The Problem

The theorists below endeavor to name “The Problem” at a level that goes deeper than just capitalist property relations.

They all agree that capitalism is part of the problem and needs to be transcended. The objective of the needed system change is sometimes called ‘socialism,’ sometimes ‘eco-socialism,’ and sometimes just called ‘post-capitalism.’ The latter, in particular, indicates that universal social ownership of the means of production may or may not be required (it’s debatable).

. the Technosphere (Barry Commoner)
. the produced world (Karl Marx)
. the artifactual world (David Watson)
. the surrogate world (Edward Goldsmith)
. second nature (Murray Bookchin)
. the synthetic environment (Murray Bookchin)
. urban-industrialism (Theodore Roszak)
. the Machine (Paul Kingsnorth)
. the Megamachine (Lewis Mumford, David Watson)
. the Apparatus (Karl Jaspers)
. the power complex (Lewis Mumford)
. the Organized System (Paul Goodman)
. the cosmopolitan global economy (Helena Norberg-Hodge)
. the Industrial Goliath (Rudolf Bahro)
. the Leviathan (Fredy Perlman)
. Empire (Samuel Alexander)
. the global totality (John Zerzan)
. over-development (Vandana Shiva)
. over-domestication (John Zerzan)
. over-civilization (Nietzsche)
. consumer society (Ted Trainer … vs. conserver society)
. Empire Culture (David Korten)
. Taker Culture (Daniel Quinn … vs. Leaver Culture)
. Dominator Culture (Riane Eisler)
. death culture (Darryl Cherney)
. mass society (various)
. the built world (various)
. the artificial environment (various)

The critique of socialism from this “deep green” perspective has to do with the sense that socialism can be prone toward promulgating an idea that’s delusory … i.e., having the working class or “we, the people” expropriate the expropriators in order to institute democratic ownership and control of society and the economy … (a) the latter being unlikely (a vastly hypertrophied and complex modern industrial economy can’t be planned or even subjectively managed), and (b) even if it could be done, it wouldn’t fully solve The Problem.

Capital, technology, and the state constitute an interlocking juggernaut having enormous inertia derived from millennia of problematic civilizational trajectories. The Leviathan is monstrous in ways that go far beyond just capitalist property relations. Leftist theory would benefit from recognizing such.