Marxism, socialism and climate change

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Marxism, socialism and climate change
By Nick Beams
22 December 2009


The issue we are discussing at this meeting—the impact of global
climate change—concerns nothing less than the future of human
civilisation. The problems are so profound and far-reaching that, to
be resolved, they require the mobilisation of all available economic,
material, scientific and technical resources.

If the current situation is not rapidly reversed, then humanity faces
a catastrophe. This will not be some single event, but rather an
ongoing worsening of social and economic conditions: drought,
increasingly violent weather events, mass population movements,
conflicts over land and water resources, and wars, even involving the
use of nuclear weapons.

Lest anyone mistakenly think that I am indulging in some kind of
socialist catastrophitis, let me quote from a report by the
high-powered American think tank, the Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS), prepared in November 2007.

The report begins by noting that “the scientific community has been
shocked at how fast some effects of global warming are unfolding,
which suggests that many of the estimates considered most probable
have been too conservative.” Nothing has happened in the past two
years to alter that conclusion. In fact, the tendency noted by the
CSIS has become even more apparent. The report sets out three
scenarios based on expected, severe and catastrophic climate change.

Under the expected scenario, based on an average global temperature
increase of 1.3 degrees Celsius by 2040, outcomes include:
“[H]eightened internal and cross-border tensions caused by large-scale
migrations, conflicts sparked by resource scarcity, particularly in
the weak and failing states of Africa; increased disease
proliferation, which will have economic consequences; and some
geopolitical reordering as nations adjust to shifts in resources and
prevalence of disease.”

Remember, this was written by a national security think tank that
provides advice to US government authorities, and so when it refers to
“geopolitical reordering”, it has in mind actions of the kind that
have been carried out in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Under the scenario of severe climate change, a not unlikely situation,
in which average global temperature increases by 2.6 degrees Celsius
by 2040, “massive non-linear events in the global environment give
rise to massive nonlinear societal events.” The report warns that
“nations around the world will be overwhelmed by the scale of change
and the pernicious challenges, such as pandemic disease.” The internal
cohesion of nations, including the US, will be under great stress as a
result of migration, changes in agricultural patterns and the
availability of water. “The flooding of coastal communities around the
world, especially in the Netherlands, the United States, South Asia,
and China, has the potential to challenge regional and even national
identities. Armed conflicts between nations over resources, such as
the Nile and its tributaries, are likely and nuclear war is possible…
In this scenario, climate change provokes a permanent shift in the
relationship of humankind to nature.”

The catastrophic scenario, where average global temperature rises 5.6
degrees Celsius by the year 2100, would see a world like that depicted
in the movie Mad Max “only hotter, with no beaches, and perhaps even
more chaos.” “The collapse and chaos associated with extreme climate
change would destabilise virtually every aspect of modern life.” The
only comparable scenario, according to the study, was the situation
that would have resulted from a US-Soviet nuclear war.

There is a stark contrast between the serious and rapidly worsening
climate change situation and the deliberations of so-called “world
leaders” at the Copenhagen climate change summit. It would take far
longer than the time we have available here to go into all the twists,
turns and manoeuvres at the conference. But the essential issues are
clear: the summit is not about tackling climate change. It is a
gathering at which the major powers are working to create conditions
where they can shove the problem onto their rivals and secure the best
outcome for themselves.

A report by Johann Hari in the December 11 edition of the British
newspaper the Independent summed up the event as follows: “Every
delegate to the Copenhagen summit is being greeted by the sight of a
vast fake planet dominating the city’s central square. This swirling
globe is covered with corporate logos—the Coke brand is stamped over
Africa, while Carlsberg appears to own Asia, and McDonald’s announces
‘I’m loving it!’ in great red letters above. ‘Welcome to Hopenhagen!’
it cries. It is kept in the sky by endless blasts of hot air. This
plastic planet is the perfect symbol for this summit. The world is
being told that this is an emergency meeting to solve the climate
crisis—but here inside the Bela Centre where our leaders are
gathering, you can find only a corrupt shuffling of words, designed to
allow countries to wriggle out of the bare minimum necessary to
prevent the unravelling of the biosphere.”

