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Capitalism, democracy and natural environment

Ioannis A. Kaskarelis
Department of Economics, University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece
Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss the mentality of our civilization, the structure of human life nowadays and to attempt to prove that under these the continual and progressive environmental deterioration is inevitable. Design/methodology/approach The paper investigates the ingredients of human life today, i.e. social political and economic aspects, combined all together. Findings Our civilization leads deterministically to an environmental deadlock. Originality/value The only reversal to the present situation is compulsory humanistic/classical education, which however is incompatible with the mentality of our civilization; the later heavily depended on technological progress. Keywords Capitalist systems, Democracy, Education, Ethics, Natural resources, Humanistic philosophy Paper type General review

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Introduction The protection of the environment can not be worked out by the use of science and technology. This is because the mentality of modern society and modern science, mutually reflected upon each other, is part of the problem. In order to see how severe is now the burden of nowadays human population for the planet because of its adopted social values, reflected on human life and activities, let us compare it with the respective human population of pre-industrial man (at 1800AD) and the burden that he and his activities were for the environment. In Kaskarelis (2005), it was found that for 1992 the human population of 5.43 billions is equivalent to 0.59 trillion of 1800AD humans (according to their lives and activities). Furthermore, the differences (presented in the same study referring to 1992) in numbers for food, oil consumption, life duration and population magnitude among low-, middle- and highincome countries were noticeable, which means that if (due to economic and cultural globalization) every human being wants to consume and produce as much as the citizen of the high income countries then an environmental deadlock is more than obvious. Impressive however is that repeating the estimations in Kaskarelis (2006) using numbers for a decade later, it was found that the 2002 human population of 6.27 billions is equivalent (as a burden to the environment) to 0.92 billions of preindustrial man of 1800AD, according to their life patterns and activities. The above findings are compatible with those referred in Daly (1991) and Harribey (1997), where different methodologies were used. In this paper using notional tools, I will try to prove that protection of the environment can not happen under present social, political, economic and cultural conditions. There is a need for a different philosophy about life humanity and universe, which is not compatible with nowadays mentality and values. Economy, society and the natural environment The doctrine that the economy can be seen as independent and autonomous from the society, which has become dominant since the eighties, is a scientific fraud (and not
Humanomics Vol. 23 No. 4, 2007 pp. 221-229 # Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0828-8666 DOI 10.1108/08288660710834702

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simply and illusion). The evolution of the economic system is directly connected to the evolution of the society and its order of values. The same occurs with the scientific and technological progress since science and technology are functioning and acting under certain political and social restrictions. (see e.g. North, 1990). Thus the choices of the technological and scientific progress, which both mark the economic evolution heavily depend on economic/political institutions and the set of values of the society. For example Greenhalgh (2005) examining the process of technological advance under capitalism and its relation to environmental problems writes: . . . because there are no institutional mechanisms to price non-renewable factors at globally optimal price levels, . . . economic decision-makers place too high a value on labour. Hence advanced capitalist markets create and use technologies that are geared to saving worker time and to producing goods and services to save consumer time, instead of technologies and products that conserve scarce non-renewable resources. . .. (Furthermore because of the existing inequality of wealth and the differential price of time between the rich and the poor) demand for positional goods by the rich, which are time-saving and resource-using, crowd out demands to meet the basic needs of the poor. Entrepreneurs react by satisfying the dominant, but wasteful, market demands of the rich, both to current supply and by responding to incentives to invent new products and processes that appeal to the rich. This has a further consequence in accentuating inequality, as prices fall and quality rises for products subject to innovation, and in driving up the relative price of skilled labour yet further, restoring the cycle of labour-saving innovation at the expense of the environment. As it concerns the relation of humans and nature, this depends on the magnitude of human population, the intensity and the continuity of human activities. If human population was smaller and human activities were not intensive and continuous, if nobody was anxious about the statistics of production and consumption growth, nobody would have talked about the environment. Every human activity (even breath) appropriate and borrow ingredients and energy from nature, thus it changes the environment (see Georgescu-Roegan, 1971). However if the three above referred factors were absent (magnitude, intensity, continuity), accumulated human activities would had never been able to produce changes in environmental conditions and possibly made a planet inhospitable for humans in the future. Furthermore his intellectual abilities give him the capacity to accompany his intensive and continuous activities with the element of expediency, which in order to be profitable and productive it should be legitimized the appropriation and dominance in any expansion and intensification of human activities against natural environment. We know that this legitimization began after the 15th century. Beginning from Luther, taking as intermediate steps Galilei, Decartes, Bacon, Newton, and coming up to the leaders of the enlightment, we should admit that none of them were driven by sinister designs. On the contrary following a period of decadence and spiritual stagnation in late dark ages, these were the enlightened spirits aiming at the evolution of knowledge and the progress of humanity, and consequently they were sending a hopeful message about the uniqueness and value of all human beings. According to dialectic in order to exist equilibrium, for any power exercised should exist an opposite counterbalancing force (actionreaction). In any period of time, every society after a disturbance will find a new equilibrium at a point which would be relatively removed from both poles of juxtaposition. The society according to the existing interrelations appropriates and interprets the thinkers; hence, the intension and the substance of their thoughts could stay aside and off the route that the society

