Raise the Hammer

Chris wrote:

"When I was active in that area [the left] taxes were viewed as the prime means of redistribution."

I don't know what group you were involved with, but from my understanding (and I have studied quite a bit of history), the left has always distinguished between progressive and regressive taxation. The carbon tax could be seen as a "flat", and thus regressive, tax because it would affect poor and working class disproportionately through higher cost of consumer goods. Here in Canada, neither the NDP, nor the two marxist-leninist parties have supported a carbon tax. But they have addressed the carbon problem in their own ways.

Sorry moderators, I know it's off topic, but some basic education is needed for me to respond to Chris' claims.

In the Cold War, the political spectrum was simplistically caricatured as having one axis, from left to right. In reality there are at least two axes: one from left to right, and one from authoritarian to libertarian. That's why Ayn Rand and Adolf Hitler (to use two extreme examples) are both "right-wing" but actually have very different views.

Similarly, the left has an authoritarian (Mao, Lenin etc) and libertarian spectrum (Emma Goldman, Noam Chomsky, Murray Bookchin). 100 years ago, the libertarian left (the classic anarchist and syndicalist movements) was arguably bigger in numbers than the Communist and Social Democratic movements. But in the hubbub of the Russian Revolution and the Cold War, the libertarian left was sort of forgotten.

Now it's back. The radical scene today has a definite social anarchist streak. This is the perspective I'm coming from. I think economics and politics need to be from the ground up and defined by direct and participatory processes. Ultimately, the phenomenon of an armed organization (the state) requisitioning the fruits of peoples' labour (taxes) by force needs to go. But I also believe profits are a form of "taxation" on the workers.

That's my left. I'm also cynical about changing things through elections. Reforming the state and capitalism is ultimately futile. Change has to come from the ground up.

However, as an adult with a firm grip on reality, I maintain that social movements have to mediate existing realities. That's why I tentatively support a carbon tax, as long working class people get a corrolary income tax break, and as long as revenues are pumped back into cities for transit. (Ensuring more transparant and participatory governance in municipalities is up to citizens and is a longer term process.)

Mass motoring and sprawl are not only major contributors to climate change and resource depletion. They excascerbate the inequalities produced by capitalism. That's why I don't think a carbon tax is necessarily regressive.ism in an extremely small nutshell.