140. Capitalism and Degrowth—An Impossibility Theorem

By John Bellamy Foster, Monthly Review, January 2011

John Bellamy Foster

In the opening paragraph to his 2009 book, Storms of My Grandchildren, James Hansen, the world’s foremost scientific authority on global warming, declared: “Planet Earth, creation, the world in which civilization developed, the world with climate patterns that we know and stable shorelines, is in imminent peril….The startling conclusion is that continued exploitation of all fossil fuels on Earth threatens not only the other millions of species on the planet but also the survival of humanity itself—and the timetable is shorter than we thought.”1

In making this declaration, however, Hansen was only speaking of apart of the global environmental crisis currently threatening the planet, namely, climate change. Recently, leading scientists (including Hansen) have proposed nine planetary boundaries, which mark the safe operating space for the planet. Three of these boundaries (climate change, biodiversity, and the nitrogen cycle) have already been crossed, while others, such as fresh water use and ocean accidification, are emerging planetary rifts. In ecological terms, the economy has now grown to a scale and intrusiveness that is both overshooting planetary boundaries and tearing apart the biogeochemical cycles of the planet.2

Hence, almost four decades after the Club of Rome raised the issue of “the limits to growth,” the economic growth idol of modern society is once again facing a formidable challenge.3 What is known as “degrowth economics,” associated with the work of Serge Latouche in particular, emerged as a major European intellectual movement in 2008 with the historic conference in Paris on “Economic De-Growth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity,” and has since inspired a revival of radical Green thought, as epitomized by the 2010 “Degrowth Declaration” in Barcelona.

Ironically, the meteoric rise of degrowth (décroissance in French) as a concept has coincided over the last three years with the reappearance of economic crisis and stagnation on a scale not seen since the 1930s. The degrowth concept therefore forces us to confront the questions: Is degrowth feasible in a capitalist grow-or-die society—and if not, what does this say about the transition to a new society?

According to the Web site of the European degrowth project, “degrowth carries the idea of a voluntary reduction of the size of the economic system which implies a reduction of the GDP.”4 “Voluntary” here points to the emphasis on voluntaristic solutions—though not as individualistic and unplanned in the European conception as the “voluntary simplicity” movement in the United States, where individuals (usually well-to-do) simply choose to opt out of the high-consumption market model. For Latouche, the concept of “degrowth” signifies a major social change: a radical shift from growth as the main objective of the modern economy, toward its opposite (contraction, downshifting).

An underlying premise of this movement is that, in the face of a planetary ecological emergency, the promise of green technology has proven false. This can be attributed to the Jevons Paradox, according to which greater efficiency in the use of energy and resources leads not to conservation but to greater economic growth, and hence more pressure on the environment.5 The unavoidable conclusion—associated with a wide variety of political-economic and environmental thinkers, not just those connected directly to the European degrowth project—is that there needs to be a drastic alteration in the economic trends operative since the Industrial Revolution. As Marxist economist Paul Sweezy put it more than two decades ago: “Since there is no way to increase the capacity of the environment to bear the [economic and population] burdens placed on it, it follows that the adjustment must come entirely from the other side of the equation. And since the disequilibrium has already reached dangerous proportions, it also follows that what is essential for success is a reversal, not merely a slowing down, of the underlying trends of the last few centuries.”6

Given that wealthy countries are already characterized by ecological overshoot, it is becoming more and more apparent that there is indeed no alternative, as Sweezy emphasized, but a reversal in the demands placed on the environment by the economy. This is consistent with the argument of ecological economist Herman Daly, who has long insisted on the need for a steady-state economy. Daly traces this perspective to John Stuart Mill’s famous discussion of the “stationary state” in his Principles of Political Economy, which argued that if economic expansion was to level off (as the classical economists expected), the economic goal of society could then shift to the qualitative aspects of existence, rather than mere quantitative expansion.

A century after Mill, Lewis Mumford insisted in his Condition of Man, first published in 1944, that not only was a stationary state in Mill’s sense ecologically necessary, but that it should also be linked to a concept of “basic communism…[that] applies to the whole community the standards of the household,” distributing “benefits according to need” (a view that drew upon Marx).

Today this recognition of the need to bring economic growth in overdeveloped economies to a halt, and even to shrink these economies, is seen as rooted theoretically in Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen’s The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, which established the basis of modern ecological economics.7

Degrowth as such is not viewed, even by its proponents, as a stable solution, but one aimed at reducing the size of the economy to a level of output that can be maintained perpetually at a steady-state. This might mean shrinking the rich economies by as much as a third from today’s levels by a process that would amount to negative investment (since not only would new net investment cease but also only some, not all, worn-out capital stock would be replaced). A steady-state economy, in contrast, would carry out replacement investment but would stop short of new net investment. As Daly defines it, “a steady-state economy” is “an economy with constant stocks of people and artifacts, maintained at some desired, sufficient levels by low rates of maintenance ‘throughput,’ that is, by the lowest feasible flows of matter and energy.”8

Needless to say, none of this would come easily, given today’s capitalist economy. In particular, Latouche’s work, which can be viewed as exemplary of the European degrowth project, is beset with contradictions, resulting not from the concept of degrowth per se, but from his attempt to skirt the question of capitalism. This can be seen in his 2006 article, “The Globe Downshifted,” where he argues in convoluted form:

For some on the far left, the stock answer is that capitalism is the problem, leaving us stuck in a rut and powerless to move towards a better society. Is economic contraction compatible with capitalism? This is a key question, but one that it is important to answer without resort to dogma, if the real obstacles are to be understood….