will follow at the new equilibrium. The mobilization of the human masses will be done with the use of a certain rhetoric which is converted during the upheaval to the status of scientific doctrine. Despite the fact that after the establishment of the new regime, the revolutionary masses will be deterministically excluded from the governing by the new regime (see Lembesis, 2005), this certain rhetoric will pass to the cellule of the society as the way of thinking. To this doctrine the society will listen and obey. Therefore, I argue that humanity during and after a social disturbance slides easier to barbarity than it can be elevated to higher spiritual and moral values, despite what the new regimes are supporting. Any upheaval that its causes are endogenous to the society (decay, decadence, stagnation, etc.) has a negative outcome as it concerns the standards of spiritual, intellectual and mental pursuits. The landmarks for the prevalence of the new perception according to Galilei (15641642), Decartes (1596-1650), Newton (1642-1727) are: the pinning up of the 95 theses by Luther in 1517 at the chapel of Wittenbergs palace, which (as a fact) consists the cornerstone of doubting of the concrete moral code of catholic church, of the medieval mental and intellectual perception of the world and it defines the end of the absolute dominance of catholic church in Europe; the Westphalia Treaty (1648) which consists the origin of the modern state sovereignty and limits the political power of Pope; and the movement of enlightenment and especially the J. Lockes (1632-1704) theories about the right of private property, which doubted the absolute right of the monarch to have property inside its state and it opened the road for the rising and prevalence of the bourgeois class against the landowners and the local monarchs (see Balakrishnan et al., 2003). From a sociological point of view 16th and 17th centuries consists the beginning of the era of modernity. Modernity refers to patterns of social life and setting-up which appeared in Europe at those centuries and then after influenced life all over the world. Giddens (1990) argues that three are the sources of modernity vigorousness: (a) the separation of time from the spatial dimension and social setting-up; (b) the development of detachment mechanisms which uprooted social bonds; and (c) the reflexivity of modern social life which has to do with the fact that social practices are continuously under restructure, under the light of new and increasing flow of information about those practices. This means that the era of modernity has not fundamental values and this undermines the logic, the reason and the knowledge. Our modern society has replaced knowledge to reflexive applied information, continuously upon which any elements of it can be revised. Therefore changes in social values are not independent of innovations in informational orientations and the flow of information which changes the social perspectives. From an economic sight, the scientific and technological revolutions (according to North, 1981) of 19th and 20th centuries are characterized by significant indivisibilities in productive process. The large scale investments of fixed capital made necessary the exploitation of potential economies of scale, which however were demanding intense and continuous production activities. This consequently brought the necessity of specialization and the division of labour in an unprecedented climax. The higher specialization and the division of labour brought higher number of exchanges taking place during productive process. This explosive increase in exchanges produced high profits due to specialization and labour productivity advances, but on the other hand the cost was the immense amount of resources (energy, natural environment and other natural resources) absorbed during this process. Furthermore, from its early times and because of its endogenous crises, capitalism was supported by an ideological

