Post #2825812

2026-05-24 16:50 UTC

Developing and advancing does not mean continuing consumerism. The overproduction of cheap plastic goods and planned obsolescence are purely problems of capital, not socialism. We can develop more intelligently, without relying on a system that requires production of endless trinkets at the destruction of the environment. Extraction will not end, sure, but it can be done more intelligently, and it can be minimized. Historical socialism has faced numerous problems due to lack of development. They didn’t simply develop to compete, but because the basis of socialism is in large industry. We cannot freeze history at a communalist level where we are hunter/gatherers, we have to advance to socialism so that we can actually intelligently solve problems leading to climate change and environmental destruction, rather than having capitalism ensure it is destroyed. Communist ecology is a wide field, and you’d do well to study it.

Replies (1)

@Dialectical_Specialist@quokk.au 2026-05-24 17:51

No one is arguing to freeze history and return to being hunter-gatherers. That seems like a real strawman. I am talking about a steady-state economy where we actually live within our physical means, rather than assuming we can just innovate our way out of finite planetary boundaries. You keep saying we can extract “intelligently” and “minimize” it, but you have to look at the actual material math of the green transition you keep praising. Building solar panels, wind turbines, and global electric vehicle fleets for billions of people requires an unprecedented scale of mining for lithium, cobalt, copper, and rare earth metals. There is no “intelligent” way to strip mine the deep sea or destroy lithium salt flats that makes it ecologically harmonious. Planning just makes the destruction more organized. The physical limits of the planet do not care how smart our five-year plans are. You say large industry is the basis of socialism, but large industry is exactly what caused the massive metabolic rift with nature in the first place. Capitalism absolutely accelerated it, but the industrial metabolism itself requires a massive throughput of the natural world. Communist ecology has a lot of great theory, but if it ignores the hard limits to growth and assumes we can infinitely develop our productive forces on a finite planet, it is repeating the exact same productivist mistakes as capitalism. It is just substituting red flags for green ones while the mines keep digging. I’ll gladly revisit communist ecology as soon as it stops ignoring the real material limits of our planet. This explains your fears of me being on a ‘eco-fascist pipeline’ though i guess. I want to conserve the commons specifically to guarantee abundance and avoid the scarcity that breeds fascism. You, on the other hand, want a centralized state to continue forcing industrial extraction and advancement on a finite planet. When your planned development inevitably hits the hard ecological walls you refuse to acknowledge, it won’t be the profit motive deciding who gets the last of the resources. It will be your socialist state. And a state forcing through industrial limits for the ‘greater good of historical progress’ is a lot closer to the architecture of fascism than a community trying to protect its water from a lithium mine. I know we’ve strayed a bit far from the initial talking points(via most of my best points being ignored and retreated from, mind you), but I have to ask, surely you have enough context to no longer be puzzled/confused by the meaning of one characterized as a ‘moderately conservative communist’? Did I clarify enough, or only muddy the waters further? If I did clarify enough, what label would you assign yourself in contrast to me and my position? Would it be better (or more productive lol) for me to take on the label of ‘degrowth communist’? I feel I understand my position more confidently, but I’m still pretty lost on where your initial confusion stemmed from.

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