Ecology and Socialism
Draft to be submitted to
the World Congress of the Fourth International
“Humanity has faced
ecological problems at other times, but these have taken on a new urgency
nowadays due to their scope and gravity. Damage to the environment often has an
irreversible impact on man and nature and the ecological crisis on the horizon
at the dawn of the 21st Century is endangering the lives of millions of
people.”
I. Foreword
Humanity has
faced ecological problems at other times, but these have taken on a new urgency
nowadays due to their scope and gravity. Damage to the environment often has an
irreversible impact on man and nature and the ecological crisis on the horizon
at the dawn of the 21st Century is endangering the lives of millions of people.
Contrary to the
prevailing currents in the workers’ movement, which have tended to ignore or
downplay environmental issues, ecological movements and Green parties can be
credited with putting these decisive questions on the agenda. However, the solutions
they put forth are often ultimately false ones, as they overlook the inherent
link between environmental destruction and the profit logic of capitalism. To
seriously deal with ecological dangers, we must break out of the framework
created by the profit motive, within the perspective of a democratically
planned socialist society.
II. Elements of the
ecological crisis
The ecological
crisis, as an outcome of human impact on nature, has reached a point that could
threaten the very survival of humanity. In keeping with the economic interests
of a small minority, new production forms be implemented faster and faster,
with no prior evaluation of their ecological consequences. These minority
interests also require maintaining production techniques recognised as harmful.
This is going on while technological progress is increasing the possibility of
acting upon nature, and hence upsetting or destroying it.
The industrial
revolution linked to the rise of 19th century capitalism greatly increased the
rate at which waste was released into the atmosphere, severely damaging the
health of workers and city dwellers. Overall, ecological shock waves of human
origin have come fast and furious. And yet, the ecological crisis as we know it
is not the linear outcome of industrial development since the 19th century. It
is the outcome of a qualitative leap, the massive generalisation of petroleum
use and the phenomenal development of the car, the chemical industry and its
use in all economic sectors, in particular in agriculture via fertilisers and
pesticides.
Since the 1970s,
this qualitative leap has become more spectacular following the crisis of
bureaucratically planned economies and above all, in a particularly dramatic
way, following the combination of economic crisis and free-for-all
industrialisation in the "
Climate
Changes
Human
activities, relying on fossil fuels (energy production, transport), using
firewood for household purposes in the
Global changes
in regulating mechanisms within and among the primary components of the Earth’s
environment (atmosphere, oceans, and biosphere) will have repercussions
throughout the 21st century. The time frame will vary, but in general it will
far exceed the timetables used by the human activities causing them. This fact
underlines the urgency of integrating ecological imperatives into the overall
organisation of societies.
Air
pollution
Industry,
transports and the breakdown of more or less durable consumer goods release a
great variety of toxic substances into the air. The unbridled and apparently
uncontrollable growth of motor vehicle traffic makes this the primary source of
sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide, far ahead of household and industrial
heating. Formic aldehyde, mercury and asbestos, for example, are industrial
pollutants. These are also found to a very significant extent in everyday
consumer products, such as building materials in the case of formaldehyde and
asbestos, and mercury in batteries.
City air can
contain 1,000 times the level of these toxins found in country air. Air pollution
has become a serious blight in major urban centres, both in wealthy countries
and in the particularly sprawling, anarchic cities found in poor countries. In
the urban setting, this pollution has lead to an alarming increase in
respiratory ailments: asthma, bronchitis, and lung cancer. European studies
have revealed that pollution in
Asbestos gives
rise to many fatal forms of cancer among shipyard and building workers. Because
these cancers have a latency period, the annual death toll is increasing by
leaps and bounds, revealing the extent of the problem. More than 100,000
asbestos-related deaths are predicted in
Water
pollution and soil deterioration
Waste, of
household, agricultural or industrial origin alike, is carried off in the
world’s waters, turning them into gigantic sewers. Continental waters, rivers
and lakes are the hardest-hit, but pollution is reaching the sea more and more,
via rivers and coastal cities. The direct consequences are the accumulation of
heavy metals; mercury, cadmium, etc, and highly toxic organic compounds, in
sediment on the ocean floor, riverbeds and lakebeds. Above all, fertiliser
build-up, involving nitrates and phosphates, has led to an unbridled
proliferation of algae and water plants. Their breakdown then exhausts the
oxygen dissolved in the water: resulting in a massive death of aquatic life.
The state of the
oceans is rapidly growing worse, all the more because they are directly
polluted by the astronomical quantity of petroleum seepage from underwater
drilling sites, vessels outgassing, and even dumping toxic, chemical and
radioactive waste.
Water pollution
is linked to soil pollution, which is both a cause and effect of certain forms
of water and air pollution. This is a consequence of agricultural practices
imposed by market pressure: intensive farming (misuse of fertiliser and
pesticides) monoculture, crops unsuited to local ecosystems and climates, etc.
This means massive soil destruction on a global scale; a toxic soup of
pollution, exhaustion, desertification, massive erosion, all bound together
with the economic and social causes of hunger affecting 800 million people in
the
Among the most
dramatic manifestations of the ecological crisis, the destruction of the
world’s forests is among the most disturbing, because of the extent of its
consequences. In 50 years, one third of the world’s woodlands has disappeared.
This has hit tropical countries the hardest. In the industrialised countries,
the wooded area has remained relatively stable, but forests are slowly dying
from air, oil and soil pollution. However, in the "
Moreover, since
1997, Amazonia,
Threats
to Biodiversity
The existence of
tens of thousands of species is menaced by the countless attacks on ecosystems.
One quarter of the Earth’s biodiversity could disappear within the next 25
years. In certain cases, these attacks could eventually destabilise the
environmental balance, with incalculable consequences on human living conditions.
Biodiversity
must be defended, not for sentimental or aesthetic reasons, but on behalf of
our own species. Failing to master the consequences of the irreversible changes
that it can cause to the environment, humankind must be careful to go about its
activities while respecting the ecological balance of nature.
Anyone wishing
to protect the ecological balance must attack the vary basis of capitalism.
Capitalism cares nothing about pollution, exploiting resources with the single
objective of short-term gain even if this threatens the very existence of
tropical forests, a treasure house of animal and plant species, or marine life.
Likewise, it
seeks to take hold of technological innovations such as GMOs, whose spread into
the environment is an irreversible and potentially dangerous process.
