Abstract
In the foreseeable future wild capitalism (neoliberalism) will be over because the unlimited growth and the monstrous inequalities that this economic model produces across the whole world is absolutely incompatible with planetary boundaries and the carrying capacity of the planet we inhabit. That is the main lesson of the Anthropocene. So what kind of model will replace neoliberalism? In this chapter I summarise some alternatives formulated by social scientists and movements, and refer to the Kingdom of Bhutan, which happens to be a real-life example, not based on any model but on the philosophical principles of Buddhism, which informs social practice, thinking and customs in that country. From my perspective, the name of the model to be established is unimportant; what matters is that neoliberalism must be terminated, otherwise humanity risks extinction. On the other hand, as seen on previous pages, IR theory has several dimensions in accordance with the different components of the subsystems that are part of the international system. The economic subsystem is a fundamental component of them, since the production of goods, services and trade is an indispensable part of satisfying human needs.
Every age generates a constellation of values coherent with its social arrangements. The modernist ethos once rose in concert with incipient exigencies but has now become out of sync with twenty-first-century realities. Modernity’s canon of perpetual progress gains little purchase in a time of thwarted expectations and existential apprehension. An international order based on the Westphalian model of inviolable state sovereignty clashes with global interdependence and the very idea of Earthland. The destabilization of the biosphere debunks the idolatry of markets, the myth of perpetual economic growth, and the fetish of consumerism. Corrosive inequality and hollowed-out communities sap allegiance to dog-eat-dog capitalism.
Raskin (2002: 25)
The first part of sustainable development – the analytical part – is to understand the interconnections of the economy, society, environment and politics. The second part of our sustainable development agenda is to do something about the challenge we face to implement the SDGs and achieve them. Our global goal should be to find a global route, made up of local and national routes, in which the world promotes inclusive and sustainable economic development, which combines economic, social and environmental objectives. This can only be achieved if a quarter of the target – the good governance of both governments and the corporate sector – is also achieved.
Sachs (2015: 13)
In the decades to come, old and alternative paradigms will struggle to fill the shoes of what could become the Second Enlightenment. Our task is to fill the reservoir of social and cultural inventions with ideas, norms, principles, and values that sustain a free perspective of mercantilism towards human needs, nature and money, based on the natural and social sciences of the 21st century which include many non-quantifiable variables. These will provide an alternative meaning, legitimacy, and options of practice for all those involved in the intense political struggles for the transformation of sustainable development. This is what The Great Change of Mind means.
Göpel (2016: 39)
Capitalism will never be subverted; it is not made for that. Capitalism will be sucked down, so to speak, by the alternatives that will appear in all parts of the world. And maybe, because there is not enough planet for capitalism.
Latour (2015: 218)
As soon as the technological change of exponential progression is extended (by the cascade effect), from silicon chips to food, clothing, transport systems and health, the cost of the production by the labour force will decrease dramatically. At that time, the economic problem that has defined human history to this day will become minuscule or will simply disappear. Those that will probably catch our attention by then will be problems related to sustainability in the economy and, beyond this, those with the competition between the different models of human life (or post-capitalism).
Mason (2016: 165)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
In my opinion, concepts such as the ‘dominant economic paradigm’ and ‘mainstream economics’ are equivalent to the ‘technocratic paradigm’ used by Pope Francis in his Encyclical and the GSG’s ‘market forces’ paradigm, as all of them allude to the predominance of a reductionist ‘economic’ mentality that places emphasis on growth, individual gain, consumerism, industrialization, and capital accumulation as the main purpose of development, ignoring its social, ecological, cultural and political dimensions.
- 2.
The power of a social imaginary (and the scientific concept of it) has been studied through the lenses of psychology (Freud and Lacan), political science (Castoriadis), and sociology (Taylor) among others. In the work of Lacan, although the term imaginary fundamentally means ‘fictive’, it is not synonymous with ‘fictional’ or ‘unreal’ because imaginary identifications can have very real effects. The term was developed in political science by the French scholar Cornelius Castoriadis in his work on the imaginary institution of societies. He asserts that societies, including their laws and institutions, are founded upon an imaginary world-view expressed through various creation myths which explain how the world came to be and how it is sustained. Thus, according to Castoriadis, imaginaries are the main source of culture and religion: Ancient Greeks and Romans believed in an imaginary in which the world stems from chaos, while in the imaginary of Muslims, Jews and Christians the world stems from the will of God. Thus, Romans and Greeks constructed a political system where the laws were established in harmony with the will of citizens, while monotheist religions developed a theocratic system according to which people must enforce the will of God. Hence, while not constituting a reality, the social imaginary is nevertheless a social force inasmuch as it constitutes the system of meanings that rules a given social structure. In consequence, these imaginaries can be understood as historical constructs defined by the interactions of subjects in society or by intersubjectivity, as Jürgen Habermas calls it. In that sense, the imaginary is not necessarily ‘real’, as it is an imagined concept of a particular social subject. Nonetheless, the imaginary can be quite real in the sense that it is precisely this ‘imagined reality’ that explains the behaviour of individuals and social groups and collectivities (Castoriadis 1975).
