CAPITALISM AND THE ECOLOGICAL CRISISTeppo Eskelinen

The Left condition

Political life, theoretical marginalisation

Lack of vocabulary: from nouns to adjectives -> liberalism with a flavour (fair trade, human development, social rights). ”Social dimension”, ”public”

Ecological concerns have been forced to be framed on liberal vocabulary (green growth, left vs green etc)

Recurrent crises of capitalism are also turning points for liberal theory, also for its capacity to address ecological problems

Ecological crisisA simultaneous shortage of: resources, sinks, certainty

From problems to crisis: Often discussed merely as temporary shortage of particular resources or a shortage of a particular sink (such as climate absorbtive capacity)

Coupled with financial crisis as a general crisis of contemporary capitalism

”Peak everything”, crisis of accumulation

Limits impossible to impose within capitalism

Any attempt on decreasing production will lead to a social crisis given the current system

Addressing the ecological crisis

Consumer awareness and other economic incentive changes

”Immaterial turn”

Degrowth

Ecological investment strategy

Consumer awareness

Neoclassical strategy of locating the essence of the economic system in the act of consumption

Well-being theory, here also theory of responsibility

Neoclassical economics: marginalist logic (consumption and production), conservatism, continuity, lack of system analysis

Immaterial turn

Ever more “green economy”: services, culture etc (the creative class etc)

The "immaterial turn" can result in being only an expansion of capitalist relations and relocation of production, not “greening” of the economy

What the immaterial turn consists of: exploitation of flexible labour in the service industries, international tax avoidance, patents on life-saving medicines, biopiracy, closing down systems of co-operation such as free software or science in general

Degrowth

Strategy of decreasing / stable GDP

Why care about the GDP so much? The growth is not a process, its an outcome (by-product of accumulation)

Says nothing about the productive relations, for example financial capitalism is a degrowth strategy, just a very bad one

Ecological investments

The state undertakes investments in new energy production and distribution, transport infrastructure etc

Can affect the capital-labour relations in a variety of ways, also positive ways in full employment

Necessary rebound effect on accumulation regime: premised on increasing consumption

Leaves capitalist relations intact

Neoclassical economics

A specific understanding of “well-being”.

Addressing ecological concerns by marginalist economics… (equilibrium, continuity vs conflict, revolutions)

Conservatism: the main point in continuity, especially in modern financial economics

Equilibrium: ontology of classical cosmology

Any ecological problem is interpreted as pricing problem, externality to be priced…

Marxism

Two key Marxist analytical ideas:

The form of the society derives from its form of reproducing its social and productive relations

The form of the society derives from its “underlying revolution”

Ecological society: how can a society maintain its reproducing ecological relations longer, what kind of revolution would be the revolution of sustainability?

Expansion of capital (1)

Rosa Luxemburg: capitalist expansion = colony, demand

For whom are new products made for? Why imperialism prevails?

Not ”map colouring”, but economic imperatives

This new imperative is not raw materials, but demand

Have to force the ”natural economy” to demand (or the correct currency, also loans)

Capital needs politics, and can always move ahead from area of exploitation to another

Expansion of capital (2)

The key difference to Marx: capitalism is not a closed system, but needs non-capitalist terrains

Capitalism is not similar everywhere

Capitalist dominance vs capitalist self-destruction

Constant struggle between capitalist and non-capitalist forms

Not growth of efficiency, but growth of capitalist dominance

The green economy (1)No shift, but a new area of exploitation (quite like energy sources)

An analysis of growth: ”normal accumulation” vs crisis when new areas are needed in which to detach the producer and tools of production (comp. Scientific revolutions)

Also creation of demand: new social necessities (”radical monopoly”)

New areas of exploitation not only geographic, but also cultural etc

As in all capitalist expansion, government power is needed (commodification, patents)

The green economy (2)

At the same time as capitalism expands to new terrains, it cannot live without its ecological basis (resources, dumping)

Planetary ecology is the limit from which capitalism cannot escape: necessarily destroys its own conditions of reproduction

”The cancer stage of capitalism”

Strategies (1)

Struggle at the borderlines of capitalism

Commons, co-operatives, alternative economic systems, open software…

To what extent the ecological, cultural and temporal terrains are analogous to colonies in Luxemburg's time?

Ever more significance of struggle: capitalism can create its own terrains of exploitation

Strategies (2)

Re-inventing an economy of use-value

No commodification, abundance vs scarcity

Eco-efficiency redefined

Strategies (3)

Using the self-fulfulling logic of contemporary capitalism

In financial capitalism, value is restored fundamentally not in money, but in collective psychological beliefs (Keynes’ beauty contest generalised)

For example, value of oil

Strategies (4)

Using government power to gain ever more control

Can or cannot work in green transition, but limits must be imposed

Combining profitability and ecological concerns might be a dead-end

Would implicate gradual socialisation of the banking system