Instead of
remaining a laboratory technique, the production of genetically modified
organisms has become of the key biotechnologies capitalism is using to find new
markets. Capitalism is seeking control over the most intimate level, heretofore
outside its scope: reproduction and the genetic control of plant and animal
species.
Industrial
disasters and nuclear risk
The disastrous
ecological consequences of capitalist production also take the form of
wide-scale accidents, or the potential risk of such accidents, in industrial
complexes such as chemical plants and nuclear power plants. The Bhopal
disaster, its 15 000 deaths and the sufferings of the many methyl isocyanate
victims who are still dying by the hundreds every year, was one of the most
tragic examples, along with Chernobyl.
Nuclear power’s
very nature, the incalculable extent of its possible adverse effects, and
especially its very long-term lasting impact, and along with the existence of
alternative solutions, quite rightly represent a particularly alarming example
of the (aberrant) choices made in terms of development of the productive
forces.
Radioactive risk
does not only mean the threat of major accidents. After 40 years in existence,
the atomic industry has still not found a solution to the nuclear waste storage
problem. Threatened with decline, it is now promoting its ecological virtues to
promote new electro-nuclear programmes, now at a standstill. The atom is
claimed to be a way of reducing CO2 emissions. This claim downplays radioactive
pollution hazards (authorised or accidental dumping) and the fact that vehicles
are by far the main cause of CO2. Moreover, such a relatively inflexible energy
system, based on huge production units and building hundreds of new power
plants, would monopolise investments at the expense of other systems (energy
saving, renewable energies). Moreover, production over-capacity and loss over
distribution systems would encourage power wastage. It would also perpetuate a
development model that is harmful in the long run.
Far from
creating new emergencies pushing traditional economic, social and political
problems to the margins, on the contrary, all the elements of this ecological
crisis are closely tied to these concerns.
The ecological
crisis has become a dramatic and spreading phenomenon, leading to local and
partial disasters. In certain cases these are irreversible, in others they can
be reversed in the short or medium term or only over 2 or 3 centuries (the age
of many trees). This depends on the conscious choices made by human
communities.
III Structural causes of
the ecological crisis
Although it
cannot escape the laws of nature, in various ways the mode of capitalist
production comes into fundamental contradiction with nature and the natural
evolution process. For capital, only the quantitative aspect is decisive,
determining the relation between labour time and money in the framework of the
law of value; qualitative and global relations cannot be taken into
consideration.
Capitalist
production is based on carrying out cyclical processes in the shortest possible
time to get a return on capital invested. Thus, it must impose a rhythm and
framework on natural processes that is foreign to them. The exploitation of
natural resources cannot take the time needed for their formation or their
renewal into account. The spread of commodity production cannot respect
pre-existing modes of social organisation. Occupying the space needed for a
smooth production process, energy supply and distribution must go ahead without
taking the natural environment, fauna and flora into account. It is not
capitalism’s lack of wisdom that brings about environmental destruction, but
the very logic underlying the system. This is why the social democrats calls for
"qualitative growth" are stymied by capital’s logic: qualitative
growth and the law of value are mutually exclusive.
Capitalist
rationality determines the movement of individual capital. However, competition
among capital makes the system as a whole irrational. The intelligence brought
into play to improve production or save on raw materials stops at the company
door. The environment foots the bill wherever "nobody" feels
responsible- for example, in the case of water, air and soil pollution.
Moreover, competition
leads to periodical overproduction crises, revealing that a considerable
quantity of energy and materials has been invested in commodities that don’t
sell. Furthermore, the market promotes the production of superfluous products
in use-value terms (advertising, various drugs, arms, etc.) but with an
exchange value that makes for big profits. Competition and the race for profits
and super-profits are the ultimate reason behind criminal behaviour, recognised
as such by capitalist legislation itself: non-respect for environmental
regulations, use of toxic substances, inadequate quality testing, falsifying
content listings, unauthorised dumping of waste, etc.
The
ecological crisis in the imperialist metropolises
The most
advanced economic exploitation, i.e. the process of economic quantification of
pre-existing natural, social and historic substrata, is found in the developed
capitalist countries. Nowadays, commodity production governs all sectors of
social life, while the social process of production has become more and more
fragmented. Property relations have become more and more centralised -
competition among owners of the means of production keeps them from becoming
entirely frozen.
This has led to
the same major ecological problems in all imperialist countries. Here is yet
more proof that these problems cannot be viewed as "breakdowns" or
"system failures"; they correspond to this system’s logic throughout
the world.
The virtually
complete exploitation of the last cubic centimetres of land for use as
industrial zones, shopping centres, bedroom suburbs, theme parks or
administrative zones has greatly increased commuting time and traffic, while
the structure of needs has remained essentially unchanged. Transport policy,
based on private cars using petroleum fuel, has resulted in chronic traffic
congestion, threatening all major metropolitan areas with paralysis and
asphyxia.
Particularly in
the energy field, centralised property relations have dictated the building of
huge fossil fuel or nuclear power stations. This choice is detrimental to air
quality and completely irrational from the standpoint of an economical use of
energy.
Market
irrationality and the profit motive play a decisive role in the problem of
waste. It is more and more "advantageous" for each firm to throw
away, flush out or burn what is useless for production. Hence, mountains of
waste, in particular toxic waste, have practically become a symbol of the
society of capitalist overabundance.
The consequences
of these basic ecological problems are: destruction of natural sites and urban
sprawl, over-congestion of the road system, air pollution caused by the private
car, poisoning by the chemical industry, radioactive pollution due to nuclear
energy, ever-growing mountains of waste. Capitalism is not capable of
correcting these "failings". If natural resources, such as water,
wood, soil, are "freely" available, under capitalism they are used
up, wasted and polluted, most often without control. They are - and not only in
the economic sense - "exogenous factors". They remain conditioned,
that is they are objects of the search for private profit. In other words, the
limited nature of resources is only seen by those who must purchase them. Their
sellers have a basic interest in expansion and oppose any attempt to safeguard
them. All attempts at control run counter to capitalists’ current push for
greater deregulation. If not, they can only be contemplated on the basis of the
false premise that the law of value can distinguish between "good"
(environmentally friendly) profits and "bad" profits. Hence,
imperialist countries are resigned to trying to patch up problems after the
harm is done. At most, this can only result in very limited or partial remedies
such as mandatory filters to purify water and air, etc.
Capitalist
production also reshapes its own consumers. Thus, individuals’ behaviour is a
factor aggravating the ecological crisis and hampering a solution to it.
