L5: Eco-socialism

Eco-socialism challenge

• challenges us to extend vision of environmental politics nexus

  • To think of politics and in terms of society

    • Interwoven

  • Interrogate how the now politics of environment nexus is related to economy

Multiplicity of environmental politics

• Environmental politics or "eco-politics" currently takes many different forms

• E.g., youth activists, degrowthers, indigenous communities pitted against corporate extractors, environmental feminists, green New Dealers, eco-nationalists, etc.

• Each form has different diagnosis-prescription about what's causing environmental degradation and what would be needed to correct it

  • Eco politics is all over the place

    • Large, confused terrain

    • Perspectives are conflictual/ at odds with one another 

• This moment of political confusion is also one of possibility

Fraser’s eco-socialism

• trans-environmental

• Anti-capitalist

• Counter-hegemonic

Counter-hegemonic bloc that is trans-environmental and anti-capitalist —> new eco-socialist perspective

Fraser’s eco-socialism: trans-environmental

• Environmental crises linked to social and political crises

  • Connects enviornmental concerns to other social concerns

    • Not stand alone problem, but link it to other concerns

    • Binds environmental and non-environmental issues together

• Environmental issues bound to non-environmental issues

Fraser’s eco-socialism: anti-capitalist

• Capitalism is a common driver behind environmental, social, and political crises

• A fundamental contradiction within capitalism means it creates crises in all three domains

• Therefore, shared rejection of capitalism could be unifying

• The link between environmental and non-environmental is capitalism

  • Capitalism creates different types of crises, on purpose and accidentally

Fraser’s eco-socialism: counter-hegemonic

• In a world organized by capital, an anti-capitalist position is definitionally counter-hegemonic

• By definition, to be counter-hegemonic it needs to be anti-capitalist (against status quo)

Fraser: confusion clarified

• "Capitalism non-accidentally creates environmental crises" # "Only capitalism creates environmental crises"

  • Environmental devastation is not unique to capitalism

• Non-capitalist societies can, but are not structurally compels them to destroy the environment

  • Contingent: nothing inherent or built in to their structure that compels them to destroy the environment

• By contrast, capitalism can't help but generate environmental harm because of a contradiction baked into its structure

• For eco-socialists, unlike for green Keynesians, capitalism cannot be made adequately greener

  • Both see capitalism as the cause but Keynesians think capitalism can be made more environmentally sound, eco-socialism does not

Capitalism: what

• System of economic production and exchange predicated on growth and accumulation

Also something more:

• System for organizing the relationship between a) economic production and exchange b) their supporting, "non-economic" conditions and materials

Capitalism: contradiction

• Capitalism organizes the relationship between economy and non-economy in a contradictory and self-undermining way

• Capitalism divorces economy (value creating) from non-economy (not value creating)

• Therefore, capitalism invites economy to free ride on non-economic resources

  • Encourages people to snatch up non-economic resources as quickly and as cheaply as possible without thinking about replenishing it

    • Free-riding corrodes

      • Capitalism needs non-economic resources to function, but encourages to deplete them 

  • Ends up incentivizing the destruction of the resources they need

Capitalism: contradiction diagram

Capitalism: non-economic contradictions

Capitalism needs:

• environment as a) tap for inputs b) sink for waste

• society for a) care work of human labor b) care work of human cooperation

• politics for a) security b) legal protection of private property c) policies that enable accumulation

  • Eats away at poltical support it needs to prosper

But by designating each as "non-economic," capitalism encourages economy to free ride on and corrode:

• environmental resources

• social resources

• political resources

This means capitalism simultaneously needs and trashes:

• environment, leading to environmental crises (i.e., capital's environmental or ecological contradiction)

• society, leading to social crises (i.e., capital's social contradiction)

• politics, leading to political crises (i.e., capital's political contradiction)

Capitalism contradictions conclusion

Ecological expression of contradictions

 

Despite needing it, capitalism segregates it (depends on but trashes)

•  Severs nature from human economy

• Puts emphasis on anything that create value, anything that doesn’t isn’t as important

Capitalism sees environment and society + politics in the same way (non-economic resources)

• Needed for the systems to work, but don’t actually create any value (money) so they are not ‘important’

  • Sees no economic value  —> encourage to free-ride again

Fraser on capitalism and contradiction

Capitalisms economy is always on verge of destroying its own ecological system

Contradiction is structural

• can’t save planet if we don’t change the structure

 The social, environmental and political are interconnected, intersects

• Social reproduction is intertwined with ecological reproduction (eg. Life and death)

Non-economic interconnected

• Environment, society, and polity interconnected

  • If something goes wrong in one arena, it is likely to go wrong in the other as well

• Therefore, crisis in one domain likely to mean crisis in others

  • Capitalisms antagonization of one leads to the antagonization of the other

• This analytical complexity is an opportunity for solidarity and coalition building

  • E.g., environmental crises are often also political crises because states manage the boundary between environment and economy, making environmental decisions also political decisions

