[Fresh Ink] Samir Amin: Capitalism's ecological footprint condemns South to poverty

[Richard Menec]

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/57940

Capitalism's ecological footprint condemns South to poverty

Samir Amin

2009-07-23, Issue 443

The expansion of capitalism is destroying the planet and placing the future 
of people in the South in jeopardy, writes Samir Amin in this week's edition 
of Pambazuka News. Consumption levels in Europe, North America and Japan are 
four times higher than the per capita global average, a figure which already 
outstrips the earth's ecological carrying capacity. If this pattern 
continues, says Amin, its logical conclusion is 'either the actual genocide 
of the peoples of the South - as "over-population" - or at least keeping 
them in ever increasing poverty.'

1) The work of Wackernagel and Rees (first publication in English, 1996) 
instigated a major strand in radical social thinking about construction of 
the future.

The authors not only defined a new concept - that of an 'ecological 
footprint' - they also developed a metric for it. Its units are defined in 
terms of 'global hectares', comparing the biological capacity of 
societies/countries (their capacity to produce and reproduce the conditions 
for life on the planet) with their consumption of resources made available 
to them by this bio-capacity.

The authors' conclusions are worrying. At the global level, the bio-capacity 
of our planet is 2.1 global hectares (gha) per capita (ie 13.2 billion gha 
per 6.3 billion inhabitants). In contrast, the global average for 
consumption of resources was already - in the mid-1990s - 2.7 gha. This 
'average' masks a gigantic imbalance, the average for the Triad[1] (Europe, 
North America and Japan) having already reached a multiple of the order of 
four magnitudes of the global average. A good proportion of the bio-capacity 
of societies in the South is taken up by and to the advantage of these 
centres. In other words, the current expansion of capitalism is destroying 
the planet and humanity and this expansion's logical conclusion is either 
the actual genocide of the peoples of the South - as 'over-population' - or 
at least keeping them in ever increasing poverty. An eco-fascist strand of 
thought is being developed which gives legitimacy to this type of solution 
to the problem.

2) The interest of this work goes beyond its conclusions. For it is a 
question of a calculation (I use the term 'calculation' deliberately, rather 
than 'discourse') put in terms of the use value of the planet's resources, 
illustrated through their measurement in global hectares (gha), not in 
dollars.

The proof is therefore given that social use value can be the subject of 
perfectly rational calculation. This proof is decisive in its import, since 
socialism is defined in terms of a society founded on use value and not on 
exchange value. And defenders of capitalism have always held that socialism 
is an unreal utopia because - according to them - use value is not 
measurable, unless it is conflated with exchange value (defined in terms of 
'utility' in vulgar economics).

Recognition of use value (of which the measurement of economic footprints is 
but one good example) implies that socialism should be 'ecological', indeed 
can only be ecological, as Altvater proclaims ('Solar socialism' or 'no 
socialism'). But it also implies that this recognition is impossible in any 
capitalist system, even a 'reformed' one, as we shall see.

3) In his time, Marx not only suspected the existence of this problem. He 
had already expressed it through his rigorous distinction between use value 
and wealth, conflated in vulgar economics. Marx explicitly said that the 
accumulation of capital destroys the natural bases on which it is built: Man 
(the alienated, exploited, dominated and oppressed worker) and the earth 
(symbol of natural riches at the disposal of humanity). And whatever might 
be the limitations of this way of putting it, trapped within its own era, it 
nonetheless remains an illustration of a clear consciousness of the problem 
(beyond intuition) that deserves to be recognised.

It is regrettable, therefore, that the ecologists of our time, including 
Wackernagel and Rees, have not read Marx. This would have allowed them to 
take their own proposals further, to grasp their revolutionary import, and, 
of course, to go further than Marx himself on this topic.

4) This deficiency in modern ecology facilitates its capture by the ideology 
of vulgar economics from its dominant position in contemporary society. This 
capture is already under way and, indeed, considerably advanced.

