Economic, financial and social commentators from all directions and of all persuasions are obsessed with the prospect of recovery. The world remains mired in a deep, prolonged crisis, and the key question seems to be how to get out of it.
There is, however, a prior question that few if any bother to ask: Do capitalists want a recovery in the first place? Can they afford it?
The way in which our society is structured ensures that environmental degradation and destruction is written into the actual function of our society. Trade agreements not only allow rich countries and companies to exploit the cheap labor of poor nations, or to simply plunder their wealth and resources, but we also “offshore” our environmental degradation to poor countries, leaving profoundly negative side effects for health and ecology around the world. This process is called ‘ecological unequal exchange,’ and it is written into the system itself.
