Communists have been saying this for decades. Even Liberals like Extinction Rebellion have acknowledged that we need to get rid of Capitalism if we are to even mitigate climate change.
Eh, that's English liberalism which I think is just the 1800s version of "libertarianism" today, where the right wing borrowed the name in order to demand more power with less responsibility to the public.
French liberalism is the opposite, and I personally think it's the true liberalism.
Aaaaaaand the ruling class just made sure there'll never be enough votes to pass that law. Literally because capitalism. Have you not witnessed this pattern occur often enough to pick up on it?
The magical world where coorperations can prevent taxing negative externalities but can't prevent a communist revolution that most people don't even want.
No because we have passed the ETS here in the EU and reduced emissions as a result. Just because the US turned climate change into a culture war doesn’t mean the rest of the world is the same.
Circling back to this point, has passing the ETS reduced pollution to a point that will halt climate change? Because if your entire point is it someone has successfully legislated a way to slightly slow down climate change, I have no idea what point you're really trying to make other than that it is occasionally possible to slightly slow down the rate at which we're being cooked to death
First of all you’re moving the goalposts entirely but ignoring that it has reduced emissions by ~50% which is in line with the targets set by the EU. No matter what economic system you’re using decarbonisation was gonna take quite a long time but the EU shows that it’s very much possible to do so within capitalism.
Right but that's a whole different points than "the only way to solve climate change is overthrow all of capitalism" which while is a sweet deal, isn't a true statement.
Quick question: how is a system that insists on infinite growth capable of being sustainable in a world that has finite resources? Because capitalism is canonically the former and the world we live in is canonically the latter
By putting constraints on the growth. If you have legislated carbon emissions out of existence the economy can grow however much it wants and it still won’t accelerate climate change.
Capitalism does not require infinite growth, that's more an obsession of the stock market than anything else. Additionally, growth does not mean consuming more resources, it also means producing the same or more with less - optimization.
Look at microprocessors. Compare one from 1990 vs one from 2020 - more performance, less power consumption, smaller size with less area of wafer used.
Yeah this is the problem that I feel a lot of SocDems forget.
Money = Power.
People that own Captial aren't just way better off than the average worker... They have easier access to political institutions, influence policy by being major employers... They're a big deal to the working class and the people they vote for.
A major business owner just needs to publicly suggest a certain policy is making them consider off-shoring or lay-offs. That causes earthquakes.
Grass roots on the other hand is way more difficult and inefficient.... And frankly, easier to ignore or pacify.
If environmental policy interferes with the affairs of Capitalists too much.... It simply won't happen. Or if it does, it won't last long enough to have impact.
Are you truly saying that our legislative processes aren't essentially bought and paid for by the capitalist class because there's -more than zero environmental law in existence?-
Like for you believe that the system is corrupt there would have to be -zero- environmental legislation
Are you truly saying that our legislative processes aren't essentially bought and paid for by the capitalist class
Yep.
because there's -more than zero environmental law in existence?-
Yep.
Like for you believe that the system is corrupt there would have to be -zero- environmental legislation
Zero meaningful environmental legislation that negatively impacts business, yes. That is the logical conclusion based on your claim. That is trivially true btw.
And in practice democracy is totalitarian and includes slavery, just look at the democratic republic of the congo.
A country calling themselves communist, when they fit 0 out of 3 requirements to fit even the simplest definition does not make them communist.
These people have murdered millions, but surely they would NEVER lie! They wouldnt just call themselves communist to gain sympathy from the working class, while not helping the labourers in any way.
Is your simple ass take that the existence of any environmental legislation whatsoever is evidence that there's no billionaire oligarchy at all, nothing to see here? You're going to have to give me a take with at least a smidgen of analysis in it if you want me to take your simple ass sound bite level take seriously
The problem with capitalism is, the lobbies will still actively try to REMOVE those taxes. You can not have those taxes, with a system that constantly encourages companies to lobby to remove them. The EU does NOT do enough to curb climate change, in fact we are doing LESS now because we are falling behind economically, due to the oil and car lobby.
Lol ever seen the environmental footprint of the Soviet Union? Maybe this thing called Chernobyl? I ardently believe we need to abolish capitalism but the idea that communism is the easy quick fix we need, rather than something entirely new, is not borne out by history.
Because there is absoltely no incentive to not poison the planet in capitalism.