Eco-compatible capitalism is conceivable in theory, but unrealistic in practice. Capitalism would require a high level of regulation to bring about the reduction of our ecological footprint. The market system, dominated by huge multinational corporations, will never set off down the virtuous path of eco-capitalism of its own accord….

Mechanisms for countering power with power, as existed under the Keynes-Fordist regulations of the Social-Democratic era, are conceivable and desirable. But the class struggle seems to have broken down. The problem is: capital won….

A society based on economic contraction cannot exist under capitalism. But capitalism is a deceptively simple word for a long, complex history. Getting rid of the capitalists and banning wage labour, currency and private ownership of the means of production would plunge society into chaos. It would bring large-scale terrorism….We need to find another way out of development, economism (a belief in the primacy of economic causes and factors) and growth: one that does not mean forsaking the social institutions that have been annexed by the economy (currency, markets, even wages) but reframes them according to different principles.9

In this seemingly pragmatic, non-dogmatic fashion, Latouche tries to draw a distinction between the degrowth project and the socialist critique of capitalism by: (1) declaring that “eco-compatible capitalism is conceivable” at least in theory; (2) suggesting that Keynesian and so-called “Fordist” approaches to regulation, associated with social democracy, could—if still feasible—tame capitalism, pushing it down “the virtuous path of eco-capitalism”; and (3) insisting that degrowth is not aimed at breaking the dialectic of capital-wage labor or interfering with private ownership of the means of production. In other writings, Latouche makes it clear that he sees the degrowth project as compatible with continued valorization (i.e., augmentation of capitalist value relations) and that anything approaching substantive equality is considered beyond reach.10

What Latouche advocates most explicitly in relation to the environmental problem is the adoption of what he refers to as “reformist measures, whose principles [of welfare economics] were outlined in the early 20th century by the liberal economist Arthur Cecil Pigou [and] would bring about a revolution” by internalizing the environmental externalities of the capitalist economy.11 Ironically, this stance is identical with that of neoclassical environmental economics—while distinguished from the more radical critique often promoted by ecological economics, where the notion that environmental costs can simply be internalized within the present-day capitalist economy is sharply attacked.12

“The ecological crisis itself is mentioned” in the current degrowth project, as Greek philosopher Takis Fotopoulos has critically observed, “in terms of a common problem that ‘humanity’ faces because of the degradation of the environment, with no mention at all of the differentiated class implications of this crisis, i.e., of the fact that the economic and social implications of the ecological crisis are primarily paid in terms of the destruction of lives and livelihood of the lower social groups—either in Bangladesh or in New Orleans—and much less in terms of those of the elites and the middle classes.”13

Given that it makes the abstract concept of economic growth its target, rather than the concrete reality of capital accumulation, degrowth theory—in the influential form articulated by Latouche and others—naturally faces difficulty confronting today’s reality of economic crisis/stagnation, which has produced unemployment levels and economic devastation greater than at any time since the 1930s. Latouche himself wrote in 2003 that “there would be nothing worse than a growth economy without growth.”14 But, faced with a capitalist economy caught in a deep structural crisis, European degrowth analysts have little to say. The Barcelona Degrowth Declaration simply pronounced: “[S]o-called anti-crisis measures that seek to boost economic growth will worsen inequalities and environmental conditions in the long-run.”15 Neither wishing to advocate growth, nor to break with the institutions of capital—nor, indeed, to align themselves with workers, whose greatest need at present is employment—leading degrowth theorists remain strangely silent in the face of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression.

To be sure, when faced with “actual degrowth” in the Great Recession of 2008-2009 and the need for a transition to “sustainable degrowth,” noted ecological economist Joan Martinez-Alier, who has recently taken up the degrowth banner, offered the palliative of “a short-run Green Keynesianism or a Green New Deal.” The goal, he said, was to promote economic growth and “contain the rise in unemployment” through public investment in green technology and infrastructure. This was viewed as consistent with the degrowth project, as long as such Green Keynesianism did not “become a doctrine of continuous economic growth.”16 Yet how working people were to fit into this largely technological strategy (predicated on ideas of energy efficiency that degrowth analysts generally reject) was left uncertain.

Indeed, rather than dealing with the unemployment problem directly—through a radical program that would give people jobs aimed at the creation of genuine use values in ways compatible with a more sustainable society—degrowth theorists prefer to emphasize shorter working hours, and separate “the right to receive remuneration from the fact of being employed” (by means of the promotion of a universal basic income). Such changes are supposed to allow the economic system to shrink and, at the same time, guarantee income to families—all the while keeping the underlying structure of capital accumulation and markets intact.

Yet, looked at from a more critical standpoint, it is hard to see the viability of shorter work hours and basic income guarantees on the scale suggested other than as elements in a transition to a post-capitalist (indeed socialist) society. As Marx said, the rule for capital is: “Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!”17 To break with capitalism’s institutional basis of the “law of value,” or to question the structure underpinning the exploitation of labor (both of which would be threatened by a sharp reduction of working hours and substantial income guarantees) is to raise larger questions of system change—ones that leading degrowth theorists seem unwilling to acknowledge at present. Moreover, a meaningful approach to the creation of a new society would have to provide not merely income and leisure, but would also need to address the human need for useful, creative, non-alienated work.

