   D.4 What is the relationship between capitalism and the ecological crisis?

   Environmental damage has reached alarming proportions. Almost daily
   there are new upwardly revised estimates of the severity of global
   warming, ozone destruction, topsoil loss, oxygen depletion from the
   clearing of rain forests, acid rain, toxic wastes and pesticide
   residues in food and water, the accelerating extinction rate of natural
   species, etc., etc. Almost all scientists now recognise that global
   warming may soon become irreversible, with devastating results for
   humanity. Those few who reject this consensus are usually paid by
   corporations with a vested interest in denying the reality of what
   their companies are doing to the planet (such as oil companies). That
   sections of the ruling class have become aware of the damage inflicted
   on the planet's eco-systems suggests that we have only a few decades
   before they irreparably damaged.

   Most anarchists see the ecological crisis as rooted in the psychology
   of domination, which emerged with the rise of hierarchy (including
   patriarchy, classes, and the first primitive states) during the Late
   Neolithic. Murray Bookchin, one of the pioneers of eco-anarchism,
   points out that "[t]he hierarchies, classes, propertied forms, and
   statist institutions that emerged with social domination were carried
   over conceptually into humanity's relationship with nature. Nature too
   became increasingly regarded as a mere resource, an object, a raw
   material to be exploited as ruthlessly as slaves on a latifundium."
   [Toward an Ecological Society p. 41] In his view, without uprooting the
   psychology of domination, all attempts to stave off ecological
   catastrophe are likely to be mere palliatives and so doomed to failure.

   Bookchin argues that "the conflict between humanity and nature is an
   extension of the conflict between human and human. Unless the ecology
   movement encompasses the problem of domination in all its aspects, it
   will contribute nothing toward eliminating the root causes of the
   ecological crisis of our time. If the ecology movement stops at mere
   reformism in pollution and conservation control - at mere
   'environmentalism' - without dealing radically with the need for an
   expanded concept of revolution, it will merely serve as a safety value
   for the existing system of natural and human exploitation." [Op. Cit.,
   p. 43] Since capitalism is the vehicle through which the psychology of
   domination finds its most ecologically destructive outlet, most
   eco-anarchists give the highest priority to dismantling it:

     "Literally, the system in its endless devouring of nature will
     reduce the entire biosphere to the fragile simplicity of our desert
     and arctic biomes. We will be reversing the process of organic
     evolution which has differentiated flora and fauna into increasingly
     complex forms and relationships, thereby creating a simpler and less
     stable world of life. The consequences of this appalling regression
     are predictable enough in the long run -- the biosphere will become
     so fragile that it will eventually collapse from the standpoint
     human survival needs and remove the organic preconditions for human
     life. That this will eventuate from a society based on production
     for the sake of production is . . . merely a matter of time,
     although when it will occur is impossible to predict." [Op. Cit., p.
     68]

   This is not to say that ecological destruction did not exist before the
   rise of capitalism. This is not the case. Social problems, and the
   environmental destruction they create, "lie not only in the conflict
   between wage labour and capital" they also "lie in the conflicts
   between age-groups and sexes within the family, hierarchical modes of
   instruction in the schools, the bureaucratic usurpation of power within
   the city, and ethnic divisions within society. Ultimately, they stem
   from a hierarchical sensibility of command and obedience that begins
   with the family and merely reaches its most visible social form in the
   factory, bureaucracy and military. I cannot emphasise too strongly that
   these problems emerged long before capitalism." However, capitalism is
   the dominant economic form today and so the "modern urban crisis
   largely reflects the divisions that capitalism has produced between
   society and nature." [Op. Cit., p. 29 and p. 28]

   Capitalism, unlike previous class and hierarchical systems, has an
   expansionist nature which makes it incompatible with the planet's
   ecology. So it is important to stress that capitalism must be
   eliminated because it cannot reform itself so as to become "environment
   friendly," contrary to the claims of so-called "green" capitalists.
   This is because "[c]apitalism not only validates precapitalist notions
   of the domination of nature, . . . it turns the plunder of nature into
   society's law of life. To quibble with this kind of system about its
   values, to try to frighten it with visions about the consequences of
   growth is to quarrel with its very metabolism. One might more easily
   persuade a green plant to desist from photosynthesis than to ask the
   bourgeois economy to desist from capital accumulation." [Op. Cit., p.
   66]