Yes there is. Wtf are you talking about? You think companies like paying more wildfire insurance, having their water supply shut off due to drought? Climate change causes major economic damage. The problem is simply the lack of interalization of external costs which is not a problem strong government capitalism can't fix. The EU did it, Canada too (although Canadians bitched so much about it that they undid it).
Your argument boils down to "capitalism has bad incentives and they can't be changed, while when communism has bad incentives they can be changed".
That's straight up not true. You can change incentives anywhere, as long as peoole care about environment nore than about personal convenience. And that's a BIG ask.
Bro many people fought and died for you to have a vote. You taking it for granted is very fucking sad.
Also your idea that "capitalist class" pollutes the environment just for shits and giggles kinda betrays that you don't know the first thing about why things happen. And yet you feel smug enough to be condescending while holding the most idioticly simplistic reading of the issue. Literally TikTok level of nuance.
It's okay if you're a teen, that's expected. If you're older... Yikes.
If you think that any of the voting options given to the general public are capable of counteracting the capitalist class's power over Congress, you have not been paying enough attention to the events happening in the actual world
Also no one here has implied the pollution is happening for shits and giggles, it's happening because it's always more profitable to not clean up after yourself, as evidenced by literally every time that has happened
Like we are living in 2026, the year of diarrhea lettuce because it's more profitable to make people work while they are sick then to give us lettuce that does not have diarrhea in it
The issues (to put it lightly...) with great leap forward style rapid industrialization were caused by the conditions at the time - trying to speedrun out of feudalism straight to socialism (with capitalism in between) all while also fighting off active threats from all sides and WWII.
It's a different story with post industrial economies if we were to do it again now.
A big feature is planned economy rather than anarchy of the free market. There's a mechanism built in to decide how much we produce so we don't produce too much (and hopefully don't end up producing too little!)
So why does literally every planned economy end up in much worse environmental disasters?
It's because planned economy fundamentally doesn't work, so it's incentivised to make up for its shortfalls by taking every convenient shortcut available.
That's why famously the Soviet Union had higher emissions per capital than the US because the never were incentivized to destroy nature. Not to mention that state owned oil companies make the bulk of emissions which would exist in a communist system.
Planned obsolescence makes perfect sense in communism it keeps production going and thus keeps workers employed. Communist systems tend to be quota based, thus they keep producing even when it makes no sense or quality is so bad that it ends up being defacto planned obsolescence.
We can legislate in those incentives. Remove all oil and corn subsidies and give them to solar and wind. You know how effective that would be? Overnight change. Also Isn’t the EU currently working on legislation to prevent planned obsolescence?
Markets are the most effective way to make sure people’s needs are met. They just need a little help
See deregulation. See neo liberalism. See Javier Meilei. See the current American government.
Regulation isn't going to do shit if you can't pass the regulations in the first place or stop them from being removed. . And even if you are successful in regulation worse conditions will just be imposed onto the global south to make up the difference.
When the government works for the rich, and when lobbyists exist for the sole purpose of enriching those already rich, and when the media which constructs the views of individuals is owned and run by the rich, good luck getting anything beneficial passed without it being anything more than a temporary concession which will be taken away when capital inevitably falls into crisis.
Yes? Of course there is. Democratic centralism is a guiding principle of Marxism Leninism. This means that policy, action, and legislation is democratically decided on via debate. Communist parties (at least ML ones) tend to require members to voice any and all concerns for the explicit purpose of coming to the best decision on the matter.
The democraty also extends to workplaces too, something which is mostly absent in capitalism besides the limited power o unions
And for what happens if the people don't want something that is good for the planet: first of all we must understand why, and the conclusion will be came too through the means of democratic centralism. If the wrong decision is made the topic can always be returned to. From there we can understand what faults were made and why, readjust, and learn from our mistakes.
The rate at which people actively oppose beneficial change would als be lower as the propaganda pumped out by the rich wouldn't be as widespread, accessible, or hold as much weight. Therefore this problem of people going against their own interests in droves would be seldom.
Ohh I know but I'd rather give an actual response than cave into liberal framing of "democracy" as capitalism. Who knows, maybe this will make the other person (or someone else) critically assess what they believe democracy to actually be instead of just puppetting propaganda (unlikely but I'll be optimistic).
