Notes on John Bellamy Foster,

The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet

Notes on John Bellamy Foster,

The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet

Philosophy 100 (Ted Stolze)Philosophy 100 (Ted Stolze)

John Bellamy Foster is a professor of sociology at the University of Oregon,

Eugene.

A Thought Experiment

Imagine that life on Earth had evolved without the emergence of human beings. But now imagine that refugees from another planet, whose biosphere they had damaged beyond repair, hoped to relocate to Earth. What basic facts would they need to know about the Earth’s biosphere in order to avoid destroying it as well? What moral principles and values would have to guide them in their renewed effort to live in a sustainable way?

The Ecological Problem

“… economists have not grasped a simple fact that to scientists is obvious: the size of the Earth as a whole is fixed. Neither the surface nor the mass of the planet is growing or shrinking. The same is true for energy budgets: the amount absorbed by the Earth is equal to the amount it radiates. The overall size of the system—the amount of water, land, air, minerals and other resources present on the planet we live on—is fixed.

The most important change on Earth in recent times has been the enormous growth of the economy, which has taken over an ever greater share of the planet’s resources. In my lifetime, world population has tripled, while the numbers of livestock, cars, houses and refrigerators have increased by vastly more. In fact, our economy is now reaching the point where it is outstripping Earth’s ability to sustain it. Resources are running out and waste sinks are becoming full. The remaining natural world can no longer support the existing economy, much less one that continues to expand.”

(From Herman Daly, “On a Road to Disaster,” in New Scientist, October 18, 2008, pp. 46-47.)

What is Sustainability?

“From a human point of view, a sustainable society is one that satisfies its needs without diminishing the prospects of future generations. This ideal is the polar opposite to the ideal of unlimited material growth.”

(From Ernest Callenbach, Ecology: A Pocket Guide, revised and enlarged [Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008], p. 130.)

One Way to Defend Sustainability

1. Assume that I don’t know into which generation of human beings I am going to be born.

2. It is in my rational self-interest to minimize serious threats to my basic needs as a human being.

3. An important way to minimize serious threats to these basic needs is to insure that the global economy is ecologically sustainable and has as little negative impact as possible from one generation to the next.

4. Therefore, it is in my rational self-interest to insure that the global economy is ecologically sustainable.

Three Features of any Critical Social Theory

Analysis and Criticism Transition Alternative

What is Capitalism?

Capitalism = a socio-economic system in which the means of producing and distributing wealth are predominantly owned and controlled by private individuals and groups.

What is Wrong with Capitalism?

In a nutshell, Bellamy Foster argues that capitalism creates a metabolic rift between society and nature to the point that is ecologically unsustainable.

Objection: Thou Shalt Not Criticize Capitalism!

Why not?

• It would be “Un-American.”

• Capitalism = the “Free Market.”

• Only private ownership and decision making generate incentives and economic efficiency.

Three Aspects of Capitalism

• Treadmill of Production

• Second Contradiction

• Metabolic Rift

The Treadmill of Production

Capitalism is “an unstoppable, accelerating treadmill that constantly increases the scale of the throughput of energy and raw materials as part of its quest for profit and accumulation, thereby pressing on the earth’s absorptive capacity. “Accumulate, Accumulate!” Marx wrote, “that is Moses and the prophets!” for capital” (p. 48).

Second Contradiction

“Capitalism, in addition to its primary economic contradiction stemming from class inequalities in production and distribution, also undermines the human and natural conditions (i.e, environmental conditions) of production on which its economic advancement ultimately rests. For example, by systematically removing forests we lay the grounds for increasing scarcities in this area—the more so to the extent that globalization makes this contradiction universal. This heightens the overall cost of economic development and creates an economic crisis for capitalism based on supply-side constraints on production” (p. 48).

Metabolic Rift (1)

“[T]he logic of capital accumulation inexorably creates a rift in the metabolism between society and nature, severing basic processes of natural reproduction. This raises the issue of the ecological sustainability—not simply in relation to the scale of the economy, but also even more importantly in the form and intensity of the interaction between nature and society under capitalism” (p. 49).

Metabolic Rift (2)“In reflecting on this crisis of capitalist agriculture, Marx adopted the concept of metabolism, which had been introduced by nineteenth-century biologists and chemists, including [Justus von] Liebig, and applied it to socio-ecological relations. All life is based on metabolic processes between organisms and their environment. Organisms carry out an exchange of energy and matter with their environment, which are integrated with their own internal life processes. It is not a stretch to think of the nest of a bird as part of the bird’s metabolic process. Marx explicitly defined the labor process as the “metabolic interaction between man and nature.” In terms of the ecological problem he spoke of “an irreparable rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism,” whereby the conditions for the necessary reproduction of the soil were continually severed, breaking the metabolic cycle. “Capitalist production,” he wrote, “therefore only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all wealth—the soil and the worker.” Marx saw this rift not simply in national terms but as related to imperialism as well. “England,” he wrote, “has indirectly exported the soil of Ireland, without even allowing its cultivators the means for replacing the constituents of the exhausted soil” (p. 50).

Metabolic Rift (3)

“This principle of metabolic rift obviously has a very wide application and has in fact been applied by environmental sociologists in recent years to problems such as global warming and the ecological degradation of the world’s oceans. What is seldom recognized, however, is that Marx went immediately from a conception of the metabolic rift to the necessity of metabolic restoration, arguing that ‘by destroying the circumstances surrounding that metabolism, which originated in a merely natural and spontaneous fashion, it [capitalist production] compels its systematic restoration as a regulative law of social reproduction.’ The reality of the metabolic rift pointed to the necessity of the restoration of nature, through sustainable production” (p. 50).

Metabolic Rift (4)

“It is this dialectical understanding of the socio-ecological problem that led Marx to what is perhaps the most radical conception of socio-ecological sustainability ever developed. Thus he wrote in the third volume of Capital:

From the standpoint of a higher socio-economic formation, the private property of individuals in the earth will appear just as absurd as the private property of one man in other men. Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations, as boni patres familias [good heads of the household]” (p. 51).

 

Metabolic Rift (5)

“For Marx, in other words, the present relation of human beings to the earth under private accumulation could be compared to slavery. Just as “private property of one man in other men” is no longer deemed acceptable, so private ownership of the earth/nature by human beings (even whole countries) must be transcended. The human relation to nature must be regulated so to guarantee its existence “in an improved state to succeeding generations.” His reference to the notion of “good heads of the household” hearkened back to the ancient Greek notion of household or oikos from which we get both “economy” (from oikonomia, or household management) and “ecology “(from oikologia or household study). Marx pointed to the necessity of a more radical, sustainable relation of human beings to production in accord with what we would now view as ecological rather than merely economic notions. “Freedom, in this sphere,” the realm of natural necessity, he insisted, “can consist only in this, that socialized man, the associated producers, govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under their collective control...accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy” (p. 51).

What is the Alternative to Capitalism?

Although Bellamy Foster allows for the possibility of a “weakly sustainable” capitalism through the introduction of “greener” technologies, he personally favor the replacement of capitalism by a democratic transition to a “strongly sustainable” type of socialism.

What Kind of Transition?

Bellamy Foster argues for a mass movement that would extend and deepen democracy from the political sphere into the workplace and communities, and into national and global economies. The historical analogies would be the labor movement, civil rights, and women’s movements—but this time on a global scale.