I have recently been reading ‘The Emergence of Ecosocialism,’ a collection of essays written by the now sadly departed Joel Kovel. Edited by Quincy Saul, and published in 2018, the book is reviewed more fully here, here and here on this blog.
In Kovel’s
essay which goes by almost the same title as this post, (I've added Ecosocialist for clarity) first published
at Capitalism Nature Socialism in
2000, he argues that the expansion of the notion of ‘use-value’ is a prerequisite
for establishing an ecosocialist economic and social system to replace
capitalism. The task becomes more urgent every day, as the evidence mounts of
the acceleration of devastating climate change, wrought by our current,
unsustainable, political economy.
In the
introduction to the essay Kovel writes:
The chief
selling point of capitalism is its phenomenal success at creating wealth in the
commodity form. But the same success creates poverty and gathering
ecocatastrophe. An ecologically rational society, by contrast, will have to
turn away from the entire complex by means of which we have become enslaved by
commodities. To do this, ecosocialism, - the name for such a society – will have
to redefine the nature of wealth, and the way people under capitalism have come
to define self-worth by the accumulation of commodities.
Capitalism sees
nature, and humanity, as a field for exploitation to create commodities, which
through ‘exchange-value’ is converted into capital, which increases the
capacity for further exploitation and further capital extraction, and so on,
indefinitely. The capitalist system ensures the efficient regulation of this
process, whilst the capitalist state regulates access to the conditions of
production, nature (land), humanity (labour) and infrastructure (the built
environment).
Within this process, exchange value, which has no value in itself, needs to conjugate, to use Kovel’s term, with use-value to give it value. No one will be interested in things with no use-value, of course, but exchange-value sits like a parasite upon use-value.
For example, a field can be
used to produce food when human labour plants the seeds, water and tend to the
crops. The food produced has a clear use-value, we need to eat food to survive,
and any farm animals also need to be fed, to produce further food and perhaps animal labour. At which point
the produce of the farm attains an exchange-value. People will buy the food, which then
produces capital for the land owner as profit, or to use the Marxist term,
surplus value.
The use-value
of food is obvious, and the capitalist system will seek to produce more of this
surplus value, because it needs to grow to survive, which leads to what is referred to as 'efficiencies', the use of machinery for example, reducing labour costs to get even more surplus value from the same patch of land. Fertilisers and pesticides will
need to be used also to increase the yield, which in turn degrades the land and the
wider environment. Which means more will need to be used, and so on.
With some
commodities, like the various gadgets that are continually produced have a less clear
‘use-value,’ but the capitalist system manipulates people’s wants through the
fashion and marketing / advertising industries. We all too often have a desire
for novelty as a species, and the system exploits this, when often these goods in themselves have very
limited use-vale, but become the latest must have thing.
Kovel writes:
For capital,
the ideal world would be one in which everything useful – the air, the water we
drink, the songs we whistle to ourselves – would in fact be the occasion of a
commodity. Air is still largely free, though there is a brisk trade in purification
devices and elements of it like oxygen; while water, as we know, has become
increasingly commodified and in certain locales costs more than gasoline.at the
supermarket. The ecological crisis has created new ground for commodity
formation, which is just fine so far as ruling interests are concerned.
What would a
prefigurative ecosocialism look like then? To take our example of a field used
to grow food. If the farming was of an organic nature, not dispensing
fertilisers and pesticides, it would be moving towards ecosocialism. And what
if it was run as a cooperative, with equal shares for all in the cooperative and therefore with no surplus
value being appropriated? This again would move this type of ensemble towards
ecosocialism.
This is far
from supplanting exchange-value with use-value but is an example of how things
could be run differently, and make the idea less utopian, that it might
otherwise be seen, making it more attainable. Kovel says these ways of production can be seen as
stepping stones to ecosocialism. These two examples also bridge the issues of land and labour,
which can be seen as bringing them together, eco and socialism.
Kovel again:
The
restoration of use-values is first of all, no simple atavism, that is, we do
not seek to recapture some original goodness of use-value in things before
capital subordinated them to exchange value. Use-value is a kind of
relationship; it signifies appropriation between humanity and nature, and
within humanity as part of nature, and cannot be reduced to any crude or
absolute measure of worth.
Kovel adds that
this type of working can address what Marx called the alienation of labour,
resulting from capitalist productive processes and the extraction of surplus
value from the workers. Thus the restoration of the use-value of human
labor points toward the emancipation of the worker from capital.
Kovel then
turns his attention to the concept of usufruct, quoting by Marx’s now well
known amongst ecosocialists words on the matter from Capital Volume 3:
From the
standpoint of a higher economic form of society, private ownership of the globe
by single individuals will appear quite as absurd as private ownership of one
man by another. Even a whole society, a nation, or even all simultaneously
existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the globe. They are
only its possessors, its usufructuries, and, like bona patres familias, they
must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition.
Usufruct means
the right to use and enjoy. Kovel informs us that the term appeared in the
English language in the early seventeenth century but has applied in many historical
cultures going back to the Code of Hammurabi. In England, it referred to rights
to use common land in the transition
toward enclosure of this land. It allowed the common right to use the ‘property’
of someone else for income as well as leisure, while not damaging it in anyway.
Could this concept be employed in a reverse transition away from private propety and towards ecosocialism?
I will leave
the last word to Kovel:
If ecosocialism
can offer a usufructory of the earth, it will be one of employment, the aesthetic
dimension and improvement.
This is a good explanation of use-value. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteBut what about the land. Even when used for growing food in a cooperative, the land is expropriated from the natural world as habitat for other non-human species. What is the use-value of the land not turned into agricultural fields? Does the use value of habitat for non-human species have standing in an ecosocialist society?
How do we work this out so that we are not colonizing the land and denying it to its non-human inhabitants?
Wild land does have a use-value, in terms of human well being, but more importantly, these spaces are necessary for the flourishing of ecosystems. Ecosocialism, is an ecocentric philosophy, and so works with nature, not against it.
Deletethis article is brilliantly clear and logical, especially in the first half. it could usefully be printed as a leaflet for discussion in schools. the later parts referring to Marxism, though no doubt accurate and relevant to the history of ideas, could be offputting to younger people and are not essential to the message that needs to be conveyed. Addition re value of wild land, emphasising interdependence and balance between humans and other living things, would be useful if the article were to be published for eg schools.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure they would allow that Jay, what with anti-capitalism being banned recently, but thanks for your comment.
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