However, individual changes in behaviour can only exert a minimal influence on
the fundamental environmentally destructive nature of capitalist production.
Ecological
crisis in the dependent countries
A study by the
United Nations agency for the environment has drawn the lucid conclusion that
the ecological problems of the "
The primary
cause of dire poverty and ecological crisis is the capitalist mode of
production. The well-known structures of imperialist dependency and the world
market it dominates have subjected the natural environment of dominated
countries to far more direct and brutal economic exploitation than is the case
in imperialist countries. Environmental destruction according to the world
market’s needs and multinationals’ interests comes into even more flagrant
contradiction with the social structures and ways of life handed down through
history. In all these countries, imperialism has shaped their territory by
imposing an infrastructure almost entirely built up around centres of economic
activity dependent on the world market. It is on this basis that " natural
resource centres", business centres, and holiday zones, plantations and
grazing lands are chosen, for export-oriented production. This puts enormous
pressure on people who fall victim to these processes, pushing different ways
of life and "outmoded" social functions are pushed towards a
country’s peripheral regions. The impact has been and continues to be far
graver than in the capitalist metropolises, subject as these countries are to
processes set in motion by others.
We can also
observe the fatal effects of the law of "combined and uneven
development" in the dependent countries from an ecological standpoint.
The world market
carries its environmentally destructive dynamics and its most agonising
contradictions into the most "backward" corners of the world. Its
action here is incomparably more devastating, the forces opposing it
incomparably weaker. We can set forth a series of structural characteristics of
this mechanism:
Direct
exploitation of raw materials for the world market (minerals, wood, cotton,
rubber, etc.) and the parallel development of infrastructures, roads, railways,
power plants, etc.;
The
transformation of land into farmlands or pasture reserved for export
production, via a land-clearing policy involving heavy use of chemical
fertilisers and pesticides with the resulting pollution.
These two
processes make the land question the great burning issue in most of the
dependent countries. The rural population is pushed into regions unable to
sustain permanent settlement or agriculture. These people have no choice but to
clear the land and use farming methods that only speed up the exhaustion of
land and its erosion. Clear-cutting hillsides, burning tropical forests,
settling arid or flood-risk regions, the destruction of fertile soil layers,
etc. compound the risk of long-term climate changes and "natural
disasters".
An urbanisation
brought about by a specific economic structure and the land question. According
to UN estimates, cities in the dependent countries are growing three times
faster than in the industrialised capitalist countries. In these cities, the
usual urban problems are even more catastrophic for the environment and living
conditions. Air pollution caused by motor-vehicle traffic and household heating
is an acute threat. The quality of clean and purified water is the second
problem facing cities in the dependent countries.
Waste disposal
is the third. In most major cities in Asia, Africa and
For most of the
population of dependent countries, energy supply is a problem of everyday
survival. 1.5 billion human beings are short of firewood. The annual working
time devoted to gathering firewood (or other fuel sources such as manure, plant
residues, etc.) has increased fourfold, sometimes reaching 190 to 300 working
days yearly. Especially in rural areas near cities, but also in many other
regions, forests are clear-cut because of the energy shortage.
The problem
facing dependent countries most spoken about these days is the debt to banks
and imperialist governments. This has an impact on ecological crisis because the
debt requires stepping up the priority on export production, in turn increasing
acute poverty and the rural exodus. In the 1990-1995 period, deforestation in
33 African countries ranked among the poorest and most indebted was 50% greater
than forest destruction in other African countries, and 140% greater than the
average rate of world deforestation. At the same time, there are no resources
to finance conservation measures. International financial institutions, such as
the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, exact a higher and higher
toll on man and nature for the consequences of debt.
All of this is
cynically rounded out by a series of direct acts of destruction of nature and
ecological crimes committed by imperialist multinationals. Hazardous production
units (especially in the chemical industry) are transferred to the dependent
countries. There they not only benefit from cheap labour but also can pollute
the environment with impunity.
The governments
in most dependent countries are powerless in the face of ecological crisis.
Their connection to imperialist interests and their own privileges or class
interests extend economic dependency and ecological crisis. Even certain
international aid programmes (to fight hunger, to fight ecological disasters or
recent plans for a partial cancellation of the debt in exchange for
environmental protection measures) often merely contribute to enriching elites
in power.
Solving the
ecological crisis in the dependent countries is unthinkable without breaking
dependency on imperialism. Seeking "modernisation" through credits
and debt to solve urgent social problems has been an error that only compounds
the situation. This is truer still for the ecological crisis. Poverty and
economic dependency force millions of people take part in behaviour causing
dire harm to the environment, but without which they could not even survive.
This means the process of anti-imperialist revolution, "permanent"
revolution, in the dependent countries must consciously take up ecological issues
and make them part of their programme of struggle against capitalist plunder.
This is the condition for successfully building alternative, socialist
production relations.
Ecological
crisis in the former bureaucratised societies
Despite the
disappearance of the
One of the
reasons for this situation is the fact that these societies only partially succeeded
in overcoming the capitalist law of value and the objective restrictions on
production it entails. In many key production sectors, dependency on capitalism
and the world market was still present. Exploitation of natural resources for
an export economy and dependence on products and technologies derived from
capitalist industries also led to an inevitable destruction of the environment
in these societies too. This happened in a way comparable what we see in
dependent countries.
The planned
economy was an attempt to develop a directly social economy. Contrary to
capitalism where the usefulness of labour is based on the market alone, that
is, the ability to sell products, non-capitalist societies attempted to
determine and plan social needs before production. It is obvious that this
attempt can only succeed if all human needs and specific interests are brought
into an overall process of democratic deliberation and decision-making. When an
actual shortage must be shared out, democracy becomes even more essential.
However, the bureaucratisation of transitional societies completely eliminated
democracy. The multitude of social and national, cultural and economic needs of
different people became standardised, and forcibly inserted into a plan
dictated from above. As all qualitative aspects were buried along with
democracy, the determining characteristics of the plan could only be
quantitative standards and rates of growth. Thus, transitional societies put
the accent on quantitative increase in growth, sometimes even more than
capitalist societies. These rates were set forth by decree and enforced with
repression. Protecting resources and the environment were at best included in
such plans in quantitative terms (number of purification stations, filters,
certain budget outlays, etc.). This planning was from the outset beset with
errors and huge oversights in planning (with a corresponding misuse of
resources). Without social controls, these were only rectified when they were
finally recognised "higher up".
Furthermore, the
different parts of the plan corresponded to the interests of different
fractions of the bureaucracy that set them. This is how the gigantism that was
so typical of the
The bigger,
larger-scale and more centralised the projects were (example: changing the
course of Siberian rivers), the more power it meant for the bureaucrats. Since
the 1970s, bureaucrats concerned with environmental issues did come on the
scene, but they lacked clout and remained stuck in small, low-level
departments.
Optimism and
faith in progress were a tenet of the bureaucracy’s ideology. Bureaucracies put
forth the prospect of "competition between the two systems" and
"overtaking" capitalist societies. From this standpoint, the
capitalist consumer and modernisation models that caused such environmental
harm were valued and taken up as ideological values playing a part in framing
the plan.
The bureaucracy
only used models based on quantifying natural resources (namely, models comparable
to those used by conservative bourgeois economists).
It goes without
saying that the ecological crisis can only be exacerbated in the context of
economic pillage and free-for-all capitalism now reigning in
IV. Workers’ movement and ecology
Ecologists
accuse Marx and Engels of productivism. Is this accusation justified?
No, to the
extent that no one had spoken out with such force as Marx against the
capitalist logic of production for production’s sake, capital accumulation,
wealth and commodity production as an end in itself. The very idea of socialism
- contrary to the pathetic bureaucratic caricatures of it -is producing use
value, goods necessary for the satisfaction of human needs. The supreme aim of
technical progress in Marx’s eyes is not an infinite increase in goods
("having") but a shorter working day, and more leisure time
("being").
However, it is
true that sometimes we find in Marx and Engels - and even more in later Marxism
- a tendency to make "development of productive forces" the main
vector of progress, and a relatively uncritical stance towards industrial
civilisation, especially in terms of its destructive relationship to the
environment. The following passage of the Gründrisse is a telling example of
Marx’s too uncritical admiration for the "civilising" mission of
capitalist production, and its brutal instumentalisation of nature:
"Thus
capital creates the bourgeois society and the universal appropriation of nature
as well as of the social bond itself by the members of society. Hence the great
civilising influence of capital; its production of a stage of society in
comparison to which all earlier ones appear as mere local developments of
humanity and as nature-idolatry. For the first time, nature becomes purely and
object for humankind, purely a matter of utility; ceases to be recognised as a
power for itself; and the theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws appears
merely as a ruse so as to subjugate it under human needs, whether as an object
of consumption or as a means of production".
On the other
hand, we also find texts by Marx explicitly mentioning the ravages Capital has
wrought on the natural environment - bearing witness to a dialectical vision of
the contradictions of "progress" brought about by productive forces -
for example, in the famous passage on capitalist agriculture in Capital:
"The
increased productiveness and quantity of the labour set in motion are bought at
the cost of laying waste and consuming by disease labour-power itself.
Moreover, all progress in capitalistic agriculture is a progress in the art,
not only of robbing the labourer, but of robbing the soil; all progress in
increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time, is a progress towards
ruining the lasting sources of that fertility. The more a country starts its
development on the foundation of modern industry, like the
Even in Engels,
who so often celebrated man’s "mastery" and "domination"
over nature, we can find texts that call our attention more explicitly to the
dangers of such an outlook. For example, we can mention the following passage
in the article, "The part played by labour in the transition from ape to
man" (1876)
"Let us
not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over
nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it
is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the
second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only
too often cancel the first. The people who, in
Thus at every
step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over
a foreign people; like someone standing outside nature - but that we, with
flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature and exist in its midst, and that all
our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all
other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly".
It would not be
difficult to find other examples. The fact remains, however, that Marx and
Engels lack an overall ecological outlook. The ecology question is one of the
greatest challenges for a renewal of Marxist thought at the dawn of the 21st century.
It demands of Marxists a thorough critical reappraisal of their traditional
concept of "productive forces" and a radical break with the ideology
of linear progress and the technological and economic paradigm of modern
industrial civilisation.
Parallel to the
development of reformism in the ranks of the workers’ movement, Marx and
Engels’ critical reflection on the threat capitalist civilisation poses to
nature was downplayed. Reformism took up the productivist concepts/outlook of
bourgeois society just as it was becoming an integral part of it by accepting
its major institutions (State, army, legislation, etc"). For example,
early in the 20th century, the Deutcher Metallarbeiterverband (DMV), the metal
workers’ organisation, dominated by social democracy, explained in a telling
statement: "The faster technical development is, the faster the capitalist
mode of production will have reached the point where it will block by itself
and will have to be replaced by a higher mode of production,"
Social democracy
and Stalinism, despite their disagreements on many questions, shared a
productivist concept of the economy and a profound lack of sensitivity to
environmental questions. We must recognise that revolutionary currents in
general - and the Fourth International in particular - were very late in
integrating the ecological question. The persistence of ecological disasters,
the growth of environmental protection movements, these movements’ partial
victories, and their attempts to structure themselves politically
("Green" parties, etc.) have led to differentiations within the
workers’ movement. In a series of countries, entire unions or at least strong
minorities within their ranks oppose the "peaceful" use of nuclear
energy - CGIL in
At present, we
can distinguish among four currents in parties and unions that claim to speak
for the workers:
a) The
"hard-core" fraction that wants to keep on as if nothing has changed.
Even this fraction has had to make some adjustments, in light of the
catastrophic developments for the environment. This current is now calling for
emission standards and new regulations, but advocates continued use of nuclear
power. Without revising its short-sighted positions, it has declared its
agreement with "patching up" the ecology, especially if it opens up
new markets.
b) A
technocratic current that thinks it can solve ecological problems via high-tech
solutions. Indeed, most often these would only shift the problems round: for
example, what to do with the enormous quantities of filtration residues,
purification sludge and other waste? Peter Glotz of the German SPD is calling
for co-operation with the "end of the pipe technology" fraction of
major capital. Through an alliance among "the traditional left, technical
elites and critical minorities of capitalists with a sound outlook in terms of
growth", socially directed innovation could be achieved. He expressly
rejects any challenge to private property over the means of production.
c) The third
current that could be called "reformist-ecologist", also refuses to
speak about production relations. Once again, they claim it is possible to rid
capitalism, or as the put it delicately, "industrial society", of its
sins against the ecology. Erhard Eppler, as chairman of the German SPD’s
"Fundamental Values Commission" explained: "More than ever, the
task of social democracy is to proceed, through a new policy of reforms, with
democratic, human and ecological corrections to industrial society."
d) The fourth
current, in the minority, but far from negligible in numbers, is eco-socialism,
integrating the fundamental achievements of Marxism - while ridding it of its
productivist dross. Eco-socialists understand that market and profit logic (as
well as the authoritarianism of the defunct "people’s democracies")
are incompatible with ecological demands. While criticising the ideology put
forth by the leading currents of the workers’ movement, they understand that
workers and their organisations are an essential force for transforming the
system.
