Preservation First! Toward a Political Economy of a Good Society By James O'Connor College 8 University of California Santa Cruz, California 95064 Tony, isn't it true that the petrochemical plants started to leak poisons when the industry plunged into crisis in the 1970s? -- J. O'Connor Hell, they started to leak as soon as they were built! -- Tony Mazzocchi The three standard models of economic development -- state socialist planning in the East, nationalist development in the South, and Keynesian welfare states in the West -- have come to the end of the line. These models proved to be, each in its own way, too inflexible, too costly, too bureaucratic, too nationalistic, too disrespectful of the "free market" (read "globalization" and "finance capital"), and, last but not least, too considerate of working class interests and needs. The Asian model of export-led authoritarian capitalism has triumphed. This model developed on a political terrain more or less innocent of Western liberalism, free from the conceits of semi-autarkic nationalism in the South, and unsullied by the irrationalities of the East, where full employment and job security and cradle-to-grave welfare ensured economic gridlock, weak exports, and low productivity, hence the inability to import Western consumer goods so desired by the rebellious urban middle classes in East Europe and the USSR in the late 1980s. The Asian model succeeded for many reasons, not the least of which was that capital valorized the family and a variety of "Confucianisms" and "groupisms," developing forms of loyalty, collaboration and dependency between capital and labor, manufacturers and trading companies, banks and manufacturers, and so on, unknown in the West (at least in peacetime). Asian "collectivist capitalism" developed in the context of weak trade unions, safety nets full of holes, a high rate of exploitation of labor, and governments determined to expand exports faster than production for the domestic market. Asian culture proved to be better at the kind of "capitalist collectivism" needed in an age when the productive forces -- science and technology, information, and organization -- have become quintessentially social in character. The relevance of this brief account of the failures of the East, South, West and the success of Asia is that the economic and social classes in the non-Asian world do not believe that it is possible to impose Asian-style capitalism on their own societies and economies. It follows that alternative forms of material production, distribution, exchange, and consumption are at least possible -- at least in the West and possibly the South. For the foreseeable future, most countries in the non-Asian world will experience weak economic growth, high unemployment and underemployment, relatively low wages, and growing inequality and poverty -- and more people open to alternatives. As is well- known, capital's crisis-resolution strategy is to restructure finance and industry, downsize, deregulate, relocate plants overseas, and follow other cost-reduction measures, all of which will make the average worker and her family worse off. In the U.S., the economy will no longer be driven by consumption and military spending; today, the country seeks to become an "export super-power," as George Bush put it. Capital/labor ratios will continue to rise (as capital expels more living labor from production); capital goods production will continue to expand faster than consumer goods production (hence exacerbating both realization and disproportionality crisis tendencies); and social democracy and the unions will continue to be weakened and downsized. These trends will ensure relatively weak effective demand in the home market, and, in all probability, a revival of protectionism and begger-my-neighbor policies (did the U.S., in fact, torpedo the European monetary union by secret foreign exchange rate manipulation?). Those who are trying to develop (or would support) safe and sane economic alternatives -- greens, red greens, feminists and women, unions looking beyond their next contract, conversion experts, oppressed minorities, the poor, much of the intelligencia -- face three dangers. One is that they might find themselves coopted by right-wing protectionist forces, e.g., the alliance between left and right in the U.S. in opposition to NAFTA today. A second is that the prosperous regions in the West might politically shed their poorer cousins, as the Legas in North Italy desire. A third is that a revival of national chauvinism aimed at foreign workers and immigrants generally might derail any possibilities of unity between working people, the unemployed, small business, and other popular classes. These dangers mean that any alternative to global capital -- maximum efficiency in the service of insane goals -- has to be realistic, rational, and politically marketable, and, above all, sharply distinguishable from the dominant models of accumulation. In the current conjuncture, it's no wonder that most reform-minded unions and social democrats in the West are beginning to choose one alternative over others. I refer to the view that what's needed is, first, work sharing, and, second, the creation of "socially useful work." "Work sharing" means fewer hours worked per day, fewer days worked per year. In and of itself, this is a totally unobjectionable goal. "Socially useful work" is also unobjectionable in principle, as it can mean almost anything one wants it to mean. However, the tendency seems to be to define socially useful work in terms of the construction of new physical and social infrastructure, that is, a "new Deal solution," a solution to the last great crisis of capitalism (which, in the last analysis, didn't work). Just as generals typically organize armies to fight the last war, not the next