The Socialism of Water

The Socialism of Water
A socialism of water is what we have built in the United States and yet we are unable to recognize it.

Most people in the U.S. value the fact that they have water flowing from their taps but our rulers consider the idea of socialism an evil in itself. Thus nobody even discusses the fact that water is a highly subsidized resource supplied to us by government agencies (or agencies closely connected to the state) at very low cost. Nobody in the elite dares call our water system, a socialist system, because then people might want other kinds of socialism, say, in health care. We in the United States are detached from the history of water. We take it for granted. . We take for granted the large government projects that have given us a system of water socialism, supplying large industrial farms and mega-cities with great supplies of gushing water. The U.S. system of cities would not be able to exist without water socialism.

We also take for granted the "successes" and failures of the urban and industrial revolutions that provided us with our socialism of water.

There are many things, good and bad, that one can say about our unique socialism of water in the U.S. And because I am in favor of libertarian socialism myself I will work against the grain and begin with some of the bad things. Sometimes our system of socialism exhibits all of the qualities of the tragedy of the commons. We waste huge amounts of water. Our system of water consumption often leads to large amounts of water pollution that must be cleaned at the public expense. Some of the largest water projects in the West can largely be seen as a subsidy to big businesses, and these businesses in no way pay their share in taxes to compensate the rest of us. The South and East largely subsidized the West and Southwest in building an infrastructure of water socialism, and this has contributed to a political shift away from Eastern cities and the industrial sector. The West and Southwest call themselves 'rugged individualists and yet their whole way of life is based upon federal water projects. This is rarely if ever acknowledged. The absurdity of our system of water socialism can be seen in a desert city such as Las Vegas, one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S., which is spread across waterless land under a burning sun, with suburban style grasslawns soaking up water at a fast clip, all to support an adult entertainment industry based on gambling. The specific contradiction or the U.S. form of water socialism arises from the fact, that in order for any form of socialism to continue in the U.S. it must largely benefit the rich and powerful. Here is the true tragedy of the commons, but stated in a way that is not usually acknowledged by right-wing economists.

Historically, water socialism in the U.S. arose at times of the revolution of rapid urbanization and later suburbanization. These were also times when groups of elites had to compete with each other for political support from the multitude. The history of water in New York City, and the tremendous system of underground tunnels from upstate reservoirs, is an example of how one elite group opposed to another, competing for middle class and working class support, was able to establish the water infrastructure of an imperial city. It is, by the way, one of those rarely studied facts of history that all great imperial cities have been based on one form or another of collectivization of water. The great water projects in many cases arose in the same way that they did in New York, from elite competition to gain support of the masses. The best example is, of course, Rome during the ancient Republic. But another example is the New Deal attempt to extend New York City type water projects to the whole of the U.S., and to also apply the idea of water socialism to electricity. Most sunbelt rugged individualists, those who hate government intervention, those who think that Federal welfare is evil, would be living without a sure water supply, and without electricity, but for the projects of the federal government that led to a distributed water supply and to rural electrification.

The U.S. system of water socialism, for all of its failings is largely a success. Edmund Wilson, once said that one of the great cultural advances of all times is the American bathroom. I believe this is true. Water socialism makes this great human comfort of indoor plumbing possible. Note that the possibility of indoor plumbing in effect created the modern U.S. real estate industry and thus, indirectly, the modern banking system. It is a simple historical fact that without our system of water socialism the most vibrant aspects of U.S. "capitalism" (so-called), would not exist. Further without water socialism all but the well off people would go through everyday life working and planning to obtain enough water to live.

Given the success (and the reasons for the few failures) of water socialism in the U.S. is it any wonder that most academics who write about politics, economics, and law simply ignore the lessons of the history and administration of water, especially drinking water? They only concentrate on issues of pollution, important issues no doubt, but an issue that leads to skewed conclusions about the tragedy of the commons. In our society, when intellectual elites are confronted with a successful example of socialism they will only concentrate on the tragedy of the commons and never on the success of social planning as opposed to the market..

That is why it was nice to see an attempt to look into the history of water as relates to law. James Saltzman, who from reading his papers I surmise would not agree with my politics, has begun "an ongoing book project on the history of drinking water," a project that should be watched. One of the first entries of this project is called Thirst: A Short History of Drinking Water. I recommend this paper.

Below I provide a quote.

Drinking water is most obviously a physical resource, one of the few truly essential requirements for life. Regardless of the god you worship or the color of your skin, if you go without water for three days in an arid environment your life is in danger. And water’s physical characteristics confound easy management. Water is heavy – it is difficult to move uphill. Water is unwieldy – it cannot be packed or contained easily. And drinking water is fragile – it easily becomes contaminated and unfit for consumption. Drinking water is also a cultural resource, of religious significance in many societies. A social resource, access to water reveals much about membership in society. A political resource, the provision of water to citizens can serve important communication purposes. And finally, when scarce, water can become an economic resource.

As the Cochabamba [Bolivia, where a consortium led by Bechtel attempted to privatize water delivery] experience makes clear, managing and mediating these many facets of drinking water is no easy matter. Understanding a society’s ability to provide clean drinking water to its citizens, examining how it recognizes the different natures of this vital resource, provides a unique prism on the society’s organization, equity, and view of itself. In seeking to understand better how societies manage such a critical resource, this article considers three questions.

• How have different societies thought about drinking water?
• How have different societies managed access to drinking water?
• How have these changed over time?

These questions are, of course, interrelated. How we think of water, whether as a sacred gift or a good for sale, both influences and is influenced by how we manage access to drinking water. When management of drinking water fails to reflect popular conceptions and expectations, pressures for transition to a new management regime increase. And, as we saw in Cochabamba, when the new management regime fails to respect popular conceptions and expectations, it will fail.

Asking such questions may seem odd to an American environmental lawyer, for we tend to assume the presence of drinking water and focus on its quality rather than its natures as a resource; we tend to think in terms of quality rather than quantity. There is a vast literature on drinking water treatment, sources of water pollution, and drinking water standards, for example, yet relatively little on how we manage the resource, itself. To be sure, much thought has been dedicated to the problems of groundwater depletion and rivers that no longer run to the sea, but not because of drinking water concerns.

Compared to irrigation water, domestic use is a trickling afterthought. And even within the category of domestic use, much less water is used for drinking than for clothes washing, baths/showers, toilet flushing, or watering the lawn. In many parts of the world and for much of human history, however, drinking water quality has been only one of the basic challenges in managing this vital resource. While not an obvious issue to us in 21st century America, management of drinking water as a resource – who gets it, when they get it, and how much they get – matters a great
deal.

Finally, it must be said that our unique system of water socialism is denied to most people in the world today. There are historical and cultural reasons for this. Some of these reasons are indigenous and some international. Some have to do with the fact that during the period of urbanization, often forced urbanization, these areas of the world were dominated by distant empires. Today neo-liberal economic policies contribute to the failure of governments to build a working water infrastructure. In the great city of Rio de Janeiro for instance there is bottled water for the rich and dirty water for everyone else. As Saltzman states:

The facts of drinking water in the developing world are both straightforward and daunting. Over one billion people do not have access to even a basic water supply. Well over two billion people lack adequate sanitation. As a result, approximately half of the developing world inhabitants suffer from illnesses caused by contaminated water supplies. Many environment ministers consider this the single greatest threat to their people.

The contrast with developing countries could not be starker. Neither water quality nor quantity can be assumed. Because water supply infrastructure is not provided in the poorest urban or in many rural areas, obtaining water is regarded as an individual or domestic responsibility. In contrast to the ease of turning on a faucet, lack of infrastructure means a high labor input as someone from the household (generally women and girls) must collect each day’s water, whether from a communal pond or well, a tanker, or kiosk. Less than half of the population in Africa lives within a 15-minute walk of a safe drinking water source.

I fear with the wearing down of working class solidarity in the U.S. we are heading for this kind of divided economy of water. If water is commodified by "capitalist" standards we will all lose. And this brings us to the fact that our water system is a form of bureaucratic socialism and not a form of democratic and libertarian socialism. Our water system should be a part of our public debate and consciousness and the infrastructure itself should be administered democratically by the workers. Making our system of water consumption and delivery more democratic is a goal that goes along with making all aspect of our society more democratic.


Postscript: Saltzman quotes Scott E. Masten, Prospects for Private Water Provision in Developing Countries: Lessons from 19th- Century America xx (draft),

“The role of waterworks in firefighting was also a major theme. First, water demands for firefighting meant that waterworks had to be much larger than otherwise, raising the fixed costs of water systems…Fire insurance companies as early as 1800 made provision for centralized water systems in their rates… In Houston, pressure for a municipal takeover of the city’s private waterworks erupted in 1886 after a fire destroyed an important cotton seed mill ‘while firemen stood by helplessly because the hydrants were dry.’”

From my knowledge of the class nature of water politics in New York City, I know that the real estate interests were those who were mostly in favor of a system of water management that would provide enough water pressure for firefighting. This was also part of the movement to privatize municipal agencies such as the Police and Fire Departments, both of which were at times "private" and remained, for quite a long time, centers for political power and corruption. Insurance companies and real estate interests realized that it made good economic sense to support great water projects. Such projects expanded their economic base and provided for stable expansion. Free drinking water for the masses and pressurized water supply for real estate stability (and, as a side argument, offering indoor comfort to the rich), was part of urban party politics at the turn of the century. The reason I point to this is that economists rarely pay attention to the fact that developing and maintaining the commons was historically essential to the creation of the possibility of markets, in this case the urban and suburban real estate market. Markets are always created and/or maintained by collective non-market processes and those markets would fall apart otherwise. I cannot think of exceptions.



Jerry Monaco
New York City
4 March 2006




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