"The ecological crisis is thus presented as a technical problem that can be fixed within the current system, through better ingenuity, technological innovation and the magic of the market. In this view, the economy will be increasingly dematerialized, reducing demands placed on nature. The market will ensure that new avenues of capital accumulation are created in the very process of dealing with environmental challenges.
Yet this line of thought ignores the root causes of the ecological crisis. The social metabolic order of capitalism is inherently anti-ecological, since it systematically subordinates nature in its pursuit of endless accumulation and production on ever-larger scales.
Technical fixes to socio-ecological problems typically have unintended consequences and fail to address the root of the problems - the political economic order.
Rather than acknowledging metabolic rifts, natural limits, and ecological contradictions, capital seeks to play a shell game with the environmental problems. It generates, moving them around rather than addressing the root causes."
Technical fixes to socio-ecological problems typically have unintended consequences and fail to address the root of the problems - the political economic order.
Rather than acknowledging metabolic rifts, natural limits, and ecological contradictions, capital seeks to play a shell game with the environmental problems. It generates, moving them around rather than addressing the root causes."
After the Kyoto protocol and the IPCC report, climate change has
emerged as a serious issue facing mankind. Climate change and the issues of
social justice should be seen in the context of the urgency of the global
ecological crisis.
Some writers think that the origins of today’s global ecological
crises are to be found in the unusual response in Europe’s ruling states, to
the great crisis in the 14th century 1290 -1450. There are indeed striking
parallels between the world system today, and the situation prevailing in a broadly
feudal Europe. At the dawn of the 14th century, the agriculture regime, once
capable of remarkable productivity, experienced stagnation. A large population shifted
to cities; western trading networks connected far-flung economic centers. Resource
extraction like copper and silver, faced new technical challenges, fettering
profitability. After some six centuries of sustained expansion, by the 14th
country, it had become clear that feudal Europe had reached the limits of its
development, for reasons related to its environment, its configuration of
social power, and the relations between them.
What followed was either immediately or eventually the rise of
capitalism. Regardless of one’s specific interpretation, it is clear that the
centuries after 1450 marked an era of fundamental environmental transformation.
It was to be commodity-centered and exclusive, it was also an unstable and
uneven, dynamic combination of seigniorial capitalist and peasant economics.
This ecological regime of early capitalism was beset with
contradiction. In the middle of the 18th century, England shifted from its
position as a leading grain exporter to major grain importer. Yield in
England’s agriculture stagnated. Inside the country, landlords compensated by
agitating for enclosures, which accelerated beyond anything known in previous
centuries. Outside the country, Ireland's subordination was intensified with an
eye on agricultural exports. This was the era of crisis for capitalism's first ecological
regime. For all the talk of early capitalism as mercantile, it was also
extraordinarily productivist and dynamic, in ways that went far beyond buying
cheap and selling dear. Early capitalism had created a vast agro-ecological
system of unprecedented geographical breadth, stretching from the eastern
Baltic to Portugal, from southern Norway to Brazil and the Caribbean. It had
delivered an expansion of the agro-extractive surplus for centuries. It had
been, in other words, an expression of capitalist advancement following Adam
Smith and occasionally, combining market, class and ecological transformations
in a new crystallization of ecological power and process.
By the middle of the 18th century, however, this world ecological
regime had become a victim of its own success. Agricultural yields, not just in
England but also across Europe, extended even into the Andes and Spain. It was
a contributor to the world crisis. It was a world ecological crisis, i.e., not
a crisis of the earth in an idealist sense, but a crisis of early modern
capitalism's organization of the world nature of capitalism and not just a
world economy, but also a world ecology. For even many on the left have long
regarded capitalism as something that acts upon nature treating it as a
commodity. This world ecological crisis can be characterized as capitalism's first
developmental environmental crisis, quite distinct from the epochal ecological
crisis that characterized the transition from feudalism to capitalism. It was a
crisis resolved through two major successive waves of global conquest - the
creation of North America, and increasingly India as a vast supplier of food
and resources; and then, by the later 19th century, the great colonial invasion
and occupation of Southeast Asia, Africa and China.
