Written by
Michael Löwy and first published at Herramienta
The present
economical and ecological crisis are part of a more general historical
conjoncture: we are confronted with a
crisis of the present model of civilization, the Western modern
capitalist/industrial civilization, based on unlimited expansion and
accumulation of capital, on the “commodification of everything” (Immanuel
Wallerstein), on the ruthless exploitation of labour and nature, on brutal
individualism and competition, and on
the massive destruction of the environment.
The increasing threat of the breakdown of the ecological balance points
towards a catastrophic scenario - global warming - that puts in danger the
survival itself of the human species. We are facing a crisis of civilization
that demands radical change. [1]
Ecosocialism
is an attempt to provide a radical civilizational alternative, rooted on the
basic arguments of the ecological movement, and of the Marxist critique of
political economy. It opposes to the
capitalist destructive progress (Marx)
an economic policy founded on non-monetary and extra-economic criteria: the
social needs and the ecological equilibrium.
This dialectical synthesis, attempted by a broad spectrum of authors,
from James O’Connor to Joel Kovel and John Bellamy Foster, and from André Gorz
(in his early writings) to Elmar Altvater, is at the same time a critique of “market ecology”, which does not
challenge the capitalist system, and of “productivist socialism”, which ignores
the issue of natural limits.
According to
James 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. I would add that these aims
require:
a) collective ownership of the means of production, - “collective”
here meaning public, cooperative or comunitarian property;
b) democratic
planning that makes it possible for society to define the goals of investment
and production, and
c) a new technological structure of the productive
forces. In other terms: a
revolutionary social and economic transformation.. [2]
The problem
with the dominant trends of the left during the 20th century - social-democracy
and the Soviet-inspired communist movement - is their acceptance of the really
existing pattern of productive forces. While the first limited themselves to a reformed - at best Keynesian –
version of the capitalist system, the second ones developed a collectivist - or
state-capitalist – form of productivism. In both cases, environmental issues
remained out of sight, or were marginalised.
Marx and
Engels themselves were not unaware of the environmental-destructive
consequences of the capitalist mode of production: there are several passages
in Capital and other writings that point to this understanding. [3]
Moreover, they believed that the aim of socialism is not to produce more and
more commodities, but to give human beings free time to fully develop their
potentialities. In so far, they have
little in common with “productivism”, i.e. with the idea that the unlimited
expansion of production is an aim in itself.
However,
there are some passages in their writings who seem to suggest that socialism
will permit the development of productive forces beyond the limits imposed on
them by the capitalist system. According to this approach, the socialist transformation concerns only
the capitalist relations of production, which have become an obstacle -
“chains” is the term often used - to the free development of the existing
productive forces; socialism would mean above all the social appropriation of these productive capacities, putting them
at the service of the workers.
To
quote a passage from Anti-Dühring, a canonical work for many generations of
Marxists: in socialism “society takes possession openly and without detours of
the productive forces that have become too large” for the existing system. [4]
The
experience of the Soviet Union illustrates the problems that result from a
collectivist appropriation of the capitalist productive apparatus: since the
beginning, the thesis of the socialization of the existing productive forces
predominated. It is true that during
the first years after the October Revolution an ecological current was able to
develop, and certain (limited) protectionist measures were taken by the Soviet
authorities.
However, with the process of Stalinist bureaucratization, the
productivist tendencies, both in industry and agriculture, were imposed with
totalitarian methods, while the ecologists were marginalised or eliminated. The
catastrophe of Tchernobyl is an extreme exemple of the disastrous consequences
of this imitation the Western productive technologies. A change in the forms of property which is
not followed by democratic management and a reorganization of the productive
system can only lead to a dead end.
Marxists
could take their inspiration from Marx’ remarks on the Paris Commune: workers cannot take possession of the capitalist state apparatus and put
it to function at their service. They
have to “break it” and replace it by a radically different, democratic and
non-statist form of political power.
The same
applies, mutatis mutandis, to the
productive apparataus: by its nature, its structure, it is not neutral, but at
the service of capital accumulation and the unlimited expansion of the market.
It is in contradiction with the needs of environmental protection and with the
health of the population. One must therefore “revolutionize” it, in a process
of radical transformation.
This may
mean, for certain branches of production, to discontinue them: for instance, nuclear plants, certain methods of mass/industrial fishing (responsible
for the extermination of several species in the seas), the destructive logging
of tropical forests, etc (the list is very long !). In any case, the productive forces, and not
only the relations of production, have to be deeply changed - to begin with, by
a revolution in the energy-system, with the replacement of the present sources
- essentially fossile - responsible for
the pollution and poisoning of the environment, by renewable ones: water,
wind, sun.
Of course, 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 account the preservation of
the ecological equilibrium.
The issue of
energy is decisive for this process of civilizational change. Fossile energies
(oil, coal) are 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
Tchernobyls, but also because nobody knows what to do with the thousands of
tons of radioactive waist - toxic for hundreds, thousands and in some case
millions of years - and the gigantic masses of contaminated obsolete
plants.
Solar energy, which did never
arise much interest in capitalist societies, not being “profitable” nor
“competitive”, would become the object of intensive research and development,
and play a key role in the building of an alternative energetic system.
Entire sectors of the productive system are to
be suppressed, or restructured, new
ones have to be developed, under the necessary condition of full employment for
all the labour force, in equal conditions of work and wage.
This condition is essential, not only
because it is a requirement of social justice, but in order to assure the
workers support for the process of structural transformation of the productive
forces. This process is impossible without public control over the means of
production, and planning, i.e. public
decisions on investment and technological change, which must be taken away from
the banks and capitalist enterprises in order to serve society’s common good.
Society itself, and not a small olygarchy of
property-owners - nor an elite of techno-bureaucrats - of will be able to
choose, democratically, which productive lines are to be privileged, and how
much resources are to be invested in education, health or culture.
The prices of goods themselves would not be
left to the “laws of offer and demand” but, to some extent, determined
according to social and political options, as well as ecological criteria, leading to taxes on certain products, and
subsidized prices for others. Ideally, as the transition to socialism moves forward, more and more products and
services would be distributed free of charge, according to the will of the
citizens.
Far from being “despotic” in
itself, planning is the exercise, by a whole society, of its freedom: freedom
of decision, and liberation from the alienated and reified “economic laws” of
the capitalist system, which determined the individuals’ life and death, and
enclosed them in an economic “iron cage” (Max Weber).
Planning and the reduction of labour time are
the two decisive steps of humanity towards what Marx called “the kingdom of
freedom”. A significant increase of free time is in fact a condition for the democratic
participation of the working people in the democratic discussion and management
of economy and of society.
The socialist
conception of planning is nothing else as the radical democratization of
economy: if political decisions are not to be left for a small elite of
rulers, why should not the same principle apply to economic ones? I’m leaving aside the issue of the specific
proportion between planning and market mechanisms: during the first stages of
a new society, markets will certainly
keep an important place, but as the transition to socialism advances, planning
would become more and more predominant, as against the laws of exchange-value.
While in
capitalism the use-value is only a means - often a trick - at the service of exchange-value and profit
- which explains, by the way, why so many products in the present society are
substantially useless - in a planned socialist economy the use-value is the
only criteria for the production of goods and services, with far reaching
economic, social and ecological consequences.
As Joel Kovel observed: “The enhancement of use-values and the
corresponding restructuring of needs becomes now the social regulator of
technology rather than, as under capital, the conversion of time into surplus
value and money”. [5]
In a rationally
organised production, the plan
concerns the main economic options, not the administration of local
restaurants, groceries and bakeries, small shops, artisan enterprises or services. It is important to emphasize that planning is not contradictory with workers
self-management of their productive units: while the decision to transform an
auto-plant into one producing buses and trams is taken by society as a whole,
through the plan, the internal organization
and functioning of the plant is to be democratically managed by its own
workers.
There has been much discussion on the “centralised” or “decentralised”
character of planning, but it could be argued that the real issue is democratic
control of the plan, on all its levels, local, regional, national, continental
and, hopefully, international:
ecological issues such as global warming are planetary and can be dealt with
only on a global scale.
One could call
this proposition global democratic planning; it is quite the opposite of what
is usually described as “central planning”, since the economic and social
decisions are not taken by any “center”, but democratically decided by the
concerned population.
Ecosocialist
planning is therefore grounded on a democratic and pluralist debate, on all the
levels where decisions are to be taken: different propositions are submitted to the concerned people, in the
form of parties, platforms, or any other political movements, and delegates are
accordingly elected.
However, representative democracy must be completed -
and corrected - by direct democracy, where people directly choose - at the
local, national and, later, global level - between major social and ecological
options: should public transportation be free?
Should the owners of private cars pay
special taxes to subsidize public transportation?
Should sun-produced energy
be subsidized, in order to compete with fossile energy?
Should the weekly work hours be reduced to
30, 25 or less, even if this means a
reduction of production?
The
democratic nature of planning is not contradictory with the existence of
experts, but their role is not to decide, but to present their views - often
different, if not contradictory - to the population, and let it choose the best
solution.
What guarantee is that the people will make
the correct ecological choices, even at
the price of giving up some of its habits of consumption? There is no such “guarantee”, other than the wager on the rationality of
democratic decisions, once the power of commodity fetichism is broken. Of
course, errors will be committed by the popular choices, but who believes that the experts do not
make errors themselves?
One cannot imagine the establishment of such a new
society without the majority of the population having achieved, by their
struggles, their self-education, and their social experience, a high level of
socialist/ecological consciousness, and
this makes it reasonable to suppose that errors - including decisions which are
inconsistent with environmental needs - will be corrected.
In any case, are not
the proposed alternatives - the blind market, or an ecological dictatorship of
“experts” - much more dangerous than the
democratic process, with all its contradictions?
The passage
from capitalist “destructive progress” to ecosocialism is an historical process, a permanent revolutionary
transformation of society, culture and mentalities. This transition would lead not only to 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 reign of
money, beyond consumption habits artificially produced by advertising, and
beyond the unlimited production of commodities that are useless and/or harmful
to the environment.
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 program.
The
development of socialist consciousness and ecological awareness is a
process, where the decisive factor is
peoples own collective experience of struggle, from local and partial
confrontations to the radical change of society.
Should
development be pursued, or should one choose “negative growth” (décroissance)?
It seems to me that these two options share a purely quantitative conception of
- positive or negative - “growth”, or of the development of productive
forces. There is a third position,
which seems to me more appropriate: a qualitative transformation of
development.
This means putting an end to the monstrous waste of resources by
capitalism, based on the production, in a large scale, of useless and/or
harmful products: the armaments industry is a good example, but a great part
of the “goods” produced in capitalism - with their inbuilt obsolescence - have
no other usefulness but to generate profit for the great corporations.
The
issue is not “excessive consumption” in abstract, but the prevalent type of
consumption, based as it is on conspicuous appropriation, massive waste,
mercantile alienation, obsessive accumulation of goods, and the compulsive acquisition of
pseudo-novelties imposed by “fashion”.
A new society would orient production towards the satisfaction of
authentic needs, beginning with those which could be described as “biblical”
- water, food, clothing, housing - but
including also the basic services: health, education, transport, culture.
Obviously, the countries of the South, where
these needs are very far from being satisfied, will need a much higher level of “development” - building railroads,
hospitals, sewage systems, and other infra-structures - than the advanced
industrial ones. But there is no reason why this cannot be accomplished with a
productive system that is environment-friendly and based on renewable
energies.
These countries will need to
grow great amounts of food to nourish their hungry population, but this can be
much better achieved - as the peasant
movements organised world-wide in the Via Campesina network have been arguing
for years - by a peasant biological agriculture based of family-units, cooperatives or collectivist farms, rather
than by the destructive and anti-social methods of industrialised
agro-business, based on the intensive use of pesticides, chemicals and
GMOs.
Instead of the present
monstruous debt-system, and the imperialist exploitations of the resources of
the South by the industrial/capitalist countries, there would be a flow of
technical and economic help from the North to the South, without the need - as
some Puritan and ascetic ecologists seem to believe - for the population in
Europe or North America to “reduce their standard of living”: they will only
get rid of the obsessive consumption, induced by the capitalist system, of
useless commodities that do not correspond to any real need.
How to distinguish the authentic from the
artificial, false and makeshift needs? The last ones are induced by mental
manipulation, i.e. advertisement. The
advertisement system has invaded all spheres of human life in modern capitalist
societies: not only nourishment and
clothing, but sports, culture, religion and politics are shaped according to
its rules. It has invaded our streets,
mail boxes, TV-screens, newspapers, landscapes, in a permanent, aggressive and
insidious way, and it decisively contributes to habits of conspicuous and compulsive
consumption.
Moreover, it wastes an
astronomic amount of oil, electricity, labour time, paper, chemicals,
and other raw materials - all paid by the consumers – in a branch of
“production” which is not only useless, from a human viewpoint, but directly in
contradiction with real social needs.
While advertisement is an indispensable dimension of the capitalist
market economy, it would have no place in a society in transition to socialism,
where it would be replaced by information on goods and services provided by
consumer associations.
The criteria for
distinguishing an authentic from an artificial need, is its persistence after
the suppression of advertisement (Coca Cola !). Of course, during some years, old habits of
consumption would persist, and nobody has the right to tell the people what
their needs are. The change in the
patterns of consumption is a historical process, as well as an educational
challenge.
Some
commodities, such as the individual car, raise more complex problems.
Private cars are a public nuisance, killing and maiming hundreds of
thousand people yearly on world scale, polluting the air in the great towns -
with dire consequences for the health of children and older people - and significantly contributing to the
climate change.
However, they
correspond to a real need, by transporting people to their work, home or
leisure. Local experiences in some
European towns with ecologically minded administrations, show that it is
possible - and approved by the majority of the population - to progressively
limit the part of the individual automobile in circulation, to the advantage of
buses and trams.
In a process of
transition to ecosocialism, where public transportation - above or underground
- would be vastly extended and free of charge for the users, and where
foot-walkers and bicycle-riders will have protected lanes, the private car would have a much smaller
role as in bourgeois society, where it has become a fetish commodity - promoted
by insistent and aggressive advertisement - a prestige symbol, an identity sign
- in the US, the drivers license is the recognized ID – and the center of
personal, social or erotical life.
Ecosocialism
is based on a wager, which was already Marx’s: the predominance, in a society
without classes and liberated of capitalist alienation, of “being” over
“having”, i.e. of free time for the
personal accomplishment by cultural, sportive, playful, scientific, erotic,
artistic and political activities, rather than the desire for an infinite
possession of products.
Compulsive
acquisitiveness is induced by the commodity fetishism inherent in the
capitalist system, by the dominant ideology and by advertisement: nothing
proves that its is part of an “eternal human nature”, as the reactionary
discourse wants us to believe.
As Ernest Mandel emphasized: “The continual
accumulation of more and more goods (with declining “marginal utility”) is by
no means a universal and even predominant feature of human behavior. The
development of talents and inclinations for their own sake; the protection of
health and life; care for children; the development of rich social relations
(…) all these become major motivations once basic material needs have been
satisfied”. [6]
This does not
mean that there will not arise conflicts, particularly during the transitional
process, between the requirements of the environment protection and the social
needs, between the ecological imperatives and the necessity of developing basic
infra-structures, particularly in the poor countries, between popular consumer
habits and the scarcity of resources. A
class-less society is not a society without contradictions and conflicts!
These are inevitable: it will be the task
of democratic planning, in an ecosocialist perspective, liberated from the
imperatives of capital and profit-making, to solve them, by a pluralist and
open discussion, leading to decision-making by society itself. Such a grass-roots and participative
democracy is the only way, not to avoid errors, but to permit the self-correction,
by the social collectivity, of its own mistakes.
Is this
Utopia? In its etymological sense - “something that exists nowhere” -
certainly. But are not utopias, i.e. visions of an alternative future,
wish-images of a different society, a necessary feature of any movement that
wants to challenge the established order? As Daniel Singer explained in his
literary and political testament, Whose Millenium?
