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Wednesday, October 9, 2024

Zero waste

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_waste
Used products dumped at a scrap metal recycler

Zero waste, or waste minimization, is a set of principles focused on waste prevention that encourages redesigning Natural resource resource life cycles so that all products are repurposed (i.e. “up-cycled”) and/or reused. The goal of the movement is to avoid sending trash to landfills, incinerators, oceans, or any other part of the environment. Currently 9% of global Plastic recycling plastic is recycled. In a zero waste system, all materials are reused until the optimum level of consumption is reached.

Zero waste refers to waste prevention as opposed to end-of-pipe waste management. It is a “whole systems” approach that aims for a massive change in the way materials flow through society, resulting in no waste. Zero waste encompasses more than eliminating waste through reducing, reusing, and recycling. It focuses on restructuring distribution and production systems to reduce waste. Zero waste provides guidelines for continually working towards eliminating waste.

According to the Zero Waste International Alliance (ZWIA), Zero Waster is the conservation of all resources by means of responsible production, consumption, reuse and, recovery of all products, packaging, and materials, without burning them and without discharges to land, water, or air that threaten the environment or human health.

Advocates expect that government regulation is needed to influence industrial choices over product and packaging design, manufacturing processes, and material selection.

Advocates say eliminating waste decreases pollution and can also reduce costs due to the reduced need for raw materials.

Cradle-to-Grave

The cradle-to-grave is a linear material model that begins with resource extraction, moves to product manufacturing, and ends with a "grave" or landfill where the product is disposed of. Cradle-to-grave is in direct contrast to cradle-to-cradle materials or products, which are recycled into new products at the end of their lives so that ultimately there is no waste.

Cradle-to-cradle focuses on designing industrial systems so that materials flow in closed-loop cycles, which means that waste is minimized and waste products can be recycled and reused. Cradle-to-cradle goes beyond dealing with waste issues after it has been created by addressing problems at the source and redefining problems by focusing on design. The cradle-to-cradle model is sustainable and considerate of life and future generations.

The cradle-to-cradle framework has evolved steadily from theory to practice. In the industrial sector, it is creating a new notion of materials and material flows. Just as in the natural world, in which one organism's "waste" cycles through an ecosystem to provide nourishment for other living things, cradle-to-cradle materials circulate in closed-loop cycles, providing nutrients for nature or industry.

The spread of industrialization worldwide has been accompanied by a large increase in waste production. In 2012 the World Bank stated that 1.3 billion tons of municipal waste was produced by urban populations and estimates that the number will reach 2.2 billion tons by 2025 (Global Solid Waste Management Market - Analysis and Forecast). The increase in solid waste production increases the need for landfills. With the increase in urbanization, these landfills are being placed closer to communities. These landfills are disproportionately located in areas of low socioeconomic status with primarily non-white populations. Findings indicated these areas are often targeted as waste sites because permits are more easily acquired and there was generally less community resistance. Additionally, within the last five years, more than 400 hazardous waste facilities have received formal enforcement actions for unspecified violations that were considered to be a risk to human health.

There is a growing global population that is faced with limited resources from the environment. To relieve the pressures placed on the finite resources available it has become more important to prevent waste. To achieve zero waste, waste management has to move from a linear system to be more cyclical so that materials, products, and substances are used as efficiently as possible. Materials must be chosen so that they may either return safely to a cycle within the environment or remain viable in the industrial cycle.

Zero waste promotes not only reuse and recycling but, more importantly, it promotes prevention and product designs that consider the entire product life cycle. Zero-waste designs strive for reduced material use, use of recycled materials, use of more benign materials, longer product lives, repair ability, and ease of disassembly at end of life. Zero waste strongly supports sustainability by protecting the environment, reducing costs and producing additional jobs in the management and handling of wastes back into the industrial cycle. A Zero waste strategy may be applied to businesses, communities, industrial sectors, schools, and homes.

Benefits proposed by advocates include:

  • Saving money. Since waste is a sign of inefficiency, the reduction of waste can reduce costs.
  • Faster Progress. A zero-waste strategy improves upon production processes and improves environmental prevention strategies which can lead to taking larger, more innovative steps.
  • Supports sustainability. A zero-waste strategy supports all three of the generally accepted goals of sustainability - economic well-being, environmental protection, and social well-being.
  • Improved material flows. A zero-waste strategy would use far fewer new raw materials and send no waste materials to landfills. Any material waste would either return as reusable or recycled materials or would be suitable for use as compost.

Health

A major issue with landfills is hydrogen sulfide, which is released from the natural decay of waste. Studies have shown a positive association between increased lung cancer mortality rates and increased morbidity and mortality related to respiratory disease and hydrogen sulfide exposure. These studies also showed that the hydrogen sulfide exposure increased with proximity to the landfill.

Household chemicals and prescription drugs are increasingly being found in large quantities in the leachate from landfills. This is causing concern about the ability of landfills to contain these materials and the possibility of these chemicals and drugs making their way into the groundwater and the surrounding environment.

Zero waste promotes a circular material flow that allows materials to be used over and over, reducing the need for landfill space. Through zero waste the number of toxins released into the air and water would be decreased and products examined to determine what chemicals are used in the production process.

