Kurt Cobb: Is the United States drifting toward "war socialism"?

Jay Hanson is a well-known voice on issues of peak oil and sustainability. A systems analyst by trade, he established one of the first web sites (dieoff.org) to discuss these issues in depth in the mid-1990s. His latest web venture is a site called War Socialism on which he describes a form of governance which might become the only viable one in the coming age of scarcity unless we can muster unprecedented global cooperation to manage the decline.

By discussing “war socialism” I am not endorsing it. In fact, Hanson proposes an alternative, a global government that severely restricts human use of the global commons, that is, the natural resources upon which all of us depend. But Hanson is no lightweight. He has thought very deeply about our ecological predicament. He has tried to square what he knows about human behavior with what he believes needs to be done in the world we now face. It is clear from the organization and emphasis of his new site that he does not believe it is probable that the kind of global cooperation he would prefer will actually emerge.

To understand “war socialism” one needs first to understand that Hanson believes that the most likely (though certainly not preferable) trajectory for humanity is a massive dieoff that will claim the lives of 90 percent of the human inhabitants of the Earth. Absent the kind of cooperation Hanson would like to see in managing the coming decline, the only rational strategy may be for one’s own country to work to outcompete other countries. The picture he paints is not an appealing one. But when you are trying to be one of the 10 percent who will survive the coming collapse, there is little room for sentimentality.

Energy Bulletin