In a powerful chapter entitled “Realistic Utopia”, “if the establishment now looks so solid,
despite the circumstances, and if the labor movement or the broader left are so
crippled, so paralyzed, it is because of the failure to offer a radical
alternative. (…) The basic principle of the game is that you question neither
the fundamentals of the argument nor the foundations of society. Only a global
alternative, breaking with these rules of resignation and surrender, can give
the movement of emancipation genuine scope”. [7]
The socialist
and ecological utopia is only an objective possibility, not the inevitable
result of the contradictions of capitalism, or of the “iron laws of
history”. One cannot predict the
future, except in conditional terms: in the absence of an ecosocialist
transformation, of a radical change in the civilizational paradygm, the logic
of capitalism will lead the planet to dramatic ecological disasters,
threatening the health and the life of billions of human beings, and perhaps
even the survival of our species.
To dream, and
to struggle, for a new civilization does not mean that one does not fight for
concrete and urgent reforms. Without
any illusions on a “clean capitalism”, one must try to win time, and to
impose, on the powers that be, some
elementary changes: the banning of the HCFCs that are destroying the ozone
layer, a general moratorium on
genetically modified organisms, a drastic reduction in the emission of the
greenhouse gases, the development of public transportation, the taxation of
polluting cars, the progressive replacement of trucks by trains, a severe regulation of the fishing
industry, as well as of the use of pesticides and chemicals in the
agro-industrial production.
These, and similar issues, are at the heart of the
agenda of the Global Justice movement, and the World Social Forums, which has permitted, since Seattle in 1999,
the convergence of social and environmental movements in a common struggle
against the system.
These urgent
eco-social demands can lead to a process of radicalisation, on the condition
that one does not accept to limit one’s aims according to the requirements of
“the [capitalist] market” or of
“competitivity”. According to the logic
of what Marxists call “a transitional program”, each small victory, each
partial advance can immediately lead to a higher demand, to a more radical aim.
Such
struggles around concrete issues are important, not only because partial
victories are welcome in themselves, but also because they contribute to raise
ecological and socialist consciousness, and because they promote activity and
self-organisation from bellow: both are decisive and necessary pre-conditions
for a radical, i.e. revolutionary, transformation of the world.
There is no
reason for optimism: the entrenched ruling elites of the system are incredibly
powerful, and the forces of radical opposition are still small. But they are the only hope that the
catastrophic course of capitalist “growth” will be halted. Walter Benjamin
defined revolutions as being not the locomotive of history, but the humanity
reaching for the emergency breaks of the train, before it goes down the abyss…
Notes
[1] For a
remarkable analysis of the destructive logic of capital, see Joel Kovel, The
Enemy of Nature. The End of Capitalism or the End of the World ?, N.York,; Zed Books, 2002.
[2] John Bellamy Foster uses the concept of
“ecological revolution”, but he argues that “a global ecological revolution worthy of the
name can only occur as part of a larger social - and I would insist, socialist
- revolution. Such a revolution (…)
would demand, as Marx insisted, that the associated producers rationally
regulate the human metabolic relation with nature. (…) It must take its inspiration from
William Morris, one of the most original and ecological followers of Karl Marx,
from Gandhi, and from other radical, revolutionary and materialist figures,
including Marx himself, stretching as far back as Epicurus”. (“Organizing Ecological Revolution”, Monthly
Review, 57.5, October 2005, pp. 9-10).
.
[3] See John
Bellamy Foster, Marx’s Ecology.
Materialism and Nature, New York, Monthly Review Press, 2000
[4] F.Engels,
Anti-Dühring, Paris, Ed. Sociales, 1950,
p. 318.
[5] Joel Kovel, Enemy of Nature, p. 215.
[6] Ernest
Mandel, Power and Money. A Marxist Theory of Bureaucracy, London, Verso, 1992, p. 206.
[7]
D.Singer, Whose Millenium? Theirs or
Our ? New York, Monthly Review
Press, 1999, pp. 259-260.
