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Eco‐Communism: Undermining the Monstrosity of Capitalism By: Jeremy Janz A spectre is haunting the world – the spectre of an ecological communalism. All the G8 nations have entered into an egomaniacal alliance to obsessively accumulate capital amongst its elite citizens while attempting to use institutionalize propaganda to exorcize this inevitable spectre: President and Prime Minister, Obama and Harper, Consumerist Radicals and illusions of Terrorist Threats. The capitalist based, centralized and conglomerated media ignores the potentialities because it threatens their precious profits. We are fed echoes of endless capitalist accumulation with the adjective “Green” attached in the attempt to make it more palatable, even revolutionary. Yet nothing can be further from the truth. Only if the earth itself is infinite can boundless accumulation be possible. This of course is not the case and thus we must enter into a new phase of equilibrium with the planet. We must enter into the Eco‐Communist phase of our social evolution in order to save Ecology. Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto that capitalism “has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom – Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions,” capitalism has a created naked, shameless, direct and brutal exploitation, all for the hording of capital amongst elite persons and private institutions who are ironically bailed out by the very system which they viciously attempt to undermine. John Bellamy Foster in his book The Ecological Revolution and Joel Kovel in his book The Enemy of Nature articulate exceptionally well capitalism’s inherent ecocide nature. Yet both of them are primarily critiques and do not offer much in the way of practical, or concrete, methods for undermining capitalism in order to bring about an ecologically based socialist revolution. They both do discuss how this system can work broadly speaking; moreover, they cite current interesting examples of Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela and others. Bill McKibben in his book Deep Economy offers up more practical ways of attempting to thwart capitalist pressures to conform. Yet on some level there seems to be a placid acceptance that it is impossible to politically revolutionize the social structures which perpetuate our ecocide. Within this work I will attempt to give a starting point from which this spectre can germinate, perpetuate and eventually flourish. Sustainability itself will require the dismemberment of capitalism which is antagonistic to sustainability. Thus we crave a redefinition of humanity’s metabolism with nature. This metabolism is the basis of all economic structures since, by its very essence, an economy necessarily metabolizes nature by creating “goods”. Yet what has gone horribly wrong is that capitalism, in its incessant expansion, surplus production and hording of accumulation, has created a hyperbolic metabolism of nature and community. To become truly sustainable we must redefine value. This will require us to move from a mindless consumerism towards a critical egalitarianism. Rather than measuring well‐being individualistically by how much we can suck and amass out of this planet and our fellow citizens, we need to shift towards a holistic model which views well‐being as ecologically and community orientated. We must ask the question: how is the community of Ecology going to flourish? It is incumbent upon society to move towards a socialist model in order to attain true sustainability. Yet we cannot underestimate the power of market forces. Supply and demand has a simplicity which would make Occam’s Razor drool. This can be seen in the perpetuation of socialist states like Cuba who have developed interesting agricultural reforms allowing “small private farms” and “pocket sized urban market gardens” coupled with a profit sharing system (McKibben 73). This “certainly isn’t unfettered capitalism” but it is allowing the simplicity of market forces to work (McKibben 75). Additionally we can also look toward the example of Kerala, India and the development of a “mixed economy”. Yet under the narcissism of unfettered capitalism, or pseudo‐socialismi, demand is manufactured through a clever psychological dopamine fuck of the population into coveting whatever it is a particular corporation is producing. The corporations have developed a consumerism completely out of touch with itself. This is by virtue of the fact that these corporations care only for expansion and profits, not the fulfillment of human need. In Marxist terminology we have exchange‐value rather than use‐value. Our culture and society is geared towards that which the corporations have defined as valuable regardless of its usefulness. A suped‐up‐V12‐mega‐4X4‐SUV is more valuable to pick up groceries and commute than riding transit or driving an economical car. The only possible reason for this is that the SUV has a greater exchange‐value since the other two options are equally, if not more, useful. By having a society and culture focused on the egocentric exchange‐value rather than the ecocentric use‐value inhibits the ability to attain sustainability. Moreover, market forces are manipulated by corporations through the manufacturing of illusory consumerist need primarily via advertising. In addition to this the profits made from such sales are drawn away from the community in which they are purchased and aggregated amongst an elite few who usually have no connection to the community from which they rob. This sucks the life blood out of the community and centralizes it into private institutions where it sits, is loaned to those from which it was stolen or reinvested with the sole purpose of more concentration of capital amongst this new aristocracy. Yet certain societies are demanding more then become slaves to multi‐national corporations. Venezuela has been accused of “resource nationalism” and “petro‐socialism”; accusations which some of us consider as complements. Rather than shipping the wealth of their nation off to multi‐national energy firms based in New York or London, Venezuela has dared to declare that this wealth is the wealth of their community. As such Venezuela has been reinvesting that wealth back into sustainable social transformation (Foster 274). Well these types of actions are condemned by the G8 and their marionette institutions (IMF, World Bank and WTO) they are applauded by the Eco‐Communist as we collectively attempt to undermine the capitalist structures on which these socially and environmentally antagonistic multi‐national corporations/NGOs/institutions are based. The question then remains, how do we integrate the simplicity of the market with the sustainability and egalitarianism of Eco‐Communism. Firstly, any such social revolution is best done subversively without a violent uprising. In our contemporary conception large scale social revolutions take on violent form. The beheading of King Charles I in England; the American revolution; the French revolution; the Bolshevik revolution; the Cultural revolution... We feel that to change the political apparatus we must violently resist the establishment. Yet such revolutions cause untold hardships and destroy the very ecology we seek to sustain. Thus we must pursue a more subversive methodology. Causing such a social change within a country as vast and diverse as Canada presents many obstacles. The current political climate in Canada is apathetic at best due to a lack of leadership from our major party