mo nt hlyreview.o rg https://monthlyreview.org/1998/03/01/marxism-metaphors-and-eco logical-po litics

David Harvey more on Marxist Eco logy

Essays in this series…

David Harvey teaches in the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at The John HopkinsUniversity. His books include Social Justice and the City; The Limits to Capital; The Condition ofPostmodernity, and, most recently, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference.

It has, unf ortunately, taken f ar too long f or Marxists to take environmental issues seriously. There aresome good reasons f or this, including the undoubtedly “bourgeois” f lavor of many of the issues polit icizedunder that heading (such as “quality of lif e” f or the relatively af f luent, romanticism of nature, andsentimentality about animals) and the middle class domination of environmental movements. Against this, itmust also be recognised that communist/socialist government have of ten ignored environmental issues totheir own detriment (the pollution of Lake Baikal, the destruction of the Aral Sea, def orestation in China,being environmental disasters commensurate with many of those attributable to capitalism). Environmentalissues must be taken seriously. The only interesting question is how to do it.

I crit icized John Bellamy Foster ’s The Vulnerable Planet (“TVP”) in my book Justice, Nature and theGeography of Difference (“JNGD”) because I think he takes some wrong turns in conf ronting the problem.While I applaud his attempts to link the production of many environmental problems to the dynamics ofcapitalism (and agree with much of what he has to say on that topic), he concedes f ar too much to therhetoric of the environmentalists. Like many others on the lef t who take environmentalism seriously, hetreads on dangerous conceptual ground without recognizing it. In particular, he appeals to metaphors thatcreate polit ical dif f icult ies rather than advantages f or socialists.

I would like to make two main points in response to his comments. The f irst is that the metaphors to whichwe necessarily appeal in our discourses about “nature” are dangerous (see JNGD, chapter 7). We cannotdo without them, but we should proceed with caution and select with care. They cannot be laid aside asFoster does with a casual “they are not to be taken too literally.” Some metaphors can just as easily workas justif ications f or ecof ascism and sociobiology as f or socialism. The second point is that, while it isimportant to do a caref ul and respectf ul reading of what environmentalists say (everything f rom deepecology and social anarchism, through the “scientif ic and managerial” literature, to the environmental justicemovement) we do not have to give up on our own language (Marxism) in order to translate much of what isimportant in their arguments into our own polit ical tradit ion. I illustrate these two points by taking up twoissues brought up in his book and in his commentary on JNGD.

Metaphors of Crisis, Collapse and “The End of Nature”

The idea of crisis, imminent collapse, or even “the end of nature” plays an overwhelmingly powerf ul role inshaping most varieties of environmental discourse. The appeal of this rhetoric to the lef t is partly based ondisplacing the crisis and collapse rhetoric about capitalism f rom class conf lict to the environmental issue.Foster (TVP) opens his argument thus: “the destruction of the planet in the sense of making it unusablef or human purposes has grown to such an extent that it now threatens the continuation of much of nature,as well as the survival and development of society itself ” (my italics draw attention to a dif f erent part of thesentence then that emphasized in Foster ’s comment).

I re-emphasize here my view that a socialist polit ics that rests on the view that environmental catastropheis imminent is a sign of weakness. It echoes that long and not very impressive history of proclaiming “thef inal collapse of capitalism” in the Marxist tradit ion. This does not mean there are no environmentalproblems. But we should resist the idea that the very existence of a “vulnerable planet” (Foster ’s term) isthreatened.

Leaving aside the question (which mainly preoccupies Foster) of whether we can indeed ‘threaten the

continuation of much of nature,” in the short or long run, there are short-run polit ical dif f icult ies with theidea. If the collapse does not materialize in the near term or the grounds f or such expectations areseriously disputed, with strong appeals to both scientif ic theory and evidence, then environmentalism ingeneral (including its socialist variant) gets discredited f or crying “wolf ” too of ten. There is now a wholegenre of writ ing along those lines. Not all of it comes f orm the right wing and some of the rebuttals, suchas that of the Ehrlichs and the statement of the World Scientists, cited so approvingly by Foster, are everybit as problematic as the literature they rebut. The Ehrlichs’ posit ion on population control is very hard f orsocialists to accept and the language of “humanity on a collision course with the natural world” reeks ofthose abstract and ideological conceptions of which Marx complained “whenever (natural scientists)venture beyond the bounds of their own specialit ies.”1 Looking f or signs of catastrophe (always popularwith the media) may also divert our attention f rom some of the longer-term more gradual changes thatought also to command our attention. Besides, I am by no means as sanguine as many that a rhetoric ofcrisis and imminent catastrophe will sharpen our minds in the direction of class polit ics or even cooperative,collective, and democratic responses as opposed to a “lif eboat ethic” in which the powerf ul pitch the restoverboard.

