Farooque Chowdhury:

IDENTIFYING the GDP’s limitations help find the losses the working people have to make, untold yet, due to climate crisis, although it’s the working people that bear the most. The reason that works to put the working people in this position is, in briefest way, they are chained by capital.

Nothing, but GDP?

YET, to fathom performance in economic front, GDP is used widely.

John Smith tells the compelling fact: ‘[I]t is impossible to analyse the global economy without using data on GDP and trade, yet every time we uncritically cite this data we open the door to the core fallacies of neoclassical economics which these data project. To analyse the global economy we must decontaminate this data, or rather the concepts we use to interpret them.’

Vikram Mansharamani says: ‘This doesn’t mean GDP, or GNP for that matter, is useless. Far from it. But analysing the contours of GDP does force us to zoom out and understand its limitations.’17

Other than the GDP, there are, now-a-days, Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Index, which looks into governance, sustainable and equitable development, environmental conservation, and cultural preservation; the OECD’s Better Life Index that includes a work-life balance dimension, and presents a broad set of measures and allows users to weight them as they see fit; the UN’s Human Development Index, which ranks countries based not only on GDP per capita but also on factors like life expectancy, literacy, and school enrolment; the UN’s World Happiness Report that looks into people’s happiness; the Genuine Progress Indicator taking into consideration the issue of personal consumption for income inequality.

The scientists’ study mentioned at the very beginning of this article looks into GDP. It’s not the scientists’ wrong approach as they check with GDP. They had to initiate the appraisal process from a steppingstone still used widely. So, their study provides a picture of devastating reality, which is perceptible to much extent. Further studies will follow the scientists’ work.

But, the load

THE GDP has its many limitations, as has been shown above by liberally citing discussions on GDP. The GDP fails to tell about the part of climate-burning burden on people, especially the working classes.

In class divided society, benefits, advantages, accesses, entitlements, resources concentrate in the hands of the dominant classes, and the dominated part — the people, the poor, the working classes, the exploited — is deprived of these. The same pattern is present when burden, hardship, loss, etc are distributed; and that happens in an inverse way — the dominated parts bear the most, almost, all while the dominating parts carry nothing. This is part of the law of distribution in class divided society/society with exploitative relations. The force that determines this law of distribution is, in general terms, the dominating parts’ power, ranging from economy to politics, propaganda and manipulation of facts. This pattern of distribution of resources and hardships is void of equity; and this is found historically, in countries, in periods of booms and busts, crises and dangers.

As is well-recognised today that distribution of social products of a society is conditioned by modes of production and exchange in the society in a given time; and ruling classes take the biggest chunk while the subjugated classes, ie, the exploited get nothing, as, according to Engels, distribution depends on production and exchange relations in any society in a given time.

Johan Norberg, senior fellow, Cato Institute, Washington, DC, tells a number of hard facts:

‘Twenty per cent of the world’s population […] consumes more than 80 per cent of the earth’s resources, while the other 80 per cent consume less than 20 per cent. Critics of globalisation never tire of reminding us of this injustice.’

‘Critics of capitalism point out that per capita GDP is more than 30 times greater in the world’s 20 richest countries than in the 20 poorest. The critics are right to say that this inequality is due to capitalism […]’

And,

‘The world’s inequality is due to capitalism. Not to capitalism making certain groups poor, but to its making its practitioners wealthy. The uneven distribution of wealth in the world is due to the uneven distribution of capitalism.’

On the question of inequality, there’s no disagreement irrespective of the right and left camp: Today, none denies overwhelming inequality, inequality in the distribution system in the world, although many ideologies and politics never address the question of inequality; and whenever the question is mentioned by this camp, it’s neither addressed effectively nor its source is identified, as, if that’s done, that’ll question the entire system of exploitative property relation the ideologies and politics try to defend.

As the question of distribution is being focused in this part of the present article, let’s check the way the question stands:

The origin of inequality is within the system that produces only for profit, which is essentially, relations of distribution comes from the relations of production.

It is the system in which capitalists own means of production and all products that creates inequality.

Distribution is comprised of means of production and consumer goods, the necessary product and surplus product, as it’s an aspect of relations of production connecting production and consumption, and distribution and exchange link production and consumption; and distribution’s nature, principles and forms are defined by the mode of production in a society in a given time.