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rationalization that it would benefit society as a whole, and therefore the states were complied in ensuring growth. Thus, there is not any paradox in the connection between the appeal for free markets and the demand fro government intervention on behalf of the free market economy. However, we should note here that early bourgeois liberalism was characterized by the ascetic aspiration of early protestant morality, which was emphasizing the value of labour for the salvation of human soul. At the dawn of the 20th century started a broad mechanization of every day life due to the numerous new inventions. This simultaneous mechanization in all aspects of life consisted in an extended interdependence between production and consumption. Since the technical prerequisites were present, mass sales should have to ensure the incessant mass production. Kondylis (1991) argues that this fact brought to the end the civic liberal democratic era, and since the seventies we have entered to the era of mass democracy, which is characterized by three central phenomena: (a) the advanced division of labour, which actually denied any manufacturing tradition and wiped out every perception of craftsmanship and it replaced them by the principle of continuous improvement and replenishment in production; (b) the splitting of society to individuals-atoms which was, to such an extent, unacceptable to the bourgeois liberal society. Under the new conditions of mass democracy, this split became legitimized and realized in such an extent that all members of the society became mobile and interchangeable. The social bonds were considerably decreased and individuals lack of social prerequisites has been proclaimed as the condition for genuine equality in society and chances; and (c) the social mobility and flux was achieved due to the sequel of increased mobility and tradability of all socially crucial dimensions. Fast consumption brought the need for fast replacement of merchandises by renewed ones and thus the need for individuals who are rather elusively crossing each other than actually communicating. This brings not only to external physical but also to internal psychical fluidity and changeability, which is justified by the belief that continuous changes and new flows of impressions consists in the inner law of life in the society today. The free (leisure) time is not any more used for relaxation in order the employee to be fresh and productive next day at work. Now is work (labour) that finds the mean (income) which gives to the individual the ability to formulate his free (leisure) time in a broad consumption base. This frolic spirit of consumer is considered as more important asset than the well-disciplined activity of the working people. But as the desire for more consumption in free-time intensifies, there is a need for more working time in order to obtain the consumer goods that will brink the sensation of personal fulfillment. Representative democracy At the civic-liberal period of democracy, political parties were representing socioeconomic classes and their interests and their staff were directly referred to those classes. However, this picture changed after the World War II when universal suffrage was generally instituted in all countries. The class strangle of Marxism seems to retreat, special sectoral interests were rigorously promoted by lobbying, distributional coalitions and covert collusions. Political power gradually passed to the hands of political elites, and the relation between parties and classes was broken. These elites administer the state policies, according to the relative power of the conflicting teams promoting their own special and sectoral interests, and each member of these political elites acts having as ultimate aim his political survival and the benefits that his position in these elites brings to him.

Downs (1957) argues that rational agents (voters-individuals) are not well informed because they have no strong motives to invest in time and effort in order to make detailed examination and appraisal of the political parties programs. Due to the above argument voters are not able to affect policies. In a two-party model, political rationalism commands to the two parties to work out their policies in a mist of ambiguity. If both parties converge to the middle (mean of voters political assignment distribution) and express no-controllable promises, this also does not facilitate voters to be rational. In this case, if they decide to participate to the elections, they normally choose to vote according to personal criteria (e.g. family tradition, personality of candidates, gallops results, etc.) and not to the real problems of the society. Of course if all voters became disappointed by this political behaviour of the two parties, they can abstain from the elections and then the political system would collapse. However even in this case, Downs (1957) supports that the collapse can be avoided if parties are forced to clarify their policy proposals or/and at the very end if the political system converts to a multi-party system (with coalition governments) through proportional representation. According to Condornet principle an alternative should be chosen if and only if it beats every other alternative in pair wise contests. That means, if a million people have the ranking (in descending order) x, y, z and a million minus one people order y, z, x, then there is indeed a case for selecting y, who (or which) is liked best or second best by all, but the Condornet winner is x, a choice that divides the electorate. Hirschman (1970) argues that, as in economic competition firms can exchange disappointed with their products customers, and this situation can be dragged on as long as the firm managers/owners are denying to solve the problem; in democracy, the competition among political parties and the exchange of disappointed voters can convert a possibly subversive reaction of the electoral body to a controllable expression of dissatisfaction to the government. Therefore through exit of annoying voters to the other parties, political competition could survive without applying costly policies in order to confront emerging social problems. What Olson (1965) consider as the main obstacle to any attempt of political, social and economic progress is that distributional coalitions and covert collusions are able to control and filter the flow of information and knowledge and therefore they actually control the production of socially accountable knowledge. Consequently we come to the role of the media in nowadays democracy. Dearing and Rogers (1996) examined the relation among public, political and media agenda setting. Media agenda setting depends on the competition among media enterprises and that among journalists who, however, have common training and apprehension about when and how to raise an issue. Dearing and Rogers (1996) argue that an issue arises in media agenda if and when celebrities are involved, moving happenings can be caught by TV cameras, the possibility the journalists could be able to control the plot of the story, etc. Usually issues that are shown in the media attract some public interest which the most of the times does not help a solution to be found. On the other hand, they argue that public agenda might be quite different from the media and political one (at least in local and personal level), however in national level, individuals are certainly influenced by the issues that media show and the way media frame them. Corneo (2006) admits that objective news coverage is vital to democracy and therefore captured media can seriously distort collective decisions. The media could secretly collude with interest groups in order to influence the public opinion (see also Baron, 2005). In the case of voting over the level of a productivity enhancing public bad, Corneo (2006) shows that an increase in the concentration of firm ownership