Even more problematic is the attitude of much of current degrowth theory toward the global South. “Degrowth,” Latouche writes,

must apply to the South as much as to the North if there is to be any chance to stop Southern societies from rushing up the blind alley of growth economics. Where there is still time, they should aim not for development but for disentanglement—removing the obstacles that prevent them from developing differently….Southern countries need to escape their economic and cultural dependence on the North and rediscover their own histories—interrupted by colonialism, development and globalization—to establish distinct indigenous cultural identities….Insisting on growth in the South, as though it were the only way out of the misery that growth created, can only lead to further westernization.18

Lacking an adequate theory of imperialism, and failing to address the vast chasm of inequality separating the richest from the poorest nations, Latouche thus reduces the whole immense problem of underdevelopment to one of cultural autonomy and subjection to a Westernized growth fetish. This can be compared to the much more reasoned response of Herman Daly, who writes,

It is absolutely a waste of time as well as morally backward to preach steady-state doctrines to underdeveloped countries before the overdeveloped countries have taken any measure to reduce either their own population growth or the growth of their per-capita resource consumption. Therefore, the steady-state paradigm must first be applied in the overdeveloped countries….One of the major forces necessary to push the overdeveloped countries toward a…steady-state paradigm must be Third World outrage at their overconsumption….The starting point in development economics should be the “impossibility theorem”…that a U.S.-style high mass consumption economy for a world of 4 billion people is impossible, and even if by some miracle it could be achieved, it would certainly be short-lived.19

The notion that degrowth as a concept can be applied in essentially the same way both to the wealthy countries of the center and the poor countries of the periphery represents a category mistake resulting from the crude imposition of an abstraction (degrowth) on a context in which it is essentially meaningless, e.g., Haiti, Mali, or even, in many ways, India. The real problem in the global periphery is overcoming imperial linkages, transforming the existing mode of production, and creating sustainable-egalitarian productive possibilities. It is clear that many countries in the South with very low per capita incomes cannot afford degrowth but could use a kind of sustainable development, directed at real needs such as access to water, food, health care, education, etc. This requires a radical shift in social structure away from the relations of production of capitalism/imperialism. It is telling that in Latouche’s widely circulated articles there is virtually no mention of those countries, such as Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia, where concrete struggles are being waged to shift social priorities from profit to social needs. Cuba, as the Living Planet Report has indicated, is the only country on Earth with high human development and a sustainable ecological footprint.20

It is undeniable today that economic growth is the main driver of planetary ecological degradation. But to pin one’s whole analysis on overturning an abstract “growth society” is to lose all historical perspective and discard centuries of social science. As valuable as the degrowth concept is in an ecological sense, it can only take on genuine meaning as part of a critique of capital accumulation and part of the transition to a sustainable, egalitarian, communal order; one in which the associated producers govern the metabolic relation between nature and society in the interest of successive generations and the earth itself (socialism/communism as Marx defined it).21 What is needed is a “co-revolutionary movement,” to adopt David Harvey’s pregnant term, that will bring together the traditional working-class critique of capital, the critique of imperialism, the critiques of patriarchy and racism, and the critique of ecologically destructive growth (along with their respective mass movements).22

In the generalized crisis of our times, such an overarching, co-revolutionary movement is conceivable. Here, the object would be the creation of a new order in which the valorization of capital would no longer govern society. “Socialism is useful,” E.F. Schumacher wrote inSmall is Beautiful, precisely because of “the possibility it creates for the overcoming of the religion of economics,” that is, “the modern trend towards total quantification at the expense of the appreciation of qualitative differences.”23

In a sustainable order, people in the wealthier economies (especially those in the upper income strata) would have to learn to live on “less” in commodity terms in order to lower per capita demands on the environment. At the same time, the satisfaction of genuine human needs and the requirements of ecological sustainability could become the constitutive principles of a new, more communal order aimed at human reciprocity, allowing for qualitative improvement, evenplenitude.24 Such a strategy—not dominated by blind productivism—is consistent with providing people with worthwhile work. The ecological struggle, understood in these terms, must aim not merely for degrowth in the abstract but more concretely for deaccumulation—a transition away from a system geared to the accumulation of capital without end. In its place we need to construct a new co-revolutionary society, dedicated to the common needs of humanity and the earth.

