As someone who has studied Karl Marx in depth, I am sometimes challenged by certain 'Greens' to the effect that Marx has little to offer on ecology, other than a 'productivism' that reproduces all the old capitalist arrogance with respect to nature. Marx's use value is condemned for seeing nature in utilitarian and instrumental terms which is every bit as ecologically damaging as the capital system's exchange value. I ask back: "What nature?" Marx is clear that terms such as "God" and "Nature," like the Enlightenment favourites of "Man," "Humanity," and "Reason," are merely empty abstractions when detached from the social practices, structures and relations that give them substance. There are a lot of idle debates over these questions, idle because they presuppose a certain kind of ontological certainty that can never be given. Evidence doesn't settle such questions, either, and we get into problem and paralysis as a result of conflating ontology and epistemology.
I've gathered up some articles here on Marx and ecology, citing work from some people I have had the good fortune to have known and been influenced by in my own work on Marx. My own work on Marx can be found elsewhere. Here, I direct people who want to get serious about ecology - that is, want to see a resolution of the environmental crisis we face - to cease dealing with meaningless abstractions and start to engage in a critique of political economy that analyses these problems in institutional and structural terms, and starts to break the issue down into first-order and second-order mediations. In other words, analysis the contradictory dynamics at work, identify the forces driving crisis, and start to take socially effective action, rather than engage in a combination of intellectualizing ("Reason"), moralizing ("God," "Nature," "Man") and lamenting (humanity is rubbish and the world is going to end - there is no "humanity", stop demanding that "we" take action, because "we" don't exist politically and socially, "humanity" is a biological entity, not a political and institutional reality, your appeals are addressed to an entity that doesn't exist, and so, inevitably, go ignored).
The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth, i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking that is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.
Marx, Thesis II on Feuerbach
Participants in this graduate seminar “were united in expressing surprise at just how prescient Marx’s observations regarding human-environment relations were.”
It comes as a constant surprise to me that people have still to read Marx for the depth and richness of his thought. Those who do have an answer to the "what nature?" question beyond abstraction, and beyond ontologically suspect concepts, point to natural or traditional societies. That has the merit of identifying specific relations and practices, only to underline how utterly detached from institutional and societal realities such thinking is. Indeed, that lack of reality is celebrated as a virtue, given how detached contemporary techno-industrial civilization is from sources of life. I agree with the latter point. I just see ideas of returning to some past naturalism so utterly utopian as to all but invite collapse. Marx wrote that humankind only sets itself such problems as it can solve. That is, specific social relations generate not merely crises in relation to productive forces and social forms, but the means for their positive resolution. To recoil from the crises and contradictions we face demonstrates a lamentable loss of nerve and nous. I even recently saw an article being circulated by "naturalist" ecologists to the effect that Marx and Marxism are as "alien" to natural societies as are Christianity and capitalism. (“Marxism is as Alien to My Culture as Capitalism”) The article makes good points against a soulless, purposeless materialism, but tends to idealism, is utopian in thinking, regressive and nostalgic, and utterly strawmans Marx and Marxism (although note, I do argue that Marx's argument needs to be buttressed by a transcendent ethic that incorporates the spiritual dimension.) 'Like germs, European culture ...' Defenders of "European culture" will reply that human beings have never been healthier, wealthier, and more educated, and in greater numbers, than they have under capitalism. No wonder "back to nature" advocates struggle to win people over in any great number.
Marxism, capitalism, Christianity are alien to natural societies. So is everything that goes beyond a certain level of development. There's no going back. It's not even worth debating. To have expectations of that kind is to invite failure and the destruction of the social and natural environment both, with endless comment on the end and destruction of "nature" being merely a rehearsal for the certain defeat to come. If you think we can go back to such naturalism and stay there then you are deluded. The processes taking human civilization away from a stable form of existence close to nature have been long underway, the challenge is a social and institutional one, creating collective forms enabling the interchange with the environment to be undertaken consciously.
