Environment, Capitalism & Socialism

Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP)

The Australian Democratic Socialist Perspective's major work on the environment, originally published by Resistance Books in 1999, is now available online here.The Table of Contents is available below.Contents:

Chapter 1. The threat to human survival

1. Destroying the biosphere

— 1. The atmosphere: greenhouse, acid rain and ozone depletion

— 2. The land: deforestation, desertification and pesticides

— 3. Depleting and polluting the waters

— 4. Poisoning and destroying the species

— 5. Passing thresholds of sustainability

2. Nuclear war

3. What hope for a solution?

Chapter 2. Symptoms and causes of the environmental crisis
1. Three false diagnoses

— 1. 'Too many people'

— 2. 'Overconsumption' and 'too much growth'

— 3. 'Technological development'

2. Society, technology and nature

— 1. No 'return to nature'
— 2. Nature, humanity and labour

3. Capitalist production and the environmental crisis
4. The environmental crisis in the former 'socialist' countries

Chapter 3. The environment movement

1. Sources of modern environmentalism

— 1. Ecological concerns in natural and social science

— 2. Resource management

— 3. Conservation and animal rights

— 4. Marx and Engels

— 5. Early blueprints for sustainable societies

2. Rise of the modern environmental movement

3. Ruling class responses to environmentalism

— 1. Business and the environmental crisis

— 2. Environmental 'governance'

Chapter 4. Currents in ecological thought

1. Environmental reformism and 'ecocapitalism'

2. Utopianism

3. Ecomysticism

4. The conservatives and reactionaries

5. Their common features

Chapter 5. Political consequences of the environmental crisis

1. The Green parties

2. Impact of the environment movement on the labour movement

3. Environmental record of the ALP

4. The DSP and the environmental movement

Chapter 6. Towards an environmentally sustainable world

1. Planning and public ownership

2. Parliamentary versus genuine democracy

3. Peace, disarmament and social equality

4. Social equality and environmental sustainability

Appendix: Can green taxes save the environment?
by Dick Nichols


* What tax rate?
* What impact have resource efficiency gains had on total resource
depletion and pollution?

* Green tax evasion

* Who pays?

* Would green taxes raise sufficient income to fund needed
environmental budgets?

* Competition and discount rates

* Can 'social marginal cost' be established?

* A drop in the (polluted) ocean

* Can socialism do better?