Capitalism, Socialism and Ecology

Alex WoodMike Pastorkovich

Harvey Holtz

ECOSOCIALISMand

A D D

The Mind is a Terrible Thing

Please view the next 7 slides

for a moment each

“Capitalism can no more survive limits on growth than a person can live

without breathing.”

(Joel Kovel)

COLLAPSE

A continuation of capitalism would lead to the literal collapse of civilized society and the coming of a new Dark Age, similar to Europe after the fall of

the Roman Empire: “…depopulation, desolation,

degeneration — a great cemetery.” (Rosa Luxemburg -The Junius Pamphlet)

NotNatural Catastrophes

But Capitalist Catastrophes

Eaarth – Home or Commodity “In the hands of capitalism everything becomes a

commodity:

the water, the soil, the human genome, the ancestral cultures, justice, ethics, death … and life itself.

Everything, absolutely everything, can be bought and sold and under capitalism.

And even “climate change” itself has become a business.”

Evo Morales

“(Eco)socialism or barbarism: There is no third way.”

(Ian Angus) Rosa Luxemburg

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.

Marx and Engels

There can be no true ecological revolution that

is not socialist; no true socialist revolution

that is not ecological.

The Struggle for Ecosocialism is:

THE PROSPECT OF BUILDING A BETTER WORLD

andTransforming Humanity

----------------------------------Can we suggest that new world?

Ecocommunism or

Extinction?Nature, Humanity, Revolution &

Science in the AnthropoceneDao

Marx and Engels

A Bit of Theory

Humans Live from Nature

“Man lives from nature, i.e. nature is his body, and he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if he is not to die. To say that man’s physical and mental life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.” [Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts]

Moreover, no individual nation or people owned the earth; it belongs to successive generations and should be cared for in accordance with the principle of good household management.

[Marx, Capital, vol. 3]

The Metabolic Rift

• Capital creates an “irreparable break in the coherence of social interchange prescribed by the natural laws of life.” Capital “disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and the earth… it hinders the operation of the eternal natural condition for the lasting fertility of the soil… it undermines “the original sources of all wealth—the soil and the worker.”

• Capital, v I, New York: International Publishers., pp. 505-506,

The (Re)Integration of Science

“natural science…will become the basis of human science, as it has already become the basis of actual human life, albeit in an estranged form. One basis for life and another basis for science is a priori a lie...Natural science will in time incorporate into itself the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural science: there will be one science.”

Marx: Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts 1844.

“Communism, as fully developed naturalism…equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism.”

Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (New York: International Publishers, 1963), 146, and Early Writings (New York: Vintage, 1974), 348, 353.

Production, work, leisure and ecology Here, one begins to see the full ecological significance

of free time as a measure of communist wealth. Specifically, if the secondary needs developed and satisfied during free time are less material and energy intensive, their increasing weight in total needs should reduce the pressure of production on limited natural conditions. This is crucial insofar as Marx’s vision has the producers using their newfound material security and expanded free time to engage in a variety of intellectual and aesthetic forms of self-development.

Marx, Grundrisse; Marx and Engels, The German Ideology,

USSR, Lenin and Ecology• Lenin --recycling soil nutrients and supported both

conservation and pioneering experiments in community ecology (the study of the in specific natural environments).

• This led to the development in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and early 1930s of probably the most advanced conception of ecological energetics or trophic dynamics (the basis of modern ecosystem analysis in the world at the time).

• Vernadsky’s theory of the biosphere• Oparin’s theory of the origin of life• Vavilov’s discovery of the world centers of germplasm (the

genetic sources of the world’s crop plants).

CUBA

• The most revolutionary experiment in agro-ecology on earth…

• World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Report, “Cuba alone” in the entire world has achieved a high level of human development, …while also having a per capita ecological footprint below the world’s average.

• This ecological transformation is deeply rooted in the Cuban revolution rather than, as frequently said, simply a forced response in the Special Period following the fall of the USSR.

Ecosocialism

The Four Laws• Four laws of ecology: (Barry Commoner)• Everything is connected to everything else,• Everything must go somewhere,• Nature knows best, and• Nothing comes from nothing.

• Four laws of capitalism: • The only lasting connection between things is the cash nexus;• It doesn’t matter where something goes as long as it doesn’t reenter the circuit of

capital;• The self-regulating market knows best; and• Nature’s bounty is a free gift to the property owner.

The foregoing contradictions between ecology and the economy can all be reduced to the fact that the profit-making relation has become to a startling degree the sole connection between human

beings and between human beings and nature.

Socialism

• collective ownership/control of the means of production

• the best ecological principles & practices,• democracy, equality, and social justice.

• active elimination of exploitation, profit and accumulation as the driving forces of our economy.

• top priority to stopping anti-environmental practices, restoring damaged ecosystems, reestablishing agriculture and industry on ecologically sound principles.

(From How to Make an Ecosocialist Revolutionby Ian Angus)

Ecosocialism’s radical transformations in:(From The Belem Ecosocialist Declaration & How to Make an Ecosocialist Revolutionby Ian Angus)

• the energy system, by replacing carbon-based fuels, biofuels and nuclear energy with clean sources of power under community control: wind, geothermal, wave, and above all, solar power.