Notes

1. ↩ James Hansen, Storms of My Grandchildren (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009), ix.
2. ↩ See Johan Röckstrom, et al., “A Safe Operating Space for Humanity,” Nature 461 (September 2009): 472-75; John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York, The Ecological Rift (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010), 13-19.
3. ↩ Donella Meadows, Dennis H. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III, The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind(New York: Universe Books, 1972).
4. ↩ “What is Degrowth?” http://degrowth.eu.
5. ↩ See John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York, “Capitalism and the Curse of Energy Efficiency,” Monthly Review 62, no. 6 (November 2010): 1-12.
6. ↩ Paul M. Sweezy, “Capitalism and the Environment,” Monthly Review 41, no. 2 (June 1989): 6.
7. ↩ Herman E. Daly, Beyond Growth (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 3-4; John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy(New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1904), 452-55; Lewis Mumford, The Condition of Man (New York: Harcourt Brace and Jovanovich, 1973), 411-12; Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, The Entropy Law and the Economic Process (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1971).
8. ↩ Herman E. Daly, Steady-State Economics (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1991), 17.
9. ↩ Serge Latouche, “The Globe Downshifted,” Le Monde Diplomatique (English edition), January 13, 2006, http:mondediplo.com.
10. ↩ Serge Latouche, “Would the West Actually be Happier with Less?: The World Downscales,” Le Monde Diplomatique(English edition), December 12, 2003, http://mondediplo.comand “Can Democracy Solve All Problems?” International Journal of Inclusive Democracy 1, no. 3 (May 2005): 5, http://inclusivedemocracy.org.
11. ↩ Latouche, “The Globe Downshifted.”
12. ↩ See, for example, Martin O’Connor, “The Misadventures of Capitalist Nature,” in Martin O’Connor, ed., Is Capitalism Sustainable? (New York: Guilford Press, 1994), 126-33.
13. ↩ Takis Fotopoulos, “Is Degrowth Compatible with a Market Economy?” The International Journal of Inclusive Democracy 3, no. 1 (January 2007), http://inclusivedemocracy.org.
14. ↩ Latouche, “Would the West Actually be Happier with Less?”
15. ↩ “Degrowth Declaration Barcelona 2010,” Second International Conference on Economic Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity, March 28-29, 2010, Barcelona, http://degrowth.eu.
16. ↩ Joan Martinez-Alier, “Herman Daly Festschrift: Socially Sustainable Economic Degrowth,” October 9, 2009, http://eoearth.org.
17. ↩ Karl Marx, Capital, vol. 1 (London: Penguin, 1976), 742.
18. ↩ Serge Latouche, “Degrowth Economics,” Le Monde Diplomatique (English edition), November 2004,http://mondediplo.com.
19. ↩ Daly, Steady-State Economics, 148-49.
20. ↩ World Wildlife Fund, Living Planet Report, 2006, http://panda.org.
21. ↩ See John Bellamy Foster, Marx’s Ecology (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000), 163-70.
22. ↩ David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 228-35.
23. ↩ E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), 254-55.
24. ↩ On the concept of plenitude, see Juliet Schor, Plenitude (New York: Penguin, 2010); Foster, Clark, and York, The Ecological Rift, 397-99.

139. Don't Send Bugs to Mars

By Barry E. DiGregorio, New Scientist, December 28, 2010

Mars Rover on Mars

We humans have a unique talent for contaminating pristine environments. We put millions of tonnes of pollutants into the atmosphere every year. We poison our soils, lakes, rivers and streams with chemical and radioactive waste. We spill oil into our seas. We fill the Pacific and Atlantic oceans with islands of plastic garbage visible from space. Is it any surprise that we are also contaminating pristine celestial bodies with bacterial spores?

Spacefaring nations have been sending unsterilised spacecraft to the moon, Mars, Jupiter, comets and asteroids for over 40 years. It has been estimated that about one trillion microbial spores from spacecraft are now scattered around Mars (Advances in Space Research, vol 35, p 1648). Yet the search for life in our solar system has barely begun.

It wasn't always so. At the dawn of the space age, policy-makers had every intention to protect space from contamination. They also set out to protect Earth from material brought in from other celestial bodies that might contain toxins or pathogens.

These lofty goals were enshrined in the United Nations Outer Space Treaty of 1967, now signed by all spacefaring nations. It plainly states: "Parties to the Treaty shall pursue studies of outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, and conduct exploration of them so as to avoid their harmful contamination and also adverse changes in the environment of the Earth resulting from the introduction of extraterrestrial matter."

Early spacecraft had to be thoroughly and expensively sterilised before they could be sent to the moon or planets. However, over the years this requirement has been watered down. The Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) in Paris, France, has been charged with making adjustments based on new data. COSPAR now allows spacecraft to bypass any sterilisation as long as they are not carrying life-detection instruments or landing on areas of Mars designated as "special regions" - areas where liquid water could exist for short periods that might support terrestrial microbial growth. The problem with these policy changes is that they are premature: our knowledge about the survivability of life on Mars is constantly changing with each spacecraft mission.

Numerous reports have debated whether terrestrial spores might be able to replicate and spread on Mars. We still don't know the answer, so why risk contaminating the most Earth-like planet in our solar system?

Now a mission slated to launch in the second half of 2011 will effectively tear up the treaty. The Russian Federal Space Agency's Phobos Sample Return Mission (formerly known as Phobos-Grunt) will send not just microbial spores but live bacteria into the solar system for the first time. If this isn't a direct violation of the Outer Space Treaty then what is?

The mission will fly to Mars, study it from orbit and then land on Phobos, the larger of Mars's two moons. On board will be two sealed capsules containing live micro-organisms. Some months later the craft will embark on the return journey carrying the still-sealed capsules, plus samples of soil scooped up from the surface of Phobos. All being well it will return to Earth in 2014.

The reason for sending live micro-organisms to Phobos is to investigate if any survive the three-year journey. If they do, the researchers say it would support the theory of transpermia, which holds that microbial life can be exchanged between planets via rocks ejected from their surfaces by collisions.

That theory is tenuous at best. All of the Martian meteorites found on Earth spent millions of years in space before they arrived. In order to justify their experimental goals, one of the groups involved in the experiment, The Planetary Society of Pasadena, California, argues that rocks larger than 100 grams are transferred from Mars to Earth in only two to three years. No direct evidence exists for this claim. Is the transpermia question really so important that it is worth risking the contamination that would surely happen if the spacecraft malfunctioned and crashed on Mars?

This is no small risk. Of 38 craft launched towards Mars, only 19 succeeded. At least three crash-landed on the planet's surface.

The Phobos Sample Return Mission has one of the most complex mission profiles ever flown. Not only will the spacecraft have to perform a series of manoeuvres in Mars orbit to launch a satellite, it will also have to change its orbit to rendezvous with Phobos. The last time the Russians attempted to land on Phobos was in 1988 with the Phobos 1 and 2 spacecraft. Both lost contact en route.