'So, I suppose to conclude this, I should state clearly that leading anyone toward Marxism is the last thing on my mind. Marxism is as alien to my culture as capitalism and Christianity are. In fact, I can say I don’t think I’m trying to lead anyone toward anything. To some extent I tried to be a “leader,” in the sense that the white media like to use that term, when the American Indian Movement was a young organization. This was a result of a confusion I no longer have. You cannot be everything to everyone. I do not propose to be used in such a fashion by my enemies. I am not a leader. I am an Oglala Lakota patriot. That is all I want and all I need to be. And I am very comfortable with who I am.”'
Whatever you want to call this type of thinking, one thing you cannot call it is "big." People who lament the absence of big ideas and then advocate a return to the garden are just hopeless, with nothing but nostalgia and lament and narcissism to offer. And I say narcissism with respect to their endless pronouncement that the planet is dying and the world is ending. Material life is finite. That's not news. Species go extinct. The time will come when the sun explodes, the earth contracts and everything will disappear, and, for materialists, there will be no memory of anything, no universal mind, no geological record, nothing. I'm seeking moderns who invested their religious hopes in their creations, sought earthly happiness and eternal life together in their machines, discarded God, were orphaned by their technological creations, and now see themselves master of nowhere. Even now, they take agency out of the hands of the "Nature" they worship to give pronouncement of the end of life that, if they are right, belongs to Nature "herself."
I'm short tempered with this stuff. I consider it manifest drivel, an emotional identification with an "alien" nature to take some kind of pleasure, or satisfaction, in "nature's revenge" upon a greedy and rapacious human species. Having proven feeble politically, having failed to persuade people in sufficient numbers to the environmental cause, having failed to meet the alternative institutions requirement, having failed to put an end to the capital system, there seems to be nothing left for some to gain some kind of satisfaction in confirmation that, indeed, the capital system will destroy the world if it isn't ended. Here we are. And I haven't got any more time to waste on it.
So here are articles containing plenty of theoretical and practical weight for those who want to get serious of resolving the social and ecological contradictions of the capital system (and an education for those who still want to talk blandly of "industrialism," "technology," "civilisation," and "humanity." The problem we face is not one of Anthropocene but of the Capitalocene - the destructive actions of particular classes of human beings organised within social structured patterns of behaviour and production relations.
'Discussions initially revolved around Marx’s concept of ‘metabolic rift,’ as elaborated by Bellamy Foster. For Marx, human-nature relations include a social-ecological metabolism carried out through labour processes:
“Labour is, first of all, a process between man and nature, a process by which man, through his own actions, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature. He confronts the materials of nature as a force of nature. He sets in motion the natural forces, which belong to his own body, his arms, legs, head and hands, in order to appropriate the materials of nature in a form adapted to his own needs. Through this movement he acts upon external nature and changes it, and in this way he simultaneously changes his own nature … It [the labour process] is the universal condition for the metabolic interaction [Stoffwechsel] between man and nature, the everlasting nature-imposed condition of human existence….” (Marx 1976 [1867]: 283, 290)
Marx, using the ecological crisis of large-scale soil degradation in United Kingdom during the first half of the 1800s, identified a ‘rift’ in this metabolism. Prior to industrialization soil nutrients were replaced by rural populations living off the land. But with the invention of Watt’s coal and water-fuelled, double-acting steam-engine, machines became mobile and “permitted production to be concentrated in towns instead of being scattered over the countryside.” (Marx 1976 [1867]: 497-498) The English countryside depopulated while in crowded London nutrients were washed away in the Thames. This ‘rift’ – produced by growing differences between the urban and rural – supported Marx’s broader claim that capitalism is inherently self-destructive.