One of the more egregious examples of this corrupt process involves
the efforts of the Rudd Labor government to ensure an agreement that
would enable Australia and other countries with large agricultural
areas, in particular the United States and Canada, to “offset” their
carbon emissions against increased absorption of carbon by the soil.
As a report in the Sydney Morning Herald noted, because these
countries have hundreds of millions of hectares of land “very small
increases in soil carbon could generate huge reductions in their net
emissions”. This could prove very important for Australia, as the
latest figures show that its greenhouse gas emissions have risen by 82
percent since 1990. Looking at these and other, similar, reports, one
wonders whether perhaps some ironist decided that Copenhagen, the home
town of Hans Christian Andersen, the author of fairy tales, would be
the most appropriate venue for the conference.

In examining the farce at Copenhagen the following question arises: is
the manifest refusal of governments, in the face of all the evidence
and warnings from their own advisors, to respond effectively to this
crisis a product of individual regimes, personalities, leaders and so
on, or is it in fact rooted in the very structure of the present
economic and political order—a structure that makes impossible a
solution within the existing framework. Depending on how one answers
this questions, very different political perspectives flow.

Johann Hari clearly recognises that the Copenhagen summit is a fraud—a
“con” is his terminology. But he nevertheless holds out the prospect
that if the movement demanding action becomes big enough and strident
enough, if the political temperature is raised sufficiently, then a
viable regime can be established to reduce the physical temperature,
with a global environmental court taking action against any nations
that refuse to make real and rapid cuts. At the risk of sounding too
harsh, such a perspective, aimed at pressuring the various capitalist
governments into action, is a fairy tale. Let us review the basic
structures of the global capitalist system in order to make clear why.

Climate change and the contradictions of global capitalism

As soon as we begin to consider climate change, two things become
apparent. The first is that, by its very nature, the problem is global
and no national solution is possible. The second is that the
productive activity of man, that is the development of economic and
social life, cannot be considered outside of mankind’s relationship to
nature. Or, to put it another way, there is no separation between the
activities of mankind, a part and product of nature, and the rest of
nature, upon which mankind depends. Mankind’s productive activity must
be carried out, not independent of, but in accordance with, the laws
of nature. In considering these questions, however, we run headlong
into the very foundations of the global capitalist order.

Take the issue of the nation-state system. Marxism long ago pointed to
the contradiction between the development of the global economy under
capitalism and the division of the world into conflicting nation
states. That contradiction exploded nearly 100 years ago in the form
of World War I. The expansion of the world economy over the preceding
four decades had given rise to a conflict between the major capitalist
powers for markets, profits and resources.

The same contradiction has been on display in the wake of the global
financial crisis. The response of every capitalist power to the crisis
that erupted one year ago was to put in place measures to protect its
own economy and financial system above all else. Now it has emerged to
the surface once again at the Copenhagen summit, as each of the major
powers attempts to shove off the costs of climate change onto its
rivals, minimise its own costs and secure the maximum benefits from
any emissions trading system that may be established.

In his book Commonwealth, Economics for a Crowded Planet, the American
economist Jeffrey Sachs pointed to the significance of this issue for
the survival of civilisation. “The defining challenge of the
twenty-first century,” he wrote, “will be to face the reality that
humanity shares a common fate on a crowded planet. That common fate
will require new forms of global co-operation, a fundamental point of
blinding simplicity that many world leaders have yet to understand or
embrace… In the twenty-first century our global society will flourish
or perish according to our ability to find common ground across the
world on a set of shared objectives and on practical means to achieve
them.”