- 3.
In many developing countries there are numerous conflicts, and there is a permanent debate between those who support investments in mining sites or hydroelectric plants and the local communities that oppose such projects. Evaluating whether such projects are appropriate (or not) to the requirements of sustainable development, from the perspective of the alternative paradigm described here, could help to resolve such contentious points of the debate.
- 4.
It is important to mention the fact that neither constitutional amendment has been applied in an appropriate manner. In Ecuador the return to neoliberal economic policies under the rule of President Lenin Moreno provoked violent indigenous protests in 2019 that obliged authorities to repeal their decisions. In Bolivia, in spite of the good results of some important economic reforms, President Evo Morales was forced to resign in 2019 after public protests against his intention to remain in office via election fraud.
- 5.
According to Worstall, “The American trade deficit with the rest of the world rose to $502.3 billion last year, that’s in 2016 … The US trade deficit narrowed slightly in December, but the improvement was not enough to keep the deficit for the entire year from rising to the highest level since 2012. The deficit in December fell 3.2% to $44.2 billion, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday. Again, in exports of commercial aircraft, heavy machinery and cars offset to rise in imports. For the whole year, the deficit rose 0.4% to $502.3 billion, the highest annual imbalance since 2012. The US trade gap was the largest since 2012. The last time the country ran a surplus was in the mid-1970s when Gerald Ford was president. The deficit with Mexico, the biggest target of President Donald Trump’s wrath, rose 4.2% to $63.2 billion in 2016 to mark a five-year high, according to government data … The economy grew at 3.5% pace in the third quarter”.
- 6.
Those unemployed workers have aggravated the problem of narcotics consumption due to the increased use of medicines with opiate content in pain medication, legally prescribed by medical doctors. In other words, the increase of addicts is linked to mental illnesses that in turn are derived from the frustration, pessimism and negative attitude which are side-effects of the kind of unemployment caused by transnational corporations when they move abroad seeking low-wage workers.
- 7.
This happens because the profits which are not repatriated are deposited in tax havens around the world. According to the statement of Jeffrey Sachs in the high-level ECOSOC segment at the United Nations (held in New York in October 2016), these deposits amount to the incredible sum of US $20 trillion.
- 8.
This is corroborated by the official statistics of almost all the countries that place the largest job generators in the SME sector. There are also small businesses in the informal sector of the economy which generate employment in poor countries, but obviously, precisely because they are informal, statistical registration is lacking since they do not pay taxes or social security.
- 9.
According to Richards, the French term for epistemological rupture – coupure épistémologique – was originally proposed by Gastón Bachelard, and alludes to a theory of knowledge preferable to that of Thomas Kuhn’s concept of paradigm shift because “as Kuhn clarifies in the second edition of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a paradigm is always a concrete example of what science is and should be according to a determined scientific community. We propose, on the contrary, that the economy of social solidarity (ESS) is and should not be a concrete example but an invitation to exercise an infinite creativity in the perfection of a great variety of material practices” (Richards 2017: 3).
- 10.
To give an idea of the 169 targets assigned to each SDG and the indicators that will allow the UN to verify their accomplishment, they include reducing poverty by half; implementing social protection systems and measures; ending hunger and ensuring access to healthy, nutritious and sufficient food; ending all forms of malnutrition; doubling agricultural productivity and the income of food producers; maintaining the genetic diversity of seeds; increasing investments; correcting and preventing trade restrictions and distortions in world markets by eliminating subsidies; reducing the maternal mortality rate; ending avoidable deaths of newborns and children under five years of age; ending the AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria epidemics; guaranteeing universal access to health services; ensuring that all children have free and equal quality primary and secondary education; eliminating gender disparities; building and adapting school facilities; and increasing the scholarships available for developing countries.
- 11.