The Industrial Revolution retains its hold on the popular
imagination as the historical and geographical locus of today’s environmental
crisis. It was a view that co-existed with the profound faith in technological
progress. It can be viewed that the industrial revolution as the resolution of
an earlier moment of modern ecological crisis and a more expansive, more
intensive reconstruction of global nature. The industrial revolution offered
not merely a technical fix to the developmental crisis that marked capitalisms
ecological regimes, but within this revolution, was inscribed a vast
geographical fix, which at that time was as limiting as it had once been
liberating. Such a perspective of world ecological crisis offers a more
historical name and a more hopeful way of looking for a pro-people approach for
thinking and acting about the problems of ecological crisis in the modern world.
While the technological marvels of the past two centuries are routinely
celebrated, it had become clear in the 1860s that all advances in resource
efficiency promised more aggregate resource consumption. This is how the modern
world market functions, towards profligacy and not conservation. The technological
marvels have rested on geographical expansion neither more nor less than they
did in the formative centuries of capitalist development. The pressure to
enclose vast new areas of the planet and to penetrate even deeper into the niches
of social and ecological life has continued unabated. Now we are witnessing the
imperial process of new enclosures, with a partnership with the ruling elites,
and the corporate sector of the Third World countries. All this has been
reinforced in the same manner by a radical plunge into the depths of the earth
to extract oil, coal, water and different types of strategic resources. It is
an ecological regime that has reached, or will soon reach, its limits. Whatever
the geological veracity of the peak oil argument, it is clear that the American
led ecological regime that promised, and for half a century delivered cheap oil,
is now done for - this is a bigger issue than present limits of oil reserves.
It is from this standpoint that an accounting of earlier crises may
help us to discern the contours of the present global ecological crisis. At the
outset, it seems capitalism’s preference for externalizing its crisis through
colonial expansions, plunder and conquest of new territories for resources and
markets, has reached its definite and destructive geographical limits. As long
as fresh land existed beyond the reach of capital, the system's socio-ecological
contradictions could be managed. With the possibilities for external
colonization foreclosed by the 20th century, capital has been compelled to
pursue strategies of internal colonization, among which we might include the
explosive growth of genetically modified plants and animals since 1970. Drilling
even deeper and to even more distant locales for oil, water and minerals; converting
human bodies, especially those of women, people of color, workers and farmers
into toxic waste dumps for a wide range of carcinogenic and other lethal
substantives.
There has been lots of critical analysis of different dimensions of
contemporary environmental degradation, of government policies, and the role of
multinational international agreements. What is needed is sufficient care given
to the task of situating these factors systemically and historically.
There is a certain urgency to the present ecological crisis. Now it
has been proved that the world economy has been driven to the limits, and in
some cases beyond a whole range of ecological thresholds. The global ecological
crisis is not impending, it is already here. To understand the structural logic
of this crisis, we have to have a historical perspective on globalization and
distinguishing the new from the old, in the present juncture and trying to
situate the contemporary dynamics of the world historically. Our response to
the fate of human civilization depends on how we deal with this age of
ecological catastrophes. By locating today's ecological transformations within
long run and large-scale patterns of recurrence and evolution in the modern
world, we may unravel the distinctiveness of the impending ecological
catastrophe. This means that we have to situate ecological relations internal
to the political economy of capitalism and not merely placing concepts of
ecological transformation and governance, alongside those of political
categories of political economy from the standpoint of the historically
existing dialectic of nature and society. Once ecological relations of
production are put into the mix, one of the chief things that come into view is
the production of socio-ecological regimes, both regional and on world scale.
These initially liberate the accumulation of capital, only to generate self-limiting
contradictions that culminate in renewed ecological bottlenecks to continued
accumulation each time the cycle starts anew; historically, this has been more
expansive and intensifies relations between capital labour and external nature.
The task before us is to identify the different forms and kinds of the
unfolding ecological crises.
The Writing on the Wall
Ecology: The Moment of Truth
Explaining the magnitude of the crisis and the urgency to deal with
it, John Bellamy Foster in his note “Ecology: The Moment of Truth"
says: "It is impossible to
exaggerate the environmental problem facing humanity in the twenty-first
century.” Nearly fifteen years ago he observed (John Bellamy Foster, “This
Vulnerable Planet”, 1994): "We have only four decades left in which to
gain control over our major environmental problems if we are to avoid
irreversible ecological decline.
