Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - "15 of the world's biggest ships now emit as much pollution as the world's 760m cars"

roachboy · 05-05-2009, 03:49 PM

so let's think about this. say both msd and lucifer are right. where does that leave us? well, the short of it is that the present model of capitalism is simply not sustainable. ocean shipping is fundamental to the entire globalizing capitalist order...which is a result of a significant mutation in the old centralized production model into one that's liked via automated forms of just-in-time systems, and so is comprised of supply chains..one of the main drivers behind this is that it enables externalization of costs like social and environmental responsibility, and enables the race to the bottom in terms of wages and working conditions---which is of a piece with the autonomization of capital....it's a highly centralized mode of doing things, but one which exploits newer technologies to get around problems of older-style mass production--for example j-i-t systems typically have quite flexible assembly lines, which enable shorter production runs...so it's a mode that in many ways is as or more centralized than was the older factory system, but it appears not to be. costs can be driven down by avoiding social and environmental responsibility and by continually pushing down wages through manoevering bids within the supply pool such that it makes sense from a profit viewpoint--but no other--to spread elements of a production chain all over the place geographically and connect the elements with container ships and combinations of rail and trucking. but there's a downside to this spreading, and it's in the transport linkages that hold the system together that you can really see them, at least from an environmental damage viewpoint.

but these things are invisible for most folk, so there's little in the way of politics surrounding this.

this form of centralization is THE problem that explains this entire mess that's being discussed in this thread. to get around it, there'd have to be a different politics of production and distribution--an emphasis on decentralization, say---pressure to move the elements of production closer to the rest of the system (distribution, etc) and to each other--a movement for force capital to accept the social and environmental responsibilities that follow from their ability to extract profit at all---folk would have to start seeing capitalism as a social system, it's outcomes as following from choices, not from forces of nature, not from some magical hydraulics that is somehow assumed to explain how markets operate.

this is the world that neoliberalism brought us all--to change it, we'd have to rid ourselves of the whole of the fog that it cast around capitalism and force a very different arrangement. short of that, lucifer's right--and so is msd--and if that's the case, we could all be fucked.

05-05-2009, 03:49 PM	#14 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	so let's think about this. say both msd and lucifer are right. where does that leave us? well, the short of it is that the present model of capitalism is simply not sustainable. ocean shipping is fundamental to the entire globalizing capitalist order...which is a result of a significant mutation in the old centralized production model into one that's liked via automated forms of just-in-time systems, and so is comprised of supply chains..one of the main drivers behind this is that it enables externalization of costs like social and environmental responsibility, and enables the race to the bottom in terms of wages and working conditions---which is of a piece with the autonomization of capital....it's a highly centralized mode of doing things, but one which exploits newer technologies to get around problems of older-style mass production--for example j-i-t systems typically have quite flexible assembly lines, which enable shorter production runs...so it's a mode that in many ways is as or more centralized than was the older factory system, but it appears not to be. costs can be driven down by avoiding social and environmental responsibility and by continually pushing down wages through manoevering bids within the supply pool such that it makes sense from a profit viewpoint--but no other--to spread elements of a production chain all over the place geographically and connect the elements with container ships and combinations of rail and trucking. but there's a downside to this spreading, and it's in the transport linkages that hold the system together that you can really see them, at least from an environmental damage viewpoint. but these things are invisible for most folk, so there's little in the way of politics surrounding this. this form of centralization is THE problem that explains this entire mess that's being discussed in this thread. to get around it, there'd have to be a different politics of production and distribution--an emphasis on decentralization, say---pressure to move the elements of production closer to the rest of the system (distribution, etc) and to each other--a movement for force capital to accept the social and environmental responsibilities that follow from their ability to extract profit at all---folk would have to start seeing capitalism as a social system, it's outcomes as following from choices, not from forces of nature, not from some magical hydraulics that is somehow assumed to explain how markets operate. this is the world that neoliberalism brought us all--to change it, we'd have to rid ourselves of the whole of the fog that it cast around capitalism and force a very different arrangement. short of that, lucifer's right--and so is msd--and if that's the case, we could all be fucked. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite