> In terms of material wealth Western commerce structures have produced more. High levels of pollution, propping up of corrupt regimes in exchange for access to resources for cheap cost, environmental damage done to poor countries, etc.
It is inarguable that all these things have occurred. The point I hope to politely contest is that this is a function of Western commerce structures to a greater degree than other commerce structures.
The reason is that the Soviet Union had ecological catastrophe on a scale far beyond anything observed in the West:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&...
Basically, for every Three Mile Island class event in the West, you had a Chernobyl (or more than one) under the communist regimes.
Put another way -- there's no question that large corporations will pollute if they can get away with it, which is why some form of externality regulation is necessary. But large governments will also pollute if they can get away with it, and in the absence of independent power structures formed by individuals (= capitalism/markets), there is only politics -- and governments outside the West have tended to be less answerable to their people.
Thus, a non-Western commerce structure which produced less material wealth (namely communism) also produced "high levels of pollution" and "environmental damage in poor countries". Communists also certainly propped up corrupt regimes in return for access to resources at cheap cost (e.g. the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was in part driven by their desire to get to the Gulf).
I'm not trying to split hairs here by any means, just saying that the "overthrow of capitalism" which the original post advocates will not solve the very real problems you identify, and the historical record indicates that it may in fact exacerbate them. Now, there might be a third solution[1] which is not communism or capitalism that does not result in the problems you describe, but (IMO) it's unlikely to simply be an intermediate between the two.
---
[1] I found the following article by Steven Johnson interesting, on how open source doesn't fit into the market-oriented frame of capitalism nor the command-and-control frame of socialism/communism:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/31/business/31every.html
I think the paradox he observes is that people are motivated by socioeconomic status, and that open source contributors are more interested in the "socio" (= props from other programmers) than the "economic" part of that equation. Given that the "economic" part dominated thought in the 20th century, even to the extent that people actually used it as a proxy for (rather than correlate of!) social class, it might be profitable to think more in terms of the "socio" end[2] of things should one want to start improving society.
[2] I hesitate to use the term "game mechanics" in such a discussion, but this kind of thing makes recycling fun, and takes it out of the market frame:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSiHjMU-MUo