1.
Today, with a quarter-century
still remaining in this projected time line, it appears to have been too
optimistic. Available evidence now strongly suggests that under a regime of
business as usual we could be facing an irrerevocable “tipping point” with
respect to climate change, within a mere decade.
2. Other crises such as species
extinction (percentage of bird, mammal and fish species “vulnerable or in
immediate danger of extinction” are “now measured in double digits”).
3. The rapid depletion of the oceans’
bounty; desertification; deforestation; air pollution; water shortages/pollution;
soil degradation; the imminent peaking of world oil production (creating new
geopolitical tensions); and a chronic world food crisis - all point to the fact
that the planet as we know it and its ecosystems are stretched to the breaking
point. The moment of truth for the earth and civilization has arrived.”
To be sure, it is unlikely that the effects of ecological
degradation in our time, though enormous, will prove apocalyptic for human
civilization within a single generation, even under conditions of capitalist
business as usual. Normal human life spans, there is no doubt that considerable
time is still left before the full effect of the current human degrading the
planet comes into play. Yet, the period remaining in which we can avert future
environmental catastrophe, before it is essentially out of our hands, is much
shorter. Indeed, the growing sense of urgency of environmentalists has to do
with the prospect of various tipping points being reached as critical
ecological thresholds are crossed, leading to the possibility of a drastic contraction
of life on earth. (See “Ecology: The Moment of Truth” by John Bellamy Foster,
Brett Clark and Richard York, Monthly Review, July-August 2008).
Capitalist and Socialist Response
to the Present Ecological Crisis
Under capitalist conditions, the environment is more and more
transformed into a contested object of human greed. The exploitation of natural
resources, and their degradation by a growing variety of pollutants, results in
man made scarcity, leading to conflicts over access to them. Access to nature
is uneven and unequal, and the societal relation of man to nature therefore is
conflict-prone. The ecological footprints of people in different countries and
regions of the world are of very different sizes, reflecting severe
inequalities of incomes and wealth. Ecological injustices, therefore, can only
usefully be discussed if social class contradictions and production of inequality
in the courses of capital accumulation are taken into account. The environment
includes the energy system, climate, biodiversity, soils, water, wood, deserts,
ice sheets, etc., the different spheres of planet earth and their historical
evolution. The complexity of nature and the positive and negative feedback
mechanisms between the different dimensions of the environment in space and
time are only partly known. Therefore, an environmental policy has to be made
in the shadow of a high degree of uncertainty. This is why one of the basic
principles of environmental policy is that of precaution. The effects of human
activities, particularly economic activities on natural processes and the feedback
mechanisms within the totality of the social political and economic systems,
constitute the so-called societal relation of man to nature. Only a holistic
attempt to integrate environmental aspects into discourses of political
economy, political science, sociology culture studies, etc., can make possible
a coherent understanding of environmental problems and yield adequate political
response to the challenges of the ongoing ecological crisis.
Green Capitalism and
Capitalist Response to the Ecological Crisis
Mainstream environmentalists seek to solve the ecological problems
almost exclusively through three mechanical strategies: (1) technological
solutions, (2) extending the market to all aspects of nature, and (3) creating
what are intended as mere islands of preservation in a world of almost
universal exploitation and destruction of nature habitats. In contrast, a
minority of critical human ecologists have come to understand the need to
change our fundamental social relations.
The Capitalist Response to
Global Ecological Crisis
The ecological crisis is a complex mix of dangerous trends. Capitalist
ideology characteristically views only the components of this crisis, thereby
obscuring its systemic nature. The build up of greenhouse gases and the
consequent spectres of climatic tipping points have been widely, if reluctantly,
acknowledged within the US ruling class, although for the most part without any
matching sense of urgency. Little attention is paid to this in official
mainstream campaign discourses. Different dimensions of the crisis are viewed
either as a local problem, or more alarmingly, as opportunities for future
profit. One can see these in the spread of toxins, the depletion of vital goods
- notably fresh water, and biodiversity; the increasingly intrusive and
reckless manipulation of basic natural processes as in genetic engineering, cloud
seeding, changing the course of rivers, etc.