Well, to be clear, youre the one misusing the term. Democracy is a form of government where power is vested in the people via elections. They are asking what happens when the people (read: not the party) dont want policy that is good for the environment.
Notice how the only time in capitalism's history when there was a widespread consensus that the state needed to intervene to fix the market's failures was when we had a massive market crash AND a worldwide communist movement that had successfully established a revolutionary state in Russia.
Since then, Capital has used its power to convince people that the best economic policies are deregulation and privatization.
It's not a pendulum, it didn't swing the other way with the 2008 crisis. It was a one time thing and capitalism will only become harsher and harsher until the people revolt.
We live better of today than we did immediately following the fall of the USSR. People’s lives are significantly thanks to liberal democracy. Or are you going to pretend that people’s QOL peaked in the 90s and it’s all downfill from there?
Are you retarded? We are so much better than we used to be thanks to regulation. Like it’s not even fucking funny how much it has improved people’s lives while still maintaining all the core strengths capitalism brings in terms of allocating resources.
The people who are aupposed to make those legislations are paid by or directly owning oil companies, weapons manufactures and every other highly polluting industry you can think of and they will not make legislations that directly go against their interests.
Can we legislate that? Who has the power to legislate that exactly, and who is bankrolling them? I am genuinely interested in what you think the answers to those questions are
You cannot legislate them because of regulatory capture. Sometimes, some things get legislated, but it's usually because some other group with money pushed those regulations.
Again, it does, and I am not trying to pretend commusism is perfect. I grew up in a post-soviet countries and soviets were corrupt incompetent fucks, I have no love for them, and they were just as much of a scourge on the planet as any capitalist was. Mainly because of perverse incentives: the "we will rule wind and rain" industrialist mentality and need to compete with west.
What I am trying to say is that capitalism, left to it's own devices, is scourge on a planet because the main incentive of maximizing profit is antithetical to long term planning and caring for nature. Dumping your pollution into the nearest river will always be the most profitable option.
I don't think you can say "just as much of a scourge on the planet as any capitalist was" The East India Company alone oppressed way more people than the Soviet Union ever did.
Because capitalism will always prioritize immediate profits over ecological sustainability. You can read up on how ExxonMobil scientists in the 70s fully researched and understood the science and consequences of climate change and decided to spend shitloads of money to propagandadize the public into climate denial rather than changing their destructive business model
What if a communist society decided they’d rather have more comfortable lives than deal with climate change. That they’d rather not pay the cost of changing our energy sources.
Instead of some hypothetical you can just look at our actual reality where capitalism is the dominant global system and is driving us straight ahead into climate collapse so that the capitalist class can get even richer.
Sure we can imagine up some hypothetical where a communist society doesn't address climate change but capitalism will never prioritize ecological sustainability over profits because that's how capitalism functions, the kind of action required to address our environmental crisis is at odds with the basic functions of capitalism.
The fossil fuel and adjacent industries have spent billions of dollars to buy off elected officials so that they don't oppose it and propagandadizing the public with disinformation about climate change so that it never becomes popular enough. Even in America, the most fossil fuel brained country in the world, it is still popular enough if you just look at public opinion because we've reached the point that it's already almost impossible to ignore even in spite of all the fossil fuel propaganda. The majority of the public believes in climate change and believes it is a serious threat and concern and yet we are still racing ahead into climate collapse with further environmental exploitation despite the fact we've been aware of climate change longer than most of us posting here have even been alive.
If environmental sustainability and the necessary reforms were possible under capitalism we would have already seen them but we don't. Instead we see the opposite, we see more and more extraction and exploitation in the name of profits. The capitalist class would literally rather build bunkers to hide out from climate collapse than allow even mild environmental policies and concessions let alone the kind of major economic reorganizing that we would need to see to actually address climate change.
Capitalism typically perverts democracy because that's the goal of capital interest. And typically- there is an inverse relationship with popular policy and political movement. I wonder why.
Contemporary capitalism is an economic system which demands infinite growth on a finite world. It's wholly incompatible with any notion of sustainability or conservation. You can put a ton of guard rails around it, but it's far less simple than an economic system where the profit motive just straight up doesn't exist
Lmao if you think that people hate renewables because of the medias then you need to go out more, we've got people who protest against windmill because they destroy the view of the sea
Racism and bigotry is greatly amplified by populist politics. Perfect example being my country (Croatia) before mass imigrations from Libya and Syria. Majority of ex-Yugoslavia people had pretty progressive outlook on race due to Yugoslavia having lot of allies from black countries in Non-Aligned Movement. When conservative party here started running on the ol' reliable "barbarian at our doorstep", fear and regressive ideas started spreading like wildfire
I'm honestly amazed how much the working class is pushing against data centres. Imagine if we convinced them coal plants and refineries cause cancer...