Sachs warned that a “clash of civilisations” could develop over rising
tensions fueled by scarce energy resources, economic inequalities, and
environmental problems, which “could be our last and utterly
devastating clash.” He continued: “The paradox of a unified global
economy and divided global society poses the greatest single threat to
the planet because it makes impossible the cooperation needed to
address the remaining challenges. A clash of civilisations, if we
survived one, would undo all that humanity has built and would cast a
shadow for generations to come.” Sachs, a committed opponent of
Marxism, is nevertheless forced to recognise that the central
contradiction of the world capitalist system identified by Marxists,
threatens the very existence of mankind.

But having pointed to the problem, what solution did Sachs propose?
Merely the vague hope that a new John F. Kennedy would emerge and
inaugurate an era of international co-operation like that which
accompanied the nuclear test ban treaty of 1963. Attempts to conjure
up some great leader—Sachs clearly had Obama in mind when he wrote his
book in 2008—who will inspire global co-operation simply ignore the
fact that the nation-state system is not some kind of snake skin that
can simply be cast off. It provides the structural foundation for the
capitalist political economy.

The so-called “world leaders” gathered in Copenhagen represent the
interests of their “own” nation-states and of the capitalist class
whose interests those states serve. And those interests conflict and
collide with the other capitalist great powers. As Obama emphasised in
his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize, he represents the American
nation-state and acts in its interests. The nation-state system can no
more be reshaped or re-fashioned to meet the new requirements of
global humanity than could the system of feudal states be accommodated
to the growth of the productive forces that took place with the
emergence of capitalism. The feudal state system had to be overturned
by the bourgeoisie. Now the global working class must overturn the
capitalist nation-state system in order that humanity can overcome the
problems it confronts and resume its historical progress.

But even if the problems caused by the nation-state are acknowledged,
is it not possible to overcome them through the establishment of some
kind of global market mechanism that will force the various nations to
act in the common good? Through the market, it is argued, we could
have the “greening of capitalism”. The radical solutions advanced by
the socialists are therefore not necessary. Let us consider these claims.

In his 2006 report on climate change, the former World Bank economist
Nicholas Stern acknowledged that global warming and the dangers it
posed were the outcome of the greatest market failure in history. But
the “solutions” advocated by governments and their committees of
experts around the world, propose to use the market to deal with the
very problem that it has created. No one asked the obvious question:
if the market produced this disaster, what other catastrophes does it
have in store? The so-called experts were silent, but the market
itself spoke loud and clear. Little more than a year after Stern’s
report, the market mechanisms of the global financial system brought
about the greatest financial crash in three quarters of a century,
pointing to the fact that billions of people all over the world now
live and work in an economic system over which they have no control
and which threatens to plunge them into poverty at any time, without
warning. As we shall see, the global financial crisis has the same
structure as the crisis of global warming. The mass of humanity is
threatened by the results of its own economic activity over which,
however, it has no control, under the present socio-economic order.

Marx and humanity’s relationship with nature

A frequent argument advanced by various representatives of so-called
“green” political tendencies is that, despite the obvious connection
between the operation of the capitalist system, based on private
ownership of the means of production, and the drive for profit, which
forms the dynamic of this system, Marxism has no answer to the problem
of climate change because it is wedded to the development of the
productive forces, which is the source of the problem. Such arguments
serve a definite political purpose. They are aimed at turning all
those people, especially young people, who have begun to raise
concerns about the operations of the capitalist economy, away from the
development of a socialist perspective and back into the arms of the
bourgeoisie and its parties, or into an attempt to find
individualistic solutions. An example of this latter genre is a
recently-published book by Raj Patel, entitled The Value of Nothing.
Enthusiastically endorsed by the author Naomi Klein, the book calls
for a “rebalancing” of market society. How is such a goal to be
achieved? According to Patel, the problem really lies in ourselves. We
must focus on “the plucking out of desire from our hearts” by
developing a middle path, based on a “Buddhist theory of value”. Patel
does not want to be seen to be advocating some kind of lifestyle cult
and so claims that Buddhism provides insights into changes in the
wider world. According to Patel, the Dalai Lama himself has taken a
stand on his preferred economic system, and has dubbed himself a
“Marxist monk” and a “Buddhist Marxist”. I raise this example in order
to make clear where the rejection of a political and social struggle
against capitalism must inevitably lead … back to mysticism and
religion, while laying the blame for the crisis on our own “desires”.