An adequate response to the crisis will ultimately involve
addressing all these dimensions. We are still only in the earliest stages of
necessary awareness. This means that we must first convincingly address the
arguments of those who would downplay the depth of the transformation that long-term
species-survival will require. One part of this task responding to those who
deny human agency in climate crisis is a matter of pitting straightforward scientific reasoning against assertions made principally by representatives of
corporate capital. Another challenge comes to social ecology from those who put
forward the view that the only feasible green agenda is a capitalist one.
Green Capitalism
Among the many possible illustrations of “Green Capitalism”, a small
news item in the financial section of the March 7, 2008 issue of the New York Times,
provides a useful lead. Captioned “Gore gets rich”, it reports that former US Vice-President Al Gore, fresh from
winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his cautionary filmed lecture about global
warming, invested 35 million
dollars with Capricorn Investment Group, a firm that puts clients’ assets into
hedge funds and invests in makers of environmentally friendly products. The
article also notes that Gore has flourished from his business ties with Apple
and Google, and that he was recently made a partner at Keiner Perkins Caufield, the top tier Silicon Valley
Venture Capital firm. A visit to the Capricorn Group’s website leads to stories
about the various projects in which its funds have been invested, one of which
is Mendel Biotechnology, which is working with BP and Monsanto supported by a
125 million dollar grant from the US Department of Energy, to find a way to propagate
Miscanthus - a potentially more efficient fuel-producing plant than corn, for
quick planting and maximum yield.
This is quintessential capitalism; its only green attribute is the
notion of crop-derived fuel as offering a clean and green form of energy. The
following core aspects of the ecological crisis, however, remain unaddressed - if
not aggravated, in this scenario:
1. Although bio fuels may produce
less greenhouse gas than petroleum, their aggregate impact in terms of air and
water pollution, soil degradation and food prices may be more severe.
2.
No recognition is given to the
need to reduce the total amount of energy consumption of paved surfaces.
3.
Large-scale use of cropland as
a fuel source impinges on food crops without reducing pressure on the world
water supply.
4. Agri-business practices,
whatever the product, have their negative impact on bio diversity.
5.
Monsanto is implicated in the
coercive imposition of genetically modified organisms (GMO).
6.
Silicon Valley is at the
cutting edge of capitalist hyper-development that has accelerated innovation
and obsolescence, a generation of vast quantities of toxic trash.
7. The US Government continues to
provide subsidies to corporations rather than supporting efforts directly to
address long-term human needs.
The more familiar image of green capitalism is the one of small grassroot
enterprises offering local services, solar housing, organic food markets, etc.
It is true and promising that as ecological awareness spreads, the space for
such activities will grow. We should also acknowledge that the related
exploration of alternative living arrangements might contribute in a positive
way to the longer-term conversion that is required. More generally it is
certainly the case that any effective conservation measures, including steps
towards renewable energy that can be taken in the short run, should be welcome,
no matter who takes those steps. However, it is important not to see in such
steps any repudiation by capital of its ecologically and socially devastating
core commitments to expansion, accumulation and profit.
To remind ourselves of this core commitment is not to claim that
capital ignores the environmental crisis, it is simply to account for the
particular way it responds to it. This includes direct corporate initiatives
and measures taken by capitalist governments. At least in the US, however, the
former thrust predominates. The accepted self designation of these approaches,
‘corporate environmentalism’ defined as environmentally friendly actions not
required by the law and thereby signifying explicitly that the corporations
themselves are setting the agenda. The most tangible expression of corporate
environmentalism is a substantial across-the-board jump through the 1980s in
the numbers of management personnel assigned to deal with environmental issues.
On the basis of both theory and performance, and viewing the
corporate sector as a whole, we can say that this new emphasis has made itself
felt in two ways. On the one hand, corporations have been alert to
opportunities for making environmentally positive adjustments, where these
coincide with the standard business criteria of efficiency and cost reduction.
