[UNLOCKED] Communism, the Highest Stage of Ecology w/ Henry Hakamäki & Salvatore Engels-Di Mauro

Yeah, and a great summary of our conversation where we're headed, right? Why is capitalism so unsustainable? What are the myths or the misunderstandings about communism that we need to unlearn or unpack? And then why is it that communism is so much better set up to be kind to ecology and really truly sustainable? And then today we're going to focus more on the Soviet Union as the example.

And then in our next conversation, we'll bring in Cuba for our series.

So great overview.

And so Salvatore, I want to ask you as well to follow on to what Henry was just talking about.

I know it may feel obvious, but just to let us know how you'd answer this.

Why is capitalism so fundamentally incompatible with ecological sustainability?

Oh, yes.

Well, Henry already, as you stated, summarised it rather well.

I would say maybe I can't really add much to it, except when you have a systemic action on the world that means that you have to endlessly produce stuff in order to endlessly make profits, that obviously has to lead to environmental problems, because the planet is finite, so it's not possible to even...

Even just logically, it kind of makes sense that way, that if you're going to be in a finite amount of resources, if you engage in infinitely producing stuff, you're going to have an ecologically unsustainable system.

One can also go on in terms of what's being called dream capitalism.

that might reduce some aspects of negative impacts on ecosystems or physical environments.

But again, if you're going to be producing solar panels because you need to make profits rather than serve the needs of people, which is what communism is about, or socialism before communism, if you like, If that's the aim, the aim is just to produce in order to accumulate more and more wealth, to accumulate more and more wealth endlessly, then even solar panels are going to be destructive.

Well, of course they are in some ways anyway, but they're going to be even worse.

And that goes with organic farming, anything that obeys that same logic, that same dynamic.

But again, the key thing is that live in a system of course in the us that is premised upon not just profitability in which you know if a business does not obey that logic they go under but it's also premised on exploiting workers to the maximum level so it's not just understanding ecological sustainability in terms of the world out there it should be understood and this is something that maybe we'll come back to ecological sustainability should be understood especially if one is someone who wants to promote communism or socialism, it should be understood as involving humans.

And so if you have a system that is based on exploiting humans, that is also unecologically, it's not ecologically sustainable because we as a species are also part of ecosystems.

And so that should also be viewed that way, ecological sustainability.

Unfortunately, the way that it's usually understood in a capitalist world is just preserving the environment out there.

It's not about preserving people.

And that's another disastrous aspect of capitalism.

It makes it ecologically unsustainable.

There's also this ideology behind it in which we're supposed to be severed from the rest of nature, even though we are part of it.

So maybe we'll touch upon that a little bit more.

So ideologically also, there's a huge problem with capitalism in terms of even being able to face ecologically unsustainable practices and let alone address them properly.