It was suggested in the discussion groups that a ‘rift’ between humans and nature has been postulated in many academic traditions. However, the temporal location of this rift varies – for some, perhaps Marx, the origin of the rift emerged the moment humans began to modify their environment through culture (yet only became problematic during the second industrial revolution). Others, such as the environmental historian Donald Worster, might associate it with the European discovery of the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries. Earth system scientists on the other hand have suggested the ‘great acceleration’ of the second half of the twentieth-century.
Discussion turned towards the Stockholm Resilience Centre’s own plea for a ‘Reconnection to the Biosphere’ – and where and how, given Marx’s understanding of social-ecological metabolism, this ‘reconnection’ should take place. Should emphasis be placed on personal epiphanies and behavioural change? Should it be aimed at changing government policy or encouraging grass-roots innovation? Should it be geared towards challenging dominant power structures?
Discussants were united in expressing surprise at just how prescient Marx’s observations regarding human-environment relations were. Indeed, some sentences could conceivably have been used in the Brundtland Report (1987): “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].” (Marx 1959 [1894]: 530) Of course, the authors might have struggled getting such policy traction with a document explicitly quoting Marx!'
'Saito’s book is crucial today, as we face unprecedented ecological catastrophes—crises that cannot be adequately addressed without a sound theoretical framework. Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism shows us that Marx has given us more than we once thought, that we can now come closer to finishing Marx’s critique, and to building a sustainable ecosocialist world.'
The metabolic exchange between nature and society in a mode of production based upon value
‘But how the desired social-ecological sustainability can be achieved, and what form it should take if capital’s drive to accumulate is not brought to a standstill, that is to say, if Moses and the prophets are not deprived of power, is a topic that has yet to be addressed by plural economics.
Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto that until now history has been a story of class struggle. And this will continue to be the case. However, in the future struggles will not only take place concerning wages, performance and the quantity and quality of employment within the existing capitalist society, and/or if this societal framework should be overhauled, but also concerning living and working conditions in a society at the limits of planetary capacity. The organization of an imperialism of plunder, as described by David Harvey (2005), or the externalization of burdens and the placing of excessive strain on nature as a result of rational calculations made by “investors”, as described by Lessenich (2016), amount to nothing but desperately patching up a protective fence that has already been torn down. There is no other option but to create an economically efficient, socially balanced society organized democratically and ecologically according to principles of sustainability. Many will note this message with approval. But it does not come from an awareness of the advantages of a post-growth economy, because it cannot exist without transcending capitalism. As has always been the case in history, it is the result of class struggles for a future worth living in, both in the 21st century and beyond: pragmatic political efforts toward a humane and ecological shaping of the total dialectical context.’
Marx had plenty to say on the environment, and more specifically on ecology, it’s just not widely appreciated. It’s there in the notions of a metabolic order and metabolic rift.
“The recovery of the ecological-materialist foundations of Karl Marx’s thought, as embodied in his theory of metabolic rift, is redefining both Marxism and ecology in our time, reintegrating the critique of capital with critical natural science. This may seem astonishing to those who were reared on the view that Marx’s ideas were simply a synthesis of German idealism, French utopian socialism, and British political economy. However, such perspectives on classical historical materialism, which prevailed during the previous century, are now giving way to a broader recognition that Marx’s materialist conception of history is inextricably connected to the materialist conception of nature, encompassing not only the critique of political economy, but also the critical appropriation of the natural-scientific revolutions occurring in his day.”
One of my old intellectual mentors Istvan Mészáros wrote brilliantly on capital’s social metabolic order and how Marx related that to ecology. In his January 1971 Deutscher Prize Memorial Lecture, “The Necessity of Social Control,” Mészáros put the relation of “Capitalism and Ecological Destruction” at the very forefront of the burgeoning contradictions of the capital system.
Many are now applying Marxian Rift Analysis to the notion of Planetary Boundaries. The work of John Bellamy Foster is well worth checking out.