On the other hand, more importantly, corporations have acted directly on the
political stage, with an exceptionally free hand in the US. Both by lobbying
and direct penetration of policy making bodies, they have moulded regulatory
practices, censored scientific reports and shaped a defiant official posture in
the global arena exemplified by US withdrawal from the Kyoto accords. In addition,
they have undertaken vast public relation campaigns (Green Washing) to portray
their practices as environmentally progressive. From outside, as well as within
the US, they have attempted with considerable success to define in their own
interest, the internationally accepted parameters of sustainable development - initially
through the continuing activity of the World Trade Organization, as well as
corporate partnerships with United Nations Development Agencies.
None of these efforts embodies the slightest change in basic
capitalist practice. On the contrary, they reflect a determination to shore up
such a practice at all costs. The reality of green capitalism is that capital
pays attention to green issues; this is not at all the same as having green
priorities. Insofar as capital makes green oriented adjustments beyond those
that are either profit-friendly or advisable for PR purposes or protection
against liability, it is because those adjustments have been imposed, or as in
the case of wind turbines in Germany, stimulated and subsidized by public
authority. Such authority, even though exerted within the overall capitalist
framework, reflects primarily the political strength of non or anti-capitalist
forces like environmentalist organizations, trade unions, community groups, grassroot
coalitions, etc., although these may be supported in part by certain sectors of
capital, such as alternative energy and insurance industries.
As this whole current of opinion becomes stronger, advocates of
green capitalism pick up on the popular call for renewable energy, but
accompany it with a vision of undiminished proliferation of industrial
products. In so doing, they overlook the complexity of the environmental crisis
which has not only to do with the burning of fossil fuels, but also with
assaults on the earth’s resource base as a whole, including for example, the
paving over the green space, the raw material and energy costs of producing
solar collectors and wind turbines, the encroachment on natural habitats not
only by buildings and pavements, but also by dams, wind turbines, etc; the
toxins associated with high-tech commodities and the increasingly critical
problems of waste disposal; in short, the routine spin-offs from capital’s
unqualified prioritization of economic growth.
Proponents of green capitalism respond to this by saying that
economic growth, far from being the problem, is what holds the solutions.
Environmentalism in this view is a purely negative response to ecological
crisis giving rise to unpopular practices like regulation and prohibition. Hence,
the singular “green capitalist” caricature of environmentalists. All of them
direct our attention to stopping the bad, not creating the good. The “good”
from this perspective, is a scenario of jobs, material abundance, and energy
independence, understood however, within a characteristically capitalist
competitive framework. While the need to cut greenhouse gases is recognized,
the challenge is posed in narrowly technological terms. Attempts to resist
consumerism are belittled, on the assumption that innovations, along with
massive public investment, will solve any problem of scarcity; the vision is
emphatically centered on the visited states, with China invoked to signify that
the growth is unstoppable. The very existence of an environmental nexus is
called into question, on the grounds that the category “environment” can only
be conceived either as excluding humans or as being synonymous with everything
- at either of which extreme it is seen to make sense. The biological understanding
of the environment as a matrix with inter-penetrating parts is not entertained.
Ultimately, green capitalism is a contradiction in terms.
One pole is referring to a complexly evolving equilibrium
encompassing the growth of one of its particular components. Ironically, the
core capitalist response to ecological crisis is a further deepening of the
logic of commodification. Capitalist practice has come to pose not just as a
material threat to ecological recovery, but also as an ideological threat to
socialist theory and by extension to the prospects for developing a long-term
popular movement with an inspiring alternative vision.
Socialist Response to
Global Ecological Crisis: Towards
Ecosocialism
Human beings depend on functioning ecosystems to sustain themselves,
and their actions affect those same ecosystems. As a result, there is a
necessary “metabolic” interaction between humans and the earth, which influences
both the natural and social history. Increasingly the state of nature is being
defined by the operations of the capitalist system, as anthropogenic forces are
altering the global environment on a scale that is unprecedented. The global
climate is rapidly changing due to the burning of fossil fuels and
deforestation. No area of the world's ocean is unaffected by human influence,
as the accumulation of carbon, fertilizer runoff, and over-fishing undermine biodiversity
and the natural services that it provides. The millennium ecosystem assessment documents
show that over two-thirds of the world’s ecosystems are over-exploited and
polluted. Environmental problems are increasingly interrelated. Experts have
been warning that we are dangerously close to pushing the planet past its
tipping point, setting off cascading environmental problems that will radically
alter the conditions of nature.