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makes the occurrence of media bias more likely. Conclusively captured media induce an efficiency loss if the wealth of the median voter is close to average wealth or if the information transmitted by the media has a sufficiently large private value. Kondylis (1991) argues that in mass democracy (since 1970s) the exertion of authority is open to be claimed by anybody, as long as he proves his competence in exploiting the opportunities better than his rivals. This means that the dominance of a class has been substituted by the dominant elite of politicians, who are endlessly fighting each other, dismissing or changing their making up; since the members of political elites have no certain social prerequisites. Therefore political elites have become permanent organs of authority exertion only since the splitting of society to individuals-atoms and the dominance of extensive equalizing doctrines and trending. However competing political elites should be legitimized by the verdict of electoral body; one or some of them will win the elections and seize power. In mass democracy according to Kondylis (1991) elites try to influence the will of the voters but at the same time elites are also reflexively influenced by the diverse aspirations of the voters. The solution to this endogeneity is given by the use of populism. Populism is the way to solve the inconsistency between the doctrine of general equality (which actually created a new broad middle class, the backbone of society, and which considers itself as the universal class, sees scornfully at the members of political elites and expresses its disregard for what they are doing) and the exertion of authority by the winner elite of the general elections. The above imply that politicians have lost their prestige, politics is now a job like all others (with profits and losses), usually exercised by slicky and incompetent (see also Caselli and Morelli, 2004) persons. This general situation forces politicians to act according to certain patterns in order to save their job. Economic-political-social environment and the protection of planet earth Free market economy can not survive without growth. Leaning upon profit competition and dominance, capitalism is obliged to create and invent needs and prospects continuously and consistently in order to survive through expansion. Nowadays, features of capitalism are on the one hand the vigorous increase of the share of services sector, which is continuously growing up whereas the shares of all other productive sectors are retreating; and on the other hand the phenomenon of over borrowing from households, firms and states. Services sector is able to create and commercialize needs and prospects easier and quicker than the other sectors of goods production. Borrowing now satisfies endless consumption and possible necessary settlements with previous debts, and it actually plays the role of the triggering mechanism that tries to preserve consumption in certain levels. Hence out of any logic, as borrowing preserves consumption and permits the production of goods and services to go on, capitalism will continue to appropriate earth, sea, air and any natural resources in order to overcome its deadlocks through continuous expansion against the ecosystems. In our days, the electoral body does not decide about the policies applied (see recently, except Downs, 1957; Lee et al., 2004). Political parties present a package of non clarified policies on several issues and using (and being used by) the special role that media play, literally grab the vote of not well informed or biased informed (by the captured media) voter and one or some of them become elected and seize the state power. Politicians are actually career professionals handling states affairs and exerting governmental power, balancing among these lobbies, and at the same time having only in mind their personal (political) survival and the benefits that this brinks to them. If any politician tried incisions (like applying measures to protect really the environment), he would had to

