ECO-SOCIALISM

intro

• helps us unpack how en relates to politics and society

• she helps us how to interrogate how its related

Multiplicity of Environmental Politics

• Environmental politics or “ecopolitics” currently takes many different forms

  • because env and egology are open ended and are given meaning through practice

  • she begins by cataloging the wide range that occupy the pol landscape

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

  • they illustrate how env politics is all over the place

  • large, confused, and contested terrain

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

  • because nothing is set theres a opp for a coalition and mobalization

• This moment of political confusion is also one of possibility

Fraser’s Eco-Socialism

• Trans-environmental

  • Environmental crises linked to social and political crises

    • connects env cncerns to social pol and env issue

    • instead of treating env degradation as a stand along prob its linked to other concerns

    • it underscores the connection between env and non env challanges

    • Environmental issues bound to non-environmental issues

• Anti-capitalist

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

    • env challanges are linked to non env challanges through capitalism

    • capitalism drives climate crisis and also rives other crisis too

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

    • a basic contradiction is non accidental and non accidental produces other kinds of crisis

  • Therefore, shared rejection of capitalism could be unifying

    • she suggests that is how env concerns are linked to non env ones

      • its what makes it trans env possible and functional

• Counter-hegemonic

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

    • runs at odds w the status quo

Anticipated Confusion Clarified

• • “Capitalism non-accidentally creates environmental crises” ≠ “Only capitalism creates environmental crises”

• Non-capitalist societies can, but are not structurally compelled, to generate environmental harm

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

  • its baked intro the structure of capitalism

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

  • both see capitalism as a cause of env crisis but green k say capitalism can be made more sound, eco socialism dont

  • eco socialists see it as destructive and contradictory

Capitalism: What

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

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

  • between the econ and non econ spheres of life that make the economy function

Capitalism: Contradiction

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

  • capitalism establishes a division and separates the econ which creates value

• Capitalism divorces economy (value creating) from noneconomy (not value creating)

• Therefore, capitalism invites economy to free ride on noneconomic resources

  • by seeing value only in the econ, it encourages citizens to take non econ resources w/o replenishing it

  • this free riding corrudes and degrades nonecon resources on which econ activity depends

  • capitalism needs resources to function but also depletes them

  • capitalism saws off the branch that it sits on

  • = contradictory

Capitalism: Contradiction Diagram

• “Economic” Activity understood to create value

• “Non-Economic” Inputs understood not to have value ↳ Free-riding and depletion [Environment, Society, Politics located here]

• = this basic contradiction : relates to the env contradictory way and relates to the social and pol in a contradictory way as well

Capitalism: 3 “Non-Economic” Contradictions

• Capitalism needs

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

    • tap for production inputs and a sink for the disposal for waste

  • -society for a) carework of human labor b) carework of human cooperation

    • it segregates it from the env from free and chea stuff devoid of value and is self rejuvenating

    • because it based on growth the effect of that segregation is ironic

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

    • compelled to grow capital and max profits ppl are incentivizes to accumulate natural resources for as little as they can regardless of env impact

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

  • -environmental resources

    • not only natural resources

  • social resources

    • non econ care work is integral to society

    • to produce literal human bodies that perform labour and create value

    • and social bonds that make co-op possible

    • sees no econ value in the carework that goes into social

    • ppl freeride on human care work

      • non accidentally generates social crisis

  • political resources

    • capitalism depends and trashes the material, legal, and political, pre-recs

    • it needs security forces

    • it needs legal systems

    • and it needs policies that aut and support continued accumilation

    • it sees non econ value in politics

    • this segregation for non econ support leads to depletion

    • capitalism incentivizes to chip away and avoid the power of the state

      • to avoid taxes, regulation, and privitize public goods

    • by depleting the state capitalism eats at the political support that it needs to prosper

• 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)

Fraser on Capitalism and Contradiction

• The carework that sustains society depends on the well material ppls bodies and immaterial ppls health

• connects the natural and society or habitat and community

“Non-Economic” Interconnected

• Environment, society, and polity interconnected

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

  • crisis are also social or vice versa

• This analytical complexity is an opportunity for solidarity and coalition building (i.e., those concerned about seemingly different crises actually have a shared enemy: capitalism)

  • when capitalism undermines its natural pre reqs it also undermines it social repro ones

  • this prevents a opp for solidarity or coalition building

  • those who care abt env and social issues share the same opponent

  • this is also the care w env and polity that are entagled w one another

  • here fraser observes states manage the boundary w nature and the econ.

    • who can use the env and how

    • env decisions are also political

    • this allows for coalition building and solidarity

    • those invested in one can find common grounds w those invested in the other

      • this makes crisis more complicated and creates shared fault line

      • capitalism irritation in 1 amounts to irritation in another

• 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: Diagram

• env

• pol

• society

• both forms of exprop intersect with the destruction of nature

• capitalism also exp human communities and also communities that are on the reciving end of colonialism and neo imperial practices

  • this means capitalism is also racialized and is connected to racially othered popuations

  • this complexity creates a pol opp that we cant disentangle from its racial social pol harms. it means theres a opp for block building

    • those committed to env shoulf also be committed to racial justice or vice versa

Eco-socialism vs. Single-issue environmentalism

• Interconnection of “noneconomic” 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

  • eventually the replacement regime will create new crisis

  • the history of capitalism is the history of env social and pol crisis

  • why is it siclical?

    • when capitalism separates the econ from non econ you get a free rider effect.

    • This pushed to far creates crisis in non econ domains

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

  • diff periods generate energy , extract resources, and get rid of waste

  • each segregates the econ from the non econ

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

  • = crisis

  • it to will other it doesnt matter abt the replacement

  • it will generate new crisis

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

  • it considers that now in the face of climate change no successor regime can emerge

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

  • she empahsizes capitalism clever by replacing one era of accumulation to new crisis

  • she highlights how capitalism creates interwoven crisis in each of these periods

  • liberal colonial regimes of the 19th and 20 th cent

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

Key Terms

• 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

  • socities also need inputs to produce energy to survive

  • a metabolic rift refers to the disruption to the process to turn enough inputs into enough energy to sustain and regenerate

    • capitalism is prone to this due to its non econ basis and make it hard for capitalist societies to sustain itself

• 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

    • econ imperialism follows as resources are taken from somewhere else (unsustainably) and maintained through more peripheral spaces

    • it can happen within a single polity (not only international) but also across multiple states

    • fixed by taking resources by the margins and degrading peripheral areas

  • 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

  • but also taxing for the env

• 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

  • overtime this means soil is less fertile

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

• Industrial capital creates a metabolic rift within capitalist society

Guano 19th c. Must-Have Natural Resource

• 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

  • way to pay down its debt

  • became peru primary export

  • and mass of peru’s state revenue

• Guano trade profitable but environmentally taxing

  • Unique geography and aesthetic of guano islands erased by extraction

    • ground down and erased because extraction happened w/o regard

  • Guano producing birds driven away and slaughtered

    • profitable but also destructive

  • Metabolic rift in North creates environmental destruction in South

Guano and Labor (socially destructive)

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

  • exploited labour to address labour shortage

• 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

  • THEY WERE DEFACTO SLAVES

  • = heart of capitalism and also at its periphery

  • the imperialism had a impact of env and people.

    • peru landscape and labour wa exploited

Nitrates: Another 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

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

  • some describe as aggression motivated by fertilizer

  • gave way not only to env and social but also pol crisis

  • hunt for fertilizer lead to war motivated by capitalism creation of env crisis

    • 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