Although the ecological crisis has captured public attention, the
dominant economic forces are attempting to seize the moment by assuring us that
capital, technology and the market can be employed so as to ward off any
threats without a major transformation of society. For example, numerous
technological solutions are proposed to remedy global climate change, including
agro-fuels, nuclear energy, and new coal plants that will capture and sequester
carbon underground. The ecological crisis is thus presented as a technical
problem that can be fixed within the current system, through better ingenuity,
technological innovation and the magic of the market. In this view, the economy
will be increasingly dematerialized, reducing demands placed on nature. The
market will ensure that new avenues of capital accumulation are created in the
very process of dealing with environmental challenges.
Yet this line of thought ignores the root causes of the ecological
crisis. The social metabolic order of capitalism is inherently anti-ecological,
since it systematically subordinates nature in its pursuit of endless
accumulation and production on ever-larger scales. Technical fixes to socio-ecological
problems typically have unintended consequences and fail to address the root of
the problems - the political economic order. Rather than acknowledging
metabolic rifts, natural limits, and ecological contradictions, capital seeks
to play a shell game with the environmental problems. It generates, moving them
around rather than addressing the root causes.
One obvious way capital shifts around ecological problems is through
simple geographical displacement. Once resources are depleted in one region,
capitalists search far and wide to seize control of resources in other parts of
the world, whether by military force or markets.
One of the drives of colonialism was clearly the demand for more
natural resources in rapidly industrializing European nations. However,
expanding the area under the control of global capitalism is only one of the
ways in which capitalists shift ecological problems around. There is a
qualitative dimension as well, whereby one environmental crisis is solved
(typically only in the short term) by changing the type of production process
and generating a different crisis, such as how the shift from the use of wood
to plastic in the manufacturing of many consumer goods replaced the problems
associated with wood extraction by those associated with plastic production and
disposal. Thus, one problem is transformed into another - a shift in the type
of rift.
The pursuit of profit is the immediate pulse of capitalism, as it reproduces
itself on an ever-larger scale. A capitalist economic system cannot function
under conditions that require accounting for the reproduction of nature, which
may include time scales of a hundred years or more, not to mention maintenance.
This is where the socialist response to global ecological crisis
assumes importance. The social order of capital is characterized by rifts and
shifts, as it freely appropriates nature and attempts to overcome, even if only
whatever natural and social barriers it confronts. It only makes shifts or
proposes technological fixes to address the pressing concern, without
addressing the fundamental crisis, the force driving the ecological crisis –
that is – capitalism itself. As Istevan Meszaros has said, “In the absence of
miraculous solutions, Capitals’ arbitrarily self-asserting attitude to the
objective determinations of causality and time in the end, inevitably brings a
bitter harvest, at the expense of humanity and Nature itself”. (See Istevan
Meszaros, “Beyond Capital”, Monthly Review Press, New York).
The global reach of capital is creating a planetary ecological
crisis. A fundamental structural crisis cannot be remedied within the
operations of the system. Capitalism is incapable of regulating its social
metabolism with nature in an environmentally sustainable manner. Its very
operations violate the laws of restitution and metabolic restoration. The
constant drive to renew the capital accumulation process intensifies its
destructive social metabolism imposing the needs of capital on nature,
regardless of the consequences to natural systems. Capitalism continues to play
out the same failed strategy.
The solution to each environmental problem further generates new
environmental problems - one crisis follows another, in an endless succession
of failure, stemming from the internal contradictions of the system. If we are
to solve our environmental crisis, we need to go to the root of the problem –
i.e., the social relation of capital itself, given that this social metabolic
order undermines the vital conditions of existence. Resolving the ecological
crisis thus requires in the end a complete break with the logic of capital and
the social metabolic order it creates.
It is here that the socialist response to global ecological crisis
assumes importance. A socialist social order, that is a society of associated
producers, can serve as the basis for potentially bringing social metabolism in
line with the natural metabolism, in order to sustain the inalienable conditions
for the existence and reproduction of the chain of human generation. Given that
human society must always interact with nature, concerns regarding the social
metabolism are constant, regardless of the society. But a mode of production in
which associated producers can regulate their exchange with nature in
accordance with natural limits and know, while retaining the regenerative
properties of natural processes and cycles, is fundamental to an
environmentally sustainable social order.
