Marxism and Ecology
By DAVID MOSS The Theoretical basis At the basis of the Capitalist and every other mode of production lies a dialectical relationship" between humans and the rest of nature. Using ver more sophisticated tools anc means of production, human labour acts upon organic and inorganic nature to convert it into wealth fo by Marx:
"Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and which mar of his own accord starts, regulates and controls the material reactions between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces, setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to appropriate Nature's productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature."
(Capital, Vol. I. p177)
Humans live not only in society in which they enter into relationships of production, exchange and exploita. tion with each other but they also exist in an ecosystem — a network of exchange of nutrients and energy between different kinds of organisms and their environments. Because the conflict between the productive forces and nature was not acute in the nineteenth century, ecological problems were given little attention by Marx and Engels, but they were aware that changes effected by humans on the environment in turn had repercussions on production. Engels pointed to the working of the ecological dialectic:
"In nature nothing takes place in isolation. Everything affects and is affected by every other thing... But all the planned action all animals has never succeeded in impressing the stamp of their will upon the earth. That was left for man.
In short, the animal merely uses its environment and brings about changes in it simply by its presence: man by his changes
*Dialectical relationship: a changing relationship based on the simultaneous unity and conflict of opposing forces. The human race has evolved from the natural world, but now finds itself in conflict with Karl Marx: a world view of dialectical materialism. nature in the struggle for survival. Socialist Viewpoint, No. 6, June 1985. Page 27
makes it serve his ends, masters it. This is the final, essential distinction between man and animals and once again it is labour that brings about this distinction.
Let uS not, however. ourselves overmuch on our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel out the first."
(Anti-Duhring, pp.178-180) Development of the Productive Forces and the impact upon Nature. Historically, the development of different modes of production have involved two great qualitative leaps in the relation between human productive forces and the environment. I. "The Neolithic Revolution" This denotes the change from human societies based on hunting gathering to those dependant on the domestication of plant and animal species. From a state of stasis stable coexistence — with nature as predominantly a predatory animal, humans shift to the conscious shaping of nature — land clearance, tion, etc. This is integral to development of modes of production based on exploitative social relations and ultimately, class and societies and the growth of nonsubsistence wealth leading to private property.
An example of the ecological impact of this transformation is referred to by Engels in the work cited above, where he describes the deforestation carried out by the civilisations of the ancient world with a consequent loss of water retention by the soil, affecting agriculture.
Because of the impact agricultural activity on the environment and also because of the increasingly expropriative character of class societles a progressively increasing nput of labour power is required tor a relatively diminishing agricultural production culmination of this trend can be seen in the intense technology, energy expenditure agriculture (see below). 2. 'The Industrial Revolution" Under the impetus of capitalism new laws of nature were discovered and new phenomena taken under control. This resulted in a decisive shift from agricultural to industrial production, an increasing dichotomy town and country and between the industrial, predominantly regions of the world and the rural.
Marx and Engels emphasised the unprecedented dynamic character of capitalism:
"The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases
other flatter acount of Famine victims in Ethiopia. natural establish and and semi barbarian irriga- the scarce colossal productive state tions dustry navigation, jured of labour?" capitalism. Indeed they by return in The high OUR HONOR, of capitalist between urbanised
Ition environment: "As planters in the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere.
connections everywhere... Just as it has made
dependant on the towns, so it has made barbarian dependant on the civilised ones. nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West... The bourgeoisie during its rule of
hundred years has created more massive and more have all the preceeding generanature's forces to man, machinery. application of chemistry to in-
Tand agriculture, elegraphs. clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations con-
Tout of the ground - what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social
(Communist Manifesto)
Written in 1847, even Marx and Engels could not foresee the massive technological strides still to be made
considered the days of capitalism to be
THIS DEFENDANT OPERATES A PLANT THA HAS CAUSED THE DEATH OF SEVERAL WORKERS. Socialist Viewpoint, No. 6, June 1985. Page 28
numbered and believed that any further rapid development of the productive forces could only be achieved under a Socialist mode of produchowever, of the threat the continua- were quite aware, however, of the threat the continua-
capitalism posed to the long as the individual manufacturer or merchant sells a manufactured or purchased commodity with the usual coveted profit, he is satisfied and does not concern himself with what afterwards becomes of the commodity and its purchasers. The same thing applies to the natural effects of the same actions. What cared the Spanish
Cuba, who burned down the forests on the slopes of the mountains and obtained from the ashes sufficient fertilizer for table cottie tres ry high cared. they that the heavy tropical rainfall atterwards washed away the unprotected upper stratum of the soil leaving behind only bare rock! In relation to nature, as to society, the present mode of production is predominantly
immediate, tangible result; and then suprise is expressed that the more remote effects of actions directed to this end turn out to be quite different...
(Anti-Duhring)
These two passages have been quoted at length because they provide the embryo of the Marxist theory of Imperialism and its all-pervasive effect both on native modes of production and the world environment.
Bother critics of capitalist industrialisation Marx and Engels also recognised the relationship between environmental pollution, workplace pollution (i.e. demanded of workers. Similarly this too has been translated onto a global
Othe industrialising, imperialist dominated countries bear The Post-War boom and the Ecological Crisis Stimulated by the economic and political strength of United States ImDON'T DO PAGAIN. PLEASE
A mother in Bhopal weeps for her children after the disastrous gas leak. perialism which emerged from the war, and perpetuated by paper credit, the development of the productive forces has accelerated at a fantastic rate in the lifetime of a single generation. Massive amounts of resources have been utilised in military equipment and consumed in hundreds of local wars of varying intensity. Mass production of consumer commodities, often discarded betore they are worn out, has drained the world's resources to the industrialised west and the per capita consumption of energy and materials is further increased by the demands of the infrastructure of production - towns, communications, water, sewage disposal, health care, etc., and the governing and administrative superstructure of the state.
This analysis is mainly concerned with the areas in the Imperialist economic and political sphere but many of the ecological problems are faced by industrialised countries in the Stalinist bureaucratic states. Even in these, varying degrees of Imperialist economic penetration is evident and competition between the two industrial systems, particularly in the military technology field, leads to rapid industrialisation at the expense ot nature.
The development of the productive forces under both these modes of production has created what could be described as the beginning of the third qualitative leap. The state has been reached where whole ecosystems are being destroyed, where organisms and biological cyles are unable to reproduce themselves and where the very existence of life on earth is threatened.
Below we outline the main areas
where ecological crisis is being approached, elaborated by a tew examples which in no way represent an exhaustive list. Nuclear Power This represents the culmination of the world's productive forces and their
employment as destructive forces. The danger of cataclysmic destruction in nuclear war is widely recognised but the "peaceful" nuclear power are no less alarming. Apart trom the dangers of a major accident at a nuclear power station, there is the cumulative effect of the leakage of low level radiation and the problems of the disposal of waste. Added to the radioactivity released into the atmosphere by nuclear bomb tests this creates a growing threat to all organisms in the ecosystem, including humans — as the high of Leukemia amongst people in the vicinity Windscale indicates.
Workers in all parts of the process from Uranium mining onwards are at risk and no completely safe method of transporting radio active material exists. The proliferation of nuclear power stations in the industrialising countries and in Britain, if the Tory PWR plan is put into effect, increases the odds of some serious accident occuring and compounds the problem of waste disposal. Also there is no safe, cheap way of decommissioning redundant nuclear plants. Chemical Pollution This falls into two basic categories: substances deliberately discharged into the environment and those "accidentally" discharged. Socialist Viewpoint, No. 6, June 1985. Page 29
1. Deliberate discharge of pollutants includes the effluent of industrial processes which are released into the atmosphere, rivers or sea or are dumped in the soil. This category also includes the massive emissions from the internal combustion engine.