It is primarily f or this reason also that the invocation of “limits” and “ecoscarcity” as a means to f ocus ourattention upon environmental issues makes me as polit ically nervous as it makes me theoreticallysuspicious (see JNGD, pp. 139-49). While there are versions of this argument that accept that “limits and“ecoscarcit ies” are socially evaluated and produced (in which case the question of limits in nature gets sosof tened as to become almost irrelevant), it is hard to keep this line of thinking f rom slipping into someversion of naturalism (the absolutism of f ixed limits in nature) or, worse still, Malthusianism (even to thepoint where many radical environmentalists now claim that Malthus was right rather than wrong—and I notehere that Foster (TVP) heads his list of environmental dif f icult ies with the polit ically loaded Malthusian term“overpopulation,” without any qualif ication, and approvingly quotes Malthusians like the Ehrlichs at severalpoints in his book as well as in his comments).

We have, I want to suggest, a choice of background metaphors f or our deliberations. Against the idea thatwe are headed over the clif f into some abyss (collapse) or that we are about to run into a solid andimmovable brick wall (limits), I think it f ar more consistent with both the better sorts of environmentalthinking and Marx’s dialectical materialism to construe ourselves as embedded within an on-going f low ofliving processes that we can individually and collectively af f ect through our actions, at the same time as weare prof oundly af f ected by all manner of events (some self - induced) within the world we inhabit. Toconstrue ourselves as active agents caught within the “web of lif e” is a much more usef ul metaphor thanthe linear thinking that has us heading of f a clif f or crashing into a brick wall.2

But it is then necessary to f ind a way to construct socialist environmentalist perspectives within the “webof lif e” metaphor. It is f irst usef ul to consider the directly “negative” and “posit ive” consequences of diversehuman activit ies, both f or ourselves (with appropriate concern f or class, social, and national distinctions)and f or others (including non-human species and whole habitats). But, even more importantly, we need torecognize how our actions f ilter through the web of interconnections that make up the living world with allmanner of unintended consequences. Foster is here quite correct to point out that the question of scale(both temporal and, I also add, geographical) is vital to how we identif y and assess the seriousness ofenvironmental issues (this point is also made in JNGD, pp. 203-4, but needs much more detailedelaboration). Global issues (warming and loss of biodiversity) contrast with micro- local issues (radon in thebasement) and short- term dif f icult ies intermingle with long-term trends. I agree in principle, however, thatwe need to f ocus on the transf ormations occurring around us and not try to get ourselves of f the hook byinvoking, f or example, geological t ime as opposed to historical t ime. (Ironically, Foster tries to def lect thef orce of my crit icism by making it sound as if I may be correct geologically but incorrect historically!)

How, then, should we assess our contemporary situation? A strong case can be made that theenvironmental transf ormations now underway are larger scale, riskier, and more f ar-reaching and complexin their implications (materially, spiritually, aesthetically) than ever bef ore in human history (cf . the citationf rom Science given in Foster ’s comment). The quantitative shif ts that have occurred in the last half of thetwentieth century in, f or example, scientif ic knowledge and engineering capacities, industrial output, waste

generation, urbanization, population growth, international trade, f ossil f uel consumption, resourceextraction—just to name some of the most important f eatures—imply a qualitative shif t in environmentalimpacts and potential unintended consequences that require a comparable qualitative shif t in ourresponses and our thinking. The web of planetary lif e has become heavily permeated with human inf luences(on this point Foster and I clearly agree). The environmental movement (broadly understood) has pioneeredin alerting us to some of the risks and uncertainties entailed. As a result, we now see that there is f ar moreto the environmental issue than the conventional Malthusian view that population growth might outstripresources and generate crises of subsistence. (Up until as late as the 1970s this was the dominant f ormenvironmentalism took.) Furthermore, the evidence f or widespread unintended consequences (somedistinctly harmf ul to us and others unnecessarily harmf ul to other species) of such massive environmentalchanges, though not uncontested, is f ar more persuasive (cf . the case of the disappearing f rogs cited byFoster) than the idea that we are reaching some limit, that environmental catastrophe is just around thecorner or that we are about to destroy the planet earth.