Health issues related to landfills:

Zero waste promotion of a cyclical product life can help reduce the need to create and fill landfills. This can help reduce incidents of respiratory diseases and birth defects that are associated with the toxins released from landfills. Zero waste can also help preserve local environments and potable water sources by preventing pollutants from entering the ecosystem.

History

2002–2003

The movement gained publicity and reached a peak in 1998–2002, and since then has been moving from "theory into action" by focusing on how a "zero waste community" is structured and behaves. The website of the Zero Waste International Alliance has a listing of communities across the globe that have created public policies to promote zero-waste practices. There is a zero-waste organization named the GrassRoots Recycling Network (now known as Zero Waste USA) that puts on workshops and conferences about zero-waste activities.

The California Integrated Waste Management Board established a zero waste goal in 2001. The City and County of San Francisco's Department of the Environment established a goal of zero waste in 2002, which led to the City's Mandatory Recycling and Composting Ordinance in 2009. With its ambitious goal of zero waste and policies, San Francisco reached a record-breaking 80% diversion rate in 2010, the highest diversion rate in any North American city. San Francisco received a perfect score in the waste category in the Siemens US and Canada Green City Index, which named San Francisco the greenest city in North America.

2009: The Zero Waste lifestyle movement emerges

In 2008, Zero Waste was a term used to describe manufacturing and municipal waste management practices. Bea Johnson, a French American woman living in California, decided to apply it to her household of 4. In 2009, she started sharing her journey through her blog, Zero Waste Home, and in 2010, was featured in The New York Times. The article, which introduced the mainstream to the concept of waste-free living, received much criticism from people confusing it for a bohemian lifestyle. These critical reviews began to shift after images of the family and their interior was widely broadcast in worldwide media. In 2013, Johnson published Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying your Life by Reducing your Waste. Dubbed "Bible for the zero waste pursuer" by Book Riot, it provides a simple to follow the methodology of 5R's with in-depth practical tips on how to eliminate waste in a household. Translated into 27 languages (as of 2019), the international bestseller helped spread the concept to a wide audience. Some of Bea's followers and readers went on to start their own blogs, such as Lauren Singer, an eco-activist living in New York, whose Social Media channels spread the concept to millennials, open package-free stores, such as Marie Delapierre, who opened the first unpackaged store in Germany (based on the model of Unpackaged, the first package-free concept in our modern era), launch non-profit organizations, such as Natalie Bino, founding member of Zero Waste Switzerland. Over the years, the Zero Waste lifestyle experienced a significant increase in followers. Thousands of social media channels, blogs, unpackaged stores, lines of reusables, and organizations have emerged worldwide. And in turn, the fast-evolving grass-root movement created a demand for large corporations, such as Unilever and Procter and Gamble, to conceive reusable alternatives to disposables.

2010 to Present

The movement continues to grow among the youth around the world under the organization Zero Waste Youth, which originated in Brazil and has spread to Argentina, Puerto Rico, Mexico, the United States, and Russia. The organization multiplies with local volunteer ambassadors who lead zero waste gatherings and events to spread the zero waste message.

The International Day of Zero Waste was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 14, 2022. The event will be held annually on March 30 commencing in 2023. "During International Day of Zero Waste, Member States, organizations of the United Nations system, civil society, the private sector, academia, youth and other stakeholders are invited to engage in activities aimed at raising awareness of national, subnational, regional and local zero-waste initiatives and their contribution to achieving sustainable development. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) jointly facilitate the observance of International Day of Zero Waste."

Packaging Examples

Returnable glass milk bottles
Zero-waste store in Antwerp, Belgium

Milk can be shipped in many forms. One of the traditional forms was reusable returnable glass milk bottles, often home delivered by a milkman. While some of this continues, other options have recently been more common: one-way gable-top paperboard cartons, one-way aseptic cartons, one-way recyclable glass bottles, one-way milk bags, and others. Each system claims some advantages and also has possible disadvantages. From the zero-waste standpoint, the reuse of bottles is beneficial because the material usage per trip can be less than other systems. The primary input (or resource) is silica-sand, which is formed into glass and then into a bottle. The bottle is filled with milk and distributed to the consumer. A reverse logistics system returns the bottles for cleaning, inspection, sanitization, and reuse. Eventually, the heavy-duty bottle would not be suited for further use and would be recycled. Waste and landfill usage would be minimized. The material waste is primarily the wash water, detergent, transportation, heat, bottle caps, etc. While true zero waste is never achieved, a life cycle assessment can be used to calculate the waste at each phase of each cycle.

Online shopping orders are often placed in an outer box to contain multiple items for easier transport and tracking. This creates waste for every order, especially when there is only a single item. In response, some products are now designed not to require an outer box for safe shipping, a feature known as ships in own container.