An examination of Marx’s work shows that, far from being outdated, as
claimed by the “greens” and their ideologues, the great revolutionist
provides the basic methodological framework and analysis without which
this crisis cannot be understood, much less tackled and resolved.
Marx, of course, did not deal directly with the problem of climate
change. But he did deal with the social relations of capitalism and
their impact on man’s relationship with nature, out of which this
crisis has arisen.

At the beginning of Chapter 7 of Volume I of Capital, Marx provides an
important analysis of the labour process: “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.” Labour, Marx explains, is a nature-imposed necessity. The
issue is not whether man engages in labour, in productive activity. He
has to, out of necessity. The question is: how does that process take
place? It is through labour that man “controls the metabolism between
himself and nature.” Central to the concept of “metabolism” is the
idea that it is the basis on which a complex set of interactions takes
place, enabling life and growth.

While the problem of climate change had not emerged when Marx wrote,
the impact of capitalism upon the natural environment was apparent,
giving rise to major problems in the sphere of agriculture, problems
that remain to this day.

The social relations of capitalism are based, in the final analysis,
on the buying and selling of labour-power, or the capacity to work, in
the market. Markets existed long before capitalism. Historically,
however, the market and commodity production did not become the
dominant form of economic organisation until production was carried
out on the basis of wage-labour, that is when labour power came onto
the market.

How did this social system arise? How did wage labour emerge? Clearly,
these are not products of nature, but of historical development.
Wage-labour emerged when the immediate producers had been separated
from the means of production—first of all from the land and nature—and
had no way of meeting their needs other than by selling their labour
power to the owners of the means of production and the land. It is
this separation of man and nature, a metabolic rift, that lies at the
root of the crisis of climate change.

This metabolic rift made its initial appearance in the sphere of
agriculture. At the conclusion of Chapter 15 of Volume 1 of Capital
Marx writes: “Capitalist production collects the population together
in great centres, and causes the urban population to achieve an
ever-growing preponderance. This has two results. On the one hand it
concentrates the historical motive power of society; on the other
hand, it disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and the earth,
i.e., it prevents the return to the soil of its constituent elements
consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; hence it hinders the
operation of the eternal natural condition for the lasting fertility
of the soil. Thus it destroys at the same time the physical health of
the urban worker, and the intellectual life of the rural worker.” [1]
The waste products of the great cities were not returned to the land
but dispersed, leading to a decline in the fertility of the soil that
had to be restored by other means. Today, this is carried out via
manufactured nitrogenous fertilisers, creating new sets of problems in
the form of water run offs.

Global warming, the result of the release of carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at a rate faster than can be
reabsorbed, is a further development of the processes delineated by
Marx in relation to capitalist agriculture. What is the solution? Marx
pointed to it as follows: “The capitalist mode of production completes
the disintegration of the primitive familial union which bound
agriculture and manufacture together when they were both at an
undeveloped and childlike stage. But at the same time it creates the
material conditions for a new and higher synthesis, a union of
agriculture and industry on the basis of the forms that have developed
during the period of their antagonistic isolation.” [2] The solution
to the crisis lies not in a return to the past—that is impossible in
any case—but the establishment of a higher social and economic order.