Eco-socialism is
the current in the workers’ and ecology movements most sensitive to the interests
of workers and peoples of the South. It breaks with the productivist ideology
of progress - in its capitalist and/or bureaucratic form (so-called
"actually existing socialism") - and opposes the infinite expansion
of an environmentally destructive mode of production and consumption.
It understands
that "sustainable development" is impossible within the framework of
the capitalist market economy.
As
revolutionaries, our objective is to join forces with this current and convince
workers that partial reforms are totally inadequate. Micro-rationality must be
replaced with socialist, ecologist macro-rationality, calling for a genuine
change in civilisation. This is impossible without an in-depth technological
reorientation, seeking the replacement of current energy sources with other,
non-polluting and renewable ones, such as solar energy. This means the first
issue at hand is the question of control over the means of production, and
above all over decisions relating to investments and technological change.
An overall
reorganisation of the mode of production and consumption is needed, based on
criteria foreign to the capitalist market: people’s real needs and
environmental safeguards. In other words, an economy in transition to
socialism, based on the peoples’ own democratic choices of priorities and
investments - and not the "laws of the market" or an all-seeing
politburo. A planned economy, able to find lasting ways of overcoming the
tensions between satisfying social needs and ecological imperatives. A transition
leading to an alternative way of life, a new civilisation, beyond the reign of
money, consumer habits artificially fuelled by advertising, and the endless
production of environmentally harmful goods (the private car!).
V. Achievements and limits
of the ecology movement
The ecology
movement’s fundamental achievement, which has brought about an in-depth change
in public awareness of environmental questions, has been and remains the
understanding of the extent to which late capitalism has destroyed the
environment. Destruction of nature has reached a point that imperils all
humanity. Here, as in the case of a world nuclear war, it is a question of
survival. However, contrary to the danger of nuclear destruction, it is a
question that is always "new" and more and more obviously becoming
more and more serious. The ecology movement’s fundamental achievement is at the
same time its basic limit. Since this movement views the environmental question
as vital to all humanity, it seeks out interclass solutions and consequently,
fails to call upon adequate means (class struggle against capital).
Another
achievement of the ecology movement is the way it questions the concept of
"progress". It has demonstrated the shortcomings of the Marxist
analysis of late capitalism. We can no longer speak as during the beginning of
capitalist development of a positive development of the productive forces, only
trammelled by private ownership of the means of production or developed at the
expense of the proletariat. More and more, capitalism, having survived much
longer than historically necessary for the development of the productive
forces, is transforming productive forces into destructive ones. But this also
means that these forces cannot be liberated as such, that is, used in a
socialist system on behalf of all. They will have to be vetted and critically
analysed. This is not merely a theoretical question, but also a very practical
one, involving a criticism of the idea of "overtaking capitalism", so
typical of Stalinist bureaucratic thought. Moreover, a more elaborate analysis
of the material side of production (use value) is being made for the first
time, by asking which products are desirable from an ecological and social
viewpoint etc.
After the
setbacks following the 1968 movement, the ecology movement has once again
brought a utopian dimension into politics. Discussions about a fundamental
change in the social system, another way of living and producing, are
re-introduced on the basis of ecological demands. The aforementioned debate
about use value of products also encompasses a discussion of socially useful
production. New utopian ideas about a different society are being voiced, and
concrete "reconversion plans" sketched out.
The ecology
movement first developed in
Major ecological
mobilisations have also taken place in the
It would be very
mistaken to think ecological issues only concern the countries of the North - a
luxury for wealthy societies. More and more, social movements with an
ecological dimension are emerging on the periphery of capitalism, the
"South".
These movements
are reacting to deepening ecological problems in Asia, Africa and
A 1991 text by
Peruvian peasant leader Hugo Blanco (of the Fourth International) is a
remarkable expression of the meaning of this "ecology of the poor".
"At first glance, defenders of the environment or conservationists seem
like nice, rather eccentric fellows, whose main goal in life is preventing the
extinction of blue whales or pandas. The common people have more pressing
concerns, for example where their next meal will come from However, in
Indigenous
peoples, living in direct contact with the forest, are among the primary
victims of the "modernisation" imposed by agrarian capitalism. As a
result, they are mobilising in many Latin American countries to defend their
traditional way of life, in harmony with the environment, against the
bulldozers of capitalist "civilisation". Among the countless
manifestations of the Brazilian "ecology of the poor", one movement
has stood out as particularly exemplary, by its social and ecological, local
and planetary, "red" and "green" scope. Namely, the fight
of Chico Mendes and the Coalition of Forest Peoples in defence of the Brazilian
Amazon region, against the destructive appetites of major landowners and
multinational agribusiness.
Let us briefly
recall the major events in this confrontation. Chico Mendes was a trade-union
activist, with ties to the (CUT) and the Brazilian Workers’ Party (PT).
Explicitly referring to socialism and ecology, in the early 80s, Mendes
organised land occupations by the seringueiros, peasants who lived by tapping
rubber trees, against latifundistas who were sending in bulldozers to cut down
the forest and replace it with grazing lands. Afterwards, he succeeded in
bringing together peasants, farm workers, seringueiros, trade unionists and
indigenous tribes - with the support of rank-and-file Church communities - in
the Alliance of Forest Peoples, that was able to thwart many clear-cutting
attempts. International awareness of these actions warranted him the Global
Ecological Prize in 1987. However, a short time afterwards, in December 1988,
latifundistas exacted a heavy price for this ecological struggle by having
hired killers murder him.
Given the links
forged between social and ecological struggles, peasant and indigenous
resistance, survival of local populations and safeguard of a global imperative
(protection of the last major tropical forest), this movement can become a
paradigm for future popular mobilisations in the "South".
In certain
countries - especially in
And yet, despite
all attempts at reform, despite the environmental industry, destruction on the
global level has become more serious than ever before.
Pollution of the
seas, clearing of tropical forests and climate changes all show that the global
dynamics of ecological crisis remain unchanged. From this standpoint, this
crisis shows the need for a fundamental change in our society; above beyond any
reforms that may see the light of day.
