Capitalism is genocide and ecocide

Charles and Karen McFadden, September 2022

We argue here that emphasis on the reform of capitalism assures the premature end to the existence of our species on Earth. Only a commitment to replacing capitalist social relationships by communal ones offers the possibility of a human future, one based on democratic decision making, non-violence, social justice and an ecologically sustainable relationship with the rest of Earth’s biosphere.

Our argument here is primarily a logical one. We trust that those who agree with our logical arguments will undertake the combination of revolutionary activity and empirical data gathering needed to test the logic we offer here. At the very least, our arguments here should serve to strengthen the optimism, initiative and perseverance needed to radically transform social relationships and humanity’s relationships with the rest of nature.

The essence of our argument arises from questioning the material cost (energy and other natural resources) of the two primary economic activities needed to sustain capitalist social relationships:

  • The commodification of exchange?
  • Maintenance of exploitative social relationships

Among other consequences, the commodification of exchange includes:

  • Advertising (as opposed to scientifically validated information)
  • Sales (as opposed to distribution) of needed goods and services
  • Prioritization of production of goods and services that serve primarily the need of capitalism to create private profits (in opposition to prioritizing the need of people for essential goods and services and leisure time)

Among other consequences, the maintenance of exploitative social relationshisp includes the wastefulness of:

  • An education system which emphasizes fact-recall, competition, and time - serving over conceptual knowledge (science), social collaboration, imagination, and their application and development through social problem solving (problem - based learning and apprenticeship)
  • Social services which emphasize control, detention, and punishment over empathy and support for others (most evident in the capitalist institutionalization of prisons, police, security, and other so-called ‘social services’)
  • A largely privatized adversarial justice and governmental system which primarily serves those most able to purchase its services.

One consequence of the continuation of a social system predicated on class division is a tendency towards patriarchy. It is only when freed from the patriarchy inherent in capitalist class rule that all will be freed to share in our collective need for human reproduction. It is only then that the option will exist of voluntarily adjusting human reproduction to the level consistent with a sustainable relationship with the rest of the biosphere.

It is only through the struggle and achievement of a more just, democratic, peaceful, and ecologically sustainable global civilization that we can know and thus quantify the savings that can be achieved in the expenditure of energy and natural resources to meet essential human needs. The more diligently and collaboratively we work towards these ends the more likely it is that humanity will succeed in this historically greatest challenge it has faced.

Responding meaningfully to the threats of ecocide and genocide

We have a limited window of time to organize ourselves to achieve the political defeat of the ruling capitalist class and its defenders, replacing capitalism with a communally organized global system committed to a more just, democratic, peaceful and ecologically sustainable future.

Recognizing that even the capitalist class and its defenders will ultimately be included in the worst consequences of continued capitalist class rule, it should be possible to persuade many if not most of its current representatives to join in this most essential struggle for a future.

Now is the time to get better organized to confront the capitalist class and its representatives with the only logical alternative to ecocide and genocide. Time is not on our side, but all that is best in our heritage from past and current generations is.

Welcome!

Now in our fourteenth year, this website was launched September 1, 2010 in response to the convergence of growing inequality within and between countries and a rapidly developing ecological catastrophe. After several years of further participation in the social justice, democratic and environmental movements of the people and discussions with many of our friends in these movements about draft essays we have posted to this website, we believe we now have a relatively brief, coherent set of eleven arguments that can serve as a basis for further discussion and development by those committed to taking action to reverse the neoliberal tidal wave and move forward to the achievement of an ecologically sustainable global civilization. These were completed by spring 2021. Our further arguments, including updates on our prior posted ones, can be found in the What's New Section which accompanies each page. - C&K McFadden

What's New

Winter 2024

Charles Posa McFadden with assistance from Karen Howell McFadden and Scott Cameron McFadden

The Path to an Ecologically Sustainable Future is that of Class Struggle

Summer - Fall 2023

Charles Posa McFadden with assistance from Karen Howell McFadden and Scott Cameron McFadden

Achieving an ecological civilization is the challenge before us. A knowledge of applicable empirically validated natural and social science laws is the key that opens the door.

Charles Posa McFadden with assistance from Karen Howell McFadden

An alternative to destruction by capitalism: The case for communism

Winter - Spring 2023

Charles Posa McFadden with assistance from Karen Howell McFadden and Scott Cameron McFadden

For a future beyond capitalism

1. A contemporary lens for addressing the existential crises we now face

2. For a future, we must end the systemic causes of destruction and waste

3. Meeting the urgent need for revolutionary political renewal

Fall 2022

C & K McFadden (Sept. 2022): Capitalism is genocide and ecocide

Winter 2022

C McFadden (Feb. 2022) For Canada: On Freedom - A response to the “Freedom” Convoy

C & K McFadden (Feb. 2022) For Canada: A House Divided

C & K McFadden (Jan. 2022): The Need for an Ecosocialist Revolutionary Movement

Fall 2021

C & K McFadden (Sept. 2021) For Canada:  For a future: Organize!

Winter 2020-21

C McFadden (Feb. 2021) How scarcity necessitates a more ecologically sustainable global community and digital technology makes that feasible

C&K McFadden (Dec. 2020) Can Greens avoid the pitfalls of capitalist electoral politics?

Spring 2020

C&K McFadden Canadian electoral politics and the global loss of legitimacy of the neoliberal project

Fall 2019

C&K McFadden Beyond Marx for a 21st Century Revolutionary Perspective

Spring 2019

C&K McFadden To Change the System, We Must Know the System!

Fall 2018 

C&K McFadden, we either escape the internal logic of capitalism or descend with it into barbarism

C&K McFadden, We Need an Updated Manifesto 

Don Fitz, Revolving Doors

C McFadden, The Greens Have It Right

Don Fitz, Is Nuclear Power a Solution to the Climate Crisis  

CANADA

C&K McFadden (February 2022) A House Divided

C McFadden (February 2022) On Freedom - A response to the “Freedom” Convoy

C&K McFadden (September 2021) For a future: Organize!

David Gehl (2018), Fight Climate Change Not War

C&K McFadden (2018), It is time for Canada to do the right thing by its First Nations

George Hewison (2018)WINNIPEG 1919 & THE COLD WAR

George Hewison (2018)Art Manuel - "Unsettling Canada

NEW BRUNSWICK 

Charles & Karen McFadden, An Historic Turning Point on the Journey to Recovery from Capitalism and its History of Colonialism: Reclaiming Wolastoq Ceremony

Charles McFadden, Decolonizing the U.S. & Canada: The People United for a More Just Sustainable Future


REVIEWS 

Charles McFadden Is Canada a force for good in the world, as many imagine? Review of Tyler Shipley (2020) Canada in the World: Settler capitalism and the colonial imagination

Karen and Charles McFaddenCan emergent early 21st century neo-fascism be defeated without coming to grips with late 20th century restructuring of capitalism into a global system Review of William I Robinson (2014) Global Capitalism and the Crisis of Humanity

Karen and Charles McFaddenA Dominant Capitalism or a Sustainable Environment? Why we can't have both. Review of Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster (2011) What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism

 

 

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