Recycling

It is important to distinguish recycling from Zero Waste. The most common practice of recycling is simply that of placing bottles, cans, paper, and packaging into curbside recycling bins. The modern version of recycling is more complicated and involves many more elements of financing and government support. For example, a 2007 report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency states that the US recycles at a national rate of 33.5% and includes in this figure composted materials. In addition, many multinational commodity companies have been created to handle recycled materials. At the same time, claims of recycling rates have sometimes been exaggerated, for example by the inclusion of soil and organic matter used to cover garbage dumps daily, in the "recycled" column. In US states with recycling incentives, there is constant local pressure to inflate recycling statistics.

Recycling has been separated from the concept of zero waste. One example of this is the computer industry where worldwide millions of PC's are disposed of as electronic waste each year in 2016 44.7 million metric tons of electronic waste was generated of which only 20% was documented and recycled. Some computer manufacturers refurbish leased computers for resale. Community Organizations have also entered this space by refurbishing old computers from donation campaigns for distribution to undeserved communities.

Software recycling

A clear example of the difference between zero waste and recycling is discussed in Getting to Zero Waste, in the software industry. Zero waste design can be applied to intellectual property where the effort to code functionality into software objects is developed by design as opposed to copying code snippets multiple times when needed. The application of zero waste is straightforward as it conserves human effort. Also, software storage mediums have transitioned from consumable diskettes to internal drives which are vastly superior and have a minimal cost per megabyte of storage. This is a physical example where zero waste correctly identifies and avoids wasteful behavior.

Use of zero waste system

Zero waste is poorly supported by the enactment of government laws to enforce the waste hierarchy.

A special feature of zero waste as a design principle is that it can be applied to any product or process, in any situation or at any level. Thus it applies equally to toxic chemicals as to benign plant matter. It applies to the waste of atmospheric purity by coal-burning or the waste of radioactive resources by attempting to designate the excesses of nuclear power plants as "nuclear waste". All processes can be designed to minimize the need for discard, both in their own operations and in the usage or consumption patterns which the design of their products leads to. Recycling, on the other hand, deals only with simple materials.

Zero waste can even be applied to the waste of human potential by enforced poverty and the denial of educational opportunity. It encompasses redesign for reduced energy wasting in industry or transportation and the wasting of the earth's rainforests. It is a general principle of designing for the efficient use of all resources, however defined.

The recycling movement may be slowly branching out from its solid waste management base to include issues that are similar to the community sustainability movement.

Zero waste, on the other hand, is not based in waste management limitations to begin with but requires that we maximize our existing reuse efforts while creating and applying new methods that minimize and eliminate destructive methods like incineration and recycling. Zero waste strives to ensure that products are designed to be repaired, refurbished, re-manufactured and generally reused.

Significance of dump capacity

Many dumps are currently exceeding carrying capacity. This is often used as a justification for moving to Zero Waste. Others counter by pointing out that there are huge tracts of land available throughout the US and other countries which could be used for dumps. Proposals abound to destroy all garbage as a way to solve the garbage problem. These proposals typically claim to convert all or a large portion of existing garbage into oil and sometimes claim to produce so much oil that the world will henceforth have abundant liquid fuels. One such plan, called Anything Into Oil, was promoted by Discover Magazine and Fortune Magazine in 2004 and claimed to be able to convert a refrigerator into "light Texas crude" by the application of high-pressure steam.

Corporate initiatives

An example of a company that has demonstrated a change in landfill waste policy is General Motors (GM). GM has confirmed their plans to make approximately half of its 181 plants worldwide "landfill-free" by the end of 2010. Companies like Subaru, Toyota, and Xerox are also producing landfill-free plants. Furthermore, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has worked with GM and other companies for decades to minimize waste through its WasteWise program. The goal for General Motors is to find ways to recycle or reuse more than 90% of materials by selling scrap materials, adopting reusable boxes to replace cardboard, and recycling used work gloves. The remainder of the scraps might be incinerated to create energy for the plants. Besides being nature-friendly, it also saves money by cutting out waste and producing more efficient production. Microsoft and Google are two other big companies that have Zero Waste goals. These two companies have goals to keep the majority of their waste out of landfills. Google has six locations that have a Zero Waste to Landfill goal. These locations have a goal to keep 100% of their waste out of landfills. Microsoft has a similar goal, but they are only trying to keep 90% of their waste out of landfills. All these organizations push forth to make our world clean and produce zero waste.

A garden centre in Faversham, UK, has started to prevent plastic plant pots from being passed down to customers. Instead, it reuses the plastic pots only locally in the garden center, but upon selling it to its customers it repots the plants in paper plant pots. It also sells plants wrapped in hessia and uses a variety of techniques to prevent handing down (single-use) plastics to customers.

Re-use or rot of waste

The waste sent to landfills may be harvested as useful materials, such as in the production of solar energy or natural fertilizer/de-composted manure for crops.

It may also be reused and recycled for something that we can actually use. "The success of General Motors in creating zero-landfill facilities shows that zero-waste goals can be a powerful impetus for manufacturers to reduce their waste and carbon footprint," says Latisha Petteway, a spokesperson for the EPA.

