This is probably the best, clearest, summation of the current situation and the functioning of Capitalism I've read: Ecosocialism: For a Society of Good Ancestors (Part One). It's well worth reading, in full.
"If you ask any of them individually, our rulers would undoubtedly say that they want their children and grandchildren to live in a stable and sustainable world. So why do their actions contradict their words? Why do they seem determined, in practice, to leave their children and grandchildren a world of poisoned air and water, a world of floods and droughts and escalating climate disasters? Why have they repeatedly sabotaged international efforts to adopt even half-hearted measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions?
When they do consider or implement responses to the climate crisis, why do they always support solutions that do not work, that cannot possibly work?
Karl Marx had a wonderful phrase for the bosses and their agents — the big shareholders and executives and top managers and the politicians they own — a phrase that explains why they invariably act against the present and future interests of humanity. These people, he said, are “personifications of capital.” Regardless of how they behave at home, or with their children, their social role is that of capital in human form.
They don’t act to stop climate change because the changes needed by the people of this world are directly contrary to the needs of capital.
Capital has no conscience. Capital can’t be anyone’s ancestor because capital has no children. Capital has only one imperative: it has to grow."
(Via Dissident Voice.)
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