CICIG was the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, an UN body established in 2007 at the request of the Guatemalan government to assist the general prosecutor of the Ministry of Justice (MP) to investigate the most significant cases of impunity. The work of the Commission went well until it started to prosecute high-level officials (a former president and a vice president of the republic were forced to resign and are currently in jail; the former President Morales was also investigated). In 2018 the government announced that the Commission agreement would not be renewed and prohibited the Commissioner, the distinguished jurist and former Colombian judge Iván Velásquez, from entering the country. The General Attorney and Prosecutor Telma Aldana (also a former president of the Supreme Court) was dismissed and is currently in exile because she presented her candidacy to the presidency of the republic in the 2019 elections.
- 12.
However, it seems that a change of government facilitated more social investment in El Salvador and by 2018 Salvadorans had improved their indicators concerning reduction of poverty.
- 13.
Corruption is the true cancer of capitalism and has been increasing worldwide, facilitated by the phenomenon of globalization that has proliferated as transnational organized crime for several years. Thus, there are corporations such as the Brazilian firm Odebrecht that would have bribed more than a thousand high officials to obtain large contracts for public works up to an amount of US $2,200 million. The case of the so-called Panama Papers uncovered the huge corruption and money laundering network existing on a world scale and, as mentioned before, in Guatemala both the former President and Vice-President were forced to resign in 2015, and both the former Peruvian and Spanish presidents Kuscinsky and Rajoy resigned because of corruption charges in 2018.
- 14.
In the 1990s Manuel Castells asserted that there was a perverse connection between governments and organized crime as follows: “Crime is old as humankind. But global crime, the networking of powerful criminal organizations and their associates in shared activities throughout the planet, is a new phenomenon that profoundly affects international and national economies, politics, security and, ultimately, societies at large … The economies and politics of many countries … cannot be understood without considering the dynamics of criminal networks presented in their daily workings. The flexible connection of these criminal activities in international networks constitutes an essential feature of the new global economy, and of the social/political dynamics of the Information Age. There is a general acknowledgment of the importance and reality of this phenomenon, and a lot of evidence from well documented journalists’ reports and the conferences of international organizations. Yet the phenomenon is largely ignored by social scientists, when it comes to understanding economics and societies, with the argument that data are not truly reliable, and that sensationalism taints interpretation. I take exception to these views. If a phenomenon is recognized as a fundamental dimension of our societies, indeed of the new globalized system, we must use whatever evidence is available to explore the connection between these criminal activities and societies and economies at large” (Castells 1998: 167–168).
- 15.
The increase in drug addiction and violence in high schools in the United States, and, indeed, the whole problem of drug trafficking is linked to the unhappiness of people and the psycho-social pathologies related to the phenomenon. Even terrorism, racism and xenophobia can be regarded as endemic social illnesses generated by structural violence. Thus the treatment of these social diseases should be the priority of governments’ public policies, not the repression and punishment of addicts. Addiction and youth violence are public health problems, not issues of national or international ‘security’.
- 16.
The terms ‘human development’ and ‘sustainable development’ have been used separately in the context of the United Nations and the academic world in general. However, both concepts are part of the new paradigm proposed by the United Nations that has its origin in both the theory of human needs and respect for nature and the planet we inhabit (Gaia) as a vital source of all that exists, on which humanity depends and which we cannot help ourselves to as if it were an inexhaustible supply of resources, on pain of exposing Homo sapiens to the risk of its own disappearance as a species. In this sense it is interesting to quote the famous French philosopher and anthropologist Bruno Latour, who in an interview answered the question about how we should understand the Gaia concept: “Gaia is an entity of Greek mythology that was reinvented scientifically by James Lovelock. As a mythological figure she has a complex and cruel history. She is a goddess of many facets and metamorphoses, which describes her character and personality very well. And Lovelock turned to her to imagine a way to pay attention to the planet not as something inert but as a finished, complete form. Gaia means Earth, system, planet, but it is not a holistic definition, it is rather a set of connections between human action and natural action. Human history and planetary history come together in a process that I call ‘geo-history’. Our predecessors never imagined that we would have to take the entire planet, with its geological ages, as part of our history” (Latour 2015).
- 17.