To make matters worse, we already know a good deal about microbial survival in space thanks to experiments done with Apollo, the Mir space station, the International Space Station and the space shuttles. Similar experiments have also been done at space environment simulation facilities on Earth. Why not continue to use these and spare Mars potential contamination?

For those having any doubts about microbes surviving a fiery re-entry, you need only consider the break-up of the Columbia space shuttle in February 2003. One of the microbial experiments on Columbia survived intact, although slightly charred. After analysis it was determined that a heat-resistant microbe, Microbispora, had survived.

The question "Is there life on Mars?" has surely been answered by our own ignorant actions. Yes, there is life on Mars, because we put it there. The only remaining question is, will it survive and grow, confusing future scientific results? Sending live bacteria to Phobos can only increase the risk that it will.

Barry E. DiGregorio is director of the International Committee Against Mars Sample Return and author of Mars: The Living Planet (North Atlantic Books)

138. Deep Ecology and the Left--Contradictions

The is journal is dedicated to the development and promotion of Ecological Socialism (Ecosocialism), a small but growing movement.  It welcomes contributions that aim to clarify and develop the theory and practice of Ecosocialism.  The following article by David Orton identifies and discusses some problems that he finds associated with (Eco)socialist and Deep Ecology movements that bar their fruitful synthesis.  It is reproduced here to encourage much needed discussion.  Criticism and further discussion would be welcome. 


--KN

*      *      *  

By David Orton, Deep Green Web, January 3, 2011

Arne Naess

“There is clearly both in capitalist and socialist politics things which can be modified and used in sane eco-politics but essentially green politics will be something deeply different.” Arne Naess, Ecology, community and lifestyle, p. 160.

“The most forceful and systematic critique of capitalism is found in socialist literature. This makes it natural for supporters of the deep ecology movement to use socialist criticisms of capitalism in their own work, and, looking at the slogans of green parties it is immediately clear that many of these slogans are also socialistic or at least compatible with some sort of socialism. As examples: no excessive aggressive individualism. Appropriation. Community, production for use, low income differentials, local production for local needs, participative involvement, solidarity. On the other hand, it is also clear that some socialist slogans still heard are not compatible: maximise production, centralization, high energy, high consumption, materialism…It is still clear that some of the most valuable workers for ecological goals come from the socialist camps. One of the basic similarities between socialist attitudes and ecological attitudes in politics is stress on social justice and stress on social costs of technology.” Naess, Ibid, p. 157.

“Deep ecology comes home as the strategy of advanced capitalist elites, for whom nature is what looks good on calendars.” Joel Kovel, The Enemy of Nature, 2002, 1st Ed., p. 172.

Introduction

This blog post is an examination of the contradictions I see in the relationship between deep ecology and the Left. I contrast in this discussion the human-centered traditional Left, with the ecocentric Left which has come into a relationship with deep ecology. With some notable exceptions (e.g. Judi Bari, Andy McLaughlin, Richard Sylvan, Fred Bender, Stan Rowe, Andrew Dobson and Rudolf Bahro), the Left has been hostile to deep ecology. Why is this? Is there something intrinsic to deep ecology, which is seen as incompatible with the beliefs of a person of the Left? Arne Naess, the philosophical founder of deep ecology, had an evident sympathy towards the social justice side of socialism. The above quotes by Naess clearly show this, as does the 1973 foundational article, “The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement. A Summary.” However, for Naess and countless others, a new ecopolitics will be “deeply different” from socialist and capitalist politics and will not be some kind of add-on to socialism. The ecological question cuts across all “isms.”

The Left, no matter what its myriad forms have been, is politically associated with social justice for the human species. This is its universal symbolism and important contribution. I am a person of the Left. Concerning human-centered politics, my main sympathies are on the communist/socialist side. Anti-communism ends up signalling an alliance with Capital. There are legions of ‘Leftists’, particularly in North America, who do not share this perspective, having had anti-communism and the Cold War pounded into them and internalized from an early age. However, I believe that the ecocentric Left has to be Earth-rooted. It can be non-communist, but not anti-communist. Ecological justice for all species and the planet must be primary. For Arne Naess, this primacy of the natural world is considered an “intuition” and not logically or philosophically derived. We are first Earthlings, in personal and social consciousness, but we must also be involved in social justice issues for our own species. As the environmental cliché says, “There can be no social justice on a dead planet.”

Discussion

I consider myself as both a supporter of deep ecology and a long-time Canadian leftist. Over the years my meshed sense of being has been sorely tested by fellow leftists – as in the misleading attitude towards deep ecology, conveyed, for example, by the Joel Kovel quote above. (See my review of his book.) But my personal identity has also been tested by my own criticisms of deep ecology, made from an ecocentric Left perspective. As I have written in the past, much deep ecology writing is obscure and not particularly relevant to practical environmental or green work. Also, most deep ecology writers do not present any real political, economic or class guidelines for activists. The response of deep ecology writers to criticisms from the Left and to my own writings, has helped me work out my contribution to the left biocentric theoretical tendency within deep ecology.

As the left biocentric tendency has gathered some support (the internet discussion group “left bio”, for example, has been running for over eleven years), I have found it necessary to distance myself from a few supporters who could not ditch their anti-communism and anti-Marxism, or who have attempted to bring into contemporary ecopolitics echoes of past Left divisive battles – often, it seems, associated with Trotskyism.

This distancing has also been directed at people who could not face criticism of their social justice support, e.g. for aboriginal positions. These people are opposed to seeing Earth justice as a priority (see for one example, my recent review of Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry), or are uneasy about public calls for human population reduction (as in the eight-point Deep Ecology Platform. They also see deep ecology as a reformist eco-philosophy within capitalism; and are uncomfortable with my critical, yet friendly, support for someone like the Finnish eco-philosopher Pentti Linkola (see my review of his book).

Another problem for me concerns ecocentric Leftists who are stuck on being defenders of Israel and are seemingly blind to the horrible situation of the Palestinians.

Green parties have become shallow ecology defenders of industrial capitalist society, even if Arne Naess was supportive of them. The German Green Party theoretician Rudolf Bahro resigned from the party in the early 1980s, and pointed out that green party shallow ecology  is content to “brush the teeth” of industrial society. Nothing happened since Bahro made this statement which calls his observations into serious question. My limited experience with the Canadian federal Green Party reinforces Bahro’s statement.

Some Left Contradictions

Why is the Left so negative about deep ecology? And why is it misleadingly alleged by ecosocialist Joel Kovel that, “Like many deep greens, however, Orton hates socialism and considers it doomed to remain in its twentieth-century form”? (Kovel, The Enemy of Nature, 2nd ed., p. 302)

For the traditional Left, human interests have priority, not the health of ecosystems and their non-human inhabitants. There is a basic reductionism – “we have the answers” – in the thinking of the Left. I have found an intrinsic conservatism towards new ideas among the Left. This has always puzzled me, given that socialists want a new society, allegedly different from capitalism. Shouldn’t the Left be open to and embrace new ideas? The Left has to fundamentally move beyond its traditional human-centered thinking, to see what contemporary Earth-centered ecopolitics is about. Left reductionism takes various forms, but the current eco-Marxist variant claims that Marx really is an ecologist, if only we understand him correctly and therefore he is a (or the) role model for ecological work today. The 1988 proposal for a “Left Green Network”, inspired by Murray Bookchin and the ideas of social ecology, took the position that, to be a Green and also on the Left, could only mean to be a supporter of social ecology: “Left Greens are social ecologists.” There was no room at this network inn for left deep ecology supporters. (As a Canadian, one has to also note that the network proposal reflected the imperial nature of U.S. society, with Canada being considered an appendage for signing-on purposes.)

There is arrogance among socialists who think that they should be leading the ecological movement, because they have a “class analysis” and are anti-capitalist. What comes across is that the Left believes it is entitled to intellectual hegemony in the green and environmental movements, by virtue of prior knowledge. The Left does not seem to be able to absorb the pluralism of green and environmental politics – as Naess informed us, “the front is long” – let alone accept the earned leadership of others by virtue of their practical or theoretical work. Ed Abbey noted, through the character Doc Sarvis in The Monkey Wrench Gang, the importance of practical involvement in actual environmental struggles: “Let our practice form our doctrine, thus assuring precise theoretical coherence.” (p. 68) The idea that deeper environmentalists and greens can come to an anti-capitalist critique based on their own experiences, without studying Marxism or social ecology, but based on field experience, seems, apparently, difficult to grasp for the Left.

A contemporary manifestation of this Left arrogance, is their desire to define a future post-industrial-capitalist society as “ecosocialist”, and not as something being struggled over by countless environmental and green activists. By using this name, ecosocialists imply that they have the answers and know the path forward. Yet there are lots of tentative ideas about the shape of future post-industrial-capitalist societies. These are being widely discussed, experimented with, and written about, but it is a work in progress. There is no “ecosocialist society” on the horizon to which we all can rally.

Ecosocialists traditionally attack the ecocentric Left around population, aboriginal issues and about being critically supportive of theorists like Pentti Linkola. (This Finnish thinker has been called an eco-fascist. I do not believe this to be true, as my review of his recent book makes clear. In my next blog post I will further examine what “eco-fascism” is all about. I have recently become aware that those sympathetic to national socialism are not adverse to “borrowing” analysis from deep ecology to further their own ends.)

Other fault lines between the “ecosocialist” and ecocentric Left concern:

a) The ecosocialist hostility toward the spiritual component of social change as well as the promotion of a animistic spiritual/psychological transformation, so that the interests of all species override the self-interest of the individual, the family, the community and the nation.

b) Ecosocialists deny the role of individual responsibility in destructive ecological and social actions. They don’t recognize the necessity to practice voluntary simplicity so as to minimize one’s personal impact on the Earth.

c) A disagreement that it is not capitalism per se, but industrial societies that create the social formation at the heart of our dilemmas. The ecocentric Left believes that these societies can have a capitalist or socialist face.

Left doctrines in the past have focussed on the human condition, not on the well-being of other species and of Nature itself. From a Left perspective, nature and other species have been viewed as “resources” for human consumption. Deep ecology has zeroed in on this. John Livingston, the late Canadian eco-philosopher, who was not a person of the Left but who was a supporter of deep ecology – really Canada’s Arne Naess – has laid out in his writings the implications of “resourcism” for planetary health. (See “John Livingston – An Appreciation”. The benefits from this focus on human kind have been enormous for a number of us but deadly for the planet.