Prudence in the f ace of such risks is a perf ectly reasonable posture. This provides a more likely basis f orf orging some collective sense (and a class polit ics) of how to approach environmental issues. There are,however, several points to be made here. First, the def init ion of “environmental issues” has its ownparticular bias, with those that af f ect the poor, the marginalised, and the working classes f requently beingignored (occupational saf ety and health, f or example) while those that af f ect the rich and the af f luent getemphasized (f or example, poverty is a f ar more important cause of shortened lif e expectations in theUnited States than smoking, but it is smoking that gets all the attention). Secondly, environmental impactsf requently have a social bias (class, racial, gender discriminations are evident in, say, the location of toxicwaste sites and the global impacts of resource depletion or environmental degradation). Thirdly, some risksand uncertainties can strike anywhere, even against the rich and the powerf ul. The smoke f rom the f iresthat raged in Indonesia in the f all of 1997 did not respect national or class boundaries any more than didthe cholera that swept nineteenth century cit ies, the latter provoking a universal rather than specif icallyclass-based approach to public health. The threat of increased hurricane f requencies f rom global warmingterrif ies insurance companies as much as it irritates General Motors and the oil companies to hear thatthey should cut back on their global plans f or expansion because of the threat of emissions to theatmosphere. Finally, the distinction between the production/prevention of risks and the capitalistic biastowards consumption/commodif ication of cures has signif icance.

Once the environmental issue is conceptualized in part as directly a class issue, then this conf iguration ofarguments f its into a def inite kind of class polit ics. We need, in the f irst instance, to understand thespecif ic class content and def init ion of environmental issues and seek alliances around their resolution(as, f or example, in the environmental justice movement—see JNGD chapter 13). The polit ics of this kind ofenvironmental improvement can then replicate that which limited the length of the working day as “theworking class’s power of attack grew with the number of its allies in those social layers not directlyinterested in the question.”3

But there is a more general point. The risk and uncertainty we now experience acquires its scale, complexity,and f ar-reaching implications by virtue of processes that have produced the massive industrial,technological, urban, demographic, lif estyle, and intellectual transf ormations that we have witnessed in thelatter half of the twentieth century. In this, a relatively small number of key institutions, such as the modernstate and its adjuncts, multinational f irms and f inance capital, and “big” science and technology, have playeda dominant and guiding role. For all the inner diversity, some sort of hegemonic economistic-engineeringdiscourse has also come to dominate discussion of environmental questions, commodif ying everything andsubjecting almost all transactions (including those connected to the production of knowledge) to thesingular logic of commercial prof itability and the cost-benef it calculus. The production of our environmentaldif f icult ies, both f or the working class, the marginalised and the impoverished (many of whom have hadtheir resource base stripped f rom under them by a rapacious commercialism) as well as f or some segmentsof capital and the rich and the af f luent, is broadly the result of this hegemonic class project (and itsreigning neoliberal philosophy). It invites as response an equally hegemonic class project of risk preventionand reduction, resource recuperation and control, in which the working class and the marginalised could

take a leading role. In perf orming that role the whole question of constructing an alternative mode ofproduction, exchange and consumption that is risk reducing and environmentally, as well as socially, justand sensit ive can be posed. Such a polit ics must rest on the creation of class alliances in which theenvironmental issue and a more satisf ying “relation to nature” have a prominent place alongside thereconstruction of social relations and modes of production and consumption. A polit ical project of this sortdoes not, I insist, need a rhetoric of limits or collapse to work ef f ectively and well. But it does requirecaref ul and respectf ul negotiation with many environmental movements that clearly see that capitalism isincompatible with a satisf actory resolution of the environmental questions that bother them.

