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Notes on John Bellamy Foster,
The Ecological Revolution: Making
Peace with the Planet
Philosophy 100 (Ted Stolze)
John Bellamy Foster is a professor of sociology at
the University of Oregon, Eugene.
A Thought Experiment
Imagine that life on Earth had evolved without the emergence of
human beings. But now imagine that refugees from another planet,
whose biosphere they had damaged beyond repair, hoped to relocate
to Earth. What basic facts would they need to know about the Earth’s
biosphere in order to avoid destroying it as well? What moral
principles and values would have to guide them in their renewed effort
to live in a sustainable way?
The Ecological Problem
“… economists have not grasped a simple fact that to scientists is obvious: the size of
the Earth as a whole is fixed. Neither the surface nor the mass of the planet is
growing or shrinking. The same is true for energy budgets: the amount absorbed by
the Earth is equal to the amount it radiates. The overall size of the system—the
amount of water, land, air, minerals and other resources present on the planet we live
on—is fixed.
The most important change on Earth in recent times has been the enormous growth
of the economy, which has taken over an ever greater share of the planet’s
resources. In my lifetime, world population has tripled, while the numbers of livestock,
cars, houses and refrigerators have increased by vastly more. In fact, our economy is
now reaching the point where it is outstripping Earth’s ability to sustain it. Resources
are running out and waste sinks are becoming full. The remaining natural world can
no longer support the existing economy, much less one that continues to expand.”
(From Herman Daly, “On a Road to Disaster,” in New Scientist, October 18, 2008, pp.
46-47.)
What is Sustainability?
“From a human point of view, a sustainable society is one that satisfies
its needs without diminishing the prospects of future generations. This
ideal is the polar opposite to the ideal of unlimited material growth.”
(From Ernest Callenbach, Ecology: A Pocket Guide, revised and
enlarged [Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008], p. 130.)
One Way to Defend Sustainability
1.
Assume that I don’t know into which generation of human
beings I am going to be born.
2.
It is in my rational self-interest to minimize serious threats to
my basic needs as a human being.
3.
An important way to minimize serious threats to these basic
needs is to insure that the global economy is ecologically
sustainable and has as little negative impact as possible from
one generation to the next.
4.
Therefore, it is in my rational self-interest to insure that the
global economy is ecologically sustainable.
Three Features of any Critical Social Theory
Analysis and Criticism  Transition Alternative
What is Capitalism?
Capitalism = a socio-economic system in which the means of
producing and distributing wealth are predominantly owned and
controlled by private individuals and groups.
What is Wrong with Capitalism?
In a nutshell, Bellamy Foster argues that capitalism creates a
metabolic rift between society and nature to the point that is
ecologically unsustainable.
Objection: Thou Shalt Not Criticize
Capitalism!
Why not?
•
It would be “Un-American.”
•
Capitalism = the “Free Market.”
•
Only private ownership and decision making generate incentives and
economic efficiency.
Three Aspects of Capitalism
•
Treadmill of Production
•
Second Contradiction
•
Metabolic Rift
The Treadmill of Production
Capitalism is “an unstoppable, accelerating treadmill that constantly
increases the scale of the throughput of energy and raw materials as
part of its quest for profit and accumulation, thereby pressing on the
earth’s absorptive capacity. “Accumulate, Accumulate!” Marx wrote,
“that is Moses and the prophets!” for capital” (p. 48).
Second Contradiction
“Capitalism, in addition to its primary economic contradiction stemming
from class inequalities in production and distribution, also undermines
the human and natural conditions (i.e, environmental conditions) of
production on which its economic advancement ultimately rests. For
example, by systematically removing forests we lay the grounds for
increasing scarcities in this area—the more so to the extent that
globalization makes this contradiction universal. This heightens the
overall cost of economic development and creates an economic crisis
for capitalism based on supply-side constraints on production” (p. 48).
Metabolic Rift (1)
“[T]he logic of capital accumulation inexorably creates a rift in the
metabolism between society and nature, severing basic processes of
natural reproduction. This raises the issue of the ecological
sustainability—not simply in relation to the scale of the economy, but
also even more importantly in the form and intensity of the interaction
between nature and society under capitalism” (p. 49).
Metabolic Rift (2)
“In reflecting on this crisis of capitalist agriculture, Marx adopted the concept of
metabolism, which had been introduced by nineteenth-century biologists and
chemists, including [Justus von] Liebig, and applied it to socio-ecological relations. All
life is based on metabolic processes between organisms and their environment.
Organisms carry out an exchange of energy and matter with their environment, which
are integrated with their own internal life processes. It is not a stretch to think of the
nest of a bird as part of the bird’s metabolic process. Marx explicitly defined the labor
process as the “metabolic interaction between man and nature.” In terms of the
ecological problem he spoke of “an irreparable rift in the interdependent process of
social metabolism,” whereby the conditions for the necessary reproduction of the soil
were continually severed, breaking the metabolic cycle. “Capitalist production,” he
wrote, “therefore only develops the techniques and the degree of combination of the
social process of production by simultaneously undermining the original sources of all
wealth—the soil and the worker.” Marx saw this rift not simply in national terms but
as related to imperialism as well. “England,” he wrote, “has indirectly exported the soil
of Ireland, without even allowing its cultivators the means for replacing the
constituents of the exhausted soil” (p. 50).
Metabolic Rift (3)
“This principle of metabolic rift obviously has a very wide application and has in fact
been applied by environmental sociologists in recent years to problems such as
global warming and the ecological degradation of the world’s oceans. What is seldom
recognized, however, is that Marx went immediately from a conception of the
metabolic rift to the necessity of metabolic restoration, arguing that ‘by destroying the
circumstances surrounding that metabolism, which originated in a merely natural and
spontaneous fashion, it [capitalist production] compels its systematic restoration as a
regulative law of social reproduction.’ The reality of the metabolic rift pointed to the
necessity of the restoration of nature, through sustainable production” (p. 50).
Metabolic Rift (4)
“It is this dialectical understanding of the socio-ecological problem that led Marx to
what is perhaps the most radical conception of socio-ecological sustainability ever
developed. Thus he wrote in the third volume of Capital:
From the standpoint of a higher socio-economic formation, the private property of
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 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]” (p. 51).
Metabolic Rift (5)
“For Marx, in other words, the present relation of human beings to the earth under
private accumulation could be compared to slavery. Just as “private property of one
man in other men” is no longer deemed acceptable, so private ownership of the
earth/nature by human beings (even whole countries) must be transcended. The
human relation to nature must be regulated so to guarantee its existence “in an
improved state to succeeding generations.” His reference to the notion of “good
heads of the household” hearkened back to the ancient Greek notion of household or
oikos from which we get both “economy” (from oikonomia, or household
management) and “ecology “(from oikologia or household study). Marx pointed to the
necessity of a more radical, sustainable relation of human beings to production in
accord with what we would now view as ecological rather than merely economic
notions. “Freedom, in this sphere,” the realm of natural necessity, he insisted, “can
consist only in this, that socialized man, the associated producers, govern the human
metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under their collective
control...accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy” (p. 51).
What is the Alternative to Capitalism?
Although Bellamy Foster allows for the possibility of a “weakly
sustainable” capitalism through the introduction of “greener”
technologies, he personally favor the replacement of capitalism by a
democratic transition to a “strongly sustainable” type of socialism.
What Kind of Transition?
Bellamy Foster argues for a mass movement that would extend and
deepen democracy from the political sphere into the workplace and
communities, and into national and global economies. The historical
analogies would be the labor movement, civil rights, and women’s
movements—but this time on a global scale.