climateandcapitalism.comhttp://climateandcapitalism.com/2008/11/04/capitalism-vs-ecology-hyperconsumption-or-hyperaccumulation/

Capitalism vs Ecology: Hyperconsumption orHyperaccumulation?

Posted on November 4, 2008

Another critique of the ecological views of the author of How the Rich are Destroying the Planet

After Climate and Capitalism reviewed Hervé Kempf’s book How the Rich Are Destroying thePlanet, a reader drew our at tent ion to this art icle by Marc Bonhomme, a long-t ime act ivist insocialist and independent ist movements in Quebec, published on August 28 in his blog, under thet it le L’écologie, d’Hervé Kempf à Françoise David. Many thanks to Marc for permission to publishhere, and to Richard Fidler for the t ranslat ion.

* * * * * * *

by Marc Bonhomme

On August 26, on the web site of Québec solidaire, the party’s chief spokeswoman, FrançoiseDavid, posted a small essay entitled “Ecology without justice is not ecology.” This essay completelyignores the post-Kyoto objectives, although these are the main topic of the current internationaldebate on ecology issues. One might have thought that the QS spokeswoman would stand on theobjectives in the final report for 2007 of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UNbody, which Greenpeace-Canada summarizes as follows:

.”.. to maintain the Earth’s average temperature increase below this 2% ceiling, globalgreenhouse gas emissions will have to be reduced to the 1990 level by 2020 andreduced by a further 50% by 2050.

“For Canada and the other industrialized countries, the objective is still more radical:greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 30% from the 1990 level by 2020 andby 80% by 2050.”

Keep that under your hat. She prefers to base herself on the positions of Hervé Kempf, theenvironmental columnist for the centre-right French newspaper Le Monde. We can understand whywhen we observe the degree of generality, imprecision and above all lack of audacity in thespokeswoman’s proposals. In January 2007, Le Devoir published a front-page interview with HervéKempf. I reacted with a short critical essay. I drew attention to the ambiguity of Kempf’s analysis

concerning anticapitalism, the standard of living of ordinary people, and especially the closures ofprofitable factories. The Québec solidaire leadership is strangely silent about the latter,notwithstanding the frequency of such closures or mass layoffs.

- – - – - – - – -

Le Devoir’s ant icapitalist punch: The better to serve the bosses

“Capitalism said to be at the origin of the social and ecological crises” was the subt it le on a pageone art icle in Le Devoir on January 6, 2007. The only way it could be said more clearly would be tomake the allegat ion a simple factual statement. Indeed, says the author of this statement, HervéKempf, Le Monde’s environmental columnist :

“The social system currently governing human society, capitalism, is blindly bracingitself in opposition to the indispensable changes that must be made if we want topreserve the dignity and promise of human existence…. We cannot understand theconcomitance of the ecological and social crises if we do not analyze them as twofacets of the same disaster.”

However, isn’t it the case that capitalism, far f rom being blind, is simply obeying the laws ofvalorizat ion of capital?

Polit ically, global capitalism, says Kempf

“relies on crises such as that of September 11 to appreciably reduce the human rightswon through struggle and to neutralize, if not eliminate altogether, the democraticmechanisms that allow free public debate on choices of projects, the choices ofsociety that are raised repeatedly by the workings of the economy.”

However, isn’t it the case that capitalism constrains parliamentary democracy within the narrowlimit of private ownership of the means of product ion and circulat ion?

Similarly, Kempf notes the inanity of the actually exist ing alternat ives:

“But he notes as well that a large part of the European left has not seen how deeplyrelated the two problems are, just as many ecologists, who cling to anenvironmentalist approach, miss half the problem if not its primary cause.”

But isn’t it t rue that pinks and greens alike, accept ing the electoralism inherent in parliamentaryinst itut ions, thereby abandon any challenge in the streets to the sacredness of private property?

Kempf’s solut ion to the evils of capital?

“To end this race to conspicuous consumption, he advocates radical controls onwealth by ‘putting limits on the maximum wage and the accumulation of inheritedwealth,’ a sort of counterpart of the minimum wage but from above. …

“We must add to the ecologist principle ‘Think globally, act locally,’ initially so usefulin creating awareness, the principle that the situation imposes: ‘Consume less,distribute better.’ …

“That is why, he says, it is necessary to ‘lower the rich’ instead of raising up the poor,and to begin to respect the irreversible thresholds of deterioration of the planet’sresources.”