It is estimated that 22,000 tonnes of poisonous heavy metals find their way into the North Sea every year. On the River Rhine alone 45 companies have been charged with serious pollution, emitting between them about 2,000 different chemicals, including 3 tonnes of arsenic and 990lbs of mercury. About 60,000 cubic metres of acidic waste is discharged into the Humber estuary every day as well as amounts of deadly Titanium Dioxide. The Tory government has refused to follow LEC directives on limiting the release of the latter. The Tories have also refused to invest in the limitation of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from power stations. The failure to act promptly to ban lead additives to petrol is symptomatic of the lack of concern for the environment reflected in their transport policy as a whole which is hostile to planned public systems.
As well as the release of pollutants into the seas and the atmosphere there is the cumulative effect of dumped chemical waste. In Holland alone there are 4,000 toxic chemical dumps. In Woodham in Buckinghamshire an ll acre quarry site has been filled with 10 million gallons of chemicals. Such dumps, some of them unrecorded, contain toxic chemical "soups" which will provide dangerous and expensive problems for future generations, along with other lethal waste such as asbestos.
A union Carbide plant in the USA. The Effects Waste dumped directly into the rivers and sea, or percolating from land dumps poses a serious marine ecosystems, destroying food chains and diminishing resources which humans utilise. I Commercial fishing stocks have already been affected in some areas and in Japan hundreds of people died or were made ill by mercury poisoning after eating contaminated fish.
Atmospheric discharges vehicles, factories and power stations increases the amount of carbondioxide in the atmosphere which, if it continues to accumulate, may have long term, irreversible effects world's climate. According theory of the "greenhouse effect" this may lead to a rise in temperature which seriously disrupts weather patterns and hence agriculture.
Chemical compounds in mosphere often come back to earth in the form of acid sulphuric or nitric acids. been responsible for the destruction of all life in numerous lakes in Galloway, Wales, Scandinavia and Canada and damage to forests in Central Europe. In the EEC alone damage is estimated at £30 billion per annum. Fish stocks and reserves are being lost at an celerating rate leading to economic loss but also an even more terrible toll of wildlife. Again the cumulative effect is bound to effect humans directly or through the impact on agriculture.
2. Accidental discharge of inlustrial products is as alarming as the etiets of anticipated and calculable pollution of the
Millions of tons of oil are annually discharged into the seas of the world In the Mediterranean alone there are threat to 350,000 tons a year from ships and 115,000 from leaks classified as "accidental" are in protein could fact intentional by ships, emptying their tanks. In 1981 there were 552 reported spillages waters and the number is rising. The use of massive super tankers makes the scale of accidents more terrible - the "Torrey Canyon" spilt 95,000 from tonnes; the The bill tonnes. damage was £2 billion. The steering gear was found to be defective, and in the scramble for profits unseawor- the on thy vessels under to the nience are common. Pollution also occurs during extraction and processing of oil. An estimated 3 million tons of oil a year is the at- leaked into rivers and lakes from the Siberian oilfields, dilluted cids. This has 500,000 barrels of oil has entered the sea as a result of the bombing of wells and the spillage continues. At Sullom Voe in Shetland, the main refinary servicing the North Sea fields, 1,174 tonnes of oil were lost as a result of a wrong valve coupling. timber used to disperse it, has a serious im- ac- pact on marine Thousands of seabirds perished in the Sullom Voe incident, including hun- dreds of uncommon Great Northern Divers. A tanker Humber, many seabirds, waders and wildfowl and threatened the nature reserve at Spurn Head. Over 50 of the very rare Dugongs, found dead as a result of the pollution environment. Socialist Viewpoint, No. 6, June 1985. Page 30
of the industries. Some oil into seas of oil in British to two cities. River Tees. "Amoco Cadiz" 220,000 for the latter's cidents of conve- flags dia. , the in the Gulf over dumped Oil, and sometimes the detergents fect ecosystems. 1S collision on the spilling 6,000 tons, killed or sea cows, have been
Gulf of Mexico. The cumulative, long term effect of oil on marine ecosystems is incalculable.