This would explain why a recurring theme in science fiction movies is the exploration of other planets for the purpose of extra-terrestrial colonization or leaving Earth after an ecological catastrophe, as depicted in Christopher Nolan’s magnificent film Interstellar. In addition, in the same Chilean interview, Latour adds the following: “Be that as it may, capitalism has no future and has nothing to do with the future. It is a definition of what happens now and above all of what happened in the past. I think that everywhere…every human being is trying to find an alternative to capitalism and to get out of the apocalyptic vision of the left of the twentieth century, which still maintains the idea of subverting capitalism … Capitalism will never be subverted; it is not made for that. Capitalism will be sucked down, so to speak, by the alternatives that will appear in all parts of the world. Because maybe there is not enough planet for capitalism …” (Latour 2015).
- 18.
A Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) is already implemented by some governments (Belgium, Colombia, Finland, France, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, Peru, Poland, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, the UK and the US) but as a national contribution. The idea of a “Global Tobin Tax” was originally suggested by John Maynard Keynes himself and afterwards reviewed by James Tobin, a US Nobel Prize Winner in economics, and proposed again in the year 2000 by the ‘pro-Tobin tax’ French NGO ATTAC. The proposed tax could have been used to fund national sustainable development projects in the face of increasing income disparity and social inequity and inequalities. The Tobin Tax could represent a rare opportunity to capture the enormous wealth of an untaxed sector and redirect it towards the public good on a world scale. Conservative estimates show the tax could yield from $150 to $300 billion annually and the revenues raised could be used for the sustainable development objectives (SDGs) of the UN 2030 Agenda. Another possible tax could be the Robin Hood Tax proposed on February 2010 by a coalition of 50 global civil society organizations that launched a campaign for a tax on global financial transactions that could have affected a wide range of asset classes, including the purchase and sale of stocks, bonds, commodities, unit trusts, mutual funds, and derivatives such as futures and options. Another possibility for global taxation imposed on financial institutions and TNCs is the French proposal for a G20 Financial Transaction Tax (G20 FTT) that was suggested in 2008 to raise revenue to reduce global poverty and spur global economic growth, but it failed to be approved at the Cannes meeting of that year. Apropos, Bill Gates is among the supporters of a G20 FTT, arguing that even a small tax of 10 basis points on equities and 2 basis points on bonds could generate about $48 billion from G20 member states or $9 billion if only adopted by larger European countries. Concerning the carbon tax, the Carbon Tax Center says on its website: “A carbon tax is a fee imposed on the burning of carbon-based fuels (coal, oil, gas). More to the point, a carbon tax is the core policy for reducing and eventually eliminating the use of fossil fuels whose combustion is destabilizing and destroying our climate. A carbon tax is a way – the only way, really – to have users of carbon fuels pay for the climate damage caused by releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. If set high enough, it becomes a powerful monetary disincentive that motivates switches to clean energy across the economy, simply by making it more economically rewarding to move to non-carbon fuels and energy efficiency. Carbon chemistry is potent but also simple. The amount of CO2 released in burning any fossil fuel is strictly proportional to the fuel’s carbon content. This allows the carbon tax to be levied ‘upstream’ on the fuel itself when it is extracted from the ground or imported into the US, which vastly simplifies its administration. The energy essence of every fossil fuel is its carbon and hydrogen atoms. Oxidizing (combusting) those atoms releases their heat energy but also converts carbon to carbon dioxide. Natural gas, with a high ratio of hydrogen to carbon, is the least carbon-intensive fuel, while coal is the most. The CO2 released from burning these fuels rises into the upper atmosphere and remains resident there – typically for around a century – trapping heat re-radiated from Earth’s surface and causing global warming and other harmful climate change. The carbon content of every fossil fuel, from anthracite and lignite coal to heating oil and natural gas, is precisely known. A carbon tax obeys these proportions, taxing coal more heavily than petroleum products, and much more than natural gas. This makes a carbon tax simple to document and measure” (Carbon Tax Center 2020).
- 19.
