Democracy and Ecological Crisis
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- Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 1624 ... June 17, 2018
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Democracy and Ecological Crisis
Nancy Holmstrom
Last fall 15,000 scientists issued a second dire notice to humanity that we are on a collision course with the limits of our planet. They concluded, "To prevent widespread misery, humanity must practice a more environmentally sustainable alternative to business as usual," including "reassess[ing]... the role of an economy rooted in growth." That means that we have to challenge capitalism; there is no capitalism without growth. Rosa Luxemburg’s statement on the eve of World War I that the choice is between socialism or barbarism was never more true. But today our struggle is about our very existence.
This reality should shape the way we think about politics and how we do politics. Democracy is often said to be... both the means and the end of socialism. Capitalist societies are peculiar class societies in that, especially the United States, they are said to be democratic. So what do we mean by "democracy" and by "socialism?"
The root meaning of "democracy" is rule by the people -- which entails that it admits of degrees according to two measures: first, how inclusive is the category of "the people" and second what the people get to decide. By the first measure -- usually the only one considered -- our democracy has clearly expanded. In those capitalist societies that are politically democratic, (not all, of course) everyone, at least all citizens, gets to vote, but this hardly happened from the beginning, by "nature" as supporters of capitalism seem to believe; indeed it has been a long heroic struggle. At the beginning only a tiny percentage of the population had the vote; property qualifications for male voters were not removed throughout the U.S. until the middle of the nineteenth century, while women won the right to vote less than one hundred years ago. African Americans were effectively denied the right to vote in the southern states until the Civil Rights movement won the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and they still face struggles over felon disenfranchisement and voter ID.
Even at its most inclusive, however, the formal equality of democracy in capitalism is undermined by economic inequality; those with more economic power simply have more influence over political decisions. Extreme inequality, the influence of money in elections, and the peculiar institution of the electoral college further limit U.S. political democracy.