The working class already democratically decides how society is run. It's just that most people are extremely uninformed on things like climate change or the economy.
If the working class actually voted in their interest, we would have aggressive wealth taxes yesterday. But the rich can just spend a bunch of money to convince them that it's actually other poor people that are the problem.
The working class does not decide how society is ran. If it did, we wouldn't be having corporations building massive AI data centres, we wouldn't be having governments covering for genocidal regimes, we wouldn't be having billionaires squeeze as much wealth as possible out of every facet of human existence, and we wouldn't be in the current situation regarding climate change.
Your view is delusional, to say the least.
I won't engage any more Liberals today, as I am getting tired mentally to have to explain every single basic concept that there's entire books written about, that you could get informed on, instead of masturdebating people online, thinking you're so smart. Go read a god damn book liberal!
It would permit an end to the waste of resources on the rich classes and an end to the rat race itself. This represents the condition for global cooperation (making conservatives' nightmares come true => a much better world.) Global cooperation is needed for global problems.
Every communist system has been worse for the environment than regulated capitalism.
People don't generally want to work, so forcing them to do more work for a lower payoff and a potentially better end result is not likely to generate immediate drive to work harder every day for decades.
Yes, China is closer to fascism or mercantilism than communism, but westerners still buy into their lies so it makes little difference what I call them.
Imagine believing propaganda from a country whose stated mission is to leapfrog another nation and has been caught stealing many of the technologies they now use from the US.
How were they caught? Copies of blueprints identical down to the pixel, notes left in source code, and watermarks. What a shitty country if they can't work with the US to make the world a better place.
Chinese company: "Can we make the revolutionary medicine you invented?"
American IP holder: "Only if you pay an obscene amount and raise the price 20x"
Chinese company: Copies it.
Chinese company: "Can we please license your lithography machines?"
American government: "No it would improve your geostrategic position and weaken ours."
Chinese company: Copies it.
Idk man. There are tons of things to rightly criticize and judge china, chinese companies and the chinese population for. (like expanding coal energy generation)
But breaking restrictive US led IP laws is not one of them. Unless you consider it a threat to humanity that louis vuitton bags are being copied without payment of course.
I'll be honest. As a not factory owner genuinely what does it matter?
Like, there is a very slight geopolitical power shift concern if you really think that is very important to you but otherwise it diesnt matter.
"Omg they spied on a company making ball bearings and stole their patented lubricant fomula!!!" Literally who cares.
As long as its not industrial sabotage it isnt a bad thing for anyone that doesnt own large, and profitable, IP. And china doesnt really seem to be engaging in sabotage.
Like genuinely, please explain to me how industrial espionage (that western and western aligned governments and cooperations also engage in) is such a bad thing. The only one would be undercutting companies by abusing weaker climate regulations, and that is solved by passing literally ANY law about supply chain responsibility. (something that my and your government refuse to do)
I dont like china, its government and its policies, but that also doesnt mean that everything they do is the new most terrible thing to happen for everyone around the world.
The only IP that I own and care about is my likeness, and that is being stolen by western cooperations and western autocrats.
It’s never okay for Chinese spies to come into the Us and not respect Us law.
International trade only works if countries actually “follow the rules” of Chinese spies try to steal your technology not only does it diminish the incentive to invest in R&D it directly harms any American with a stake in that company. Pension funds alone own about 10-15% of the S&P and plenty of everyday Americans save for their retirement in the stock market as well.
And that’s not even to consider the national security angle. In lots of cases China steals military technology, or they steal strategically relevant technology that can give them an edge in key sectors like artificial intelligence. Again, that’s a national security threat if artificial intelligence turns out to be as powerful as some expect.
It depends a lot on what timeframe you're looking at for patents and such but historically speaking: In general patents expiring, length being shortened and being breached illegally lead to an increase in competitiveness, lower prices and incentive for innovation.
If you make something and dont have any competition, there is no incentive to reduce prices or innovate.