In Guatemala, to give concrete examples, on two occasions (concerning the OXEC hydroelectric company and the San Rafael mining company) the highest courts ruled in favour of the local communities when they protested against the breach of international standards, according to ILO Convention 169, which requires prior consultation with the local population. However, in OXEC’s case, the pressure of the business elite led the Constitutional Court to reverse a previous ruling in favour of the community, while the case of Minera San Rafael, whose operations are suspended due to legal issues related to the issue of the query, is still not resolved. On the other hand, and bearing in mind what was mentioned earlier regarding the need for social policies to be financed by taxes in the framework of the redistributive obligation of the State (and the reduction of inequality as requested by SDG 10), it is interesting to note that in the face of the private sector’s argument that alleges the risk of job losses, a reduction in State tax revenues and discouragement of foreign investment when such cases are brought to the courts, Lourdes Molina, a researcher from the ICEFI (Central American Institute for Fiscal Studies), said in a press interview that the contributions of the extractive sector (mining) to the Guatemalan economy during the period 2005–2016 were only 0.07% of GDP according to data from the central bank (Banco de Guatemala), so for every one hundred ‘quetzales’ – the national Guatemalan currency – produced in the country, only 0.70 (cents) corresponded to the extractive industry. In terms of employment, the IGSS (the Guatemalan social security institute) indicates that extractive mining generated only 4,800 jobs in 2016 and in fiscal terms the tax burden of the sector only represented between 0.85 and 5.6% – well below the national average – while in relation to the budget its contribution is about Q.400 million annually (about US $55 million). Royalties are only between 0.3 and 0.7% or Q.67.4 million (about US $9 million) which was just 0.10% of the 2016 state budget. All this is according to data from the Superintendence of Tax Administration (SAT). Given such low figures, the best public policy for the country could be to declare a moratorium on extractive activities. Concerning water, Guatemala simply does not have a system for regulating the use of water resources (Padilla 2018).
- 20.
I am perfectly aware that according to traditional legal theory, only persons can have subjective rights. However, in the new constitutions of Bolivia and Ecuador, Mother Earth itself (the ‘Pachamama’) has been declared a holder of rights, as described on previous pages. The new constitution of Bolivia has five articles and the Ecuadorean one has twenty-seven articles regarding this issue. In the case of Bolivia, the concept has a spiritual meaning and is rooted in indigenous traditions: “We populate this sacred Mother Earth with different faces […] Fulfilling the mandate of our peoples, with the strength of our Pachamama and thank God, we re-found Bolivia.” According to Barié (2018), the concept of Pachamama as a benevolent deity and fertility goddess justifies the belief in Ecuador that the deity deserves a special chapter in the Constitution and is considered a subject of rights because “nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and carried out, has the right to be fully respected [in terms of] its existence and the maintenance and regeneration of its lifecycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes. Every person, community, town and nationality may demand from the public authority the fulfilment of the rights of nature” (Barié 2018: 54–55).
- 21.
An example of this is the Motagua River in Guatemala, because the amount of plastic garbage and other solid waste that it drags into the Caribbean Sea is of such magnitude that it has provoked protests from Honduras. The Pacific Ocean is also suffering from the drainage of the hyper-contaminated Lake Amatitlán near Guatemala City.
- 22.
Incidentally, and as the cases of the Motagua River and Lake Amatitlán were mentioned in the previous footnote, it is important to underline the fact that Guatemala is probably the only country in Latin America with the dubious distinction of lacking a legal water standard due to the powerful opposition of those who benefit from the absence of regulations and the prevailing neoliberal model in the economy: laissez-faire, laissez-passer (Padilla 2018).
- 23.
The French social scientist Serge Latouche argues that the informal sector is resilient. This feature is understood as a systemic characteristic which does not just apply to resilient communities after natural catastrophes but also to autopoietic ‘common good’ communities, transition towns, the informal sector solidarity networks in developing countries, the social solidarity economy groups of Howard Richards, and even the Zapatista social movement described above (Richards: 239–243). Indeed, communities around the world which resist and overcome the 2020/21 pandemic will do so as a result of their resilience and autopoietic capacity. It is appropriate to note what Maja Göpel affirms in her quotation above, because what must be pursued is not the resilience of the economic system but that of the ecological system and its biophysical qualities which can be ‘irreversibly altered’ by the predatory behaviour of capitalism. The financial system showed such a resilient and self-organizing capacity after the 2008 crisis that it is possible to think that less resilience would have been better because then governments would have been able to regulate the financial markets.
- 24.
These authors include Paul Mason, who – coincidentally – refers to the inconvenience of having a resilient financial system, as argued by Göpel. For Mason:
When the global financial system collapsed in 2008 it did not take long to discover the immediate cause of such a debacle. The culprits were the hidden debts in products known as ‘structured investment vehicles’ (subprime) valued at deceptively unrealistic prices and the network of companies not regulated and domiciled in known tax havens, from the moment the system began to implode, as the ‘shadow banking system’. Then, when the judicial proceedings began, we were able to verify the scale of all the criminal activity that led to the crisis and how normal it had seemed to us … Seven years later the system has been stabilized. By increasing the public debt of many countries to levels close to 100% of GDP, and also by printing money for an approximate value to one sixth of the world production of goods and services the United States, Great Britain, Europe and Japan managed to inject a dose of adrenaline powerful enough to counteract the attacks and tremors of the system. They saved the banks by burying their uncollectible debts; some of them were simply cancelled, others were assumed by the States in the form of sovereign debt, others were buried in financial entities to which the central banks of their respective countries gave a semblance of security by playing their own credibility in it (Mason 2016).