An old acquaintance of mine, Lawrence Wilde, is also worth checking out: ‘The creatures, too, must become free’: Marx and the Animal/Human Distinction
by Kohei Saito
There’s a lot of reading matter here, and I encourage people to read these articles and take notes. There is great work being done exposing an aspect of Marx’s thought that has been much neglected. And it is an aspect that is much needed. Permit me a note of ill-temper here with respect to my own comments (but don't let them detract from the arguments of the articles, these are merely quick observations rather than considered observations on my part). I studied Marx throughout the age in which the liveliest voices on the intellectual left were declaring that the age of the grand narratives is over. This was the time when the capital system, the biggest grand narrative in economic history, went bigger than ever with the globalization of economic relations. At the same time, a lot of what remained of the Left started to think and act small. There's nothing wrong with "small" as such, just as there is nothing good about "big" either. Appropriate scale matters. Power needs to be scaled downwards or rescaled upwards, in accordance with the nature of the problem to be addressed, and the forces it deals with. Questions of global concern require global modes of thought, action and organisation. It's not that profound a point, it's basic to the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, that power should reside at its most appropriate, and effective, level of competence. But instead of scale, we got the dissolution of "grand" themes, and a fragmentation of politics. There was a loss of collective organisation and action, and a fracturing into guerilla wars that were institutionally incapable of concentrating force effectively (as well as cultural advances that made a big difference to the quality of life of those so liberating, but which in themselves leave the basic socio-economic metabolism unchanged).
And now, I see certain deep ecologists lament the lack of big ideas, calling upon us - yes, that great, abstract, empty, non-existent "we" again - to go back to nature.
I'd prefer not to give this dreary eco-misanthropy publicity. It can involve you in polemics which take you away from positive work. Murray Bookchin took these people on, wasted his time and energy, and damaged his reputation in the process. He thought that these people would ensure that ecology would replace economics as the "dismal science." Bookchin was right. I note how these "end of the world" doomsters promote their views relentlessly on their websites and blogs, their books and speaking tours and radio shows. It's narcissism in my book. This Barry character penning the above article talks about "the appalling meaninglessness of being in a post-modern world." Actually, modernity's "disenchantment of the world" (in Max Weber's phrase) was all about the advance of modern science coming to relieve the world of any notion of objective value, meaning and purpose. I note this same character claiming God and gods to be "made-up" and non-existent. So what meaning does exist? "Nature?" Which science shows to be objectively valueless and meaningless. I note that Barry considers religion to be "pollution." (That use of the term "pollution" is entirely cultural and moralistic, note, and not ecological). Evolutionary biology makes existentialists of us all, I now read.
I believe that there is a human nature, not as an abstract and ideal "humanity," but as potentials unfolded in specific social relations. But this article establishes a very good point that the naturalists out there need to understand and understand quickly - we cannot base ethics and politics on "nature" in any simple naturalistic sense because there is no such "nature" except in such a basic sense as to give no moral guidance. We don't need an ethic to tell us to breath. It's the mediation of nature by human thought, action, technique and organisation that gives us the society-nature interchange within which we work out values, meanings and "ought-to-bes."
The article affirming the connection between evolutionary science and existentialist ethics puts those who extol the virtues of "nature" and condemn the "made up" ethics and politics of human beings on the spot. Rejecting God and religion, they say the only meaning of life lies in nature, except that here is science telling us that there is no meaning, and, therefore, that we have no option but to "make up" our values and meanings. That sounds liberatory, but it also begs the question. Why would anyone respect the choices of others? Creating existential meaning in a meaningless universe can only ever be a personal, subjective, arbitrary and groundless choice. And therefore involves us in a self-defeating process. There is no pre-given meaning or goodness or value or morality, therefore we ought to make one up. And where does that ought come from? "Nature." Which is what? Answer without reference to "made up" human concepts. There is life and it's imperatives, like breathing. But that's not an ethic. If we all just become natural beings, and no more, then there's no need for ethics. But that's not social living. As soon as human beings live together at any level of development, "we" invent rules and codes and culture and institutions to regulate our exchange and interaction. No wonder Montaigne, with his beautiful writing on ethical and cultural relativism, decided to stay with the Church. Why not, if it is all an existential choice?