The above clearly shows that to solve the world ecological crisis we
should struggle for the creation of a socialist social order.
The transition from capitalism to socialism is a struggle for
sustainable human development on which societies in the periphery of the capitalist
world system have been leading the way.
The transition from capitalism to socialism is the most difficult
problem of socialist theory and practice, the question of ecology magnifies the
importance of finding a way out of this global ecological mess. Human relation with
nature lies at the heart of the transition to socialism. An ecological
perspective is pivotal to our understanding of capitalism’s limits, the
failures of the early socialist experiments, and the overall struggle for an
egalitarian and sustainable human development.
The real prospects for the solutions of global ecological crisis can
be seen in the struggles to revolutionise social relations in the strife for a
just and sustainable society, and are now emerging in the periphery of the
world capitalism system, that is the third world societies. They are somehow
mirrored in movement for ecological and social revolution in the advanced
capitalist world. It is only through fundamental change at the centre of the
system, from which the pressure on the planet principally emanates, that there
is any genuine possibility of avoiding ultimate ecological destruction. For ecopessimists,
this may seem to be an impossible goal. Nevertheless, it is important to
recognize that there is now an ecology as well as political economy of
revolutionary change known as ecosocialism. The emergence in our times - the
struggles for sustainable human development in various people’s struggle in the
global periphery could mark the beginning of a revolt against both world alienation
and human self-estrangement. Such revolts, if consistent, could have only one
objective – i.e., the creation of a society of associated producers rationally
regulating their metabolic relation to nature, and doing so not only in
accordance with their own needs, but also in accordance with those of future
generations and life as a whole. Today the task of transition to socialism and
the transition to an ecological society are one.
The Idea of Ecosocialism
Richard Smith wrote in “The Engine of Eco Collapse”, published in
the Ecosocialist journal ‘Capitalism, Nature and Socialism’, Vol. 16, No. 4,
2005:
“If capitalism can’t be reformed to subordinate profit to human
survival what alternative is there but some sort of nationally and globally
planned economy? Problems like climate change require the “Visible hand” of
direct planning. Our capitalist corporate leaders can't help themselves, have
no choice but to systematically make wrong, irrational and ultimately – given
the technology they command – globally suicidal decisions about the economy and
the environment so then, what other choice do we have than to consider a true
ecosocialist alternative?” (Richard Smith)
The concept of ecosocialism has been advanced by socialist thinkers
like Andre Gorz, James Conner, Paul Burkett and John Bellamy Foster et al.
Ecosocialsm is an attempt to provide a radical civilizational alternative
to capitalism’s destructive process. It advances an economic policy founded on
the non-monetary and extra economic criteria of social needs and ecological
equilibrium. Grounded on the basic arguments of ecological movement and Marxist
critique of political economy, this dialectical synthesis attempted by a broad
spectrum of authors from Andre Gorz to Elma Aluater, James O’Connor, Joel Kovel
and John Bellamy Foster. It is at the same time a critique of market ecology
which does not challenge the capitalist system, and of “productivist socialism”
which ignores the issue of natural limits.
According to O’Connor, the aim of ecological socialism is a new
society based on ecological rationality, democratic control, social equality
and the predominance of use value over exchange value. (See James O’Connor, ‘Natural
Causes, Essays in Ecological Marxism’, The Guilford Press, York, 1998). The
above aims require: (a) collective ownership of the mean of production by, and (b)
democratic planning, which makes it possible for society to define the goals of
investment and production, and (c) new technological structure of the
productive forces. In other words, a revolutionary social and economic
transformation.
For ecosocialists, the problem with the main currents of political
ecology represented by most Green parties is that they do not seem to take into
account the intrinsic contradiction between the capitalist dynamics of the
unlimited expansion of capital and accumulation of profits, and the
preservation of the environment. This leads to a critique of productivism,
which is often relevant but does not lead beyond an ecologically – reformed
‘market economy’. The result has been that many Green parties have become the
ecological alibi of centre left social – liberal governments. (For detailed
critique of existing green politics, see Joel Kovel – ‘Enemy of Nature’.)