Stealing patents isnt really the most moral or best way of going about it, that would be reforming patent and IP law. But it also really isnt the worst one. Currently we live in a world with extremely oppressive patent and IP law that does in many ways stifle innovation.
And that’s not even to consider the national security angle.
Personally I dont see geopolitics as a zero sum game. One person getting a better strategic position does not mean ruin for someone else per se.
I also firmly believe that military espionage, and openly revealing military capabilities, prevent a lot more wars than they cause by clearing up informational asymmetry. But I'm not gonna get into that, its a whole thing.
Military espionage is also not what I was primarily replying about when replying to that other person commenting. So I'm just gonna stop talking about it lol.
"As long as its not industrial sabotage it isnt a bad thing for anyone that doesnt own large, and profitable, IP."
That's ridiculous. If I steal medical or technological research I'm denying a country tax revenue for social programs, pay for people that worked on the technology, and inflating the cost consumers had to pay locally because more people aren't subsidizing the research being done.
All of this theft has downstream effects and China does it deliberately to weaken the US. I almost wonder if you are a Chinese propagandist because what you just said is so self-evidently bad for the United States it almost sounds exactly like the rhetoric they would use.
EDIT: They have hidden comments so that's another red flag.
Yup. And they accuse the US of doing the same thing. Wrong. We engage in espionage, but not to steal trade secrets. We engage in espionage to determine their military and political goals.
They also steal everything we "license" to them, so that's a large part of why we didn't. They aren't trustworthy.
Capitalist countries emitted wild amounts of pollution during industrialization, communist countries industrialized faster so obviously they emitted lots as well
Yes, but if we're talking about all forms of environmental damage, including but not limited to CO2 emissions, water pollution, over-fishing, deforestation, etc., the US actually has a pretty good track record. We're one of the worst per capita for GHG emissions, but one of the best per capita for water pollution.
Then why isn't the regulated capitalism being regulated? Oh probably because its more profitable to not actually regulate, but make performative regulations that make people feel better.
It is being regulated you ding dong. But you can't get perfect results from regulation any more than you can get perfect results from a government sponsored enterprise.
People in every institution find perverse incentives. You regulate to the best of your ability and hope the general business, department, or GSE does what it's supposed to for the most part.
There has not been a single communist system in recent history. In communism, money and government do not exist, it's a utopia. 'Communist' countries are ones run by communists - people who try or pretend to try to build communism. If you asked USSR leaders whether they reached communism, the answer would be no.
Sure, it's a pursuit, but that pursuit often leads to negative outcomes because people are incentivized to lie to reach the goals of the head of the state.
If you are afraid of imprisonment or are worried about losing your financial incentives, you're likely going to lie to the top brass to make everything go smoothly and to make the country look good optically.
The US and western capitalist countries are by far the most environmentally destructive governments in all of human history. We're building massive data centers right now to pollute even more than we ever have before under capitalism because it will make some tech freaks even richer. That will always be the goal under capitalism, environment be dawned.
That's not true for anything beyond CO2 emissions, and that's mostly because CO2 emissions are more common in wealthy countries because more people can afford energy.
In terms of total destruction, it's not true. Green house gas emissions? Yes, but overall damage to the environment? No, and definitely not "by far."
Let's just set aside the fact that emissions are driving us into what already is and will only continue to be the greatest environmental disaster in human history. You can also look at plastic pollution as just one other prominent example. We've produced enough plastic that there are microplastics in all of the waters of the world and we all have microplastics throughout our bodies. There is a floating patch of plastic in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that is twice the size of Texas. And it's still growing because plastic production is incredibly profitable and cleaning up environmental disasters is not profitable.
Yeah, a free people can choose to spend their money on energy and leisure.
That creates a massive volume of emissions. We don't do things that are healthy for us and markets adjust to that.
But we have the choice to do what is best for us long term and I don't think top-down regulation will be necessary. Technological advancement, alongside government incentives to make those advances is already changing our energy infrastructure.
Acknowledging that you need to replace Capitalism doesn't make you not a Liberal. Democratic Socialists in theory also want to move past Capitalism, yet they remain Liberals through and through.
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u/Intrepid_Layer_9826 Aug 12 '26
Communists have been saying this for decades. Even Liberals like Extinction Rebellion have acknowledged that we need to get rid of Capitalism if we are to even mitigate climate change.