Accidental spillage of chemicals
Tand rivers adds to the amount of intended effluent. A factory accident at Lvov killed millions of fish and polluted the water supply
In Britain 70,000 fish and millions of spawn were destroyed by 4,000 gallons of spilt flux oil in the
Atmospheric pollution from ac-
Thas reached catastrophic proportions. A thousand people were killed and tens of thousands injured by methyl isocyanate escaping from the pesticide plant of the US transnational Union Carbide at Bhopal in In-
At Seveso in North Italy thousands were evacuated and hundreds suffered horrible after effects due to the release of Dioxin from a plant owned by Roche. Thousands of livestock and wild animals died and agricultural land was contaminated. Polluted soil mysteriously disappeared in an attempt to have it
secretly. Dioxin is over 100,000 times more deadly than cyanide and was an ingredient used in the herbicide "Agent Orange", sprayed in vast quantities by the US Air Force in South Vietnam - its ef-
still being suffered by thousands of US veterans and even more Vietnamese civilians. In Britain Dioxin has been emitted from the Rechem works at Bonnybridge.
Another deadly chemical PCB, polychlorinated biphenyls, has been leaked from transtormers. In 1968 15,000 people were affected in Japan, some fatally. Twenty gallons were also spilt as a result of an IRA attack
on a transformer in Belfast in 1981 and the incident security workers responsible for clearing up, nor the public, were alerted. ing scale, such as the Flixborough or the explosion, chemical store release chemicals of differing toxicity into the environment. dangers inherent transport or storage of chemicals is disclosed not resulting from pollution is concealed. Even limited conventional wars in- crease the amount of chemicals in- tentionally or accidentally poured in- to the environment. cesses cannot carry on indefinitely neutralising the excretia of industrial The society. transformed into an open poisonous sewer. Land Use and Abuse energy and flict with the use of land for food pro- but the creation priority natural environment in into commodities. Deforestation have little protection. tatorship transnational the country's against the US subsidiary secondary forest growth, devastated by fire.
reasong, covered up "for Neither the
Numerous local accidents, of vary-
recent. Salford fire, continually Often in production, and the damage Natural proworld is being The extraction of fossil fuels for
Craw materials for industrial production sometimes conduction. Similarly with the demands of the infrastructure of industrialism — roads, dams, buildings, etc. But under Imperialist production it is not the production of food which is the
Cof profit. Consequently, as with Engels' example of the Cuban coffee plantations, ittle attempt is made to protect the
Othe rush to convert the products of sun and soil Vast areas of the earth's tropical rain forests are being destroyed daily, by logging, clearance for plantations or ranches, mining or dam construction. The Tasmanian wilderness bas got a reprieve, but areas less exposed to media attention and with governments immune to democratic protests Indonesia: Under this military dic-
companies have been given free rein to plunder
resources. In West Papua whole native populations have been forcibly resettled to allow the logging of forests and the extraction of minerals and oil. Popular risings
Freeport Indonesia have been suppressed by air attacks. In Kalimantan logging operations have created vast areas of
which is more susceptible to drought; and an area bigger than Belgium has been Philippines: Here forest clearance has led to the settlement of people in strategic hamlets in an attempt to preempt expected resistance to the Massive forest clearance in Brazil - an area the size of Britain is being torn down. activities of the transnationals. Tribal territories have been handed over to
Socialist Viewpoint, No. 6, June 1985. Page 31
Equator plantations of pineapple, banana, sugar, etc. The government plans to log off the island of Mindanao by 1990 and Luzon by the mid '90s. Native people such as the Tasaday are faced with extinction. Brazil: Iwo and a half million hectares of forest have been cleared by bombing, fire and defoliants to sow grass for beef ranching. The soil is exhausted after about 12 years of grazing and already ½ million hectares (larger than Switzerland) has been abandoned. Iransnationals like Unilever and Volkswagen are involved, farming beef for consumption in the industrialised world, particularly the US - the so called "hamburger connection".
The building of the Tucuri dam has Deforestation could turn jungles into deserts
THE WORLD'S RAIN FORESTS required the resettlement of 40,000 peasants and Indians. A defoliant related to Agent Orange has been used to clear forest and it is reported that stocks of the chemical have been left in drums in the area which is being flooded.