There is no disput ing this “model of hyperconsumption that the lower classes, and especially themiddle class, are now trying to imitate, just as the developing countries t ry to imitate the westerncountries….” Like a plague of obesity that deforms the body, it is only too clear that our cit ies areswimming in garbage and pollut ion, and that the ecological balance of the earth is on the verge ofbreaking down.

Hyperconsumption or hyperaccumulat ion?

But it is st ill necessary to discover the origin of this self -destruct ive hyperconsumption. By reject ingMarxism as an ant i-humanist ideology, Kempf deprives himself of an essent ial tool; Marx, af ter all,laid the foundat ions of a science of history that has provided the key to understanding thebarbarit ies of the past and present.

Hyperconsumption is nothing other than the caricature by the world’s middle classes — pettybourgeoisie and labour aristocracy — of the accumulat ion of capital. With warmongeringneoliberalism, this accumulat ion of capital has become hyperaccumulat ion both of the means ofproduct ion (not only in the old auto industry, now in a crisis of overproduct ion but above all in thenew teleinformat ics, where planned obsolescence is systemat ic), and of the means of destruct ionon a basis of permanent (and no longer cold) war.

Unt il the 30 golden years of postwar expansion (1945-75), the supposed marvels of consumerismwere not generally accessible to the mass of the world’s proletariat , despite the ant icipatoryinnovat ion of the “American way of life” in the USA that Thorstein Veblen had announced in 1903

in The Theory of the Leisure Class, in which he had demonstrated the counter-revolut ionarypolit ical funct ion of conspicuous expenditures in the gilded age of the robber barons described byMark Twain and denounced by the muckrakers:

“The workers do not seek to displace their managers; they seek to emulate them.They themselves acquiesce in the general judgment that the work they do issomehow less ‘dignified’ than the work of their masters, and their goal is not to ridthemselves of a superior class but to climb up to it.” (Robert Heilbroner, The WorldlyPhilosophers, Fifth edition, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1980, pages 230-231)

If conspicuous consumption marks a break with the puritanism and Victorian moral hypocrisy ofthe Brit ish Empire, which unt il then had restrained the consumption of the new middle classesgenerated by the rising imperialism, it really only began to extend to them during the “RoaringTwent ies,” only to be brutally interrupted by the Great Depression of the Thirt ies followed by theSecond World War. Even af ter that , the mass consumption of the proletariat ,[1] the of fspring ofthe conspicuous spending of the leisure class, was not the driving force of the postwar boomalthough it does explain no doubt its longevity and even more so its end.

The principal driving force of the ef fect ive demand of the postwar boom was not in fact massconsumption but the huge reconstruct ion ef fort in the wake of the devastat ion of the war,f inanced by the victors (e.g. the Marshall and Dodge plans), not to ment ion the immense work ofre-equipping the industry of the Anglo-Saxon countries exhausted by the war ef fort . Then camethe pent-up demand of the middle classes, fueled by victory bonds and mortgage credit , which inturn necessitated a major deployment of public works f inanced by the public debt.

Proletarian mass consumption, f inanced by the generalizat ion of credit and st imulated by a newwave of advert ising that developed during the postwar boom, simply prolonged this massiveprimary ef fect ive demand. However, it was not so much an economic means as it was the polit icalresponse, predicted by Veblen, to the resurgence of the postwar t rade-union struggles in thevictorious countries against a backdrop of revolut ionary upsurge in the conquered countries otherthan Germany, former colonies and dependent countries, f rom the Chinese Revolut ion of 1949 tothe decolonizat ion of the Sixt ies. It was not conceded in good grace by Capital, therefore, but outof corrupt ing necessity.

The crumbling of socialist hope, as a result of the Stalinist degenerat ion and the collapse ofactually exist ing socialism, created the condit ions for the victory of this ideological and polit icalcorrupt ion. Proletarian solidarity found itself disarmedboth by the strangulat ion of monthlypayment deadlines and by the individualism of the suburban bungalow and car. Neoliberalism tookadvantage of this to subst itute for the proletarian mass consumption of the imperialist countries,

which responded poorly to some genuine needs, the hyperconsumption of the global middleclasses, which responds poorly to some virtual needs. The other side of the coin is thegeneralizat ion of massive poverty and inequalit ies in the third world, including in the high-growthcountries, and a generalized cancer in the imperialist countries.