Now, a return to the GDP question will find:

GDP’s growth or loss isn’t awarded equally to all — it’s unequal depending on ownership of means of production, which is actually class power, where the powerful classes reap the entire yield and the powerless return to their shanties empty handed — an unequal distribution. This happens due to the distribution system in an exploitative system.

As long as the economy is based on exploitative relations, there is a single one-way avenue of climate loss — the working people, the commoners, the people bear the burden, suffer from the loss, as the powerful, the exploiters control all instruments and mechanisms of and arrangements for exploiting the nature including the climate and people, and all the power to shift all burdens of climate loss. These include economic, political and propaganda power. The loss that capital incurs due to climate loss is also shifted onto the shoulder of the working people.

In terms of capacity, the working people, the poor, the exploited have no power and scope to adjust to situations due to climate catastrophe other than getting entangled more tightly and more haplessly into chains of exploitation while the rich, the exploiters have all the power, scope and space to continue with their business of profit making and with life of luxury, indulgence, over-spending and thievery. While the bargaining capacity of the working classes dwindles with climate cataclysm, the exploiters enjoy the opposite, which is more appropriation of surplus value, more exploitation.

With climate crisis, the loss of the commons increases. It is a net loss of the working people. The loss of the commons has two aspects: Capitals occupied/exploited/demolished the commons in the process of profit making; and, contrarily, the working people lost their commons, but paid for the loss, and due to the commons lost, the working people’s scope for leaning on the commons for mere survival, which is actually a survival mode without having the scope of getting necessary value from capital, shortens/weakens, which make their livelihood harder.

With control over state machine, capitals make gains through policies related to taxation, subsidies, etc while the working people have the opposite. In facing climate crisis, this pattern/tact prevails. Taxes, main source of income of bourgeois state machine, in capitalist economy are instrument of domination of the bourgeoisie. While facing climate crisis, the working people are/will be burdened with this instrument and the exploiters, reapers of profit through taxes, will gain.

In the face of climate crisis, capital shifts geographically, area of activity, technology. This shift puts the working people in a hapless condition, as it’s not capital’s character to look at labour unless compelled either by thrust for regeneration of capital or by labour; and the shifting capital secures itself, digs in new areas of exploitation, increases its bargaining power, which in net result is loss/increased hardship of the working people. In facing climate crisis, capital’s centralisation and concentration, whenever it happens, increases exploitation, as centralisation and concentration of capital are, other than enlargement of capital, and accumulation and capitalisation of surplus value, increases and intensifies exploitation of the working people.

The question of imperialist/imperialism organised wars gets missed in most of the time while the issue of climate crisis is discussed by the mainstream, although the principal culprit is the imperialism/imperialist capital. These wars increase suffering of peoples in war ravaged lands that have already turned victims of climate crisis. There are two aspects of these sufferings: i) two types of devastations — one, due to climate crisis and the other, due to war — the peoples face; and ii) because of war, devastation, and failure/absence of governance or engagement of governing authority with war/facing war leads to no scope for taking mitigation and adaptation measures in the face of climate crisis. Such situation, other than creating loss of lives, health, shelter, education and wage, keeps no space and scope for organisations of and struggles by the working people, although organisations including trade unions are among the most important and essential tools/arms of people, the working people, the exploited.

It’s now well-recognised that a people, a working people, an exploited people without their organisation have nothing — it’s a people unarmed. Minimum power to protest withers away in this condition of no-organisation. In reality, this condition is, in reality, a demobilised working people; and demobilised condition of the working people does nothing but increases suffering, silently bearing on all burdens capital puts on the shoulder of the working people. Imperialist war may show an increase in GDP in a certain land, but devastation of the working people’s life goes unnoticed and unaccounted.

Missing of these aspects related to the exploited, the working people while considering the issues of the climate crisis and GDP is ignoring the most important question related to the climate crisis — life, human, and with persistence of the crisis life turns lifeless, humanity is dehumanised, a situation that is never to be accepted.

Concluded.

Farooque Chowdhury writes from Dhaka, Bangladesh.