Written by Bert Oliver and first
published at Thought Leader
In Ridley
Scott’s film, The Martian, there is a scene near the end that sums up the often
ignored value of the earth. Astronaut and botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is
sitting on a bench in a park, shortly after having been rescued from a very
lonely existence on the red planet, Mars.
He notices
the new, green leaves of a small plant in front of him on the ground, smiles,
leans forward and, gently putting his fingers underneath the newborn plant’s
leaves, says something like “Hello there!” This simple scene condenses one of
the crucial “messages” of The Martian, that, compared to the vast majority of
other planets, which are probably as barren as Mars, Earth is a veritable
paradise.
And, although
this is nowhere thematised in the film, it is time for people to start waking
up to the saddening fact that humans, driven by an economic system voracious
for “growth”, are busy destroying this paradise. Too many people simply bury
their proverbial heads in the sand when they hear or read a statement like the
one I have just made – unless they sit up and take notice, and do something
about it, nature in all its glory will, in the not-too-distant future, probably
be visible only in nature documentaries such as those made by David
Attenborough.
If you don’t
believe me, you could read this
keynote address by one of the most uncompromising thinkers of our time,
Joel Kovel. It is called “Ecosocialism as a Human Phenomenon”, and was
delivered at the International Ecosocialist Conference in Quito, Ecuador, in
June 2013. Things have got much worse since then, but judging by Kovel’s
considered assessment of the global situation regarding the condition of natural
ecosystems, it was already quite bad then.
Kovel opened
the address with the remark, that: “We live in an epoch of radical crisis. From
the economic side, we see intractable stagnation and vicious class
polarisation. And from another side, which I shall call the ecological, we find
that the dominant system of production appears hell-bent on destroying the
natural foundations of civilisation as it thrashes about in response to
economic difficulties.”
If this seems
far-fetched to readers, it is probably because mainstream news sources, which
are all controlled by the dominant economic forces of our time, downplay the
bad news, with the result that most people are not aware of the true dimensions
of the looming crisis. Consequently they are so far removed from acknowledging
it that, as Slavoj Žižek, philosopher and psychoanalytical thinker
extraordinaire, has shrewdly observed, people evidently find it harder to
imagine the end of capitalism than the end of the world as we know it.
And yet, the
“end of the world as we know it” may not be in the realm of the impossible, or
even the improbable. One of the things Kovel invites his audience to reflect on
in his address on ecosocialism is the following: “ … consider the activities of
the Monsanto Corporation, fully protected by the Obama administration, as it
engages in lethal forms of production that will, in just one instance of
depredation, finish off honeybees world-wide through its nicotinamide pesticides.
Thus we
anticipate a future without pollinators, sacrificed on the altar of
accumulation. The disregard for what nature has evolved over four billion years
beggars the imagination. Indeed, if corporations are persons, as the US Supreme
Court insists, then the Exxons and Monsantos of the world are better described
as suicide bombers in the service of accumulation than as rational economic
actors.”
How many of
us have ever thought about what should be rather obvious, if we remember what
we learned in primary school, namely, that bees fulfil an essential function in
nature across the globe – pollinating plants. That is, they make sure, in the
course of collecting pollen for honey, that trees and other plants reproduce.
What would
happen without them? All the plants that depend on them for reproduction would
eventually die – and that is a lot of plants, including trees, all of which are
responsible, in turn, for producing oxygen in the process of photosynthesis.
Hence, without bees, which are being wiped out systematically by Monsanto in
its frenzied quest for more profit, most of the planet’s vegetation would be
destroyed, and without the latter all oxygen-breathing creatures, including us
humans, would be in deep trouble.
Is this so
hard to grasp? And if some, if not most of us, are really the rational
creatures we are supposed to be, why are we not doing something about it, such
as hammering our governments to censure companies like Monsanto – which,
incidentally, is probably also responsible for a host of health problems that
people are increasingly experiencing across the world, such as auto-immune
diseases like gluten and lactose intolerance, which result in coeliac disease.
Why, you may
wonder. In addition to producing the pesticides that are destroying the
honeybees, this behemoth company, Monsanto, and other companies like it, are
responsible for introducing genetically modified plants into agriculture, and
some medical researchers I have spoken to are convinced that the foods made
from such GM plants affect human physiology and gastronomy in extremely adverse
ways. This should not be surprising – as a species, we developed in close
proximity to nature (of which we are, after all, a part), and genetically
speaking our bodies are primarily capable of digesting and benefitting from
foods such as fruits and vegetables that formed part of our ancestors’ diet.
So how do we
combat the economic system that not only allows Monsanto and Exxon to operate,
but actually encourages them to do so, the egregious damage that they inflict
upon nature notwithstanding? Kovel’s answer is that there is only one option,
namely to switch to what he calls “ecosocialism”, an economic system that is
not intent on accumulation and profit at all costs, but instead promotes
production without depletion of natural resources, because unlike capitalism,
it does not set humans up as if they are nature’s adversaries, but accepts that
humans – social ecologies – and natural ecologies are interrelated and (could
be) mutually sustaining. But let me quote Kovel at length here from the keynote
address referred to above:
“Ecosocialism
makes a very large claim that must be realised in a host of individual and
often seemingly disparate instances, or paths. There is, in other words, no
privileged agent of ecosocialist transforming. The agents of transformation
emerge interstitially, which is a fancy word for anywhere contradictions ripen
and manifest themselves as transformative opportunities: a storm, a mine, a
pipeline, a toxic dump, even a classroom, or an individual mind undergoing
spiritual development.
Each
ecosocialist path is a place of production – for paths have to be made – as
well as one of the resistance against the form of production whose banner is
capitalist accumulation. We can also think of these as zones of emergence, as
contradictions mature and open up on different vistas; hence we can call them
‘horizons’ of various kinds … a horizon is by definition some way off; yet it
can also be brought closer, through devising ways of struggle. Often these
processes can be formulated in terms of the ‘Commons’, by which is meant
collectively owned and organized spaces … forming new conditions of Commoning
unifies productive zones and can come to connect them.
“All this
bears more than a superficial resemblance to the building of ecosystems, which
in the ecosocialist mode of production comes to stand in the place that capital
reserved for the commodity. Capitalism may be defined as generalised commodity
production; just so is ecosocialism definable as generalisable ecosystem
production—this being, however, ecosystems of a definite kind conducive to the
flourishing of life … ”
And guess
what? Because so-called developed countries are quite removed from older,
pre-modern modes of production, compared to countries in the global South – in
South America and Africa, for instance – these countries are in a position,
according to Kovel, to resist the further expansion of capital and cultivate
ecosocialist economies instead. This, in his view, is the only option open to
us if we want to avoid an ecological disaster of global proportions. In his
words: “Ecosocialism or Ecocatastrophe!”
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