CLIMATE CHANGE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
TOWARDS AN ECO-SOCIALIST PERSPECTIVE
~Asit Das
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.[1] As Jason W Moore argues,
...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.
In recent times, there has been lots of
similar 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. To quote Moore again,
There is a certain
urgency all this [i.e. 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.
As Moore argues, 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.’[2] Nearly fifteen years ago he observed[3]: ‘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[4].
Capitalist and Socialist Response to the
Present Ecological Crisis
Elmer Altvater posits this question very
clearly: “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.[5]”
Further elaborating the point he writes,
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
It is interesting to note that the dominant
stream of environmentalists sees the solution to ecological questions almost exclusively
through three mechanical strategies:
(1) technological fixes,
(2) extension of the market to almost all the 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.[6] In contrast, only a very small minority of critical ecologists have come up
with the more radical alternative i.e. solution of the ecological questions
through radical change in our 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.[7] 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.[8] 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.[9]
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[10]. 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
Victor Wallis makes an interesting point about
the way corporate interests and the present way of seeing the ecological
questions are closely enmeshed with each other. He writes
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[11].
Wallis further writes,
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[12].
Wallis then notes,
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 no
sense. The biological understanding of the environment as a matrix with
inter-penetrating parts is not entertained[13].
In other words, ‘green capitalism’ is a
contradiction in terms. Wallis notes with bitterness,
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
In an article published in the Eco-Socialist
journal Capitalism, Nature and
Socialism, Richard Smith writes[14],
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?
The concept of ecosocialism has been advanced
by socialist thinkers like Andre Gorz, James Conner, Paul Burkett and John
Bellamy Foster et al.
According to Michael Lowy, “Ecosocialism 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.”[15]
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[16]. 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[17].
Lowy writes,
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[18].
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
Research Fellow
South Asian Dialogues
on Ecological Democracy (SADED)
383-A, 2nd Floor, Bank
Street
Munirka, New Delhi –
110067
Office Tel: 2610-1580
Mob: 9711323129
[1] Jason W. Moore,
‘Ecological Crises and the Agrarian Question in
World-Historical Perspective’,
Monthly Review, November 2008, Volume 60, Issue 6
[2] John Bellamy Foster,
Bret Clerk, and Richard York, ‘The Moment of Truth’, July-August, 2008, Volume
60, Issue 3
[4] John Bellamy Foster,
‘Ecology:The Moment of Truth – An Introduction’ Monthly Review, July-August
2008, Volume 69, Issue 3
[5] Elmar Altvater, ‘The
Social and Natural Environment of Fossil Capitalism’ Socialist Review, Volume
43, 2007
[6] See- John Bellamy
Foster, ‘Ecology and the Transition from Capitalism to
Socialism’, Monthly Review, November
2008, Volume 60, issue 6
[7]. Victor Wallis, ‘Capitalist and Socialist Responses to the Ecological
Crisis’ Monthly Review,
November 2008, Volume 60, issue 6
[10] John W. Farley, “The
Scientific Case for Modern Anthropogenic Global Warming, Monthly Review,
July-August 2008 Volume 60, Issue 3
[11] Victor Wallis, ‘Capitalist and Socialist Responses to the Ecological
Crisis’ Monthly Review,
November 2008, Volume 60, issue 6
[12] Victor Wallis, ‘Capitalist and Socialist Responses to the Ecological
Crisis’ Monthly Review,
November 2008, Volume 60, issue 6
[13] Victor Wallis, ‘Capitalist and Socialist Responses to the Ecological
Crisis’ Monthly Review,
November 2008, Volume 60, issue 6
[14] Richard Smith, ‘The Engine of Eco Collapse’; Capitalism, Nature and Socialism, Vol. 16, No. 4, 2005:
[15] Michael Lowy, Ecosocialism: Towards a New
Civilisation’ available inhttp://www.herramienta.com.ar/revista-herramienta-n-42/ecosocialism-towards-new-civilization. Last accessed on 28th October, 2013
[16] See See James
O’Connor, ‘Natural Causes, Essays in Ecological Marxism’, The Guilford Press,
York, 1998
Note: This paper was presented in an internal presentation of
South Asian Dialogues on Ecological Democracy (SADED) a project of CSDS. In the
year 2009. Later in 2011 it was modified and presented in Delhi Platform a forum
working on Climate Change and Capitalism.
Email: asit1917@gmail.com
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