Market-based campaigns

Market-based, legislation-mediated campaigns like extended producer responsibility (EPR) and the precautionary principle are among numerous campaigns that have a Zero Waste slogan hung on them by means of claims they all ineluctably lead to policies of Zero Waste. At the moment, there is no evidence that EPR will increase reuse, rather than merely moving discard and disposal into private-sector dumping contracts. The Precautionary Principle is put forward to shift liability for proving new chemicals are safe from the public (acting as guinea pig) to the company introducing them. As such, its relation to Zero Waste is dubious. Likewise, many organizations, cities and counties have embraced a Zero Waste slogan while pressing for none of the key Zero Waste changes. In fact, it is common for many such to simply state that recycling is their entire goal. Many commercial or industrial companies claim to embrace Zero Waste but usually mean no more than a major materials recycling effort, having no bearing on product redesign. Examples include Staples, Home Depot, Toyota, General Motors and computer take-back campaigns. Earlier social justice campaigns have successfully pressured McDonald's to change their meat purchasing practices and Nike to change its labor practices in Southeast Asia. Those were both based on the idea that organized consumers can be active participants in the economy and not just passive subjects. However, the announced and enforced goal of the public campaign is critical. A goal to reduce waste generation or dumping through greater recycling will not achieve a goal of product redesign and so cannot reasonably be called a Zero Waste campaign. Producers should be made responsible for the packaging of the products rather than the consumers in EPR like campaigns by which the participation of the Producers will increase.

How to achieve

National and provincial governments often set targets and may provide some funding, but on a practical level, waste management programs (e.g. pickup, drop-off, or containers for recycling and composting) are usually implemented by local governments, possibly with regionally shared facilities.

Reaching the goal of zero waste requires the products of manufacturers and industrial designers to be easily disassembled for recycling and incorporated back into nature or the industrial system; durability and repairability also reduce unnecessary churn in the product life cycle. Minimizes packaging also solves many problems early in the supply chain. If not mandated by government, choices by retailers and consumers in favor of zero-waste-friendly products can influence production. More and more schools are motivating their students to live a different life and rethink every polluting step they may take. To prevent material from becoming waste, consumers, businesses, and non-profits must be educated in how to reduce waste and recycle successfully.

The 5 R’s of Bea Johnson

Inverted pyramid : refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle, rot.
Bea Johnson's 5R

In the book Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying your Life by Reducing your Waste the author, Bea Johnson, provides a modified version of the 3 Rs, the 5 Rs: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rot to achieve Zero Waste at home. The method, which she developed through years of practicing waste free living and used to reduce her family's annual trash to fit in a pint jar, is now widely used by individuals, businesses and municipalities worldwide.

Zero Waste Hierarchy

The Zero Waste Hierarchy describes a progression of policies and strategies to support the zero-waste system, from highest and best to lowest use of materials. It is designed to be applicable to all audiences, from policymakers to industry and the individual. It aims to provide more depth to the internationally recognized 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle); to encourage policy, activity and investment at the top of the hierarchy; and to provide a guide for those who wish to develop systems or products that move us closer to zero waste. It enhances the zero-waste definition by providing guidance for planning and a way to evaluate proposed solutions. All over the world, in some form or another, a pollution prevention hierarchy is incorporated into recycling regulations, solid waste management plans, and resource conservation programs. In Canada, a pollution prevention hierarchy otherwise referred to as the Environmental Protection Hierarchy was adopted. This Hierarchy has been incorporated into all recycling regulations within Canada and is embedded within all resource conservation methods which all government mandated waste prevention programs follow. While the intention to incorporate the 4th R (recovery)prior to disposal was good, many organizations focused on this 4th R instead of the top of the hierarchy resulting in costly systems designed to destroy materials instead of systems designed to reduce environmental impact and waste. Because of this, along with other resource destruction systems that have been emerging over the past few decades, Zero Waste Canada along with the Zero Waste International Alliance have adopted the only internationally peer-reviewed Zero Waste Hierarchy that focuses on the first 3Rs; Reduce, Reuse and Recycle including Compost.

Zero waste jurisdictions

Various governments have declared zero waste as a goal, including:

Kamikatsu Zero Waste Center, itself built using recycled materials

An example of network governance approach can be seen in the UK under New Labour who proposed the establishment of regional groupings that brought together the key stakeholders in waste management (local authority representatives, waste industry, government offices etc.) on a voluntary basis. There is a lack of clear government policy on how to meet the targets for diversion from landfill which increases the scope at the regional and local level for governance networks. The overall goal is set by government but the route for how to achieve it is left open, so stakeholders can coordinate and decide how best to reach it.

Zero Waste is a strategy promoted by environmental NGOs but the waste industry is more in favor of the capital intensive option of energy from waste incineration. Research often highlights public support as the first requirement for success. In Taiwan, public opinion was essential in changing the attitude of business, who must transform their material use pattern to become more sustainable for Zero Waste to work.

California is a leading state in the United States for having zero-waste goals. California is the state with the most cities in the Zero Waste International Alliance. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, multiple cities have defined what it means to be a Zero Waste community and adopted goals to reach that status. Some of these cities include Fresno, Los Angeles, Oakland, San Francisco, Pasadena, Alameda, and San Jose. San Francisco has defined zero waste as "zero discards to the landfill or high-temperature destruction." Here, there is a planned structure to reach Zero Waste through three steps recommended by the San Francisco Department of the Environment. These steps are to prevent waste, reduce and reuse, and recycle and compost. Los Angeles defines zero waste as "maximizing diversion from landfills and reducing waste at the source, with the ultimate goal of striving for more-sustainable solid waste management practices." Los Angeles plans to reach this goal by the year of 2025. To reach this goal, major changes will have to be made to product creation, use, and disposal.