Deep Ecology Contradictions

“The deep ecology movement carries an excessive amount of rubbish with it (in contravention, so to say, of its own platform). That does not imply that there is not a clean sound position to be discerned when the often inessential rubbish is removed...” Richard Sylvan

“Personally, I agree with almost everything you say in the Left Biocentric Primer...It’s a real shame that the Green parties came under the influence of Bookchin and not your version of Left Biocentrism – it’s obvious that’s where they need to head. So, I have no necessary bones to pick with your idea of a Left wing of the Deep Ecology movement, more power to you and your colleagues. I wonder if the word ‘Left’ is the appropriate one to use (as opposed to social justice).” Extract taken from a personal letter written by deep ecologist George Sessions to me, and also copied to Arne Naess, Bill Devall, Andrew McLaughlin and Howard Glasser, dated 4/19/1998.

Since coming to support deep ecology in the mid-1980s, I have tried to maintain a critical, yet supportive, stance towards it and, where it seemed appropriate, have given my dissenting views publicly. Richard Sylvan, the late “deep green” Australian philosopher and forest activist, was an early role model for me on this. In the past, I have raised various issues, for example:

a) I examined the criticisms that are raised about the key concept of Self-realization within deep ecology, e.g. that it ignores the importance of “place.” I emphasized that Self-realization must avoid feeding the self-help, self-cultivation, or personal transformation movement, at the expense of collective change. (See the My Path to Left Biocentrism document, “Notions of Self in the Age of Ecology”.)

 b) I explored the confused views of Naess on ‘sustainable development’.

c) I disagreed with the view (by Naess and others within deep ecology) on the separation of the peace, social justice and ecology movements. I argued that this can feed a right-wing image and makes deep ecology supporters seem uncaring about human issues.

d) I criticized the anti-communist and anti-China attitudes of some Buddhist Tibetan supporters of deep ecology (including some left biocentrists) like Joanna Macy, past CIA employee (see my review of her autobiography Widening Circles: A Memoir.)

e) I exposed the self-absorption of some deep ecology-inspired academics – whose writings dominate journals like The Trumpeter – because the articles lack relevance to problems faced by movement activists which need deep ecology insights and analysis.

f) I supported the work of George Sessions and Bill Devall, in introducing and popularizing the thought of Arne Naess at an early stage in North America. Sessions and Devall are not of the Left and this was reflected in how they handled, or did not handle, criticisms (some justified) and attacks from Left-leaning critics of deep ecology. Note in this regard, Sessions’s uneasiness with the term “Left”, in the quote above; and Devall’s eagerness to state that the environmental movement was a “loyal opposition” and that “Political revolution is not part of the vocabulary of supporters of the deep, long-range ecology movement.” (See Dharma Rain: Sources of Buddhist Environmentalism, p. 386)

There are two important contradictions within deep ecology, which need to be resolved so that this eco-philosophy can further unfold its revolutionary potential:

1. Deep ecology presents a dominant ‘social harmony’ view of social change. This can smother over contradictions in industrial capitalist societies, whereas a ‘social conflict’ view (which Left Biocentrism takes), which has historical roots in Marx and Marxism, is needed to combat ecocide and social injustice. The social harmony perspective undermines the necessity to mentally prepare for the coming social strife associated with working for ecological and major social change.

Naess’s social harmony view (“Ultimately all life is one – so that the injury of one’s opponent becomes also an injury to oneself.” Selected Works, Volume Five, p. 26) produced some guidelines for activists which seem to be out to lunch. For example, “It is a central norm of the Gandhian approach to ‘maximize contact with your opponent!’”; or “Do not exploit a weakness in the position of your opponent.” I think this social harmony view has given an entry to those who have tried to smear deep ecology as being linked to fascism. In my tribute to Naess on his death, I quoted him as saying, when speaking of “intrinsic value” – a fundamental component of his philosophy – “This is squarely an antifascist position. It is incompatible with fascist racism and fascist nationalism, and also with the special ethical status accorded the (supreme) Leader.” (See “Remembering Arne Naess, 1912-2009”) While I unequivocally believe that deep ecology is not “fascist”, yet it does seem to me that a social harmony view of the natural world and the place of humans within this can be used by reactionaries in a fascist manner. Thus the “fatherland” or the “motherland” can be upheld as the supreme good to which the citizen must subordinate herself or himself.

2. A key belief in the philosophy of Naess is that “The ideology of ownership of nature has no place in an ecosophy.” (Ecology, community and lifestyle, p. 175) This is a powerful weapon to undermine the “private property” legitimacy of bourgeois society and its view towards the natural world, that our species has the ‘right’ to decide life and death over other species. Yet not many deep ecology writers in North America are articulating this belief, nor is the US-based Foundation for Deep Ecology promoting it. The now defunct magazine Wild Earth, subsidized by the Foundation, had a number of articles trying to uphold the ecological nature of private property ownership, in an American context. Today the Foundation, through its publications, celebrates “private lands philanthropy”, in North and South America – that is, using and hence reinforcing, the private property laws of bourgeois society to acquire lands for restoration ecology purposes. They never mention the basic deep ecology position of Arne Naess about land ‘ownership’.

I myself have joined with others to contribute funds to buy forest land here in Nova Scotia, in order to prevent its destruction from industrial forestry. But in my writings about this project I have pointed out the contradictions of buying land, resulting from the basic tenet of deep ecology that humans cannot ‘own’ Nature. (See “Community Lands and Deep Ecology”) Industrial capitalist societies are not ecologically or socially sustainable and have to be replaced. This must be said in all our restoration work. Restoration work has no long term future, if the dictatorship of industrial capital is not finally overthrown and replaced by an ecocentric society, which upholds the welfare of all species and is also socially just for humankind.