leaders. As it stands Canadian’s immediate social needs are met and thus they do not feel too affected by any desire for major social transformation. Yet this is taking Canada as a whole. We can break our vast country down into smaller more manageable parts where there are hubs of ecological/social outrage in places like Vancouver and Victoria. The key to social transformation is to start at the community level and build from there to the provincial and eventually the federal. This social change must come from the grassroots of the community as the current federal, provincial and even municipal apparatuses are too entrenched into the capitalist ideology. Foster argues that “private corporations are institutions with one and only one purpose: the pursuit of profit. The idea of turning them to entirely different and opposing social ends is reminiscent of the long‐abandoned notions of the ‘soulful corporation’ that emerged for a short time in the 1950s and then vanished in the harsh light of reality” (263). This is because the private corporation can only have its private interests at heart lest it succumb to an unacceptable lack of expansion and profits. Thus the only solution is for communities and municipalities is to appropriateii these private corporations into the fold of public consciousness. It is in this way that we could turn “them to entirely different and opposing social ends”. The problem with private corporations is that they have lost touch with reality, or one might even say democracy. They operate in a megalomaniac existence where they maximize profits at the expense of social and ecological well‐being. By appropriating such corporations we can shift them from a narcissistic focus on profitability to an equitable egalitarian focus on the sustainability of Ecology. Moreover, what profits are made would be reintegrated into the community. Additionally we could use the profits to foster acquisitions of more corporations much like these private institutions currently do. One of the more horrific examples of this acquisition practice is agribusiness’s consolidation of community farmers (mainly through lobbyists and the political apparatus). What if the US owned Wal‐
Mart or Washington State Microsoft or Canada Encana or Vancouver Concord Pacific? Slavjo Žižek in his new book on the latest financial collapse articulated how the markets have descended into a collective lunacy. Žižek quotes Keynes stating, “we have reached a third degree where we devote our intelligence to anticipating what the average opinion expects the average opinion to be” (10). The markets are hopelessly and endlessly self‐referential. As such “we are forced to choose without having at our disposal the knowledge that would enable a qualified choice” writes Žižek. Thus rather than having what is in Ecology’s best interest we have a collective delusional chase through a cacophony of self‐referential markets where individually we have our own greedy self‐interest in mind. The absurdity could not be more pronounced. Factor in advertising and the manufacturing of commodity fetishes in an attempt to manipulate the market place towards your own self‐interest and we collectively descend into the gang rape of poor little Ecology. This is why I suggest that as communities, municipalities, provincial and federal governments we appropriate these deathly massive corporations so that they will be guided towards the benefit of Ecology. Essentially Main Street should once and for all buy up and control Wall/Bay Street. By doing this we would upset the non‐transitive asymmetrical relationship between Wall/Bay Street and Main Street. “To put it in more sophisticated terms,” writes Žižek, “ the relationship is non‐transitive: while what is good for Wall Street is not necessarily good for Main Street, Main Street cannot thrive if Wall Street is feeling sickly, and this asymmetry gives an a priori advantage to Wall Street” (13). Moreover, if the general public controlled Wall/Bay Street the markets would necessarily be open, transparent and ecological since the owners, i.e. Main Street, would demand free and unfettered accesses to the financial records and ecological methodologies. Furthermore, expansion would be based on modest profitability and need. Not through monopoly finance capital, manipulation of markets and wild speculation. This would bring a long term stability rather than short term profiteering instabilityiii. It is clear through the writings of McKibben, Foster and Kovel that capitalism, with its incessant drive towards expansion and accumulation, is unsustainable. Moreover, capitalism is highly inefficient in that it does not factor in ecological costs and thus creates redundancies like off‐shoring food production or trading identical commodities. Marx, Žižek and others have articulated the social contradictions which undermine our autonomy and social well‐being. Thus in a country as vast and diverse as Canada we need to start at the grass roots community level. Municipalities like Vancouver/Victoria should begin to appropriate corporations and run them in an ecologically sustainable and egalitarian way. “Liveable wages” would be set while any extra profits would then be filtered back into the community for sustainable projects or used to appropriate more corporations. Eventually communities and governmental organizations, from municipal to federal, would own, trade and control all corporations above a certain sizeiv. Community boards elected from the owning community would run the corporation with an independent auditing body which would measure profitability, social well being and ecological sustainability. Additionally a de‐facto localization would take place as communities would naturally gravitate to supporting their locally owned corporations thus contributing to sustainability. In order to become truly sustainable we need to redefine exchange‐value back into use‐vale. We must have an economy which edifies the community and ecology rather than the new aristocracy. In short, to reclaim sustainability, it is incumbent on us to become Eco‐Communists. i
Or what some of calling neo‐liberalism, the bastion of “green” capitalism and the lie of the benevolent corporation. ii
This could be done primarily through monetary mean or possibly other means dependant on the situation, i.e. through legislation, direct government/social/community action etc. iii
As can be seen with US mortgage crisis and the greed of banks like Lehman Brothers, AIG, Bank of America etc. Or the over inflated car market perpetuate by both the banks with cheap credit and GM by immortalizing hyper‐
consumerism. iv
This is not to suggest that locally owned small to medium sized non‐traded private businesses could not be present or operate within the system. Trading within financial markets (i.e. TSX, DOW, Nikki, etc.) would be done by rational community actors: municipalities, provincial and federal governments etc. This would allow a long term focused ecology to enter into financial markets rather than short term individualistic and erratic profiteering speculation. Works Cited Foster, John Bellamy. The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009. Kovel, Joel. The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World?. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2008. Mark, Karl. The Communist Manifesto. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. McKibben, Bill. Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. New York: Holt Paperback, 2007. Žižek, Slavoj. First as Tragedy, Then as Farce. London: Verso, 2009.