“Nature Knows Best”

Let it be said at the outset that “negotiation” with environmentalists can be tough and of ten f rustratinggiven the passion with which they believe in their particular causes. That passion is of ten inf ectious andcaptivating (particularly in a polit ical climate where cynicism abounds) leading those of us on the lef t whowish to take environmental issues seriously with litt le option except to concede something to environmentalrhetoric. But I think we should be caref ul as to what we will or will not concede. To paraphrase James BoydWhite, we should not f eel that respect f or environmentalism obliges us to erase our own polit ical culture asif all value lay with them and none with us.4

Foster (119-24) uncrit ically takes the principle “nature knows best” f rom Commoner5—which is a seeminglyrespectable source. Such a proposition has wide currency within the environmental movement, embracingmuch of deep ecology (Naess), the land ethicists (f ollowers of Leopold), ecof eminists, and a wide range ofecocentric movements. It is closely associated with the idea that values are in some sense “intrinsic” or“inherent” in nature. I cannot possibly unpack all the various meanings which attach to that idea here (seeJNGD chapter 7), but I think Foster is wrong to advance “nature knows best” as an acceptable principle f orthe lef t.

And here is why. If nature knows best and we want the best then we should surrender our own judgementto what nature knows. But how do we know what nature knows? Sociobiologists (E. O. Wilson) andevolutionists (R. Dawkins) claim that their detailed studies of nature give them a privileged posit ion to tellus what nature knows and that “science may soon be in a posit ion to investigate the very origin andmeaning of human values, f rom which all ethical pronouncements and much of polit ical practice f low.”6 NowI am sure that Foster would not want to be tarred with such thinking. (Indeed, his proclaimedanthropocentrism elsewhere puts him in opposition to it.) Worse still, the Nazis also claimed the mantle off ollowing natural law as do a whole swathe of supremacist movements that believe in some version ofsocial Darwinism or even a modif ied creationism (which is singularly patriarchal in tone). We can, of course,dispute that this is what nature knows, but then the whole discussion gets out of hand and quite absurd,(or purely tautological, as with the social ecologists’ thesis that “humanity is nature becoming conscious ofitself ”) with every prophet, mystic, and seer, as well as mad scientist claiming to have the inside track onwhat nature knows or what it is important to be conscious about.

I pref er to take the view that nature knows nothing in particular though we, as human beings, know a lotabout what we, as a species, have and can do to each other, to ourselves and to the world we inhabit.Socialist polit ics is about using that accumulated knowledge f or distinctively socialist ends. Those endshave nothing whatsoever to do with what nature knows. But they have everything to do with ourunderstanding of how nature works and certainly ought also to have a lot to say about what our individualand collective relation to nature as well as to each other should be.

Towards a Basic Formulation

We clearly need a socialist language in which to articulate environmental issues. The proposal I ventured inJNGD is to construct a language of dialectics and of historical-geographical materialism. The basicf ormulation goes roughly like this. We are a species on earth like any other, endowed, like any other, withspecif ic capacities and powers that are put to use to modif y environments in ways that are conducive toour own sustenance and reproduction. In this we are no dif f erent f rom all other species (f rom termites to

beavers) that modif y their environments while adapting f urther to the environments they themselves helpconstruct.

This is the f undamental conception of the dialectics of social and ecological change. It is, as Marx put it,“the nature imposed condition of our existence” that we are in a metabolic relation to the world around us,that we modif y it at the same time as we modif y ourselves through our activit ies and labors. But, we like allother species, have some very species-specif ic capacities and powers, arguably the most important ofwhich in our case are our ability to alter and adapt to our f orms of social organization—to create, f orexample, class structures and institutions—to build a long historical memory through language, toaccumulate knowledge and understandings that are collectively available to us as guide to f uture action, toref lect on what we have done and do in ways that permit learning f rom experience, and, by virtue of ourparticular dexterit ies, to build all kinds of adjuncts (e.g. tools, technologies, organizational f orms andcommunications systems) to enhance our capacities and powers. The ef f ect is to make the speed andscale of adaption to and transf ormation of our species being and of our species environment highlysensitive to the pace and direction of cultural, technological, economic, social and polit ical changes. Inrecent t imes, such changes have increasingly become captive of capitalistic modes of behavior,organization, social relations and ways of thought.