Conclusion

Perhaps it needs to be emphasized that whatever the contradictions within deep ecology, the thinking of Arne Naess, as I noted in my tribute to him when he died in 2009, “has presented a needed pathway for coming into a new, yet pre-industrial old, animistic and spiritual relationship to the Earth, which is respectful for all species and not just humans”. This is the needed message for our time. For left biocentrists, the left-right distinction is subordinate to the anthropocentric-deep ecology divide. Coming into a new relationship with the natural world is primary, and social justice for humans must keep this in mind. The Left can have a meaningful contributory role in a future ecologically focused and socially just post-industrial society, if it accepts and is transformed by the contribution of deep ecology and comes to see itself, in theory and in practice, as an ecocentric Left.

137. Around the Idea of Ecological Socialism

This journal is dedicated to the development and promotion of Ecological Socialism (Ecosocialism).  But like socialism before it, there are various interpretations, especially since the concept of Ecosocialism is new and very much a work in progress.  Below you will find a brief discussion of this topic by professor de Oliveira from Brazil. 

--KN

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By Marcus Eduardo de Oliveira, December 30, 2010

Marcus Eduardo de Oliveira 

These are some central points of discussion on what is usually called ecological socialism, or as some prefer eco-socialism: to radically change economic rationality, to approach the concerns of economics as part of the need to liberate man, to create a new environment for the life of every human being without the usual division that giving privileges to some at the expense of many and recognize definitely the existence of limits to growth.

Socialism, yes, is in the direction of elevating the social and political bonds that relate, first, to Mother Earth. Socialism moves in the direction of giving true criticism to a "god-capitalism" which states as its basic idea that the market, the sacred altar of money, can do anything. This socialism, defended here, is put in a position contrary to that premise, believing that the market is unable to solve everything and that the world cannot live only for consumption and more consumption, as the "god-capitalism" always wanted and wants to be so.

Who has eyes to see knows that there is a contradiction between capital and nature and it should be rethought in light of a new perspective that includes essentially and preferably, the human being inside the object of analysis of economic models, on the premise that the world is not, as we said, an object, a simple commodity ready to be digested by greedy mouths. Ecological socialism, eco-socialism, is to disprove the god-market and put new rules in the game, defending the basic underpinnings of life, condemning first the consumption artificially induced by advertising that provides for the survival of that "god" mentioned herein.

This ecological socialism advocated by Mexican economist Enrique Leff, by sociologist Michael Lowy, by Victor Wallis, John Bellamy Foster, Jean-Marie Harribey, Raymond Williams, David Pepper and many other names of prominence in academia, points to the need to instill in the collective imagination the fact that every time capital is built on the ruins of nature life for everyone comes into danger.

Maybe that's why Enrique Leff rightly points out that "the economy is generating the entropic death of the world." This "death" to be understood, becomes clearer when one realizes that the only concern of the "Lords of the World Economy" is about saving big business, not saving the planet and life. By the way, it would be better to say saving lives, since the planet will be able to live without us, as it is independent of our presence to survive.

On the side of the economy and voracious consumerism, the god-market basis, which destroys everything in the name of meeting the dictates of marketing, we are cognizant that the order of macroeconomics commanded by these "Gentlemen" is one: for the global economy to grow and grow and grow increasingly. On the other hand, for the sake of survival and respect for the laws of life, the order is one of ecology: fight for the possibility of ensuring the survival of our species.

While the fact is that it is no longer possible to accept the marketing sermon that makes a minority prosper while the majority know closely the drama of exclusion in a society that seems not to be otherwise beyond that of consumerist, inspired by advertising, funded by capital, destroyer of nature.

Those who defend the model to make the economy grow without limits to promote the "general happiness" as if it were feasible, and as if there was not any kind of socioeconomic difference, are wrong to ignore that this "growth" is dependent on the laws of nature and that nature in all its amplitude, is not (and never will be) able to account for this growth policy.

Eco-socialism

Finally, what is ecosocialism? To Lowy, "It is the question of a current of ecological thought and action that takes on the fundamental achievements of socialism while getting rid of the madness for over production." But the sociologist John Bellamy Foster has defined eco-socialism as "the rational regulation of production, respecting the relationship between metabolic social systems and natural systems in order to guarantee the satisfaction of common needs for present and future generations."

Therefore, the definition given by Foster is not far from the recommendation made by the Brundtland Report. To better illustrate this issue there are three aspects to highlight the position of Foster. They are:

* Recognition of the limits to growth and the break with the productivist logic that associates the increase in welfare with a production increase. The prefix echo the word socialism means to reconcile intra-generational equality with equal inter-generational;

* The reformulation of the production system in order to make it dependent solely on the use of renewable resources, linking with the previous principle. It should be noted that sustainability requires a use of renewable resources at a pace that ensures its renewal;

* The social use of nature, focusing on community management of common resources.

As seen, the terms eco-socialism and ecological socialism are far from being mere idioms or mere romantic rhetoric. They are, moreover, concepts that gain relevant outlines in a world that lives intensely in the most serious ecological crisis in history. For the good of all, the thought is in defense of sustainability that grows stronger day by day. Nature and life will thank you.




Marcus Eduardo de Oliveira is an economist and professor of economics and the FAC-FITO UNIFIEO in Sao Paulo. Member of GECEU - Group Study of Foreign Trade (UNIFIEO) and writer EcoDebate Portal, the website "The Economist" and Zwela News Agency (Angola).

Translated from the Portuguese version by: Lisa Karpova