one, so, too, do left-of-center economists, planners, and bureaucrats tend to propose economic alternatives to combat the last crisis, not the present one. As conventionally defined, spreading work will democratize poverty and dampen environmentally and socially destructive consumerism, not end it. New infrastructure will provide new, albeit it mainly temporary, jobs and will extend wage labor into new spheres of material life, not abolish it. Spreading work and building new infrastructure, appealing as they are to unemployed and underemployed workers, will harm "international competitiveness" and kill possibilities of radical reform. In other words, these twin strategies emerging from really existing labor movements need a new context. Either the West goes all the way to compete with Asia, with the aim of turning Asian export surpluses into deficits, thus massively penetrating the long-dreamed-of Asian market and also displacing realization crisis tendencies from the West to Asia. Or greens, red greens, women and feminists, left labor, unemployed and poor, oppressed minorities, and others expelled from, or exploited by, the global capitalist project develop their own alternative, based on critical scrutiny or the axioms of social democracy and the traditional labor movement, as well as those of capital itself. What would this alternative look like? Putting aside the details ("the devil is not in the details," contrary to Bill Clinton's claim, he's in the premises), in principle, the alternative is transparently simple. Since World War II (and before), economic growth has been based on the neglect of what Marx called the "conditions of production" -- which are also the conditions of life and life itself -- namely, a healthy, cultured, qualified, and reasonably happy population, livable cities, a productive symbiosis between the urban and the rural, and the integrity of the complex ecosystems and ecotones that greens call the "environment." In most if not all Western countries (and more so in the South and East), teachers produce more stupidity than enlightenment; doctors produce more profits than health; urban planners produce more congestion and high land prices and rents than livable streets; developers break down the last traces of the symbiotic relation between town and countryside; Agriculture Ministries destroy rather than defend integrated farming and rural cultures; and Environmental Ministries tend to focus on environmental amenities for the well-to-do to the neglect of ecology. By impairing or destroying the conditions of production -- however "cost-effective" in the short-run -- capital and the state have impaired or destroyed the conditions of life. Cities are more congested and polluted and drug-and-crime-ridden and mean- spirited; the countryside is culturally "urbanized;" nature is redefined as "natural capital;" people are regarded as merely "human capital." Everywhere there is a spiritual emptiness, cultural decadence, "morbid forms of social life" (Gramsci). Fear, anger, pain, and manic pleasure are the dominant experiences. Like some post-modern Gresham's Law, bad social practises drive out good ones. This should come as no surprise. By its nature, capital is bad at preserving things, whether they be people, land, urban amenities, rural life, or nature. This is especially true in the present conjuncture -- cost-reduction mania, and the obsession with new high products, capital's general crisis resolution strategies. There is no profit in maintenance, which means actions to prevent something bad from happening. Profit is in expansion, accumulation, making and selling something new at a lower cost. Thus, the "Galbraithian condition": the pathetic state of public health, education, urban life, the countryside, transport, the environment, side by side with the deadly race to capitalize "virtual reality" and "interactive systems" and other high tech novelties. I do not mean that individual capitals do not spend money maintaining their plant and equipment. They do. I mean only that such expenditures are not productive of surplus value (profits) hence will be minimized, especially today when cost reduction is the watchword and finance capital will as soon abandon a plant or city block as restore and renew them, and when tax laws favor a rapid write-off of the value of plant and machinery (which, therefore, will receive less maintenance). The conditions of production (unlike plant and equipment, rarely the property of capital) are and will be neglected even more. This tendency to fail to preserve everything and everybody that doesn't or can't turn a profit is especially powerful given the fiscal crisis of the state and the legitimation crisis of the political system and government generally (e.g., budget deficits and loss of faith in politicians, parties, and the state, respectively). Just at a time when work sharing and public works are thought by many to be the only practical alternative, the state lacks the fiscal, political, and administrative resources to implement such an alternative. are not concerned to preserve productive forces that they don't leased machinery. As a general rule, however, the trend is for has always been the case) but also temps and part-timers, land plant and equipment. Today, more U.S. companies are leasing more researchers, marketing specialists, even Directors. The "ideal capital" in fact own nothing, leases everything. It is merely a pool of money, money capital, ready and able to move to wherever cheap labor and markets beckon, and profits are greatest. In the hyper-capitalist world we live in, one that ago, money capital, finance capital, cares little about as possible. What's the alternative? In this feminist age, the issue of "reproduction" -- child raising, care for the sick and aged, housework, and the labor of producing