Zero-waste stores

Retail stores specializing in zero-waste products have opened in various countries, including Spain and the United States.

Technocriticism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocriticism

Technocriticism is a branch of critical theory devoted to the study of technological change.

Technocriticism treats technological transformation as historically specific changes in personal and social practices of research, invention, regulation, distribution, promotion, appropriation, use, and discourse, rather than as an autonomous or socially indifferent accumulation of useful inventions, or as an uncritical narrative of linear "progress", "development" or "innovation".

Technocriticism studies these personal and social practices in their changing practical and cultural significance. It documents and analyzes both their private and public uses, and often devotes special attention to the relations among these different uses and dimensions. Recurring themes in technocritical discourse include the deconstruction of essentialist concepts such as "health", "human", "nature" or "norm".

Technocritical theory can be either "descriptive" or "prescriptive" in tone. Descriptive forms of technocriticism include some scholarship in the history of technology, science and technology studies, cyberculture studies and philosophy of technology. More prescriptive forms of technocriticism can be found in the various branches of technoethics, for example, media criticism, infoethics, bioethics, neuroethics, roboethics, nanoethics, existential risk assessment and some versions of environmental ethics and environmental design theory.

Figures engaged in technocritical scholarship and theory include Donna Haraway and Bruno Latour (who work in the closely related field of science studies), N. Katherine Hayles (who works in the field of Literature and Science), Phil Agree and Mark Poster (who works in intellectual history), Marshall McLuhan and Friedrich Kittler (who work in the closely related field of media studies), Susan Squier and Richard Doyle (who work in the closely related field of medical sociology), and Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, and Michel Foucault (who sometimes wrote about the philosophy of technology). Technocriticism can be juxtaposed with a number of other innovative interdisciplinary areas of scholarship which have surfaced in recent years such as technoscience and technoethics.

Ethical socialism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethical_socialism 
 
Ethical socialism is a political philosophy that appeals to socialism on ethical and moral grounds as opposed to consumeristic, economic, and egoistic grounds. It emphasizes the need for a morally conscious economy based upon the principles of altruism, cooperation, and social justice while opposing possessive individualism.

In contrast to socialism inspired by historical materialism, Marxist theory, and neoclassical economics which base their appeals for socialism on grounds of economic efficiency, or historical inevitability, ethical socialism focuses on the moral and ethical reasons for advocating socialism. It became the official philosophy of several socialist parties.

Ethical socialism has some significant overlap with Christian socialism, Fabianism, guild socialism, liberal socialism, social-democratic reformism, and utopian socialism. Under the influence of politicians like Carlo Rosselli in Italy, social democrats began disassociating themselves from orthodox Marxism altogether as represented by Marxism–Leninism, embracing an ethical liberal socialism, Keynesianism, and appealing to morality rather than any consistent systematic, scientific or materialist worldview.

Social democracy made appeals to communitarian, corporatist, and sometimes nationalist sentiments while rejecting the economic and technological determinism generally characteristic of both economic liberalism and orthodox Marxism.

Overview

Ethical socialism can be traced back to the utopian socialists, especially Henri de Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier, but also anarchists such as the French socialist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon as well as Italian revolutionaries and socialists such as Giuseppe Garibaldi and Giuseppe Mazzini. Those utopian socialists, one of the first currents of modern socialist thought, presented visions and outlines for imaginary or futuristic ideal societies, characterized by the establishment of a moral economy, with positive ideals based on moral and ethical grounds being the main reason for moving society in such a direction. Before Marxists established a hegemony over definitions of socialism, the term socialism was a broad concept which referred to one or more of various theories aimed at solving the labour problem through radical changes in the capitalist economy. Descriptions of the problem, explanations of its causes and proposed solutions such as the abolition of private property or supporting cooperatives and public ownership varied among socialist philosophies.

Clement Attlee, prime minister of the United Kingdom (1945–1951)

The term ethical socialism initially originated as a pejorative by the Marxian economist Rosa Luxemburg against Marxist revisionist Eduard Bernstein and his socialist reformist supporters, who evoked neo-Kantian liberal ideals and ethical arguments in favour of socialism. Self-recognized ethical socialists soon arose in Britain such as the Christian socialist R. H. Tawney and its ideals were connected to Christian socialist, Fabian, and guild socialist ideals. Ethical socialism was an important ideology within the British Labour Party. Ethical socialism has been publicly supported by British prime ministers Ramsay MacDonald, Clement Attlee, and Tony Blair. While Blair described New Labour as a return to ethical socialism, several critics accused him of completely abandoning socialism in favour of capitalism.

