By Steve Painter
As the green movement grapples with problems of economics and sustainable development, it is becoming fashionable in the big business media to dismiss greens as "witch-doctors" and their proposals as economic sorcery. Given the present state of world capitalism, it's not surprising that the system's apologists find it easier to attack supporters of alternative directions than to come up with a defence of the existing order.
The February 8 Economist editorialises against "chunterers" who complain about the present state of the world instead of raising their glasses in yet another toast to the end of "communism".
"The gloom of 1992 has some half excuses", admits the British big business mouthpiece grudgingly. "One is the state of the world's economy. Its sluggishness has gone on longer than almost anybody had expected, and in the process has drawn attention to some underlying dangers: inefficient education in America, corrupt politics in Japan, the fraying of anti-inflation discipline in Germany. All this is proper cause for concern. But it does not explain the doomsday note in the complainers' voices."
Perhaps the pessimistic note might be more understandable had the Economist presented a more thorough, and honest, list — including, for example, the state of the Third World and the development of a second ozone hole, this time over the north pole. With persistent recession in the most advanced economies, deepening chaos in the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe, starvation in much of the Third World and steadily worsening environmental problems almost everywhere, the economic, social and environmental failures of permanent growth economics could hardly be more starkly exposed.
The northern ozone hole is just the latest addition to an already terrifying list of global environmental problems, and it can hardly be dismissed as greenie scaremongering. Preliminary results of a study by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) reveal that the ozone layer over parts of the USA, Canada and northern Europe could be temporarily depleted by as much as 40% in late winter and early spring. Previous studies had shown only a comparatively small depletion of 4-8% in northern ozone over a decade.
And that's just one of the latest developments on the environmental front. Socially and economically, the news is even worse, if that's possible. While the recession has caused hardship in the countries with industrialised economies, conditions in much of the Third World continue to be little short of catastrophic. At least 20% of humanity (a billion people) already suffer chronic malnutrition, and many more live on the brink, in inadequate housing, without sufficient health care or education, often under military dictatorship. Most of this is in parts of Latin America, Africa and Asia which have been dominated by the advanced capitalist states of North America, western Europe, Japan and elsewhere, and were never touched by the old Communist system.
Meanwhile, what of the advanced economies themselves? George Bush's Union message held out no hope of an early recovery from the recession in the USA. The best Bush could offer were a few short-term measures, some of which will actually be wasteful of resources. For example, his tax concessions to the building industry could merely worsen the oversupply of vacant office space in US cities, which is already 10 years ahead of demand — yet another of the many free market miracles foisted on the world by economic "rationalism".
The State of the Union message and the announcement of the US budget the next day brought no predictions of early recovery. In fact, economists have continually revised backwards their predictions of recovery. The Congress Budget office now admits that any recovery in 1992 will be weak and will do little to reduce unemployment. In the US motor vehicle industry, a long-term decline in sales is forcing permanent cuts in productive capacity.
Initially, the recession was seen as part of the long-term shift in economic power from the US to Japan and western Europe, particularly Germany. But more recently there are signs that even Japan and Germany can't ride out the recession unscathed.
Japan's economy has slowed in recent months, with production declining in each of the last three months of 1991, retail sales down and construction activity also in decline, though the latter is now said to have bottomed out. Long-term problems are beginning to emerge for the miracle economy of the '80s. These include extremely high internal costs for land and basic necessities, an ageing population and a tendency for more and more industry to move offshore to low-wage countries.
While Japan is not about to sink into a British-style long-term decline in the immediate future, early signs are beginning to accumulate of the end of its reign as world industrial-economic powerhouse. The aftermath of the 1987 stockmarket crash has been more spectacular in New Zealand and Australia, but Japan didn't escape unscathed.
There is considerable criticism of the country's "bubble economy" of the '80s. While the closure of Melbourne's small Nissan plant has attracted most attention in Australia, a far more important crisis has been developing in Japan as the industrial giant Honda slides into deep trouble. Influential Japanese economists are calling for deliberately slow growth of 2-2.5% for the rest of the decade. That might suit Japanese capital, but under the existing economic system it would also produce a permanently higher level of unemployment.
Similar trends are evident in Germany, exacerbated by the social and economic crisis caused by the dismantling of the old system in former East Germany. Big companies such as BMW, Hoechst, Bayer, Siemens, Daimler and Volkswagen are considering plans to move large investments out of Germany in pursuit of lower wages and other costs. Daimler can already import diesel engines for about half the cost of building them in Germany, and Bosch has moved parts of its operations to Malaysia, Mexico, Portugal and Turkey. Moreover, international investment in Germany is slowing at a time when more is needed for reconstruction in the east. Even in the unlikely event that the US emerges from recession in the near future, eventually pulling Australia and other weak capitalist economies with it, long-term prospects in Japan and Germany make it clear there will be more recessions, as the inherently unstable balance of capitalist economic power swings between various centres.
Whatever their other failings, those who are working to develop a green, socially just economics are certainly not the cause of the world's present problems. If there is sorcery among economists at the present time, it is among those who have held sway for the past decade — the mad scientists of economic rationalism, and more generally those who insist against all evidence that capitalism is the way of the future.
Capitalism has never delivered prosperity to more than a fraction of the people whose lives it touches. It is responsible for desperate economic problems all over the planet, and for the gravest environmental threats to all human life. Its replacement is an urgent necessity if humanity is to survive.