That is what the ‘resilience’ of the financial system consists of, which is why I favour the imposition of a Financial Transactions Tax (FTT) to mitigate this corrupt system.
- 25.
The term ‘post-capitalism’, incidentally, has its antecedents in the ideas of the Austrian economist Drucker (1999), who in 1992 published a book in which the term ‘post-capitalism’ was used to point out that the transformations suffered by the world economy were of such a nature that – according to him – the basic economic resource was no longer capital, land or labour, but rather knowledge. Of course, the traditional factors of production are still there, but they are gradually being replaced by knowledge, and even if the world is still ‘in transition’ Drucker asserts that in the foreseeable future the world will be living in a ‘post-capitalist’ society.
- 26.
Some kind of cosmopolitanism and altruism might be expected from these super-rich. Unfortunately, that global elite of rentiers is accustomed to having a ‘mainstream economics’ type of mindset, and personalities like George Soros or Bill Gates are not frequently found.
- 27.
However, democracy depends on the ideology and tendencies of electoral constituencies and, even in the most developed countries, democracy, like the market, can have ‘failures’, with the disadvantage that they cannot be corrected until the next election. In 1933 Germans elected Hitler, and more recently UK citizens voted for Brexit, Americans elected Donald Trump, Brazilians Bolsonaro, Hungarians Orban, Poles Duda and Filipinos Duterte, and so on.
- 28.
For instance, concerning plastics, the EU Strategy for Plastics in the Circular Economy (that I have mentioned before) says in its Plan of Action that the EU will restrict intentionally added microplastics, further develop and harmonize methods for measuring unintentionally released microplastics, especially from tyres and textiles, and deliver harmonized data on microplastic concentrations in seawater by applying measures like closing the gaps on scientific knowledge related to the risk and occurrence of microplastics in the environment, drinking water and foods; sourcing, labelling and using bio-based plastics, based on assessing where the use of bio-based feedstock results in genuine environmental benefits beyond reducing the use of fossil resources; and using biodegradable or compostable plastics, based on an assessment of the applications where such use can be beneficial to the environment, and the criteria for such applications. It will help to ensure that labelling a product as ‘biodegradable’ or ‘compostable’ does not mislead consumers to dispose of it in a way that causes plastic littering or pollution due to unsuitable environmental conditions or insufficient time for degradation. The EU also says that the Commission will ensure the timely implementation of the new Directive on Single Use Plastic Products and fishing gear to address the problem of marine plastic pollution while safeguarding the single market, in particular with regard to harmonized interpretation of the products covered by the Directive labelling of products such as tobacco, beverage cups and wet wipes, ensuring the introduction of tethered caps for bottles to prevent littering, and new rules on measuring the recycled content in products (European Commission 2020: 12). In Latin America the government of Chile has banned the use of plastic bags throughout the country, according to the New York Times: “Chile will become the first country in the Americas to prohibit retailers that use plastic bags, an initiative that aims to protect its more than 8,000 km of coastline. The measure, recently approved unanimously by Congress, gives stores and supermarkets six months to comply with the provisions. Small and medium-sized businesses, such as neighborhood stores, will have up to two years to adhere to the new rules. During that time, they can give a maximum two plastic bags per customer” (New York Times, 1 January 2018).
References
Angus, Ian, 2016: Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System (New York: Monthly Review Press).
Badie, Bertrand; Foucher, Michel, 2017: Vers un Monde Néo-National? Entretiens avec Gaïdz Minasssian (Paris: CNRS Editions).
Barié, Cletus Gregor, 2017: “El Buen Vivir y los Derechos de la Naturaleza”, in: Revista Política Internacional (Guatemala City: Diplomatic Academy).
Braudel, Fernand, 1987: El Mediterráneo y el Mundo Mediterráneo en la Época de Felipe II (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica).
Bollier, David; Helfrich, Silke (Eds.), 2012: The Wealth of the Commons: A World Beyond Market and State (Amherst, MA: Levellers Press).
Boulding, Kenneth E., 1966: “The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth”, in: Jarrett, Henry (Ed.): Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy: Essays from the Sixth RFF Forum (New York: RFF Press): 3–14.