As the ecology
movement has no coherent revolutionary programme and fails to see the workers
as a revolutionary subject, it is a long way from fulfilling its aspiration to
become a new social force that can occupy or inherit the place of the workers
movement. Nevertheless, if we leave out explicitly bourgeois or reactionary
groups, small in numbers, the ecology movement remains an important ally of
revolutionaries in the overall struggle against the capitalist system.
VI. Environmental problems
and bourgeois domination
Due to of the
impact of capitalist production on the environment, destruction of the natural
basis for human societies has reached a new level. This has become a problem in
and of itself for bourgeois order and ideology.
The
ecological crisis is world-wide and, in the competitive context inherent to
capitalism, can only be viewed only as a common evil;
Certain
causes of the ecological crisis go back many years, others are the products of
the combined development of various separate factors. For this reason, it is
difficult to establish and date their temporal and physiological causes. In the
same vein, mastering the ecological crisis calls for time and investments that
would be the undoing of all bourgeois concepts of input/output cycles.
Finally,
contrary to what is observed in classical economic crises, in capitalism’s
harmful social consequences and even in the aftermath of military conflicts,
dominated and exploited classes can only be made to foot part of the bill for
ecological crisis. However, it is undeniable that oppressed classes bear the
brunt of the burden, especially in dependent countries. This is truer still, given
the interaction between social and economic crisis and ecological crisis.
The growing
awareness of ecological crisis and the ecology movement developing since the
early 1960s, have represented a vigorous attack on one of the key concepts in
bourgeois ideology - the idea that the bourgeois social and economic order is
capable of guaranteeing continuous "progress for all", and that
harnessing nature is inherently positive and that all problems pertaining to it
could be solved.
Up against this
ideological challenge, there have been attempts at updating bourgeois ideology.
The first, known throughout the world, was the Club of Rome report ("The
Limits to Growth", 1972). This report documented the rapid progress of
environmental destruction and put forth a supra-national policy against
demographic growth, wastage of natural resources, environmental destruction,
etc. This study, and others following, were a double-edged sword. On the one
hand, science and bourgeois ideology retook the initiative on environmental
questions and undertook a discussion on the prognosis and the solutions to be
put forth. On the other, these studies shored up pessimistic views on the
world’s future and were a further impetus to the ecology movement.
The capitalist
world economy’s existing order lost its aura of superiority; its finality and
its mechanisms were questioned from within. At the same time, these analyses
led to catalogues of demands that tended to promote world planning and a
political regulation of the economy. Thus, they came into direct conflict with
the capitalist market economy, economic liberalism and government deregulation
offensives on the agenda throughout the world at the time.
No later than
the mid-1980s, a second bourgeois offensive on the environmental terrain proved
necessary. Thereafter, it became necessary to provide solutions, especially in
terms of concrete policy, to these contradictions. The Bruntland report
("Our Common Future") adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1988, was
an expression of this. It is already entirely marked by the bourgeois
conviction that although capitalism unfortunately harms the environment, it is
also in a position to make the necessary corrections. Thus, it claimed to bring
together the elements for a more balanced form of growth ("sustainable
development"), The1990s saw a deepening of the contradiction between
promises of new international regulations of globalised capitalism and this
very system’s brutal social and environmental impact. The Rio Declaration,
whichcameout of the Earth Summit (1992) certainly set forth certain principles,
such as the precautionprinciple, which did represent progress in awareness
about the elements of the ecological crisis. Neither Agenda
On the political
level, they run up against the interests of agrochemical and pharmaceutical
multinationals that seek to take hold of living organisms by increased use of
GMOs and patenting genomes. The Kyoto Protocol (1997) on the greenhouse effect
does not put any onus on rich countries to implement measures aimed at meeting
the very modest objective of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. 125 billion
dollars over 10 years had been announced in
Today, a
practical approach to environmental problems is part of every bourgeois
government’s programme. In general, there is an attempt to set limits to air,
soil and water pollution. To these are added gradual plans to reduce the
dangerous effects of production-process residues. When all is said and done,
these are band-aid measures that do not counteract the real destruction taking
place. Economic programmes and policy orientations concerning the
"ecological market economy" have also taken on importance. Up until
now, attempts to re-orient the capitalist economy to an environmentally
friendly functioning have not got off the drawing table.
However, in the
context of capitalist globalisation, a vast offensive is underway to impose a
system of "marketing the right to pollute" on the world level in
order to reduce the quantity of greenhouse gases. Advocated by the
Moreover, the
system aims to make pollution a commodity, hence a source of profit. How could
we imagine under such conditions that this would lead to an effective reduction
in pollution?
Finally, it must
be emphasised that the purpose of this mechanism, the key element of the
liberal offensive in the environmental field, is to defuse the subversive power
of the ecological critique, which raises a challenge to the overall functioning
of the capitalist system. It aims at restoring credibility to the idea that the
market is the best instrument in the fight against pollution, that more
capitalism would make for intrinsically "cleaner" capitalism.
This idea must
be fought, just like the thesis whereby environmental protection could become
the motor behind "a new modernisation of the capitalist economy". A
great gap separates the rich States from the poor States. While in wealthy
imperialist countries, some progress has been made in stemming some of the most
problems of pollution and destruction, in the poor countries, even the slightest
necessary measures fail due to lack of funding or in the face of the interests
of a handful of firms that succeed in making a profit precisely by damaging the
environment.
VII. Experiences in the
political organisation of the ecology movement
In a growing
number of countries, Green parties are developing. In Western Europe, they have
gained parliamentary representation in countries as different as Germany,
France, Austria, Belgium, Sweden and Portugal and constitute a significant
European Parliamentary group with 47 Members. They now take part alongside
left-wing coalitions in governments in three countries in the Union: Germany,
France and Belgium. Green parties are even found in dependent countries
(Brazil, Turkey, etc.) In the United States, Ralph Nader’s candidacy in the
presidential race symbolises the political emergence of a front uniting
environmentalists, youth and trade unionists, on the basis of
anti-globalisation struggles.
Of course, the
development of green organisations and parties over the past twenty years or so
can be explained by the emergence of ecological crisis on a global scale.
However, it cannot be understood without supplementary political factors, such
as the lack of overall perspectives by traditional leaderships of the workers
movement or the absence of revolutionary breakthroughs in capitalist Europe
since 1968.
It is completely
wrong to put all the different "Green" experiences in the same bag.
