'
SAMIR
AMIN
The ecology issue and would-be sustainable
development
1.
The work of Wackernagel
and Rees (first publication in English, 1996)
instigated a major strand in radical social thinking
about construction of the future.
The
authors not only defined a new concept, that of an
ecological footprint. They also developed a metric
for it, whose units are defined in terms of “global
hectares”, comparing the biological capacity of
societies/countries (their capacity to produce and
reproduce the conditions for life on the planet)
with their consumption of resources made available
to them by this bio-capacity.
The
authors’ conclusions are worrying. At the global
level, the bio-capacity of our planet is 2.1 global
hectares (gha) per capita(ie 13.2 billion gha per
6.3 billion inhabitants). In contrast, the global
average for consumption of resources was already –
in the mid-1990s – 2.7 gha. This “average” masks a
gigantic imbalance, the average for the Triad
(Europe, North America and Japan) having already
reached a multiple of the order of four magnitudes
of the global average. A good proportion of the
bio-capacity of societies in the South is taken up
by and to the advantage of these centres. In other
words, the current expansion of capitalism is
destroying the Planet and humanity and this
expansion’s logical conclusion is either the actual
genocide of the peoples of the South – as
“over-population” – or at least keeping them in ever
increasing poverty. An eco-fascist strand of thought
is being developed which gives legitimacy to this
type of solution to the problem.
2.
The interest of this
work goes beyond its conclusions. For it is a
question of a calculation (I use the term
“calculation” deliberately, rather than “discourse”)
put in terms of the use value of the Planet’s
resources, illustrated through their measurement in
global hectares (gha), not in dollars.
The
proof is therefore given that social use value can
be the subject of perfectly rational calculation.
This proof is decisive in its import, since
socialism is defined in terms of a society founded
on use value and not on exchange value. And
defenders of capitalism have always held that
socialism is an unreal utopia because – according to
them – use value is not measurable, unless it is
conflated with exchange value (defined in terms of
“utility” in vulgar economics).
Recognition of use value (of which the measurement
of economic footprints is but one good example)
implies that socialism should be “ecological”,
indeed can only be ecological, as Altvater proclaims
(“Solar socialism” or “no socialism”). But it also
implies that this recognition is impossible in any
capitalist system, even a “reformed” one, as we
shall see.
3.
In his time, Marx not
only suspected the existence of this problem. He had
already expressed it through his rigorous
distinction between use value and wealth, conflated
in vulgar economics. Marx explicitly said that the
accumulation of capital destroys the natural bases
on which it is built: man (the alienated, exploited,
dominated and oppressed worker) and the earth
(symbol of natural riches at the disposal of
humanity). And whatever might be the limitations of
this way of putting it, trapped within its own era,
it nonetheless remains an illustration of a clear
consciousness of the problem (beyond intuition)
which deserves to be recognised.
It is
regrettable, therefore, that the ecologists of our
time, including Wackernagel and Rees, have not read
Marx. This would have allowed them to take their own
proposals further, to grasp their revolutionary
import, and, of course, to go further than Marx
himself on this topic.
4.
This deficiency in
modern ecology facilitates its capture by the
ideology of vulgar economics from its dominant
position in contemporary society. This capture is
already under way and, indeed, considerably
advanced.
Political ecology (such as that proposed by Alain
Lipietz) was located from the beginning within the
gamut of the “pro-socialist”, political Left.
Subsequently, “green” movements (and then political
parties) located themselves in the Centre Left,
through their expressed sympathy with social and
international justice, their critique of “waste”,
their concern with the fate of workers and “poor”
peoples. But, apart from the diversity of these
movements, we should note that none of them had
established a rigorous relationship between the
authentic socialist dimension necessary to rise to
the challenge and a recognition, no less necessary,
of the ecological dimension. To achieve this, we
should not ignore the wealth/value distinction
originated by Marx.
Capture of ecology by vulgar ideology operates on
two levels: on the one hand by reducing measurement
of use value to an “improved” measurement of
exchange value, and on the other by integrating the
ecological challenge with the ideology of
“consensus”. Both these manoeuvres undermine the
clear realisation that ecology and capitalism are,
by their nature, in opposition.
5.
This capture of
ecological measurement by vulgar economics is making
huge strides. Thousands of young researchers, in the
United States, and, imitating them, in Europe, have
been mobilised in this cause.
The
“ecological costs” are, in this way of thinking,
assimilated to external economies. The vulgar method
of measuring cost/benefit in terms of exchange value
(itself conflated with market price) is then used to
define a “fair price” integrating external economies
and diseconomies. And Bob’s your uncle.
It
goes without saying that the work – reduced to
mathematical formulas – done in this traditional
area of vulgar economics does not say how the “fair
price” calculated could become that of the actual
current market. It is presumed therefore that fiscal
and other “incentives” could be sufficiently
effective to bring about this convergence. Any proof
that this could really be the case is entirely
absent.
In
fact, as can already be seen, oligopolies have
seized hold of ecology to justify the opening up of
new fields to their destructive expansion. Francois
Houtart provides a conclusive illustration of this
in his work on biofuels. Since then, “green
capitalism” has been part of the obligatory
discourse of men/women in positions of power, on
both the Right and the Left, in the Triad (of
Europe, North America and Japan), and of the
executives of oligopolies. The ecology in question,
of course, conforms to the vision known as “weak
sustainability” (in the usual jargon), in other
words, marketisation of the “rights of access to the
planet’s resources”. In the report of the United
Nations commission which he chaired, presented to
the United Nations General Assembly of 24-26 June
2009, Stiglitz openly embraced this position,
proposing “an auction of the world’s resources
(fishing rights, licences to pollute etc)”. A
proposal which quite simply comes down to sustaining
the oligopolies in their ambition to mortgage
further the future of the people of the South.
6.
The capture of
ecological discourse by the political culture of the
consensus (a necessary expression of the conception
of capitalism as the end of history) is equally well
advanced.
This
capture has an easy ride. For it is responding to
the alienation and illusion which feed the dominant
culture, that of capitalism. An easy ride because
this culture is actual, and holds a dominant place
in the minds of the majority of human beings, in the
South as well as in the North.
In
contrast, the expression of the demands of the
socialist counter-culture is fraught with
difficulty. Because socialist culture is not there
in front of our eyes. It is part of a future to be
invented, a project of civilisation, open to the
creativity of the imagination. Slogans (such as
“socialisation through democracy and not through the
market”; “the transfer of the decisive level for
decision making from the economic and political
levels to that of culture”), are not enough, despite
their power to pave the way for the historical
process of transformation. For what is at stake is
a long “secular” process of societal reconstruction
based on principles other than those of capitalism,
in both the North and the South, which cannot be
supposed to take place “rapidly”. But construction
of the future, however far away, begins today.
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