Non-economic interconnected: global color line

• Extracts labor from whole races

  • Though colonialism or post-colonialism means

• Effects their environment

• Capitalism undermining enviornment, policy and society is also racial

  • Creates a political opportunity —> can’t disentangle capitalisms racial harm and environmental harm

    • Create blocs —> if you are committed to racial cause, you should be committed to environmental cause and vise versa 

Eco-socialism vs single-issue environmentalism

• Interconnection of "non-economic" domains, and their racialization, challenges single-issue environmentalism

• As strategy (shallower critique): single-issue environmentalism bypasses opportunity for coalition-building

• As ideology (deeper critique): single-issue environmentalism accepts capitalism's separation of economy and environment

Capital’s contradiction in history

• The history of capitalism demonstrates systematic creation of interconnected environmental, social, and political crises

• When crises come to a head, one "accumulation regime," will be replaced by another (NB Fraser tracks four such "accumulation regimes")

• But each new period will eventually create new environmental, social, and political crises of its own

  • Each period has new economic and non-economic resources

• Because it too will segregate economy from non-economy, generating environmental, social, and political free-riding

  • Dooms each to crisis

• The history of capitalism is a cyclical pattern of: accumulation regime; crisis; new accumulation regime; new crisis, etc.

• Fraser is agnostic about whether climate change will put an end to this pattern

  • The cyclical pattern might be coming to an end: there might not be enough time for a new system to emerge

Metabolic rift

disruption of society's ability to generate energy needed to sustain and regenerate itself

• Eco-socialists see capitalism as especially vulnerable to metabolic rifts because of how it relates to its "non-economic" bases

• Ex. Soil nutrient drain

Ecological imperialism

taking resources from capital's periphery to compensate for metabolic rift at capital's core

• Eco-socialists see this as capitalism's standard "fix" to metabolic rifts

  • Ecological imperialism often follows metabolic rifts

• Unsustainable growth at capitalism's center or core is propped up and sustained via material pillaging and degradation at capitalism's periphery

Fraser’s liberal-colonial period

• Characterized by metabolic rift in Global North

• Mass agriculture shipped from countryside to cities to feed newly concentrated factory laborers

• Food produced and consumed in one place returns nutrients to the soil, but food produced and consumed in different places doesn't, leading to declining soil fertility

• Newly industrialized Global North experiences soil-nutrient crisis threatening food supplies

• Industrial capital creates a metabolic rift within capitalist society

Liberal-colonial period example: Guano

19th century must have natural resource

Guano = bird poop

• Guano: fertilizer traditionally used by indigenous peoples of South America

• As industrial agriculture depletes soil fertility in the Global North, interest in Global South guano deposits grows

• Peru: key guano exporter to Global North, guano revenue makes up large part of state revenue by late 1800s

• Guano trade profitable but environmentally taxing

  • Unique geography and aesthetic of guano islands erased by extraction

  • Guano producing birds driven away and slaughtered

  • Metabolic rift in North creates environmental destruction in
    South

Liberal-colonial period example: Guano And labor

socially destructive

• Early 19th century Peruvian labor shortage leads to immigration law subsidizing import of contract laborers

• European merchants import Chinese laborers through coercion and deception under horrific transport conditions

• Chinese laborers employed on plantations, railroads, and in the guano business under slave-like conditions (guano mining thought to be worst)

• Compensating for metabolic rift in the Global North via ecological imperialism leads to inhumane, racialized exploitation of labor (i.e., social crisis) in the Global South

Liberal-colonial period example: Nitrates (second fix)

Must-Have Natural Resource

• Nitrates: a second fix for capital's depletion of soil fertility in the Global North

• Found in Peru and Bolivia, nitrates start to rival guano as the export fertilizer of choice

• Peru monopolizes nitrates, expropriates private investors, many of whom are foreign (especially British)

• Bolivia raises taxes on nitrate exports

• Monopolization and taxation anger foreign investors

• War of the Pacific, AKA The Nitrate War, 1879-1883

Liberal-colonial period example: the nitrate war

• Chile backed by Britain vs. Peru and Bolivia

• Chile, victorious, claims all nitrate zones held by Peru and Bolivia

• British investors also win big

  • They buy up nitrate certificates issued by Peru during monopolization

  • After the war, Chile recognizes these certificates as proof of ownership

  • Meaning British stake in South American nitrates balloons on the heels of war

• Nitrate War seen at the time as a "case of British-instigated, Chilean-executed aggression" motivated by the quest for fertilizer

• Metabolic rift in Global North creates not just environmental and social crises but here also political crisis in the form of war

Eco-socialism’s takeaways

• Ecological imperialism allows the Global North to overburden its own environment by taking from environments in the Global South

• Capital's contradictory relation to the environment is sustained by ecological imperialism

• E.g., soil nutrient crisis in North displaced via environmental, social, and political crises in South

• Fraser: hope for trans-environmental bloc organized around rejection of capitalism, for her the only adequate prescription for environmental harm