In 2016, extreme inequalities in American society fueled support for Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign as an avowed Socialist. Sanders emphasized that health care in particular should be a universal human right, and publicized the connection between such government social welfare spending and Socialism as a political stance.
Socialism takes many forms, but the common elements, at least in principle, are social ownership of the means of production and worker participation in the management of productive enterprises. As a political movement, socialist parties oppose governments run by capitalists. At the same time, at stake in the ongoing struggle within all capitalist political economies is the distribution of power between private property owners and workers.
I strongly agree with the egalitarian and social justice aims of Democratic Socialism. But I don’t think Socialism, or any other form of political economy, can meet the needs of the present moment. The extreme, existential threat of an impending climate meltdown is a unique and totally unprecedented event in human history. Economic thinking and implementation—whether capitalist, socialist, or some mixture of the two—is necessary but nowhere near sufficient to shock humanity into grasping and grappling with the immediacy of this threat. Our survival can’t be meaningfully debated within a framework of budget trade-offs between short-term and long-term goals.
I believe we need to step entirely out of the established, dominant conceptual framework of political economy and adopt an entirely new perspective on the world as it is today. What humanity needs now is a collective metamorphosis or change of state: a complete shift of paradigm from economic thinking to ecological thinking. I use the words “natural humanism” to refer to the new paradigm.
From an ecological perspective, humanity is an interdependent part of nature. The humanist part of natural humanism emerges from the combined perspectives of biology and culture. People are products of their biological dispositions and their cultural development, which blend together in each of us. We are all alike in some ways and uniquely different in others.
The moral essence of natural humanism asserts that our social, political, and economic institutions, including our norms and belief systems, should promote and celebrate the health, well-being, and fulfillment of all human beings. And it recognizes the “self-evident” truth that sustaining a healthy planet is essential to achieving those humanist objectives. From this standpoint, both capitalism and socialism are barking up the wrong tree. We don’t need a debate between two competing versions of Economic Man. What we do need, so urgently, is to invent the best realization of Ecological Humans.
Neither neoliberal capitalism nor socialism attends to what’s most critical to human beings on planet Earth right now. Neither system, in itself, assures humanity’s future happiness or even its survival. Natural humanism starts from a fundamentally different perspective and provides a better alternative, keeping a laser focus on democracy, climate health, and social justice.
6 Responses
“Between stimulus and response there is a space.In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Victor Frankl.
I believe your whole enterprise rests on this premise. I hope the world heeds your prescription.
DW, I’m afraid that I and others get lost in that space you mention, making choices so challenging that we choose what’s easiest even though we know better.
Socialism is a dirty word in the United States, at least. I agree that we can’t address the real issues of environmental crisis unless we move beyond these dichotomies.
Unfortunately, most people are mired in an economic perspective, at least partially because they’re struggling to survive. Think about what is going on in Sri Lanka right now, or in Ukraine, or in Myanmar, or in Libya, or in Ethiopia. Understandably, one’s first concern is the security and well-being of one’s family. Armed conflict, political unrest and natural disasters deeply threaten that security. That makes it really hard to get people to focus on larger issues.
Indeed socialism has long been a dirty word in the US, though it had more of following in the early 20th Century than in subsequent decades. Some polls have shown that many younger people today find it quite a bit less dirty. In any case, the word is a symbol, and barely meaningful as anything else. Natural Humanism ‘s alternative perspective has the potential to generate “real” discussion.
The problem with Maslows hierarchy of needs -starting with basic survival on up -are not possible
without social connection and collaboration.Without collaboration there is no survival.
It has been said that the “social democratic” political regimes in Western Europe (socialistic by US standards) ask what’s good for people, while strongly capitalist ones (mainly that of the US) ask what’s good for business. Natural Humanism aligns with the former. Ask a different question, get a different answer.