Ethical socialism had a profound impact on the social democratic movement and reformism during the later half of the 20th century, particularly in Great Britain. Ethical socialism is distinct in its focus on criticism of the ethics of capitalism and not merely criticism of the economic, systemic, and material issues of capitalism. When the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) renounced orthodox Marxism during the Godesberg Program in the 1950s, ethical socialism became the official philosophy within the SPD. The decision to abandon the traditional anti-capitalist policy angered many in the SPD who had supported it. Some such as Ian Adams also argue that this was an abandonment of the classical conception of socialism as involving the replacement of the capitalist economic system and make a distinction between classical socialism and liberal socialism.

Themes

R. H. Tawney, founder of ethical socialism

R. H. Tawney denounced self-seeking amoral and immoral behaviour that he claimed is supported by capitalism. Tawney opposed what he called the "acquisitive society" that causes private property to be used to transfer surplus profit to "functionless owners", i.e. capitalist rentiers. However, he did not denounce managers as a whole, believing that management and employees could join in a political alliance for reform. Tawney supported the pooling of surplus profit through means of progressive taxation to redistribute these funds to provide social welfare (including public health care, public education, and public housing) and the nationalization of strategic industries and services. He supported worker participation in the business of management in the economy as well as consumer, employee, employer and state cooperation in regulating the economy.

Although Tawney supported a substantial role for public enterprise in the economy, he stated that where private enterprise provided a service that was commensurate with its rewards that was functioning private property, then a business could be usefully and legitimately be left in private hands. Thomas Hill Green supported the right of equal opportunity for all individuals to be able freely appropriate property, but claimed that acquisition of wealth did not imply that an individual could do whatever they wanted to once that wealth was in their possession. Green opposed "property rights of the few" that were preventing the ownership of property by the many.

Ethical socialism was advocated and promoted by former British prime minister Tony Blair, who has been influenced by John Macmurray, himself influenced by Green. Blair has defined ethical socialism with similar notions promoted by earlier ethical socialists such as emphasis on the common good, rights, and responsibilities, and support of an organic society in which individuals flourish through cooperation. According to Blair, the Labour Party ran into problems in the 1960s and 1970s when it abandoned ethical socialism and believes that the party's recovery required a return to the ethical socialist values last promoted by the Attlee government. However, Blair's critics (both inside and outside Labour) have accused him of completely abandoning socialism in favour of capitalism.

Revolutionary socialism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Revolutionary socialism is a political philosophy, doctrine, and tradition within socialism that stresses the idea that a social revolution is necessary to bring about structural changes in society. More specifically, it is the view that revolution is a necessary precondition for transitioning from a capitalist to a socialist mode of production. Revolution is not necessarily defined as a violent insurrection; it is defined as a seizure of political power by mass movements of the working class so that the state is directly controlled or abolished by the working class as opposed to the capitalist class and its interests.

Revolutionary socialists believe such a state of affairs is a precondition for establishing socialism and orthodox Marxists believe it is inevitable but not predetermined. Revolutionary socialism encompasses multiple political and social movements that may define "revolution" differently from one another. These include movements based on orthodox Marxist theory such as De Leonism, impossibilism and Luxemburgism, as well as movements based on Leninism and the theory of vanguardist-led revolution such as the Stalinism, Maoism, Marxism–Leninism and Trotskyism. Revolutionary socialism also includes other Marxist, Marxist-inspired and non-Marxist movements such as those found in democratic socialism, revolutionary syndicalism, anarchism and social democracy.

Revolutionary socialism is contrasted with reformist socialism, especially the reformist wing of social democracy and other evolutionary approaches to socialism. Revolutionary socialism is opposed to social movements that seek to gradually ameliorate capitalism's economic and social problems through political reform.

History

Origins

Portrait of Karl Marx in 1875

In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote:

The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air. Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie. In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat. [...] The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; [...] The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution.

Twenty-four years after The Communist Manifesto, first published in 1848, Marx and Engels admitted that in developed countries, "labour may attain its goal by peaceful means". Marxist scholar Adam Schaff argued that Marx, Engels, and Lenin had expressed such views "on many occasions". By contrast, the Blanquist view emphasised the overthrow by force of the ruling elite in government by an active minority of revolutionaries, who then proceeded to implement socialist change, disregarding the state of readiness of society as a whole and the mass of the population in particular for revolutionary change.

In 1875, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) published a somewhat reformist Gotha Program, which Marx attacked in Critique of the Gotha Program, where he reiterated the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat. The reformist viewpoint was introduced into Marxist thought by Eduard Bernstein, one of the leaders of the SPD. From 1896 to 1898, Bernstein published a series of articles entitled "Probleme des Sozialismus" ("Problems of Socialism"). These articles led to a debate on revisionism in the SPD and can be seen as the origins of a reformist trend within Marxism.

In 1900, Rosa Luxemburg wrote Social Reform or Revolution?, a polemic against Bernstein's position. The work of reforms, Luxemburg argued, could only be carried on "in the framework of the social form created by the last revolution". In order to advance society to socialism from the capitalist 'social form', a social revolution will be necessary:

Bernstein, thundering against the conquest of political power as a theory of Blanquist violence, has the misfortune of labeling as a Blanquist error that which has always been the pivot and the motive force of human history. From the first appearance of class societies, having class struggle as the essential content of their history, the conquest of political power has been the aim of all rising classes. Here is the starting point and end of every historic period. [...] In modern times, we see it in the struggle of the bourgeoisie against feudalism.

