We’ve been saying it for years — sustainable development is really just a disguised Marxism, with its top-down control of economic decisions, violation of private property rights, and emphasis on Social Justice — a term, incidentally, coined by none other than Karl Marx (so what was your first clue?). Well, as Agenda 21 has been enforced in more and more policies, the perpetrators have grown more and more bold in openly revealing the truth — it really is a not-so-disguised Marxism after all. But, of course, I’m just the lunatic fringe. So, let them tell you in their own words:
“We must make this an insecure and inhospitable place for capitalists and their projects.” — Dave Foreman (Co-founder of Earth First)
“If we don’t overthrow capitalism, we don’t have a chance of saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have an ecologically sound society under socialism. I don’t think it’s possible under capitalism.” — Judi Bari (Earth First)
“The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are.” — Michael Oppenheimer (Environmental Defense Fund)
“So when [people like Tom DeWeese] react to … Climate Change as if capitalism itself were coming under threat, it’s not because they are paranoid…. It’s because they are paying attention.” — Naomi Klein (writing in The Nation magazine, 11/28/11)
“Individual rights will have to take a back seat to the collective.” — Harvey Ruvin (Vice Chairman, ICLEI)
“Only socialism and the global solidarity of all working peoples can free both humanity and the earth from the fatal threat of global capitalism.” — Third Annual Conference of the World Association from Political Economy, Langfang, China, May 23-25, 2008
We call for “Zero Economic Growth.” — Speaker at the UN’s Rio+20 Summit, June, 2012.
“What is occurring here, not just in Doha, but in the whole climate change process, is the complete transformation of the economic structure of the world.” — Christiana Figueres (Executive Secretary, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, November, 2012)
Ravings of a Sustainable Lunatic
So, Marxism is all the rage in the international circles, but local proponents, planning groups, planning departments, and elected officials deny any such connections to their planning programs. Is there one? Let’s let an avowed Marxist author, Ted Trainer, explain how and why to impose the local process as he described it in his book, Transition to a Sustainable and Just World. See if you don’t recognize some of your community’s local planning programs.
According to Trainer:
The global economy is massively unjust. It delivers most of the world’s resources to the few in rich countries, and gears Third World productive capacity to rich world super-markets, not to meeting the needs of the world’s poor billions. Rich countries must move down to living on their fair share of global wealth. Local planning is based on this theory — YOU MUST LIVE ON LESS.
These faults cannot be fixed within or by a society driven by growth, market forces, production for profit, or affluence. These are the causes of the global sustainability and justice problems. Consumer society cannot be reformed to make it sustainable or just; it must be largely replaced by a society with fundamentally different structures. Local planning focuses on curtailing energy and natural resource and land use.
The alternative has to be THE SIMPLER WAY, a society based on non-affluent lifestyles within mostly small and highly self-sufficient local economies under local participatory control and not driven by market forces or the profit motive, and with no economic growth. [sounds familiar — Rio +20] There must be an enormous cultural change, away from competitive, individualistic acquisitiveness.
What then is the most effective transition strategy? The essential aim is not to fight against consumer-capitalist society, but to build the alternative to it. This revolution cannot be achieved from the top, either by governments, green parties or proletarian revolutions. This can only be a grassroots transition led by ordinary people working out how they can cooperatively make their local communities viable as the global economy increasingly fails to provide. The Eco-village and Transition Towns movements have begun the general shift, but….
Local self-sufficiency initiatives such as community gardens and Permaculture must be informed by the awareness that reforms to consumer-capitalist society cannot achieve a sustainable and just society. Nothing of lasting significance will be achieved unless it is clearly understood that our efforts in these local initiatives are the first steps to the eventual replacement of the present society by one which is not driven by market forces, profit, competition, growth or affluence. This awareness is far from sufficiently evident in present green initiatives. The most important contribution activists can make is to join community gardens, Transition Towns movements, etc. in order to help to develop this wider and radical global vision within participants.
This is what your local plannners and development plans are designed to do. This is the direct connection between international Marxism and your local government plans! Ted Trainer’s book, Transition to a Sustainable and Just World, is the blueprint for establishing Marxist principles into your local community.
Tom DeWeese is one of the nation’s leading advocates of individual liberty, free enterprise, private property rights, personal privacy, back-to-basics education and American sovereignty and independence. Go to americanpolicy.org for more information
Tom DeWeese’s new book is now on Amazon! Click here for more information.
