XPost: alt.politics.socialism, alt.politics.british, uk.   
   XPost: politics.misc   
   From: thewordovermassesagainstheclasses@massesagainsttheclasses.com   
      
   Businesses never spontaneously take into account the interest of the   
   capitalist class as a whole, let alone that of society in general. They   
   have always acted on the basis that, as Thatcher put it, there is no   
   such thing as society. One result has been the current global   
   overwarming, which Nicholas Stern, in his report to the Labour   
   government on the economics of climate change, described as the biggest   
   market failure ever.   
      
   Businesses leave it to governments to represent the overall capitalist   
   interest but, even here, they are reluctant to let governments interfere   
   with their freedom to make profits in the way they want. Not that, these   
   days, governments want to impose coercive restrictions on capitalist   
   businesses. Environment minister David Miliband has openly declared:   
      
   “Climate change is, according to Sir Nicholas Stern, the greatest ever   
   market failure, but the answer is not to replace markets. Instead, we   
   need to price pollution into markets and extend market mechanisms so   
   that they work more effectively” (Times, 12 February).   
      
   In other words, calling on Beelzebub to cast outBeelzebub. But some   
   supporters of Beelzebub are not content even with this light touch. In   
   an article entitled “A free market solution to global warming” the US   
   business correspondent of the Times, Gerard Baker, put it ironically   
        “Man-made global warming is, if the critics are correct,the biggest   
   example of market failure in the history of theplanet. It makes Marx’s   
   critique of capitalism look like nitpicking. Inequality and labour   
   alienation we can live with.Global warming is a bit harder” ( 20 February).   
      
   He then went on to point out that the sort of measures envisaged by   
   Stern and Miliband wouldn’t be enough: “Despite reassuringly low-cost   
   estimates from the likes of Sir Nicholas Stern, attempting to arrest and   
   then roll back carbon emissions by relatively mild taxation and   
   regulatory measures over decades looks a tall order. If you are really   
   serious about it, you need to be thinking in terms of an internationally   
   mandated programme of regulation and control over economic activity that   
   will surpass anything ever seen in human history”.   
      
   Capitalism, he implies, just couldn’t afford this: “The real present-day   
   cost of reducing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere substantially   
   below where they are now is almost certainly prohibitive and ruinous to   
   economic growth”.   
      
   As an alternative to what he calls “the leap into the socialist abyss”   
   he advocates “measures to limit the effects of global warming –   
   improving sea defences for example”. One better than King Canute but   
   likely to be just as ineffective in the long run. Not that socialists   
   advocate “an internationally mandated programme of regulation and   
   control” over capitalist businesses. What we want is for the production   
   of the useful things that people need to live and enjoy life to be taken   
   out of the hands of profit-seeking enterprises altogether.   
      
   We want the means of production to be owned in common by the whole   
   community as the only basis on which production can be organised to take   
   account of the overall interest of all the members of society.   
      
   In socialism there won’t be any profit-seeking capitalist enterprises to   
   regulate; just democratically-run productive unitsproducing, in an   
   ecologically and socially acceptable way, what people need.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)