confront the powerful groups of special interests and covert collusions, and he would soon had found himself definitely out of politics. We have also to add the international interest for the decisions and policies of the particular countries governments because of the special interests of multinational enterprises and the interests of the other countries legitimized by the economic globalization and the multi-country international agreements. New technology reduced the transport and informational cost. Therefore we can understand that representative democracy and the free (and globalized) market economy are mutually bound together and it will never happen the one part to renounce the other for the benefit of the citizen-voter, or the protection of the environment where this citizen-voter lives. Nowadays cultural globalization, under the name of multiculturalism, is carried on through digital equipments, internet and electronic media, presenting an immense flow of unverifiable information and pictures. Nobody can expect from the masses to check and ponder their credibility carefully. Humanistic education, that can educate and practice the young generation to moral values and codes, has been abandoned since the sixties and seventies. It is obvious that the attempt for cultural globalization preceded that of economic globalization of deregulated and internationalized (mainly capital) markets, because cultural globalization was a necessary condition for the prevalence of the economic one and therefore the survival of capitalism through this new expansion and flattening of the different peoples cultures. Nature has been conquered without resistance, but it was not enough. Now it has come the time for the conquest of the people, the guiding of peoples mind and emotion through the multicultural civilization. Hedonistic society facilitated and quickened the prevalence of globalization. Since earth was conquered and humanistic education was abandoned, then human masses have been easily used to the ambiguity of notions, the plurality and reflexivity of values. All these brought in the bantering spirit of consumers in their free (leisure) time, which is accompanied by a moral apathy, hedonism and a blurred obscenity. Famous physic St. Hawking in one of his speeches, during his visit in Hong-Kong in June 2006, pointed out that the exploration of space has been made significant for the survival of human being because of the fear of a nuclear war and the reduction of natural resources. He furthermore predicted that man will inhabit the Moon during the next 20 years and will settle colonies in Mars up to 2046 (from the press of 13-14th June 2006). Are some scientists better informed for the environmental deadlock and know even the list with the names of the first who escape? From the above we can conclude that all declarations (and on the other hand protestations) about the protection of the environment are simulated and hypocritical. Even if all mineral fuels were automatically and everywhere substituted by J. Rifkins (2002) fuel from hydrogen, even if all toxic and radioactive wastes were to be naturally dissolved and absorbed in the ecosystems; even then the interception of the environmental conditions deterioration would have been only temporal. Capitalism, consumerism, eudemonism, the alienation of modern man and the footprint of his deceptive will through the elections of the representative democracy all together will continue to be expanded and appropriate the ecosystems up to the time that man will be the sole alive being on earth. Education is the heart of the problem The ways and the routes that human mind might follow are infinite. However, for humanity more crucial is the management of the outcome of human thoughts than these mere thoughts. And this management definitely needs the existence of the

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hierarchical code of moral values (Every form of knowledge when sundered from justice and the rest of virtue is seen to be plain roguery rather than wisdom, Plato, Menexenos, 246-7). Any code is obviously restrictive: it might define that some achievements of human thoughts should never been touched, exploited or bordered on because this leads to dangerous traps for humanity. The above would had been the personal self-restriction of the intellectual and the self-censorship of the announcement or exploitation of his ideas. If societies were willing to adopt a code of moral values they ought to turn back to the compulsory, for all citizens, humanistic education. Humanistic studies should be again the core and not the decoration of the educational system as has been since the seventies. This should be accompanied by a state policy for research and science that would choose which of them should be encouraged, promoted and financed and which of the rest should be excluded. What the above proposed changes should had brought if they were applied? They would had ended the endless invention and manufacture of false needs and illusive prospects, which as we referred aims at preserving mass consumption. They would had redeemed creativity from the slavery of contingent dependent salary-based employment. They would had broken the bond between leisure time and consumption (as shopping therapy or forced consumption of services). They would had emancipated humanity from the need of continuous and intensive growth of production and consumption. They would had minimized meaningless transportations of humans or goods, or urban attraction, which all these are the results of insecurity and agony to have the chance for hedonistic living with fun and pleasant experiences. Because all those changes should had made man to look inside him and listen to the harmony of the Universe. Pindarus was saying that those who are inquiring into nature and its laws, they are finally reaping the fruit of a defective knowledge (in Stovaeus, Anthology -4).
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Hirschman, A.O. (1970), Exit, Voice and Loyalty, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Kaskarelis, I. (2005), If humanity were only willing to protect environment, how would be the day after?, Journal of Social and Economic Development, Vol. 7 No. 2, pp. 200-17. Kaskarelis, I. (2006), Free Market Economy, Representative Democracy, Cultural Globalization, Hedonistic Society and the Protection of the Environment, University of Thessaly, Volos (mimeo). Kondylis, P. (1991), Der Niedergang Der Burgerlichen Denk- und Lebensform, Acta Humaniora, Weinheim (in German). Lee, D., Moretti, E. and Butler, M. (2004), Do voters affect or elect policies? Evidence from the US house, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 119 No. 3, pp. 807-859. Lembesis, E. (2005), The Revolutionary Mass, Friends Editions, Athens (in Greek). North, D. (1981), Structure and Change in Economic History, Norton & Co., New York, NY. North, D. (1990), Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA. Olson, M. (1965), The Logic of Collective Action, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Rifkin, J. (2002), The Hydrogen Economy, Turcher/Putnam, New York, NY. Corresponding author Ioannis A. Kaskarelis can be contacted at: ikaskarelis@econ.uth.gr

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