affect (the daily dose of love and ego-message) is politically asserting itself as never before in the history of capitalism. Women, feminists, are screaming in our faces, in so many words, "maintain first, then and only then you guys can go out and self-expand!" Feminists, women, will support a "preserve first!" alternative quicker than it takes to do a load of laundry. In this environmental age, the issue of nature -- the maintenance of bio-diversity, good air, clean and abundant aquifers, unpolluted rivers, lakes, and oceans, the integrity of "ecological systems" and environmental amenities -- has come to the fore as in no other historical period. Greens of all shades are saying, in so many words, "preserve first; stop exploiting renewable resources, in effect turning them into non-renewables; don't rob future generations of non-renewable resources; keep the planet alive!" Greens, too, will politically support a "maintenance first!" alternative. In this age of the decay of the urban and rural, the issues of housing, congestion, inequality and poverty, high land prices and rents, crime, drugs, mean streets, homelessness, and the depression in the countryside are asserting themselves as never before. Not only the ghettos and barrios but also the suburbs and rural towns are desperate to put things back together and then to maintain a decent, human existence. There are other sectors of society interested in stopping capital's cancerous growth, governed by finance capital, a growth tragically supported by mainstream social democracy and labor. With a little urging, wouldn't the unions be interested in, first and foremost, elevating and maintaining the cultural and physical levels of their members, not to speak of plant and equipment, to prevent occupational disease and accidents (including stress disease rooted in bad work relations)? I think so, if this move was part of a larger, unified political struggle for "preservation first!" Or perhaps, "restoration and preservation first!" Is it an accident that the fastest-growing union in the U.S. today, the Social Service Employees International, is driven by its Justice for Janitors campaign, a movement of maintenance workers? "Preservation first!" means to use labor, raw materials, machinery, and other resources to restore, renew, repair, keep up. This is what Earth First! is all about, as are Greenpeace and other left-of-center green organizations. This is also what feminism, public health and urban movements, rural struggles, and occupational and community health and safety battles are about. If we must have competition, we need a competitive race to see who can best restore and maintain the conditions of life, instead of expand commodity production and capital, ruining these conditions in the process. The inevitable loss will be the sacred right to choose among a seemingly unlimited supply of consumer goodies, a right that, in any case, means little to the poor and unemployed. "Preservation first!" would definitely democratize a lower "standard of living," defined in terms of the commodity form of need satisfaction. It would also democratize a higher living standard defined in terms of good housing, livable streets, the integrity of the urban and rural and their relation with one another, the survival of ecosystems, and the rest. Unquestionably, capital and the capitalist state (as presently undemocratically structured) would oppose such an alternative (it wouldn't be a real alternative if they didn't!). Capital flight would be inevitable, which means speculation against the dollar, and, in the last analysis, the need for import controls (the sign that radical economic policies are hitting home). The country, and its major regions, would have to "delink" from global capital, not in the name of autarkic nationalist growth and development, but under the sign of an entirely new model of material and social existence. Solid unity would be needed between sectors of labor, greens, feminists and women, oppressed minorities, the poor, and others with a greater stake in restoring and renewing than in owning high definition TVs, which, in any case, eventually find their way into solid waste dumps. But we would have real air to breathe, real water to drink, an urban revival, a countryside with diverse local cultures and integrated farming, a rational interchange between green cities and the rural, all of which millions of people would cherish. If the rhetoric of "growth and development" and "more jobs" is needed to politically legitimate the alternative sketched above, and it is, let these mantras be redefined to mean growth of the capacity for restoration and preservation, development of green cities and countrysides characterized by economic and social justice and democratic self-governance, and the "job" of restoring an maintaining the conditions of life, and life itself. Material and environmental maintenance presuppose that our work be organized in ways that permit us to restore and maintain fully democratic, non-oppressive social relations. A few years ago, Greenpeace's monthly ran a little story headed, "Marxist Trashes Recycling." This bit of wit was inspired by a series of interviews that Alexander Cockburn did with me in Z Magazine. I had asked, "why recycle old, exploitative social relations with your newspapers?" Greenpeace magazine's (tongue-in-cheek?) attack is indicative of how, even in left-of-center green circles, the basic Marxist concept that a certain material life is also a certain social life is widely misunderstood. This can be changed. I end with a disclaimer: "preservation first!" cannot be brought to life within capitalism as we know it. We should be clear: this alternative (which also presuppose work sharing and renewal of transport and other public works) is revolutionary in intent and effect.