Such a synthesis can be achieved only through the overturn of
capitalist property relations, based on the private ownership of the
means of production and the nation-state system, and the bringing of
the productive forces under the collective and democratic control of
society as a whole. In Volume III of Capital Marx put the issue as
follows: “Freedom … can consist only in this, that socialised man, the
associated producers, govern the human metabolism with nature in a
rational way, bringing it under their collective control instead of
being dominated by it as a blind power; accomplishing it with the
least expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and
appropriate for their human nature.” [3] In earlier periods such
passages from Marx might have been passed over as some kind of
fanciful vision of the future. No longer. The perspective outlined
here must form the basis for tackling and resolving the ever-growing
problems caused by the rift between man and nature that has been
created by capitalism. Far from Marx being outdated, the world has, so
to speak, caught up with Marx.

All the “solutions” advanced by the “green” opponents of Marxism have
this in common. Opposing the overthrow of the capitalist system by
means of the socialist revolution as the key to resolving the problems
of global warming, either as “unrealistic,” not immediate enough, or
because of some alleged hostility of socialism to nature, they advance
a perspective which, in the final analysis, advocates cutting back the
productive forces, above all the human population itself. In other
words, in rejecting Marxism and its program for the establishment of
new and higher social relations of production, they align themselves
historically with the reactionary cleric and apologist for capitalism,
Thomas Malthus, who, at the beginning of the nineteenth century,
sought to rule out prospects for human progress on the grounds that
the growth of population outran the resources available to society.

Our examination of Marx’s analysis explains why all the so-called
market solutions, rather than resolving this crisis, can only compound
it. Of course, these measures are, on the face of it, absurd. They
maintain that pollution can be overcome by creating a market in rights
and permits to pollute. Even if, by some miracle never before
witnessed in any other market, all the false accounting and corrupt
methods were eliminated from the carbon market, the fundamental
problem would remain. The system of market relations is based on the
separation of the producers from the means of production, and it is
this separation—the metabolic rift between man and nature—that is the
source of the crisis.

Science, technology and capitalism

Analysis of the structural foundations of global capitalism also makes
clear why no technological solution is possible within the framework
of the profit system. This is not to say that it is beyond the
scientific capacity and ingenuity of mankind to develop new
technologies, which can begin to tackle this problem and open the way
to a solution. But such measures will require global co-operation and
collaboration between scientists, researchers, institutions and the
population as a whole, on a level that is impossible within the
present social order. A moment’s consideration shows why. New
technologies in this area would be the source of enormous profits.
That is why the results of research and technological breakthroughs
will be jealously guarded. But a regime that places barriers to the
free flow of information and the results of research is inimical to
the development of science. Under conditions where universities and
scientific institutions are forced to rely on corporate sponsorship,
information cannot be freely shared. Nor can research findings be
completely trusted, given that one is not sure who exactly is paying
for the results. Isaac Newton once said: “if I have seen further, it
is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants”. Today, scientific
research is subject to the principle of “user pays”.

Overcoming the dangers to human civilisation posed by global warming
is inseparably bound up with the struggle for international socialism,
that is, for a program based on the overthrow of the system of private
ownership and national states. The world economy must be brought under
the democratic control of the associated producers, in other words,
the international working class—blue collar, white collar,
professional, non-professional. Only then can it be controlled and
regulated to meet human need, including the need for a sustainable
environment. The dictates of profit must be overturned and the laws of
reason applied to social and economic relationships.

Confronted with this perspective, the defenders of the present order
rush to the barricades. In the past they would have invoked the name
of God. That is no longer viable, so they claim that conscious control
and regulation of the economy is simply impossible.

Martin Wolf, the economics commentator of the Financial Times, is one
such defender. He is not a climate change denier, nor an uncritical
defender of the capitalist market, which, he insists, must be subject
to certain controls. However, he maintains that, for all its faults,
no other economic system is possible. Writing on November 10, on the
20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, he insisted that this
event had “ended … the delusion of a rationally planned economy”.
Leaving aside the question of the Stalinist economies of the Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe, which, as we have explained, were neither
socialist nor rationally planned, Wolf’s remarks raise a more general
issue.