"Big important ideas to base your life upon are in short supply. Pretty much god myths, stuff, and tribes are all we got. There is nature. And she needs us," says Barry.
Now that's the kind of language that seriously annoys me. Because it is shallow and lazy and so thoroughly misleads people who are well intentioned. Everything in nature acts as a legitimate agent except human beings. Down with humans and all they do and up with nature! This personalizing of Nature as "she" with "needs" presupposes agency on the part of a physical entity, an agency that properly belongs to human beings. What do human beings have? Creative agency, insight, skill, intelligence, culture, ethics, artefacts, technology, cities and political institutions. These are dismissed as "god myths, stuff and tribes." This kind of thinking is self-indulgent, and betrays a clear loathing of human beings. If there is no God, as characters like this tell us endlessly, then "we" are charged with taking morality into our own hands and "making it up." That's not a great new idea at all, no matter how much the likes of Stuart Kauffmann present it as the way forward for human society. That's where we are, mired in an existentialist problematic in which we have to choose for ourselves and find meaning in a meaningless world. This Barry lament merely notes the patently obvious with respect to ecological degradation, and then begs all the questions.
So where are we? There is only "nature," except this nature is meaningless and valueless say the scientists. The German for Weber's "disenchantment of the world" means "dis-godding." So if we want reenchantment, we have to put the values disparagingly referred to as "god myths" back. But human beings are rubbish, of course. A meaningless nature with a brain-washed and greedy species "are all we got." Hopeless.
And so we get the regression. Back to the garden of Eden, Barry says. Entirely missing the point of that story, to make an appeal that could almost be designed not to be heard, and which is impossible to act upon.
"Primordial, pre-modern humans were part of something that mattered. Like a cell in an organism, indigenous ways of being were part of the larger whole. Imagine the thrill of being the hunter as well as the hunted, knowing your bioregion intimately and how to use natural materials to meet your every need, lifetime intimate loving relationships with your kin and surrounding life, sitting with friends around the fire pit in the forest peering out to boundless endless stars and trying to make sense of it all."
Who, what, where and when? Even the people who produced the rock art were breaking with nature in some way via culture, and that abstraction has proceeded since. There is no going back, we solve these problems by going forwards. That's how the challenge and response of evolution works, in a social and cultural sense, not merely biological.
Even if going back to some such way of being were possible on a planet of seven billion people - and it isn't, not even remotely - then it isn't desirable. This kind of non-thinking is a tired lament, mere infantile regression, and it denotes a kind of thinking that plagues the environmental left. And I should qualify that term, because I don't see it as left, a genuine left looks at reason, science and technology and what human beings can do with it, ethically, wisely, and justly, revaluing the spiritual dimension of life at the same time. I am not directing these criticisms at them, but at regressive naturalists and primitives, anti-civilization deep ecologists (which is far from being all deep ecologists). It's a dereliction of duty on the part of those who know that the planetary ecology is unravelling. It is not the planet that will die, however, it is human civilization. And I suspect these characters would be happy to see it, and countless numbers of humans, go to oblivion. Barry concludes: "The meaning of life is nature, and universal embrace of an ecology ethic before the biosphere collapses is all that really matters anymore."
Naturalist fallacy anyone? The questions that David Attenborough the atheist puts to religious people who believe in God can be put here - "nature" is all about biological and ecological imperatives, there is no meaning to the game other than staying in the game until extinction finally comes, as it has already come to 99% of all species that have ever existed. I agree with the need for an "ecology ethic", but I am clear that such a thing is an ethic, and not a scientific law. It is not "nature" as such that constitutes this ethic, but nature seen through the eyes of reason, and nature mediated by human social practice. It's the world as a co-creative universe, in which human agency plays a key part. The Marxists I have cited on this blog "get it." And I don't doubt for a second that critics of civilization would see them as utterly "alien" to nature, an external imposition, of the same stripe of exploitative human practices bringing nature to ruination. They go all the way back to the agricultural revolution on this. Like that's news! Out of Eden and living by the sweat of your brow was precisely the moral problem we set ourselves through our ingenuity and brainy brilliance. We have to live up to our powers, or risk being made orphans of them at the same time that nature ceases to support a human parasite.
