Hence, the cooperation that Roberts envisions requires a global form of life that is governed by the principles of democratic socialism. The principles cannot be posited as an ideal that is external to the lives we lead, since in that case they would have no grip on us. Rather, I make explicit how the principles are implicit in the commitment to equality and freedom through which we are already trying to justify our democratic practices.
The commitment to equality demands that we pursue our labor from each according to her ability, to each according to her need; the commitment to freedom demands that we measure our wealth in terms of socially available free time; and both of these demands can be met in practice only if we own the means of production collectively, employing and developing them for the benefit of our shared lives rather than for the sake of profit.
Nothing makes our predicament clearer than the climate crisis in which we find ourselves. By now it is a commonplace to say that “we” are responsible for destroying the ecosystem to which we belong. The moralizing and psychologizing approaches seek to explain the ecocide with reference to our supposed “human nature,” which is ascribed an inherent selfishness and greed. Yet the fundamental problem is neither selfishness nor greed but the form of social-historical life on which we all depend. Under capitalism, “we” cannot actually own and take responsibility for the economic life that we ourselves reproduce through our practices. To sustain our form of life we must prioritize doing what is profitable, even at the expense of doing what we know needs to be done. We may profess that we value our lives — and the life of other species on the planet — as ends in themselves. But as long as we produce for profit and work for a wage, we are in practice subordinating ourselves to a measure of value that treats all forms of life as means for the “growth” of capital wealth. No individual can break the hold of this measure of value on her own. Only organized collective action that overcomes private ownership of the means of production can achieve an emancipated form of life, where we will learn to be free in mutual recognition of our dependence on one another and the fragile ecosystem of our shared planet.