Consider the implications of what he is saying. Mankind is able to
probe the furthest corners of the universe, reaching back in time
almost to the Big Bang. At the micro level, mankind has penetrated the
structure of life, mapping the genetic structure of the human race
itself. The science of quantum mechanics has made possible vast
advances in computer and information technology, creating the
conditions for the exchange of information on a global scale virtually
instantaneously, not to speak of music, literature and film. Mankind
is able to do all this and much more, but it cannot subject its own
economic and social organisation to conscious control and regulation
in order to meet human need. Wolf’s thesis that the laws of reason
can, and indeed must, be deployed in every area of human endeavour,
except the organisation of economic and social life, is simply an
absurdity.

Rational democratic control and regulation of the economy, ending the
domination of the blind workings of the market, is not merely a matter
of preference. It is a necessity. I noted earlier the similarity
between the structure of the global financial crisis and the climate
change crisis. I shall now return to this issue.

In 2007-2008 the operations of the financial markets plunged the world
economy into the most serious crisis since the Great Depression.
Suddenly, the lives of billions of people the world over were
threatened. And the crisis is far from over. Indeed, there are clear
indications that further financial storms, potentially even more
devastating, are in the making. At the same time, governments
everywhere are preparing massive budget spending cuts to make the
working class and ordinary people pay for the hundreds of billions of
dollars handed out in the first round of bank bailouts.

How did this disaster happen? No one wanted it, no one organised
it—not even those who were able to benefit from it. It simply erupted
from the operation of the market. But what is the market? It is not
some kind of evil world spirit that periodically inflicts a
catastrophe upon mankind, as if somehow to punish the human race for
its sins. The market is the outcome of the collective economic
activity of humanity as a whole. But it rules over society, outside
the conscious control of anyone. Our modes of expression reflect this.
We talk about the market doing this and that, frequently resorting to
weather analogies—clouds on the economic horizon, storms brewing and
so on.

The form of the climate change crisis is the same. Mankind is
threatened by the outcome of its own economic activity, over which it
has no control. Let us assume that all the so-called world leaders
assembled today at the Copenhagen summit genuinely want to achieve an
agreement to reduce greenhouse gases. They are unable to do so,
because of the structure of the economic system over which they
preside. The debacle of Copenhagen is yet another indication that this
system has become the greatest danger to the continuation of human
civilisation and must be overturned.

But then we confront the argument of those who say they agree with our
general analysis of the necessity for socialism, but insist that this
will take too long and something has to be done “right now”. Socialism
may be all well and good, as a general aim, but the fight for a
socialist perspective cannot deal with problems, such as climate
change, that have to tackled immediately. Such arguments are generally
advanced under the banner of “realism”. In fact they constitute the
most unrealistic perspective of all. The Copenhagen conference will no
doubt declare that climate change represents a great danger, that it
is a very important issue, that something must be done. Indeed, it is
so serious that a conference will be convened next year in Mexico—to
discuss it again!

The overthrow of capitalism and the socialist transformation of
society will not be easy. It will involve many twists and turns. It
will demand sacrifice and commitment, because it is the most difficult
and complex task in human history. But it is propelled by powerful and
irresolvable contradictions at the heart of the capitalist system—a
system that, having once played a decisive role in the advance of
human civilisation, now quite literally threatens it with destruction.
Realism! It is most unrealistic to believe that somehow, some way, if
only enough pressure is applied, the capitalist system can be reformed
in such a way as to provide a future for the next generation and all
the generations to come.

Let me conclude with Marx’s summing up of the issue: “From the
standpoint of a higher socio-economic formation, the private property
of particular individuals in the earth will appear just as absurd as
the private property of one man in other men. Even an entire society,
a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are
not the 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].” [4] Such a perspective is only possible on the basis of
the program for which our party, the International Committee of the
Fourth International, and the Socialist Equality Party, fights. I urge
you to join its ranks.

Notes:

1. Capital, Volume I, p. 637

2. Ibid, p. 637

3. Capital, Volume III, p. 959.

4. Ibid, p. 911.

http://wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/etnb-d22.shtml

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