This conception is species centered and thereby commits me resolutely to an anthropocentric stance. Icannot see (here, too, I agree with Foster) that we can ever avoid asserting our own identity, beingexpressive of who we are and what we can become, and asserting our species capacities and powers in theworld we inhabit. To construe the matter any other way is, in my view, to f ool ourselves (alienate ourselves)as to who and what we are. In this sense the Marxian concept of “species being” continues to resonate. Butif our task is “to be distinctively ourselves in a world of others,” this does not mean that we cannot, if wewish, “create a f rame that includes both self and other, neither dominant, in an image of f undamentalequality.”7 We can strive to think like a mountain, like the ebola virus, or like the spotted owl, and constructour actions in response to such imaginaries, but it is still we who do the thinking and we who choose to useour capacities and powers that way. And that principle applies cross-culturally too. I can strive to think likean Aborigine, like a Chipko peasant, like Rupert Murdoch (f or he inhabits a cultural world I f ind hard tocomprehend). In these cases, however, my capacity to empathize and put myself in the other ’s shoes isf urther aided by the possibility to translate across languages and to study material activit ies and variegatedattitudes to nature through caref ul observation. But it is still an “I” or a “we” who does the imagining and thetranslation and it is always in the end through my (our) language that the thinking gets expressed. Thepolit ical and ethical thrust here lies of course in the choice to try to think like the other, the choice of whoor what I try to think like (why a mountain and not the ebola virus or why a Chipko peasant and not RubertMurdoch?) And the ef f ort to build f rames of thought and action that relate across self and others inparticular ways. And we do all of that because that is how we can explore our capacities and powers andbecome something other than what we already are. If respect and love of others is vital to respect and loveof self , then socialists should surely approach all others, including that of nature, in exactly such a spirit.Concern f or our environment is concern f or ourselves.

I here learn a great deal f rom trying to understand ecocentric lines of thought and the works, f or example,of deep ecologists, land ethicists, and animal rights theorists. I may not accept their views but I do respectthem and try as f aithf ully as I can to transcribe and translate their thoughts into my own resolutelyanthropocentric and Marxian f ramework. They help concentrate my mind on the qualitative as well as thequantitative conditions of our metabolic relation to the world and raise important issues about the mannerof relating across species and ecological boundaries that have tradit ionally been lef t on one side in manyMarxist accounts.

I am aided in this by a striking parallel between a relational version of dialectics (which has always beencentral to my own interpretation of the Marxian tradit ion) and many other f orms of environmentaldiscourses. From deep ecology and other “green” crit iques of Enlightenment and Cartesian instrumentality(including those developed in ecof eminism) I f ind sustenance f or a more nuanced dialectical and process-based argument concerning our posit ionality in the natural world. Writers as diverse as Whitehead andCobb, Naess, and Plumwood have something important to say on this and I do not f ind it impossible to

translate at least some of what they say into the language of a relational Marxism. This does not lead meto accept some of the more strident rejections of Enlightenment thought (indeed, I think on balance it waspositive and liberatory), but it reinf orces a rejection of mechanistic and posit ivist accounts of ourpostionality in an relation to the rest of the natural world that have of ten inf ected Marxism as well asconventional bourgeois f orms of analysis.

Marxism emphasizes, of course, the role of transf ormative activity—human labor—as f undamental to ourspecies being. The evolution of human societies through organization of labor process is an integral partof the evolutionary process in general. Marx was, I believe, broadly right to see his studies on a continuumwith those of Darwin, though of course, it is the evolution of our specif ic species-powers that f orm themain f ocus of Marx’s attention. This f ocus on the labor process as the active point at which we as aspecies appropriate the grand other of the natural world we inhabit is vital to my own conception and I wishthat more environmentalists would f ocus on it (rather than drif t ing of f , as so many do, into more mystical,contemplative, or “consumerist”—e.g. nature as a posit ional good—ways of thinking). We can never ignorethe conditions (social, polit ical, economic) under which we appropriate and transf orm the world around us inaccordance with our needs, wants, and desires. Nor can we ignore the extraordinary achievements of thebourgeois era in creating new technological, social and polit ical possibilit ies and developing extraordinarilysophisticated organizational f orms (divisions of labor, specializations of f unctions, institutional structures,f orms of governance). How we “make a living” and organize our lif e chances is always a f undamentalmaterialist ref erence point. To abandon it is, in Marxian language, to become alienated. To abandon theworld of possibilit ies that the bourgeois era has created is to try to go backwards (as so manyenvironmentalists are prone to do) rather than f orward into some more satisf ying relation to nature and toothers. And one of the possibilit ies opened up is to manage our relations with each other as well as withthe natural world in a f ar more prudent, satisf ying and cautionary way than is currently the case.