In 1902, Vladimir Lenin attacked Bernstein's position in his What Is to Be Done? When Bernstein first put forward his ideas, the majority of the SPD rejected them. The 1899 congress of the SPD reaffirmed the Erfurt Program, as did the 1901 congress. The 1903 congress denounced "revisionist efforts".

World War I and Zimmerwald

On 4 August 1914, the SPD members of the Reichstag voted for the government's war budget, while the French and Belgian socialists publicly supported and joined their governments. The Zimmerwald Conference in September 1915, attended by Lenin and Leon Trotsky, saw the beginning of the end of the uneasy coexistence of revolutionary socialists and reformist socialists in the parties of the Second International. The conference adopted a proposal by Trotsky to avoid an immediate split with the Second International. Though initially opposed to it, Lenin voted for Trotsky's resolution to avoid a split among anti-war socialists.

In December 1915 and March 1916, eighteen Social Democratic representatives, the Haase-Ledebour Group, voted against war credits and were expelled from the Social Democratic Party. Liebknecht wrote Revolutionary Socialism in Germany in 1916, arguing that this group was not a revolutionary socialist group despite their refusal to vote for war credits, further defining in his view what was meant by a revolutionary socialist.

Russian Revolution and aftermath

Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union and the leader of the Bolshevik party.
 
Leon Trotsky, founder of the Red Army and a key figure in the October Revolution.

Many revolutionary socialists argue that the Russian Revolution led by Vladimir Lenin follows the revolutionary socialist model of a revolutionary movement guided by a vanguard party. By contrast, the October Revolution is portrayed as a coup d'état or putsch along the lines of Blanquism.

Revolutionary socialists, particularly Trotskyists, argue that the Bolsheviks only seized power as the expression of the mass of workers and peasants, whose desires are brought into being by an organised force—the revolutionary party. Marxists such as Trotskyists argue that Lenin did not advocate seizing power until he felt that the majority of the population, represented in the soviets, demanded revolutionary change and no longer supported the reformist government of Alexander Kerensky established in the earlier revolution of February 1917. In the Lessons of October, Leon Trotsky wrote:

Lenin, after the experience of the reconnoiter, withdrew the slogan of the immediate overthrow of the Provisional Government. But he did not withdraw it for any set period of time, for so many weeks or months, but strictly in dependence upon how quickly the revolt of the masses against the conciliationists would grow.

For these Marxists, the fact that the Bolsheviks won a majority (in alliance with the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries) in the second all-Russian congress of Soviets—democratically elected bodies—which convened at the time of the October revolution, shows that they had the popular support of the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers, the vast majority of Russian society.

In his pamphlet Lessons of October, first published in 1924, Trotsky argued that military power lay in the hands of the Bolsheviks before the October Revolution was carried out, but this power was not used against the government until the Bolsheviks gained mass support.

The mass of soldiers began to be led by the Bolshevik party after July 1917 and followed only the orders of the Military Revolutionary Committee under the leadership of Trotsky in October, also termed the Revolutionary Military Committee in Lenin's collected works. Trotsky mobilized the Military Revolutionary Committee to seize power on the advent of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies, which began on 25 October 1917.

The Communist International (also known as the Third International) was founded following the October Revolution. This International became widely identified with communism but also defined itself in terms of revolutionary socialism. However, in 1938 Trotskyists formed the Fourth International because they thought that the Third International turned to Marxism–Leninism—this latter International became identified with revolutionary socialism. Luxemburgism is another revolutionary socialist tradition.

Emerging from the Communist International but critical of the post-1924 Soviet Union, the Trotskyist tradition in Western Europe and elsewhere uses the term "revolutionary socialism". In 1932, the first issue of the first Canadian Trotskyist newspaper, The Vanguard, published an editorial entitled "Revolutionary Socialism vs Reformism". Today, many Trotskyist groups advocate revolutionary socialism instead of reformism and consider themselves revolutionary socialists. The Committee for a Workers International states, "[w]e campaign for new workers' parties and for them to adopt a socialist programme. At the same time, the CWI builds support for the ideas of revolutionary socialism". In "The Case for Revolutionary Socialism", Alex Callinicos from the Socialist Workers Party in Britain argues in favour of it.

Philosophy

Revolutionary socialist discourse has long debated the question of how the preordained revolution moment would originate, i.e., the extent to which revolt needs to be concertedly organized and by whom. Rosa Luxemburg, in particular, was known for her theory of revolutionary spontaneity.Critics argued that Luxemburg overstated the role of spontaneity and neglected the role of party organization.

Technoscience

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In common usage, technoscience refers to the entire long-standing and global human activity of technology, combined with the relatively recent scientific method that occurred primarily in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. Technoscience is the study of how humans interact with technology using the scientific method. Technoscience thus comprises the history of human application of technology and modern scientific methods, ranging from the early development of basic technologies for hunting, agriculture, or husbandry (e.g. the well, the bow, the plow, the harness) and all the way through atomic applications, biotechnology, robotics, and computer sciences. This more common and comprehensive usage of the term technoscience can be found in general textbooks and lectures concerning the history of science.