Depending on the countries, political cultures, their concrete historical
origins, they have specific characteristics. Their palette ranges from a strong
influence of bourgeois and petit bourgeois forces to the coexistence of
leftist, alternative and eco-socialists, and includes reformist Green currents.
We can say in
general and with all due caution:
these
are attempts at organising within the reformist left, most often somewhere to
the left of the traditional leaderships;
although
75% of their social base is made up of salaried employees, these currents do
not view themselves as a part of the workers’ movement;
while
they often began as informal electoral structures based on ecology-centred
platforms, Green movements have taken critical stands in other areas too
(social policy, arms race, Third World, etc.).
The Greens’
activity bears the stamp of a combination of frequently correct criticisms of
sectoral social injustices alongside illusory reformist "strategies".
In most cases, government or parliamentary activity virtually stifles Green
Party grassroots activism, fosters the appearance of traditional forms of power
delegation, and by so doing tends to undermine the radical nature of its
movement. Worse still, the German Greens, for example, are in the process of
losing all the utopian power embodied by the ecological critique, and are
becoming a simple "party of reform" among others. When the Grünen
entered the government in late 1998, this brought about a veritable political
earthquake in their ranks. The shock waves continued with a difficult
compromise on the nuclear issue, the war in Kosovo and the intensified
neo-liberal course of government policy. Just the same, it is fruitless to
speculate on the rhythms and forms of changes ecologist parties may undergo and
to what extent the very nature of the Greens will be transformed by the choices
and policy shifts they make.
Revolutionary
Marxists judge political actors first of all not on the basis of their claims,
their programmes or their awareness of their own role, but on the basis of
their actual function in the class struggle. In general, we can affirm that the
appearance of Green organisations and parties has not been a step backward. On
the contrary, in many cases, it has broadened the left’s action.
The Greens must
not be ignored, on the contrary, an active policy must be developed in their direction:
common actions, debates on their theoretical positions, etc. In certain
countries, protest parties and ecological movements have arisen, forming
electoral coalitions and harnessing a segment of critical opinion. It is up to
each section of the International to concretely decide the best form of
co-operation with such parties or movements.
VIII. The Fourth
International and the ecological crisis
As we have seen
in Chapter 4, we find the premises of a radical ecological criticism of
capitalism in the original Marxist texts. But, as was the case for most parties
in the workers’ movement, our International failed to take it up in the first
years of its existence. For example, it would be useless to look for it in the
Transitional Programme, the basic programmatic document of the 1938 founding
congress. In the period following the Second World War, revolutionary Marxists
did not ignore environmental destruction or air and water pollution. However,
these phenomena were seen as one of the negative consequences of an
exploitative, inhuman system and not viewed as a global phenomenon threatening
to destroy the very basis of all life.
This has changed
since the early 1970s, when capitalist society’s self-destructive tendency
became a widely discussed subject, a subject of debate for such bourgeois
ideologues as the Club of Rome in 1972. Articles and studies written by members
of our movement appeared.
But the real
test for organisations of the workers’ movement was the birth of a popular
movement against nuclear energy, especially in Japan, Western Europe and the
United States.
Practically all
the sections of the Fourth International have been involved in these mass
movements, although very few sections found ways of consolidating their ecology
work when the anti-nuclear movement went into decline. The experience of these
movements did make its way into our discussions for the World Congresses. In
the 10th Congress’s texts, ecology and related problems were not even
mentioned. However, at the following congress, in 1979, the struggle against
the nuclear industry was viewed as a "question of survival for the working
class" and it declared that the task of the International and its sections
was to "strengthen the movement by bringing industrial workers" into
the struggle. At the 1985 congress, the positions were further developed. The
documents provide a more detailed analysis for each of the three sectors of the
world revolution. The main resolution called on the International and its
sections to put far greater emphasis on the ecology question in their
propaganda and their activities and organise common actions alongside ecology
movements. In
Today, the
Fourth International views environmental destruction as one of the main threats
to humanity, a problem giving a new meaning to the Rosa Luxemburg’s famous
formula: Socialism or Barbarism. It sees a commitment by the workers’ movement
and its organisations in the struggle against planetary destruction as its
primary task in this area. It is striving to pave the way for co-operation
between the social movement and the ecology movement, not only against
different forms of destruction, but also against the system causing them in the
first place. It wants to contribute to discussions in these movements and tries
to counteract widespread illusions on the possibility of "clean"
capitalism.
In many
countries, the International is taking an active part in ongoing struggles,
such as the struggle against GMOs and the destruction of the Amazonian forest
in Brazil. The European sections are increasingly involved in ecology movements
in their own countries. In our analyses, the ecological issue is one of the
most important poles around which the workers’ movement must reorganise.
All of this does
not mean that there have not been problems bringing these "new
issues" into our movement’s activities. Many comrades have continued to
look upon ecological problems as one contradiction of capitalism among many
others. They have not seen them as problems closely linked to everyday
struggles for the survival of the working class, against subhuman living and
working conditions and the threat of war. Most of the sections only started
pondering ecological questions when they made the headlines in the news
following actions by other forces. As a result, the debate within the
International has taken shape rather slowly. While other currents and
individuals have been discussing the question of ecology and socialism for many
decades, revolutionary Marxists have remained relatively silent. It is becoming
clearer and clearer that Marxists must make a special effort to apply their
method to the real issues at hand. It is no longer possible to simply take a
few elements of ecological thought and give them a dab of red paint.
The Fourth
International does not wish to simply take part in discussions on concrete
ecological policy. It also wants to take the political and organisational steps
forward necessary for mass actions. Only through the action of mass movements
can current conditions be changed.
IX. Action Programme
Today,
throughout the world there is a broad range of initiatives and movements
against the pillage and destruction of nature. The Fourth International
supports these initiatives and these movements and takes part in them,
sometimes critically, because the general outlook of certain ecologists is at
times rather confused. The experiences of the ecology movement prove that only
broad mobilisations and mass protests make it possible to win over public
opinion and obtain real results.
To a large
extent, ecological crisis and social crisis are stoked by identical mechanisms.
The interests of major economic lobbies, the ever-more exclusive dictatorship
of ’the markets", the world order incarnated by the WTO, IMF, WB and G8,
etc., are combining to bleed humans and nature dry. Common factors are at work
in the contemporary ecological and social crises, common remedies can and must
be put forth. It is essential to break the stranglehold of "economic
liberalism" and put human needs and ecological imperatives at the forefront.