A critique of the productivist ideology of progress and of the idea of
a socialist exploitation of nature, appeared already in the writings of some
dissident Marxists of the 1930s, such as Walter Benjamin. But it is mainly
during the last few decades, that “ecosocialism” has developed as a challenge
to the thesis of the neutrality of productive forces which had continued to
predominate in the main tendencies of the left during the twentieth century.
Many scientific and technological achievements of modernity are
precious, but the whole productive system must be transformed and this can be
done only by ecosocialist methods, i.e., through a democratic planning of the
economy which takes into the account the preservation of the ecological
equilibrium. This may mean, for certain branches of production, to discontinue
them - for instance nuclear plants, certain methods of mass/industrial fishing
(which are responsible for the near extermination of several species in the
seas), the destructive logging of tropical forests, etc.
The list is long. It first of all requires a revolution in the
energy system, with the replacement of present sources (essentially fossils)
that are responsible for the pollution and poisoning of the environment by
renewable sources of energy: water, wind and sun. The issue of energy is decisive
because fossil energy (oil and coal) is responsible for much of the planet's
pollution, as well as for the disastrous climate change. Nuclear energy is a
false alternative, not only because of the danger of new Chernobyls, but also
because nobody knows what to do with the thousands of tons of radioactive waste
toxic for hundreds of thousands and in some cases millions of years, and the
gigantic masses of contaminated obsolete planets. Solar energy, which has never
aroused much interest in capitalist societies (for not being profitable or
competitive), must become the object of intense research and development - a
key role in the building of an alternative energy system.
All this must be accomplished under the necessary condition of full
and equitable employment. This condition is essential, not only to meet the
requirement of social justice, but in order to assure working class support for
the structural transformation of the productive forces. This process is
impossible without public control over the mean of production and planning,
that is public decisions on investment and technological change, which must be
taken away from the banks and capitalist enterprises in order to serve common
good.
The whole society should be able to choose democratically which
productive lines are to be privileged and what percentage of resources are to
be invested in education, health and agriculture. The prices of goods themselves
would not be left to the law of supply and demand, but determined as far as
possible according to social political and ecological criteria. Initially this
might only involve taxes on certain products, and subsidized prices for others,
but ideally, as the transition to socialism moves forward, more and more
products and services would be distributed free of charge, according to the
needs and will of the citizens.
The passage from capitalist destructive progress to socialism is a
historical process, a permanent revolutionary transformation of society, culture
and mentalities. Politics is central to this transformative process. It is
important to emphasize that such a process cannot begin without a revolutionary
transformation of social and political structures, and the active support by
the vast majority of the population of an ecosocialist programme. The
development of Socialist Consciousness and ecological awareness is a process,
where the decisive factor is people's own collective experiences of struggle,
moving from local and partial confrontations to the radical change of society.
This transition would lead to not only a new mode of production and
an egalitarian and democratic society, but also to an alternative mode of life,
a new ecosocialist civilization, beyond the reigns of money, beyond consumption
habits artificially produced by advertising, and beyond unlimited production of
commodities that are useless and harmful to the environment.
This requires a qualitative transformation of the development
paradigm itself. This means putting an end to the monstrous waste of resources
by capitalism, based on the production, in a large scale, of useless and
harmful products: the armaments industry is a good example. A great part of the
goods produced in capitalism with their inbuilt obsolescence have no other
usefulness; is not excessive consumption acquisition of pseudo novelties
imposed by fashion through advertisement and mass culture? A new society would
orient production towards the satisfaction of authentic needs, beginning with
those which could be described as the basic requirement of a democratic
egalitarian society – water, food, clothing, housing, including basic services
like health, education transport and culture.
Only through an ecosocialist politics we can avoid the impending ecocatastrophe,
thus saving the planet and human beings.
Asit Das
See Also : http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/real-green-solution-to-climate-change.html
http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/20-theses-against-green-capitalism-by.html
See Also : http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/real-green-solution-to-climate-change.html
http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/20-theses-against-green-capitalism-by.html
No comments:
Post a Comment