Political ecology (such as that proposed by Alain Lipietz) was located from 
the beginning within the gamut of the 'pro-socialist', political Left. 
Subsequently, 'green' movements (and then political parties) located 
themselves in the Centre Left, through their expressed sympathy with social 
and international justice, their critique of 'waste', their concern with the 
fate of workers and 'poor' peoples. But, apart from the diversity of these 
movements, we should note that none of them had established a rigorous 
relationship between the authentic socialist dimension necessary to rise to 
the challenge and a recognition, no less necessary, of the ecological 
dimension. To achieve this, we should not ignore the wealth/value 
distinction originated by Marx.

Capture of ecology by vulgar ideology operates on two levels: On the one 
hand by reducing measurement of use value to an 'improved' measurement of 
exchange value, and on the other by integrating the ecological challenge 
with the ideology of 'consensus'. Both these manoeuvres undermine the clear 
realisation that ecology and capitalism are, by their nature, in opposition.

5) This capture of ecological measurement by vulgar economics is making huge 
strides. Thousands of young researchers, in the United States, and, 
imitating them, in Europe, have been mobilised in this cause.

The 'ecological costs' are, in this way of thinking, assimilated to external 
economies. The vulgar method of measuring cost/benefit in terms of exchange 
value (itself conflated with market price) is then used to define a 'fair 
price' integrating external economies and diseconomies. And Bob's your 
uncle.

It goes without saying that the work - reduced to mathematical formulas - 
done in this traditional area of vulgar economics does not say how the 'fair 
price' calculated could become that of the actual current market. It is 
presumed therefore that fiscal and other 'incentives' could be sufficiently 
effective to bring about this convergence. Any proof that this could really 
be the case is entirely absent.

In fact, as can already be seen, oligopolies have seized hold of ecology to 
justify the opening up of new fields to their destructive expansion. 
Francois Houtart provides a conclusive illustration of this in his work on 
biofuels. Since then, 'green capitalism' has been part of the obligatory 
discourse of men/women in positions of power, on both the Right and the 
Left, in the Triad (of Europe, North America and Japan), and of the 
executives of oligopolies. The ecology in question, of course, conforms to 
the vision known as 'weak sustainability' (in the usual jargon), in other 
words, marketisation of the 'rights of access to the planet's resources'. In 
the report of the United Nations commission which he chaired, presented to 
the United Nations General Assembly of 24-26 June 2009, Joseph Stiglitz 
openly embraced this position, proposing 'an auction of the world's 
resources (fishing rights, licences to pollute etc)'. This proposal quite 
simply comes down to sustaining the oligopolies in their ambition to 
mortgage further the future of the people of the South.

6) The capture of ecological discourse by the political culture of the 
consensus (a necessary expression of the conception of capitalism as the end 
of history) is equally well advanced.

This capture has an easy ride, as it is responding to the alienation and 
illusion that feed the dominant culture - that of capitalism. An easy ride 
because this culture is actual, and holds a dominant place in the minds of 
the majority of human beings, in the South as well as in the North.

In contrast, the expression of the demands of the socialist counter-culture 
is fraught with difficulty. Because socialist culture is not there in front 
of our eyes. It is part of a future to be invented, a project of 
civilisation, open to the creativity of the imagination. Slogans - such as 
'socialisation through democracy and not through the market'; 'the transfer 
of the decisive level for decision making from the economic and political 
levels to that of culture' - are not enough, despite their power to pave the 
way for the historical process of transformation. For what is at stake is a 
long 'secular' process of societal reconstruction based on principles other 
than those of capitalism, in both the North and the South, which cannot be 
supposed to take place 'rapidly'. But construction of the future, however 
far away, begins today.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Samir Amin has been the director of IDEP (the United Nations African 
Institute for Planning), the director of the Third World Forum in Dakar, 
Senegal, and a co-founder of the World Forum for Alternatives.
* Samir Amin is a contributor to Aid to Africa: Redeemer or Coloniser?, 
available to order from the Pambazuka Press website. Pambazuka News readers 
can get 20% off the recommended retail price of £12.95 - simply enter 
95641284 as the discount code when ordering online.
* Please send comments to editor at pambazuka.org or comment online at 
Pambazuka News.

NOTES [1] Translator's note: 'La Triade' (The Triad) is a term used in 
French for the three dominant economic areas in globalization, Europe, North 
America and Japan.