Giorgio Nebbia
in Peuples/Popoli/Peoples/Pueblos, n. 6 (february 1985)
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It seems to me that the discourse could start with the relationship between goods and development. In order to satisfy human needs (and for the moment let us not specify ‘what’ needs) we need material goods that are manufactured from natural resources (minerals, water, plant and animal resources, sources of energy) and transformed, with human labour, into ‘things’, i.e. material goods, into commodities.
On closer inspection, all human needs require commodities; even the need for knowledge (paper, printing presses), for communication (copper wires, telephones, etc.), even the need for beauty (to be able to go and see a landscape or a museum) and on and on it goes.
Let us assume that available natural resources are not unlimited; theoretically, the more and better we satisfy our human needs, the greater the demand for goods and natural resources. If the initial hypothesis is true, the more we satisfy human needs, the sooner the reserves of natural resources are exhausted, or depleted; the faster ‘someone’ becomes poorer.
The case of oil is illuminating; as long as the colonial conditions of the oil-producing countries were such that they were forced to sell at low prices a commodity whose stocks were becoming increasingly depleted, the richer some countries became and the poorer the oil-producing countries became.
If one rereads the proceedings of the UNCED conferences, these demands for fairer international relations date back to the 1960s. As none of the rich countries gave a reasonable answer, the rebellion began (by Allende in Chile, by Gaddafi in Libya, by the Arab oil countries from 1973 onwards), the demand for a new international economic order, etc.
At a time when one believes one is doing justice by ensuring that countries with raw materials can be sold at fairer prices and by regulating and limiting the depletion of scarce material reserves, the solution for industrial countries is to be found in having ‘less’.
It is clear that this criterion is absurd in a society whose dogma is to have ‘more’ (the dogma of increasing gross domestic product, increasing consumption, etc.). But one can only continue to have more ‘only’ by forcing someone else to have less; some can only become richer by making others poorer.
And it is quite reasonable that those who become poorer, when they realise this, get angry and rebel.
The presentation of these facts ‘in the name of profit’ may appear schematic, but it is not. It may not be true that there is the capitalist in the tuba and tight that takes the poor nigger’s food out of his mouth, but the violence of profit, or the rule of ‘more’, manifests itself in infinite ways.
Any assembly of politicians, such as democratic parliaments, continually decides for the good of its people; to protect the jobs of the Polesine peasants and the Bagnoli metalworkers, we rightly demand to be able to keep beet growing or steelmaking or thousands of other economic activities alive. And since you can’t produce sugar if someone doesn’t eat it, and each individual, however willing, can eat a little sugar (or use a little steel) and no more, you have to force someone else to limit ‘their’ sugar or steel production.
At this rate, you discover that the much-declared internationalist principles (help countries to help themselves, ensure the development of poor countries, etc.) translate into the hope, the fraternal invitation, that poor countries will set out on the road to economic development.
That means producing sugar, or steel, or electronic ocarinas, or blue jeans or shoes.
We even sell blue jeans factories and steel mills and weaving mills etc. to poor countries. When these goods appear on our market, however, we close our doors because no one dares tell the farmers in Polesine or the steelworkers in Bagnoli not to work to help Third World countries that want to sell their sugar and steel.
So we rightly introduce protectionist instruments against goods from poor countries and then, just as rightly, we tear our hair out because the poor are starving.
Can we demand that we consume less and produce less (and therefore consume less) to ensure that poor countries get a head start on development? Can we decide that human needs must be met by certain means and not by others? Can we decide that a ‘small’ car that consumes ‘little’ energy and does not exceed certain speed limits is more commendable? Can we plan the size of houses to use and waste ‘less’ land and consume ‘less’ energy?
Can we decide to use uglier newspapers and magazines made of recycled paper to consume ‘less’ woods? Can we limit advertising that results in wasted goods, money, intelligence, by limiting and standardising the quality of goods? And by requiring manufacturers to earn ‘less’?
I was thinking of all this when I used the term ‘in the name of profit’.
I consider a transition to this type of society desirable – you want to call it ‘austere’, if that’s not a dirty word? – but I also consider it indispensable if we do not want to go into an endless series of conflicts, tensions, up to and including a nuclear world war.
I don’t know if a strictly communist society – but not like those of real socialisms – would be able to cope with the contradictions between a growing population and scarcity of natural resources, the contradictions caused by the imbalances between various parts of the world.
Perhaps a democratic society would be able to give itself constraints, overcoming the opposition of the most boorish economic interests (of ‘profit’).
Perhaps it was precisely democratic societies that were able to initiate the reforms that made capitalist society less inhuman (from the Child Acts in Victorian England, to the limitation of nuclear testing in the atmosphere, and so on).
Perhaps this line needs to be fought towards, with a commitment to have the courage to say ‘no’ to certain choices, to limit certain consumption.
What consumption? by whom? to help whom in the world?
I do not know how to give answers; I only know how to ask questions, to myself first.
There is no doubt that if the League initiated a debate on this issue – resources, goods, population – it would do the only thing useful and necessary for the future.
Nebbia, Giorgio
in: Peuples/Popoli/Peoples/Pueblos, n. 6 (february 1985)