zero pollution
usually means not producing and consuming goods and services whose
benefits far outweigh their social costs -- including the damage the
pollution associated with producing and consuming them does to the
environment. Never tapping non-renewable resources is a debilitating
constraint when it proves possible to develop substitutes before a
non-renewable resource runs out. Unless we plan to vacate planet earth,
zero pollution and no resource depletion are impossible. But fortunately,
they are also unnecessary. A sustainable economy does not mean going back
to scattered clans of hunter gatherers -- who hunted most large mammal
species to extinction in short order wherever they spread in any case!
Humans will affect the environment -- but we must learn to do so in ways
that do not produce catastrophic climate change. Human activity will drive
some species to extinction -- but we must learn to do so in ways that
minimize species extinction and do not destroy vital ecosystems. Human
activity will affect fauna and flora -- but we need to learn how to affect
the living environment in ways that preserve a biosphere capable of
sustaining human and non-human life of the same, or higher quality that we
presently enjoy. It would be foolish as well as impossible to strive to
have no impact whatsoever on the biosphere.

Our present interaction with the environment is not sustainable, and will
not be sustainable as long as global capitalism persists. At present we
are consigned to fighting rear guard actions to minimize the environmental
damage capitalism wreaks while organizing to replace the unsustainable
economics of competition and greed with a sustainable system of equitable
cooperation. By calling them "rear guard actions" I do not mean to demean
their importance. Without effective rear guard actions there may be no
tropical rain forests to preserve by the time capitalism is replaced, and
there may be no way to avert climate change if it has proceeded past the
point of no return. After global capitalism is replaced, we will certainly
need to prioritize immediate changes to prevent environmental collapse.
But we will also need to plan the transition to a sustainable interaction
with the environment with both efficiency and inter-generational equity in
mind. Even if collapse is avoided, if the transition is too slow it will
unfairly advantage the present generation at the expense of future
generations, and unwisely reject opportunities to achieve future
environmental benefits that exceed present social costs. But besides being
impractical, insisting on an immediate transition imposes unnecessarily
high costs on the present generation. So once capitalism has been
replaced, we will need to calibrate non-zero levels of pollution and
resource depletion over long periods of time, and the question will be if
our new economic institutions are suited to helping us do this. I look
forward to discussions with environmentalists of whether the specific
features we have recently proposed in participatory economics are
appropriate.


Skip ahead!
Pt. 1: http://vanparecon.resist.ca/parecon_files/pareconenvironmentone.html
Pt. 2: http://vanparecon.resist.ca/parecon_files/pareconenvironmenttwo.html
Pt. 3: http://vanparecon.resist.ca/parecon_files/pareconenvironmentthree.html
Pt. 4: http://vanparecon.resist.ca/parecon_files/pareconenvironmentfour.html


Robin Hahnel has taught political economy at American University for over
25 years. He has co-authored, along with Michael Albert, numerous books on
participatory economics. His forthcoming book is Economic Justice and
Democracy: From Competition to Cooperation published by Routledge
(http://www.routledge-ny.com).