That is how Capital was able to re-establish a compromised rate of prof it [2] without, however,creat ing the condit ions for a stabilizat ion of the new paradigm, which lacked an ef fect ive engine ofdemand. This could be the (re)equipment of the product ion apparatus of the major third worldcountries if imperialism managed to recolonize them in order to gain control over their surplusvalue,[3] hence the necessary conversion of f ree-trade neoliberalism into warmongeringneoliberalism. Hyperconsumption, while it is necessary to warmongering neoliberalism to provide itwith a social basis in the middle classes and to dangle as a carrot in f ront of the proletariandonkey, is far f rom suff icient to guarantee an ef fect ive demand heralding an ascendant phase ofthe long wave[4] but it does, as a corollary of hyperaccumulat ion, help to disrupt the majorecological balances.

To f ight hyperconsumption in isolat ion is react ionary

While Le Devoir’s subt it le challenged capitalism, such was not the case with the main headline“The rich on trial” (Les riches au banc des accusés). Who are the rich? Rich can, of course, bedef ined as a synonym for capitalist or bourgeois, but it is usually understand as the opposite ofpoor. Are the so-called middle classes poor? Is the majority of the proletariat in the imperialistcountries poor? To ask the quest ion is to answer it . So it is the majority of the inhabitants of theimperialist countries, or almost, who are said to be on trial. It is t rue that, assessed by thatyardst ick, the majority of the globe’s inhabitants could be considered poor… but they are evenmore guilty than the super-rich because they produce too many children:[5]

“Hervé Kempf is quick to acknowledge that [soaring population growth] certainly hasa greater impact globally than all the hyperconsumption of this oligarchy composed ofa few hundred thousand millionaires and billionaires, who control the bulk of theincomes and financial capital.”

So that is what, in this context , is meant by “lower the rich” without “raising up the poor.” Shouldwe abolish Law 142 in order to raise the wages of the state employees who have been the vict imsof a two-year wage freeze?[6] Isn’t that instead a great opportunity to reduce the consumption ofthe rich? Should we pity the 800 Goodyear workers in Valleyf ield who have lost their jobs? Weren’tthey too well paid when, according to the mayor of Valleyf ield, “ regionally, we even suffer ashortage of skilled labour in some areas.”[7] to which the chief of regional economic developmentadded: “ For the f if teen or so employers [in the metalworking and reinforced concrete industry]

who are looking for workers, it is good news.”[8] Now, there’s a new lowering of the rich that willalso contribute to regional development!

Using Kempf’s reasoning, the thing is not to raise the minimum wage but to decree a maximumwage, no doubt set at the level that Goodyear — or the count less text ile and clothing businessesthat shut down in 2006, so many that the FTQ no longer wanted to talk about them in its year-endbalance sheet — would consider adequate to avoid shutt ing their doors af ter having forcedconcessions from the union in 1999 in return for promised investments in modernizat ion that werenever implemented.[9] Quebec employers will no doubt be happy to have found a new ally in thisscourge of capitalism who volunteers his services to the implacable imperat ives ofcompet it iveness on behalf of the ecological struggle.

“Prohibit all layoffs”

If you really want to look at France for a lef t response to wage stagnat ion and layoffs byprof itable companies, you would be better of f to follow the example of the emergency program ofthe candidate of the Ligue communiste révolut ionnaire for President, Olivier Besancenot, who ispolling between 4 and 5%. Concerning factory closures, his emergency program proposes acomplete “ban on all layoffs”:[10]

“What is needed is a straightforward incursion into capitalist property by outlawinglayoffs, making employment contracts permanent irrespective of changes in positionor skills; employment contracts to be the complete responsibility of the employer, theprofessional field or local employers irrespective of the vagaries of this or that activity.…Such choices can only be imposed on the bosses.

“It is the prohibition of all layoffs that we demand, therefore, the outlawing ofdismissals by imposing the maintenance of the employment contract. To financepotential incongruities in these rules, an occupational social security fund might beestablished, financed by employer contributions pegged to wages and managed (asthe whole social security system should be) by representatives of the workers.”