This is why
there is community of ecological and social struggle, and common terrain for
convergence.
1.
Defence of Public Services
The example of
transport is a clear example of the extent to which public policy is required
for an adequate response to social and ecological imperatives. In Europe, the
logic of the markets requires cutting the railway system to
"profitable" technologies and routes, relying on roads and highways
as the solution for everything else. Social needs (economical public transport,
a complete system serving the entire territory, decent salaries and working
conditions) and ecological ones (reducing the most polluting,
physically-destructive and energy-intensive forms of transport) requires the
development of public transport, in a public service logic. The same goes for
other areas. But this observation does not close the debate on how public
services must be organised in the modern world. In fact, State monopolies tend
to develop their policies on the basis of non-democratic objectives. (In the
energy field, we can mention links between petroleum producers and imperialist
interventions in Africa, or links between civil and military nuclear uses).
They use narrowly capitalist management approaches and productive models,
applying profitability/efficiency standards copied from private monopolies.
2. The
struggle against pollution
We have become
more and more aware of the human costs (damage to health, rising prices, etc.)
and natural costs (attacks on biodiversity) of pollution, as well as the role
played by many entrenched economic interests in aggravating this problem. The
dominant place of the car, the resulting air pollution and growing health
problems in urban centres. The power of agribusiness, brutal pollution of water
systems, and almost irreversible pollution of ground water. The weight of the
nuclear lobby and the accumulation of radioactive waste over very long periods,
in France and other countries. The role played by major private interests in
the socially unacceptable increase in the cost of drinking water in the North -
and massive lack of access to drinking water in the South. In each of these
areas, ecological and social struggles require counterpoising an alternative
logic to that put forth by the dominant economic forces.
The gravity of
pollution and public health problems has led to increased public awareness. It
has become more difficult to present so-called ecological issues as marginal
questions, as unrelated to social questions, or as elitist concerns, and
petit-bourgeois luxuries. In Europe, the "mad cow" crisis probably
marked a sea change, analogous to Chernobyl in the area of nuclear power. It
cast a light on the serious threat posed by the agribusiness mode of
production.
It is also
necessary to combat illusory strategies such as a market for the right to
pollute that Northern countries are attempting to impose on the planet.
Pollution should be eradicated, not sold to the highest bidder.
An environmental
protection policy would create new jobs in many fields. It is also essential to
point out that the dominant economic logic, which overexploits the natural
environment, also gives rise to unemployment. This is clearly the case with
agribusiness, which is emptying the countryside both of its natural (drastic
reduction in the variety of landscapes and biodiversity) and human features
(drastic loss of employment and rural exodus). This is also the case of the
automotive industry, which massively reduces its labour force - while increasing
its production capacity and whose word has become law in terms of modes of
transport, town and regional planning and urban development. An alternative
socio-economic logic would make it possible to develop a means of production
that is less predatory of nature and our way of life, while creating more jobs.
4. The
struggle for land
This is one of
the most essential vectors of the convergence between social and ecological
movements on the international scale. It is no accident that the most radical
farm movements from a social viewpoint are also those with the most advanced
environmental consciousness. They are up against polluting agribusiness, with
its GMOs, its fertilisers and pesticides poisoning the environment; they take a
stand against capitalist agriculture that destroys soil and forests. In the
countries of the South, this struggle is inseparable from the struggle for
radical land reform, against the latifundistas’ monopoly over land ownership,
and for land redistribution. But the struggle for an alternative agriculture,
respectful of the environment and based on small farmers’ work, co-operatives,
rural communities or indigenous communities is a planetary challenge,
concerning both the Third World and capitalist metropolises. One of the most
important forces in this battle for land is "Via Campesina", an
international network of the agricultural left, made up of movements as
important as the Brazilian MST or the French Confédération paysanne. These
social movements promote another outlook on agricultural production, aiming to
satisfy the population’s social needs rather than those of the global
capitalist market, and respecting peoples’ right to feed themselves.
5.
Eliminating the debt system
"Development
through debt", got its initial impetus from financial powers in the North,
and led to a system of control over debtor countries’ economic policies (above
all in the South) and strengthened powers for the IMF and WB (including in the
North). The diktat of debt interest charges and the WTO’s ultra-liberal
hard-liners have dire consequences for human societies (destruction of the
social-safety net, of subsistence farming), and of nature (destruction of
natural resources for export purposes ). This means the fundamental mechanisms
of this system of domination must be fought from both the social and ecological
standpoints.
The trade rules
brought in by the GATT, followed by the WTO, reinforce domination by major
multinationals in the North. By forcing local markets to open up to their
products, these institutions have increased dependency (even in terms of food),
undermined social equilibria and led to an irrational increase in international
trade, which feeds the energy and ecological crisis.
6. Long
term and democracy
The ecological
question requires that we take very long-term consequences into account, as
natural rhythms have a very different time frame from the necessarily short one
of the market. Many social needs (education, health, etc.) also demand a longer
timetable than the "almighty market" does to achieve their aims - and
this is one of the main reasons they are public services in the real sense.
Ecological consequences and human needs both require that our alternative
policies take these long and very long term time frames into account. This
means thinking in terms of solidarity among generations. After the defence of
social needs, ecology has given a new legitimacy to the concept of planning.
What is planning, if not taking long-term effects into account?
But ecology has
also played a part in the development of an in-depth critique of the
bureaucratic experiences of the former Eastern Bloc countries. Is this
indispensable meeting between ecological, democratic and social issues and
forces possible? Yes, because contemporary ecological and social crises share a
common origin - in capitalism. Common causes call for common solutions.
Anti-capitalism
is not a set of "negative" ideas. Indeed, it makes it possible to
foresee a common ground between ecological and social struggles. It also helps
to set forth shared alternatives, in a positive spirit of solidarity. It
enlightens us as to causes and solutions. On the other hand, should political
ecology fail to integrate/bring in a critique of capitalism, it runs the risk
of adapting to the mainstream, losing its radical edge and falling back on
elitist, ultimately anti-democratic solutions that are socially inegalitarian,
and at once impotent and unjust. This calls for true links, not merely
identifying ecology with its social impact. Ecologist thought has indeed
brought in a major dimension, not found as such in social thought - an analysis
of the relation between human societies and nature. This is its original
contribution and its specific terrain. So we can say that we must neither prune
back the ecology question to the social terrain alone nor ignore social
antagonisms in the name of planetary ecological imperatives.