lowy 2011 capital relentless ecological war cns

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Capital's Relentless Ecological

WarMichael LwyPublished online: 18 Aug 2011.

To cite this article:Michael Lwy (2011): Capital's Relentless Ecological War, Capitalism

Nature Socialism, 22:3, 117-119

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2011.594560

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reduced while the surrounding ecosystem is protected and social well-being isimproved*simply cant be done. (165.)

This is news we have heard before; this excellent examination of efforts thus far toaddress sustainable living in Green Gone Wrongcries out for guidance on how to setgreen right.

Capitals Relentless Ecological War

Michael Lowy

John Bellamy Foster, The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet,Monthly Review Press, 2009.

John Bellamy Foster has emerged during the last years as one of the primarycontemporary eco-Marxist authors. His most recent book is an outstandingcontribution to an anti-capitalist ecological reflection. One doesnt have to agreewith all his arguments in order to recognize the importance of his achievements.

The book is composed of essays published on various occasions, partly rewritten

for this publication. In spite of the diversity of the topics discussed, it is a coherentwhole, unified by a Marxist method and by a revolutionary political perspective. It isdivided into three main sections: The Planetary Crisis, Marxs Ecology, and Ecologyand Revolution.

Bellamy Fosters diagnosis of the world ecological crisis is grim but realistic.Capital is waging a war on the planet, leading to a global ecological devastation thatthreatens the survival of life on the earth. How many human beings*or other livingspecies*will survive if the process of global warming leads, as several scientistsbelieve, to a rise in temperature of 88C? Time is running out. If the (capitalist) worldcontinues with business as usualfor a few decades more, disaster is inevitable. Infact, according to James Hansen (2006), chief climatologist of the U.S. National

Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), we have at most ten years*not tenyears to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory ofgreenhouse gas emissions*if we want to avoid the tipping point of 28C whereclimate change could spiral out of control. Hansen said that in 2006.

The responsibility for this dramatic situation is not human action butcapitalism, a juggernaut which knows no limits and behaves with destructiveuncontrollability*a system of incessant accumulation and consumption withoutbounds that has appropriated, polluted, and degraded the global commons: oceans,forests, atmosphere.

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There has been no lack of warnings, since Rachel Carsons 1962 book, SilentSpring, denounced the chemical warfare on living beings and criticized a system thatworships the god of speed and quantity, and of the quick and easy profit (81).

What has been the answer of the ruling classes to the growing deterioration? The

international conferences in Rio and Johannesburg failed to produce any significantchange, and the Kyoto agreements*based on carbon-tradeand market mechan-isms*had little or no effectiveness. The (capitalist) governments have concentratedtheir efforts in the search for a technological fix to confront climate change:carbon sequestration, geo-engineering, biofuels, nuclear power and even. . .building higher seawalls! The result is that today we are in the midst of a globalenvironmental crisis of such enormity that the web of life of the entire planet isthreatened.

As a Marxist, Bellamy Foster believes that only an ecological revolution, which isalso a social revolution, can offer an alternative; in other words, the necessary globalecological revolution, which requires a civilizational shift, can only occur as part of alarger, socialist revolution. The term ecological revolution, as Bellamy Fosteracknowledges, is also used by partisans of ecological modernization, or a greenindustrial revolution,and requires technological but no social changes. Wouldnt itbe preferable to use the term ecosocialism? In any case, Bellamy Foster has no doubtthat the transition to socialism and the transition to an ecological society are one(227).

For this revolution, Marx is a very important source of inspiration. Far frombeing productivist, Marx (1894, 754) was persuaded that the entire spirit ofcapitalist production stands in contradiction. . .with the permanent conditions of liferequired by the chain of successive generations.As he did in his bookMarxs Ecology(2000), Bellamy Foster shows that Marx diagnosed themetabolic riftbetween humansocieties and the natural environment generated by capitalism and conceived thesocialist alternative as a world where the associate producers rationally regulate thehuman metabolic relation with nature. (Im less persuaded by his interpretation of

the passage in the Grundrisse[409

410] where Marx celebrates the great civilizingrole of capitalism in opposition to pre-capitalist nature-idolatry.) According toBellamy Foster, Marxs main shortcoming was that he ignored the role of ecology inthe revolt against capitalism. I would add another criticism: Marx, and even more soEngels, often defined the socialist revolution as the removal of capitalist relations ofproduction which had become obstacles*fetters*to the unbounded develop-ment of the productive forces created by capitalism itself. From a modern eco-Marxist perspective, it is obvious that the social-ecological revolution must transformboth relationsandforces of production, as well as the pattern of consumption and, in

fact, the whole capitalist civilization.

One of the chapters of the book is devoted to an interesting discussion of JamesOConnors thesis of the second contradiction in capitalism*that between theforces and the conditions of production. While acknowledging OConnors

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formidable contribution to ecological socialism(209), Bellamy Foster argues thatthis could become a too narrow, or economistic, perspective: as global warmingshows, capitalism is not only degrading the conditions of production, but thepreconditions of life itself on the planet. This is a discussion that should of course be

pursued in the pages ofCapitalism Nature Socialism.

In the last chapter, Ecology and the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism,one discovers an author seldom discussed in the Marxist debate on ecology: Hannah

Arendt. Bellamy Foster quotes from her book, The Human Condition, on theconnection between wealth accumulation and the growth of an enormous power ofdestruction: we are able to destroy all organic life on earth (Arendt 1958, 248273). The political conclusion is, however, formulated by Evo Morales, who BellamyFoster describes as one the worlds most eloquent defenders of the global

environment and indigenous rights. Morales maintains that there will be nosolution to the global ecological crisis as long as we do not change the capitalistsystem for a system based on complementarity, solidarity and harmony between thepeople and nature (2008, 769).

In conclusion, this is a book that cannot be ignored by any who believe in theneed to end capitalism before it destroys all organic life on earth.

References

Arendt, H. 1958.The human condition. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Foster, J.B. 2000. Marxs ecology. New York: Monthly Review Press.Hansen, J. 2006. The threat to the planet. The New York Review of Books, July 13: 1216.Marx, K. 1894 Capital, Vol. 3.Morales, E. 2008. Save the planet from capitalism. Links, Nov. 28: 769.

Money and Empowerment

Robin G. Isserles

Anaya Roy, Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development,Routledge, 2010.

In Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development, Ananya Royadeptly tells the story of millennial development and the creation of Poverty

Capital

through the lens of microfinance. Microfinance is a poverty alleviationprogram created in 1976 by Muhammad Yunus, a Bangladeshi economist. Yunusand his Grameen Bank (Grameen meaning village in Bangla) were recipients ofthe 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for their work lending small amounts of money to thepoor. Borrowers typically use such loans for small-scale enterprises like petty trading,

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lowy 2011 capital relentless ecological war cns

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