The relationship with the history of science is important in this subject and also underestimated, for example, by more modern sociologists of science. Instead, it is worth emphasising the links that exist between books on the history of science and technology and the study of the relationship between science and technology within a framework of social developments. We  must always consider the generational leap between historical periods and scientific discoveries, the construction of machines, the creation of tools in relation to the technological changes that occurs in very specific situations.

An alternate, more narrow usage occurs in some philosophical science and technology studies. In this usage, technoscience refers specifically to the technological and social context of science. Technoscience recognises that scientific knowledge is not only socially coded and historically situated but sustained and made durable by material (non-human) networks. Technoscience states that the fields of science and technology are linked and grow together, and scientific knowledge requires an infrastructure of technology in order to remain stationary or move forward.

The latter, philosophic use of the term technoscience was popularized by French philosopher Gaston Bachelard in 1953. It was popularized in the French-speaking world by Belgian philosopher Gilbert Hottois in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and entered English academic usage in 1987 with Bruno Latour's book Science in Action.

In translating the concept to English, Latour also combined several arguments about technoscience that had circulated separately within science and technology studies (STS) before into a comprehensive framework:

  1. the intertwinement of scientific and technological development as e.g. shown by the lab studies;
  2. the power of laboratories (and engineering workshops) to change the world as we know and experience it;
  3. the seamless webs that connect scientists, engineers and societal actors in actual practice (cf. John Law's concept of heterogeneous engineering);
  4. the propensity of technoscientific world to create new nature–culture hybrids, and hence to complicate the borders between nature and culture.

Conceptual levels of philosophical technoscience

We [who?] look at the concept of technoscience by considering three levels: a descriptive-analytic level, a deconstructivist level, and a visionary level.

Descriptive-analytic

On a descriptive-analytic level, technoscientific studies examine the decisive role of science and technology in how knowledge is being developed. What is the role played by large research labs in which experiments on organisms are undertaken, when it comes to a certain way of looking at the things surrounding us? To what extent do such investigations, experiments and insights shape views of 'nature' and of human bodies? How do these insights link to the concept of living organisms as biofacts? To what extent do such insights inform technological innovation? Can the laboratory be understood as a metaphor for social structures in their entirety?

Deconstructive

On a deconstructive level, theoretical work is being undertaken on technoscience to address scientific practices critically, e.g. by Bruno Latour (sociology), by Donna Haraway (history of science), and by Karen Barad (theoretical physics). It is pointed out that scientific descriptions may be only allegedly objective; that descriptions are of a performative character, and that there are ways to de-mystify them. Likewise, new forms of representing those involved in research are being sought.

Visionary

On a visionary level, the concept of technoscience comprises a number of social, literary, artistic and material technologies from western cultures in the third millennium. This is undertaken in order to focus on the interplay of hitherto separated areas and to question traditional boundary-drawing: this concerns the boundaries drawn between scientific disciplines as well as those commonly upheld for instance between research, technology, the arts and politics. One aim is to broaden the term 'technology' (which by the Greek etymology of 'techné' connotes all of the following: arts, handicraft, and skill) so as to negotiate possibilities of participation in the production of knowledge and to reflect on strategic alliances. Technoscience can be juxtaposed with a number of other innovative interdisciplinary areas of scholarship which have surfaced in these recent years such as technoetic, technoethics and technocriticism.

Facets

Social

As with any subject, technoscience exists within a broader social context that must be considered. Science & Technology Studies researcher Sergio Sismondo argues, "Neither the technical vision nor the social vision will come into being without the other, though with enough Concerted Effort both may be brought into being together". Despite the frequent separation between innovators and the consumers, Sismondo argues that development of technologies, though stimulated by a technoscientific themes, is an inherently social process.

Technoscience is so deeply embedded in people's everyday lives that its developments exist outside a space for critical thought and evaluation, argues Daniel Lee Kleinman (2005). Those who do attempt to question the perception of progress as being only a matter of more technology are often seen as champions of technological stagnation. The exception to this mentality is when a development is seen as threatening to human or environmental well-being. This holds true with the popular opposition of GMO crops, where the questioning of the validity of monopolized farming and patented genetics was simply not enough to rouse awareness.

Political

Science and technology are tools that continually change social structures and behaviors. Technoscience can be viewed as a form of government or having the power of government because of its impact on society. The impact extends to public health, safety, the environment, and beyond. Innovations create fundamental changes and drastically change the way people live. For example, C-SPAN and social media give American voters a near real-time view of Congress. This has allowed journalists and the people to hold their elected officials accountable in new ways.

Environmental

Chlorine chemists and their scientific knowledge helped set the agenda for many environmental problems: PCBs in the Hudson River are polychlorinated biphenols; DDT, dieldrin, and aldrin are chlorinated pesticides; CFCs that deplete the ozone layer are chlorofluorocarbons. Industry actually manufactured the chemicals and consumers purchased them. Therefore, one can determine that chemists are not the sole cause for these issues, but they are not blameless.

Mind-wandering

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind-wandering   ...