The unfortunate reality in Quebec remains the everlast ing commit tee of survival or reclassif icat ionin which the employers, local of f icials, provincial and federal governments, and labour leaders, eachblaming the other, work in unison to pressure the union ranks to wrest st ill more concessions,ending up at best with a solut ion like the one in Paccar[11] based on huge government subsidieswith a bonus investment f rom the so-called Solidarity Fund… with the same employer, no doubt.As to the leadership of Québec solidaire, let us hope for more than silence, and at least supportfor the t rade-union leaders.

Footnotes

[1] The mass consumption of the proletariat meets the needs for housing and transportat ionthrough the bungalow and the automobile, and not collect ive housing or mass public t ransit . Thehyperconsumption of the middle classes is ref lected in monster houses and SUVs, once thebungalow and the so-called family car proved ill-suited to those needs.

[2] See ht tp://www.marcbonhomme.com/page0/f iles/page0_blog_entry42_2.pdf.

[3] See the paragraphs “Les condit ions économiques d’une sort ie de crise sont part iellementréunies” et seq. in ht tp://www.marcbonhomme.com/page0/f iles/page0_blog_entry37_2.pdf.

[4] For a theoret ical explanat ion of the concept of “long waves,” seehttp://hussonet.f ree.fr/mandel05.pdf.

[5] On the quest ion of overpopulat ion, the following comment by Mike Davis, author of Planet ofSlums, is very relevant:

“The paramount question is not whether the population has grown too large, but: howdo you square the circle between, on the one hand, social justice with some kind ofequitable right to a decent standard of living, and, on the other, environmentalsustainability? There aren’t too many people in the world – but there is, obviously,over-consumption of non-renewable resources on a planetary scale. Of course, theway to square that circle – the solution to the problem – is the city itself. Cities that aretruly urban are the most environmentally efficient systems that we have ever createdfor living together and working with nature. The particular genius of the city is itsability to provide high standards of living through public luxury and public space, andto satisfy needs that can never be meet by the suburban private consumption model.…

[T]he question of whether certain cities become monstrously over-sized has less todo with the number of people living there, than with how they consume, whether theyreuse and recycle resources, whether they share public space.”(http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/interview-with-mike-davis-part-2.html)

[6] Translator’s note: Law 142, enacted by the Charest government in December 2005, imposed a33-month wage freeze (retroact ive to June 30, 2003) and annual wage increases of 2 percent inthe last four years of an almost seven-year contract . It applied to 500,000 hospital workers,teachers, civil servants, school support staf f and other provincial public-sector employees.

[7] Denis Lapointe, mayor of Valleyf ield, Radio-Canada news, January 5, 2007.

[8] Janic Tremblay notes that the news created a shock wave, Radio-Canada, January 4, 2007:ht tp://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/Economie-Affaires/2007/01/04/001-goodyear-emplois-pertes.shtml.

[9] For the unrealized promises, see ht tp://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/29/29242.htm, and forthe union concessions, see ht tp://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/22/22116.htm.

[10] See ht tp://www.f luctuat.net/3841-Programme-d-Olivier-Besancenot.

[11] [Translator’s note] In the mid-1990s, Paccar, a mult inat ional company, announced it wouldclose its Kenworth t ruck manufacturing plant at Ste-Thérèse, laying of f 850 workers. Jean-MarcPiot te describes the end result of the lengthy negot iat ions:

“ The union had to accept all the employer demands but one: it was able to retain theunion seniority clause. Of the 850 workers employed when the plant closed, 350would be recalled in 1998 and 350 were placed on a recall list while the others wouldtake early retirement. How can one seriously talk about a union victory and respectfor the dignity of the workers? The multinational Paccar, which garnered a profit of$295 million in 1995, obtained the cancellation of millions of dollars of fines for non-compliance with the automobile pact incorporated in the NAFTA, a no-interest loan of$13.5 million from the federal and provincial governments, a Quebec governmentgrant of $8,000 for each job “created” and a loan from the [FTQ] Solidarity Fund of$26.5 million…. There was one winner, Paccar, before which the union and our twogovernments had to kowtow in order to negotiate keeping 350 workers employed.”–Jean-Marc Piotte, Du Combat au Partenariat : Interventions critiques sur lesyndicalisme québécois (Montréal: Les Éditions Nota Bene, 1998, pp. 208-211.)