Carrera, Fernando; Walter, Juliane, 2009: La Educación y la Salud en Centroamérica: Una Mirada desde los Derechos Humanos (Guatemala City: Instituto Centroamericano de Estudios Fiscales [ICEFI]/Serviprensa Centroamericana).
Castells, Manuel, 1998: The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture: End of Millennium (Malden MA/Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Inc.).
Delanty, Gerard; Mota, Aurea, 2018: “Governing the Anthropocene: Agency, Governance, Knowledge”, in: Polìtica Internacional (Guatemala City: Academia Diplomática) 5 (January–June): 83–110.
Drucker, Paul, 1999: La Sociedad Post Capitalista (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana).
Dussel, Enrique, 2015: Filosofía del Sur: Descolonización y Transmodernidad (Madrid: Akal/Inter Pares).
Erkman, Suren, 2001: “Industrial Ecology: A New Perspective on the Future of the Industrial System”, Swiss Medical Weekly, 131, 37–38: 531–538.
Fox, Jonathan, 2005: “Unpacking ‘Transnational Citizenship’”, in: Political Science Review (Santa Cruz: University of California): 171–201.
Göpel, Maja, 2016: The Great Mindshift: How a New Economic Paradigm and Sustainability Transformations Go Hand in Hand (Cham: Springer International Publishing).
Gudynas, Eduardo, 2017: “Ecología Política de la Naturaleza en las Constituciones de Bolivia y Ecuador”, in: Política Internacional (Guatemala City: Diplomatic Academy).
Habermas, Jürgen, 1988: Teoría de la Acción Comunicativa: Crítica de la Razón Funcionalista, Vol. 2 (Madrid: Taurus).
Harari, Youval Noah, 2018: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (Miami FL: Penguin Random House).
Klein, Naomi, 2014: This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate (New York: Simon & Schuster).
Kupchan, Charles, 2018: “Trump’s Nineteenth-Century Grand Strategy”, in: Foreign Affairs, 97, 5 (26 September): 116–126.
Latouche, Serge, 1993: In the Wake of the Affluent Society: An Exploration of Post-Development (London, Zed Books Ltd.).
Latour, Bruno, 2015: Face à Gaia (Paris: La Découverte).
Mason, Paul, 2016: Postcapitalismo: Hacia un Nuevo Futuro (Barcelona/Buenos Aires: Paidós).
Mignolo, Walter, 2012: Decolonial Cosmopolitanism and Dialogues Among Civilizations (London: Routledge).
Mulet, Edmond, 2016: “La Agenda 2030 y los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible”, in: Revista Política Internacional (Guatemala City: Diplomatic Academy), 1 (June).
Neef, Manfred-Max; Elizalde, Antonio; Hopenhayn, Martin: Human Scale Development: An Option for the Future (Uppsala: CEPAUR, Dag Hammarskjold Foundation).
Nerfin, Marc (Ed.), 1978: Hacia Otro Desarrollo: Enfoques y Estrategias (Mexico City: Siglo XXI Editores S.A.).
Nye, Joseph; Keohane, Robert, 1988: Poder e Interdependencia: La Política Mundial en Transición (Buenos Aires: Latin American Publisher Group [GEL]).
Oswald Spring, Úrsula, 2016: “The Water, Food and Biodiversity Nexus: New Security Issues in the Case of Mexico”, in: Brauch, Hans Günter; Oswald Spring, Úrsula; Bennett, Juliet; Serrano Oswald, Serena Eréndira (Eds.): Addressing Global Environmental Challenges from a Peace Ecology Perspective (Cham: Springer International Publishing): 113–144.
Padilla, Diego, 2018: La Política del Agua. Radiografía Crítica del Estado (Guatemala City: Universidad Rafael Landívar, Instituto de Estudios sobre el Estado [ISE]).
Piketty, Thomas, 2014: Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).
Polanyi, Karl, 1957: The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston, MA: Beacon Press).
Richards, Howard, 2017: Economía Social Solidaria: Para Cambiar el Rumbo de la Historia. Módulos de un curso en la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Mexico City: National Autonomous University of Mexico [UNAM]).
Sachs, Jeffrey, 2015: The Age of Sustainable Development (New York: Columbia University Press).
Santos, Boaventura de Sousa, 2009a: Una Espistemología del Sur: La Reinvención del Conocimiento y la Emancipación Social (Mexico City: Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales [CLACSO]/Siglo XXI Editores).