"Unimaginable horrors await all of us, indeed already afflict hundreds of millions of fellow human beings and countless members of other species, unless we end war, learn to share, stop destroying natural ecosystems, and end burning of fossil fuels."
Learn! Learn to share, engage in productive and creative labour! Indeed yes! All of which are institutional and practical questions, all of which beg a critique of political economy and the creation of constructive models of alternate economic provision. Let's have that instead of an all too familiar list of ecological destruction and predictions of "unimaginable horrors" to come. Idle pipe dreams are of no use. They make for dreary reading too. And they concede the terrain to those who are prepared to build institutions and put systems of economic provision in place. People will always go in the greater numbers to those who can provide the goods and services they need, and will always be sceptical of the vagaries associated with a future (or past) state. Where is the structural capacity to act? Where are the means of realization? The practical examples? The tangible benefits that persuade people of the viability of alternate arrangements? Don't give me "nature" and "her needs," this is politically, socially and institutionally vacuous, and people know it. Any failure here is a failure on the part of those who demand alternatives, but do not provide anything remotely plausible or feasible.
Here, I make a clear and sharp break with people misidentified as the "environmental left." They are not left at all, they are reactionary, utterly lacking in politics and civics. They have no idea how to constitute a public community or a socialized economy, nor, most importantly, how to win substantial numbers over to a political platform as eco-citizens. People are just passive consumers to them, greedy, stupid and "brain washed." "We live programmed, brain-washed lives in service to non-existent gods, fake countries, and illusory consumption," says Barry, who is utterly innocent of anything by way of a meaningful and relevant politics, ethics and economics. And that's a point that needs to be made about those who indulge in anti-civilization lamentation: they are political and institutional innocents who lack what it takes to build a viable alternative society to capitalism, and so retreat into "noble savage" mythology as a utopia of escape, setting up an impossible ideal with which to berate existing society and the people in it. People are "brain-washed?" What respect these types have for "ordinary" folk! No wonder people give them wide berth. I'm just back from a day spent at the local hospital, where I observed the staff setting about the jobs they do day in and day out. I'll tell them that they are a bunch of greedy consumers, brain-washed, deluded dupes who should be living the simple life in some neverland on the margins of civilization. This is sanctimonious, impotent moralizing that doesn't remotely engage with practical questions, and betrays a wholly unjustified sense of superiority with respect to lifestyles.
I am seeing that Murray Bookchin was entirely right on this, that there are certain types of ecologists who are misanthropes who simply want to flag up how bad humanity is, how wonderful nature is, and how the planet is accursed for human beings ever having existed. It's a copout. They paralyze the will, switch people off in droves, and all but ensure the very collapse they claim they want to avoid. They are intellectually tired and politically feeble, and their hopelessness is manifest in their endless demonology. If you are serious about solving problems, don't go pitching demands at the level of impossibility, inviting defeat. I remember seeing an interview with Jacob Bronowski, on The Ascent of Man, in which he explained human origins in terms of our ancestors not being happy with the habitual life up a tree, doing the same thing over and again for century after century. If we are serious about solutions, lets have solutions that are true to what human beings are, as revealed within specific social relations, not some vague "humanity." And if we are going to ground efforts on "nature," then lets have a nature that is mediated self-consciously by social practices, not some abstract entity whose "ethics" are no more than imperatives regarding physical processes. We are past all of that, we are in nature, modifying its processes. For good or ill, that depends on us as political and moral beings, as citizens in command of substantial institutional and technological power. How to embed that power within socially and ecologically benign relationships and use it wisely is the institutional challenge before us. Bland references to "nature" and assertions of the importance of natural processes merely duck that challenge. Let's not make demands that are entirely unrealistic, and merely give expression to an ill-disguised misanthropy. And respect people as citizens, rather than dismiss them as brain-washed dupes. Bad choices are more often than not failures of institutions and systems, not personal morality and intelligence. Engage in institutional and systemic critique and outline alternative arrangements enabling individuals to make wise choices. Without that, we carry on down the road of self-destruction, and no amount of lamentations for natural paradises lost will serve to turn things around. The human species, it seems, is so narcissistic as to think it can write its own obituary - nothing learned, everything forgotten. We are cultural beings as well as natural beings; in setting these things apart, we make self-destruction all but inevitable.