• the transportation system, by drastically reducing the use of private trucks and cars, replacing them with free and efficient public transportation; retrofitting existing homes and buildings with energy efficiency

• the present patterns of extraction, production, consumption, and building, which are based on waste, in-built obsolescence, competition, manipulative advertising and pollution, by producing only sustainable and recyclable goods and developing green architecture; retraining of all affected workers

• food production and distribution, by defending local food sovereignty as far as this is possible, eliminating polluting industrial agribusinesses, creating sustainable agro-ecosystems & working …to renew soil fertility.

• closing down all military operations at home and elsewhere; transforming the armed forces into voluntary teams charged with restoring ecosystems and assisting the victims of environmental disasters.

STRUGGLE

A Bit of Theory

Historical Circumstances

• There are no guarantees. Marxism is not determinism. The ecosocialist revolution is not inevitable.

• We cannot tell in advance where mass struggles will break out or their forms

• Will the next radicalization peter out, or be defeated – or will it move forward, and ultimately challenge capitalism itself?

• We need to be patient , but we also need to be prepared for unexpectedly rapid shifts.

• Meld together ecological, social, and labor concerns;• Good theory based on a sound method of analysis placing explicit

emphasis on the natural and social conditions of production, • Theoretically and also practically useful

The Struggle for Socialism

“Communist production is not simply inherited from capitalism, needing only to be signed into law by a newly elected socialist government. It requires “long struggles, through a series of historic processes, transforming circumstances and men.”

“Marx’s vision corresponds more accurately to Roy Morrison’s view that

the “struggle for the creation of an ecological commons is the struggle for the building of an ecological democracy—community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood, region by region…the struggle and work of fundamental social transformation from below.”

Marx’s Vision of Sustainable Human Development by Paul Burkett

Why Marx Does Not Elaborate About Communism!

The self-emancipatory nature of communism also explains why Marx’s vision does not take the form of a detailed …any such blueprint would only foreclose political debates, conflicts, and strategies developed by the working class itself “understood as a unity in diversity, as a political community.” Marx and Engels’s attempts to envision communism’s basic principles should be seen not as a “master plan” but “as means of organising the workers’ movement and structuring and guiding debate in and around it.

Marx’s Vision of Sustainable Human Development by Paul Burkett

STRUGGLE

The Third Carbon Age orWWII-Level Mobilization

• “The Third Carbon Age”– rise of "unconventional sources." – (e.g.) fracking, deepwater offshore drilling,

tapping frozen underwater sources of methane• WWII-level Mobilization– 100% world’s energy from renewables (2030)– 3.8million large wide turbines– 90 thousand solar panels

• Scientific American, Ecology and Socialism

THE SEARCH FOR ALTERNATIVES

New Economy & Green Movement–pockets of production outside capital

help resist counter revolution– local, democratic control of the means

of production frees labor from capital–practices of democracy and

community are contagious

Defensive/Symbolic Battles

• KXL Protests and Divestment– Symbolic Meaning of Battles

• victories of mass protest • undermines fossil-fuels (capital)

• What direction will 350.org take– Direct movements into safer channels

• Electoral Politics and Corporate Funding– Move toward ecosocialism

• Millenials - capitalism & socialism• Raising new questions resulting from struggle

The Global Climate ConvergenceEarth Day to May Day

“Our Interests are the Same”Nature• Emergency green economic transformation• 100% clean renewable energy (2030)• Ecosystem restoration and the Rights of Mother Earth

Humanity• Full employment and living wages• Universal health care and education• Food an housing security• End deportation and mass incarceration• Economic and political democracy• Demilitarization

OUR INTERESTS ARE THE SAME

• Internationalist • Anti-Imperialist (Intersection of North and South)• Class, Race, Gender, Sexuality • Fusing Red and Green • Fusing Blue and Green• Connect Social Movements for Peace and Justice• Create the basis for ecosocialist revolutionary

movement.

Feminist Issues and Ecology

collectivization of domestic labor, – weakens bourgeois nuclear family – strengthens ecological ties

more collective living patterns – neighborhood restaurants, laundries etc., – patterns liberate women from domestic labor.

lift burden on women as agricultural laborers – especially in the dependent countries

What’s Happening Now?

Alliance for Global JusticeThe Global Climate ConvergenceEarth Day to May Day (April 22 through May 1)http://afgj.org/earth-day-to-may-day

Reject and Protect (April 26) DC (XL pipeline)The Cowboy and Indian Alliancehttp://rejectandprotect.org/

Human Societies

Hunting (fishing) and Gathering

• Primitive Commons• Work and Leisure• Sustainability• Scarcity

• Homo sapiens evolve > 200,000 years ago• Hunter/Gathers ~90% of human existence• Neolithic Revolution (resistance)

“Property” and SocietyHuman Property>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Slavery

Private Property>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Capitalism

Public Property>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>*Socialism“…crude communism is ..only a phenomenal form of the infamy of private

property representing itself as positive community.” It is still incomplete.

The Commons>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Communism “(communism) is the definitive resolution of the antagonism between man and

nature, and between man and man…It is the solution of the riddle of history and knows itself to be the solution.”

Communism and Spirituality• The New Human Being – revolutionizing humanity• STRUGGLE IS ALSO A SELF-TRANSFORMATION• “People will “not only feel but also know their oneness with

nature.” (Frederick Engels) and each other (species being)• A transformation of practice• A transformation of consciousness– A right to inequality– “From each according to his ability,

to each according to his need.”– To have or to be (the end of commodities)

• The Great Oneness (THE DAO OF COMMUNISM)

Shall We Begin?

Can we define that new & better world?

What must we do to help create it?

Well?