   Thus capitalism causes ecological destruction because it is based upon
   domination (of human over human and so humanity over nature) and
   continual, endless growth (for without growth, capitalism would die).
   This can be seen from the fact that industrial production has increased
   fifty fold between 1950 and the 1990s. Obviously such expansion in a
   finite environment cannot go on indefinitely without disastrous
   consequences. Yet it is impossible in principle for capitalism to kick
   its addiction to growth. It is important to understand why.

   Capitalism is based on production for profit. In order to stay
   profitable, a firm needs to make a profit. In other words, money must
   become more money. This can be done in two ways. Firstly, a firm can
   produce new goods, either in response to an existing need or (by means
   of advertising) by creating a new one. Secondly, by producing a new
   good more cheaply than other firms in the same industry in order to
   successfully compete. If one firm increases its productivity (as all
   firms must try to do), it will be able to produce more cheaply, thus
   undercutting its competition and capturing more market share (until
   eventually it forces less profitable firms into bankruptcy). Hence,
   constantly increasing productivity is essential for survival.

   There are two ways to increase productivity, either by passing on costs
   to third parties (externalities) or by investing in new means of
   production. The former involves, for example, polluting the surrounding
   environment or increasing the exploitation of workers (e.g. longer
   hours and/or more intense work for the same amount of pay). The latter
   involves introducing new technologies that reduce the amount of labour
   necessary to produce the same product or service. Due to the struggle
   of workers to prevent increases in the level of their exploitation and
   by citizens to stop pollution, new technologies are usually the main
   way that productivity is increased under capitalism (though of course
   capitalists are always looking for ways to avoid regulations and to
   increase the exploitation of workers on a given technology by other
   means as well).

   But new technologies are expensive, which means that in order to pay
   for continuous upgrades, a firm must continually sell more of what it
   produces, and so must keep expanding its capital. To stay in the same
   place under capitalism is to tempt crisis -- thus a firm must always
   strive for more profits and thus must always expand and invest. In
   order to survive, a firm must constantly expand and upgrade its capital
   and production levels so it can sell enough to keep expanding and
   upgrading its capital -- i.e. "grow or die," or "production for the
   sake of production" (to user Marx's term). This means that the
   accumulation of capital is at the heart of the system and so it is
   impossible in principle for capitalism to solve the ecological crisis,
   because "grow or die" is inherent in its nature:

     "To speak of 'limits to growth' under a capitalistic market economy
     is as meaningless as to speak of limits of warfare under a warrior
     society. The moral pieties, that are voiced today by many
     well-meaning environmentalists, are as naive as the moral pieties of
     multinationals are manipulative. Capitalism can no more be
     'persuaded' to limit growth than a human being can be 'persuaded' to
     stop breathing. Attempts to 'green' capitalism, to make it
     'ecological', are doomed by the very nature of the system as a
     system of endless growth." [Bookchin, Remaking Society, pp. 93-94]

   As long as capitalism exists, it will necessarily continue its "endless
   devouring of nature," until it removes the "organic preconditions for
   human life." For this reason there can be no compromise with
   capitalism: We must destroy it before it destroys us. And time is
   running out.

   Capitalists, of course, do not accept this conclusion. Many simply
   ignore the evidence or view the situation through rose-coloured
   spectacles, maintaining that ecological problems are not as serious as
   they seem or that science will find a way to solve them before it's too
   late. Some are aware of the problem, but they fail to understand its
   roots and, as such, advocate reforms which are based on either
   regulation or (more usually in these neo-liberal days) on "market"
   based solutions. In [1]section E we will show why these arguments are
   unsound and why libertarian socialism is our best hope for preventing
   ecological catastrophe.

References

   1. file://localhost/home/mauro/baku/debianize/maint/anarchy/secEcon.html