There is, then, plenty of room f or expansion of the Marxian argument through engagement withenvironmentalism. If , as Marx put it, we change ourselves through changing the world and if , at the end ofevery labor process we get a result that existed in our imagination bef ore being converted into a materialf act through labor, then there is a distinctive role f or the imaginary, both in def ining the nature of laborprocesses and, even more importantly, in def ining who and what we might or will become through arestructuring of our metabolic interactions in the world. The implication is that no socialist project totransf orm social relations can af f ord to ignore the experiential qualit ies (including aesthetic and emotiveresponses and meanings) of metabolic relations; the imaginary of socialist transf ormation must f ocus asmuch upon its relational embeddedness in the natural world and upon its metabolic conditions as uponsocial relations and power structures. Struggles f or emancipation and self - realization are multi- rather thanuni-dimensional. There the general lines of the “green” crit ique of Marxism have been helpf ul in f orcing usto re-assess the powers of our own linguistic tradit ion. But it is also vital to hold f ast to the principles that(1) all projects to transf orm ecological relations are simultaneously projects to transf orm social relations,and (2) transf ormative activity (labor) lies at the heart of the whole dialectics of social and environmentalchange.

But which social relations need to be transf ormed? The tradit ional Marxist f ocus has, of course, been onthose of class, but environmentalists as well as many others have insisted that there is much more to itthan that. Emancipation f rom conditions of dependence coupled with self - realization are both nobleEnlightenment aims deserving of unashamed re-af f irmation and extension across the whole spectrum ofsociality. Issues of gender, of reproduction activit ies, of what happens in the living space as well as in theworkspace, of group dif f erence, of cultural diversity and of local autonomy deserve caref ul consideration. Amore nuanced view of the interplay between environmental transf ormations and sociality is seriously calledf or and I think we, on the lef t, should embrace rather than reject that idea even though we quite properlyinsist that the class dimension is f undamental because that is what capitalism is always about.

On the other hand, Marxists scarcely need any urging to see that nothing short of a radical replacement ofthe capitalist mode of production will suf f ice to institute a new and saner regime of socio-ecologicalrelations. Commodif ication and market processes cannot provide answers to most of the environmentalproblems we encounter (indeed, they are a central part of the problem). The importance of a radical

agenda, clearly recognized throughout much of the non-managerial wing of environmentalism, arises f orthe very simple reason that the options open within the hegemonic powers of capitalistic institutions andprocesses are f ar too limited in relation to the risks we f ace. If , f or example, the strategy of the automobileindustry is to bring China up to the levels of the United States in car ownership then it hardly needsemphasizing that the environmental risks are huge. And even that wing of capitalism that acknowledges thatsomething called “sustainability” has importance, judges sustainability as much in terms of continuouscapital accumulation as it does in terms of socio-ecological well-being. From this standpoint, it seems thatthere is no option except to engage in massive conf rontations with many of the central institutions of acapitalistic world order. On this point I know that Foster and I would thoroughly agree and want to makecommon cause. It is a nexus where much of the lef t and many within the environmental movement can alsoconverge to make common cause if they do wish. And it just as surely def ines the f oundations f or anecologically sensit ive Marxism.

Notes

1. Marx, K., Capital, vol. I (New York: Viking, 1977), p. 494.

2. See, e.g., Capra, F., The Web of Life (New York: Doubleday, 1996) f or an environmentalistcollaboration of this concept.

3. Marx, K., Capital, vol. I, p. 409.

4. White, J., Justice as Translation (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1990).

5. Commoner, B., The Closing Circle (New York: Knopf , 1971).

6. Wilson, E., On Human Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978) p. 5.

7. White, J., op. cit., pp. 257-64.