To those who think these words harsh, I simply draw attention to the relentlessly negative and bleak portrayal of the human impact on the environment, beyond certain basic forms of living, oblivious to the constructive models in governance and social provision that are being developed, should people step up and demonstrate the nerve and the nous to constitute the eco-public as active, informed citizens. Those who say there are no big ideas and there's nothing being done are simply not looking, and they are not looking because they don't want to look, in case they see something that contradicts their misanthropic prejudices, and finds hope for human betterment in lines of development that actually redeem civilization from within. Because they don't like it. If you think you can do better than capitalism, then prove it in practice. Don't give me some abstract "nature" as an "objective truth." The ontological grounds of such a thing are as every bit as uncertain as "God" as well as everything else. That's the bit that atheists have missed - every sceptical doubt they have raised against God can be turned against every other entity they care to propose. There are no such grounds, and only the inflation of epistemological questions in the modern age has made it seem things are more concrete and certain than they actually are. So I return to Marx and Thesis II on Feuerbach - when separated from practice, the question of objective truth is an abstract question, mere idle intellectualizing which cannot be resolved. "Man must prove the truth, i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice." Everything else is idle. Whatever values and meaning you claim for "God," "Nature," "Reason," "Humanity," I want to see them fleshed out with social and practical content, structures and relations. I want to see institution-building and systems analysis on the part of critics, and I want to see a genuine engagement with people as citizens in a public realm, not moralistic hectoring and lecturing and sermonizing that implies that people are greedy and stupid and deluded. The human species is the human species, that's what we're working with. Check the history books, there's bad in there, of course, and there are also immense achievements across a whole range of fields. If you despise the material, you will achieve nothing. That's the challenge. It is beholden upon critics who launch alternative ideals and values to meet the alternative institutions requirement, that is, they must propose alternative social arrangements that do not suffer from the problems of the system to be replaced, which meet the demands of people, and command loyalty and legitimacy on the part of the public. It has to be a viable social system, in other words, and not an idle pipe dream.
And there is plenty of work underway with respect to transition strategies, ecological design and commoning. I'll end with just one example, which I support.
How do you feel about "the Commons"? If you want to learn more (or convince others of the importance of Commoning!), the @P2P Foundation's new site was created with you in mind.
Hands-down, this is one of the most beautiful, simply presented introductions to "the commons". Including Q&A-style articles, infographics and illustrations, it's a powerful resource to introduce people to commoning!
You will also find case studies of communities that have put commoning concepts into practice, along with downloadable publications, more in-depth articles plus audio and video resources.
#Postgrowthalliance submission by P2P Foundation.
Real reformation? Didn't Marx imply some such thing in pursuing Engels' description of Adam Smith as the Martin Luther of political economy? (Paris Manuscripts)
This is from The Next System Project (you see, there are big ideas, and there are people out there who are putting in time and talent to prepare the ground for acting big ... are you prepared to do the same? (Or do you just want to run back to a state of innocence that is long gone and out of reach? It's the regression that comes before death.)