Santos, Boaventura de Sousa, 2009b: Sociología Jurídica Crítica: Para un Nuevo Sentido Común en el Derecho (Madrid: Editorial Trotta; Bogotá: ILSA).
Santos, Boaventura de Sousa, 2010: Refundación del Estado en América Latina: Perspectivas desde la Espistemología del Sur (Mexico City: Siglo XXI Editores SA; Bogotá: Universidad de los Andes).
Santos, Boaventura de Sousa, 2014: Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide (New York: Paradigm Publishers).
Santos, Boaventura de Sousa, 2016: La Dificil Democracia: Una Mirada desde la Periferia Europea (Madrid: Ediciones Akal).
Singer, Paul 1980: Economía Política del Trabajo: Elementos para un Análisis Histórico-Estructural del Empleo y de la Fuerza de Trabajo en el Desarrollo Capitalista (Mexico City: Siglo XXI Editores, SA).
Singer, Paul 2002: Introdução à Economia Solidária (São Paulo: Editora Fundação Perseu Abramo).
Stavenhagen, Rodolfo 1981: “Siete Tesis Equivocadas sobre América Latina”, in: Sociología y Subdesarrollo (Mexico City: Nuestro Tiempo): 15–84.
Stavenhagen, Rodolfo (Ed.), 1990: Entre la Ley y la Costumbre: El Derecho Consuetudinario Indígena en América Latina (Mexico City: Instituto Indigenista Interamericano).
Stavenhagen, Rodolfo, 2013: The Emergence of Indigenous Peoples (Heidelberg: Springer).
Valdez, Fernando, 2015: El Gobierno de las Elites Globales: Como Se Organiza el Consentimiento (Guatemala City: Universidad Rafael Landívar/INGEP Cara Parens).
Varoufakis, Yanis, 2015: El Minotauro Global: EEUU, Europa y el Futuro de la Economía Mundial (Madrid/Mexico City: Ediciones Culturales Paidós).
Vitón García, Gonzalo, 2017: “Cambio Climático, Desarrollo Sostenible y Capitalismo”, in: Relaciones Internacionales (Madrid: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid [UAM], GERI), 34 (February–May).
Wallerstein, Immanuel, 1989: El Moderno Sistema Mundial: I: La Agricultura Capitalista y los Orígenes de la Economía Mundo Europea en el Siglo XVI, 5th edn. (Mexico City/Madrid/Bogotá: Siglo XXI Editores).
Wallerstein, Immanuel, 2006: Analysis of World Systems: An Introduction (Mexico City/Madrid/Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI Editores SA).
Ward, Peter, 2009: The Medea Hyphothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self Destructive? (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
Internet Links
“Carbon Tax Center”; at: https://www.carbontax.org/whats-a-carbon-tax/.
“Chile Ban on Plastic Bags”.
“EU Circular Economy Action Plan for a Cleaner and More Competitive Europe”; at: https://ec.europa.eu/environment/circular-economy/pdf/new_circular_economy_action_plan.pdf.
Fox, Jonathan, at: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4703m6bf.
“Global Financial Integrity”; at: http://www.gfintegrity.org/issue/trade-misinvoicing/.
“ICEFI y CIG Difieren por Impacto de Industrias Extractivas”, in: Diario La Hora Guatemala, 16 July 2017: 31; at: https://lahora.gt/icefi-cig-difieren-impacto-industrias-extractivas.
Ieven, Bram; Overwijk, Jan, 2020: “We Created This Beast: The Political Ecology of COVID-19”, in: Eurozine; at: https://www.eurozine.com/we-created-this-beast.
Latour, Bruno: “Interview with Diego Milos and Matías Wolff” (4 February 2015).
McDonald, Ross: “Paper Proposal for the Second International Workshop on Operationalizing Gross National Happiness: What Exactly is the Meaning and Purpose of Gross National Happiness?” (Auckland: New Zealand Business, Society and Culture Programme, University of Auckland).
“Transition Towns”; at: http://www.transitionnetwork.org.
Wallace-Wells, David [Interview with Jared Diamond]: “The Models Are Too Conservative”: Paleontologist Diamond on What Past Mass Extinctions Can Teach Us About Climate Change Today, in: Intelligencer (10 July 2017) at: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/what-mass-extinctions-teach-us-about-climate-change-today.html.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Padilla, LA. (2021). Alternative Paths Towards Post-capitalism or a Renewed Democratic Socialism. In: Sustainable Development in the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene: Politik—Economics—Society—Science, vol 29. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80399-5_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80399-5_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-80398-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-80399-5
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)