Six Theses on Saving the Planet Capitalism is overwhelmingly the main driver of planetary ecological collapse and it can’t be reformed enough to save the humans. The tragedy of the commodity Solutions to our ecological crisis are blindingly obvious and ready at hand, but so long as we live under capitalism, we can’t take the obvious steps to prevent ecological collapse tomorrow because to do so would precipitate economic collapse today. Why “steady state” and “degrowth” are incompatible with a viable capitalist economy Why “green capitalism” can’t save the world What would we have to do to? We would have to radically suppress fossil fuel consumption in the industrialized nations across the economy from energy generation to transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, and services. We would have to “contract and converge” production around a globally sustainable and hopefully happy average that can provide a dignified living standard for all the world’s peoples. We would have to revolutionize the production of the goods and services to minimize resource consumption and produce things to be durable, rebuildable, recyclable, and shareable, instead of disposable. We need to steer investments into things society does need like renewable energy, organic farming, public transportation, public water systems, environmental remediation, public health, and quality schools. We need to devise a rational and systematic approach to handling and eliminating waste and toxics as far as possible. If we have to shut down harmful industries then we have to provide equivalent jobs for all those displaced workers, not only because this is a moral imperative but also because, without guaranteed employment elsewhere, those workers can’t support the huge structural changes we need to make to save the humans. Most Rational planning requires democracy. Planet Democracy: Creating institutions of economic democracy Democracy requires rough socioeconomic equality. The promise of eco-socialism Impossible? Perhaps, but what’s the alternative?
Years ago I wrote about constituting "the urban public realm." Here are views very much in line with my thinking on this (I should acknowledge Murray Bookchin as a big influence too, a man who argued strongly for reason, civics and the public dimensions of social action, and took on the misanthopy of certain strains of deep ecology as a reactionary indulgence that serves to ensure the triumph of the iniquitous and exploitative forces hell-bent on destroying the social fabric and the planetary ecology. He was right.)
"This report examines the re-emergence of the urban commons as both a bottom-up emergence by citizens/commoners and a radical municipal administrative configuration. Starting with an exploration of the relationship between cities and the commons, with a particular focus on the recent revival and growth of urban commons, we attempt to answer the question of why urban commons are so crucial for a social-ecological transition. Then we review grassroots initiatives for urban commons transitions both in the global north and south, but with specific attention towards the municipal coalitions of Barcelona, Bologna, Naples, Frome and Ghent.
As a conclusion we propose an institutional framework for urban commons transitions. We look to answer the following questions: i) what can cities do to respond to the new demands of citizens as commoners; ii) what their role may be in facilitating a social-ecological transition; and iii) what institutional adaptations would favour such a role."
In the context of this report, the commons are viewed as a shared resource, which is co-owned and/or co-governed by its users and/or stakeholder communities, according to its own rules and norms. It is therefore a combination of:
an ‘object’ of cooperation, or resource, which is shared or pooled;
an activity, i.e, commoning as the maintenance and co-production of that resource; and
a mode of governance, the way decisions are made to protect the resource and allocate usage, which is related to property formats.
Defined in such a manner it is clearly distinguishable from both the private and public/state forms of managing and owning resources. Commons can be found in every social arrangement, in every region and time period. This wider framework allows us to see the re-emergence of urban commons in our particular historical conjuncture.
These municipal platforms are not solely designed for local citizens.They must form part of a multi-level structure capable of operating at the national and transnational levels. To make this happen, the municipal platforms coordinate among themselves and beyond. They aim to present viable political alternatives that channel the rising resistance to recent right-populist political developments such as Brexit and the election of Trump.
These initiatives will work if people care to invest their energy, time, skill and intelligence in them. They canalize the cooperative instincts of human beings through forms of common living and social provision to a public end, in contrast to present arrangements which divert and pervert cooperation to private ends. I'd suggest people are better using the time and talent they have in such endeavour than in making impossible demands and bemoaning how greedy and stupid and violent the human race is. In a very real sense, human life is about self-fulfilling prophecies. Be careful what you wish for ... and having been careful, back the wishes up with the practices that bring about their realization.