Indians resisting the activities of construction, mining agricultural companies have been met with bombs and machine gus. The French company Elf Aquitaine has recently been forced to pay $150,000 compensation for damage to the reserves of Amazonian Indians caused during oil exploration, but native cultures are being destroyed as the people are compressed into an ever decreasing area. Columbia: A subsidiary of Mobil has Socialist Viewpoint, No. 6, June 1985. Page 32
obtained a 50,000 hectare concession in the Pacific coast rain forest and plans to log 1,200 hectares per annum. The company claims that too high rainfall prevents them carrying out the required reforestation. The secondary growth which developes is being "poached" by small loggers. Five million hectares of virgin forest have been lost in Columbia in the last five years.
The effect of the activities of these transnational corporations is catastrophic and irreversible in both ecological and social terms. Above are only a few examples. Native cultures are being destroyed, whole populations are, at worst, being exterminated, at the best, being shifted to become landless, poorly paid plan-
tation workers or paupers in the mushrooming shanty towns around industrial centres. economies ar replaced by enterprises which drain profits from the region if not the country.
Plant and animal species are being driven to extinction as their habitats are destroyed. Some of them barely been classified, studied by science, and plants which could provide new food medical drugs are being lost.
The removal of tree cover leads to rapid erosion of the soil, making regneration of the primary forest impossible. The full implication of this for the earth's climate is still not understood. Vegetation retains water and re-releases it into the atmosphere through transpiration. The forest may fundamentally effect rainfall patterns in the tropics. Vegetation also converts carbon dioxide into oxygen, and the role of the forests has been described as that of the earth's lungs. The diminution of oxygen production, plus the increased production of carbon dioxide through burning fossil fuels further contributes to the effect. Agriculture Every year hundreds of thousands of acres of marginal agricultural land are reduced to desert as a result of overcultivation, overgrazing or the cutting of firewood. This is not an inevitable result of "overpopulation" but a product of demographic policies (as in the case of Ciskei) or economic policies, tying local agriculture to the demands of the world market, rather
Subsistance have let alone sources oI loss of rain "greenhouse developing subsistance production. The growth of plantations producing for consumption crops dustrialised countries concentrates peasants in marginal areas with a consequent degradation of the environment and an inability to sustain food production. government ed with reforestation, etc., debtedness of most of the countries involved makes this a low priority. than to Remains of a mangrove swamp cut down by charcoal burners: now desert.
Part of the 965,000 ton EEC dried milk mountain. in the in- increasingly This desertification could be avoid- investment in irrigation, but the in- agents). ing great use crease in the increase be
Emphasis is placed on agriculture which will earn foreign currency and as a result the economy of these countries becomes even more enmeshed in the imperialist system. Transnational agribusinesses take over production and export of crops or the import of pesticides and fertilisers. Thirty per cent of pesticides produced by the main transnationals like ICI, Hoechst and Ciba-Geigy are exported to the industrialising world. Some are indiscriminately used, injuring both people and the environment. The last mentioned company even admitted experimentally spraying Egyptian peasant children with the pesticide Galecron which Contains carcinogens (cancer producing
Even in the temperate, industrialis-
world intensive agricultural techniques threaten the environment and therefore long term food production. The present technology, making
Noi chemicals and heavy machinery has only been employed for barely thirty years and its full effects are yet to be felt.
In Britain between 1949 and 1968 a 35% increase in agricultural production was achieved by an 800% in-
Muse of artificial tertilisers. By 74/75 these had reached 979,900 tonnes leaping to 1,335,000 tonnes in 80/81. The production of these chemicals and of the machinery used in farming, as well as the fuels used to run them signities a massive
Tin the consumption of energy and raw materials relative to the amount of food produced. It has been estimated that with less intensive methods and an increased use of human labour the same crops could
produced along with a 70% energy saving.
The production of new strains of high yield crops demands the increasing use of fertilisers, fungicides, herbicides and insecticides. The concentration of these damages the soil ecosystem and also the physical structure of the soil is damaged by mechanised cultivation. In another 20 years large areas British arable land will no longer be able to support traditional crops.
The wider ecosystem is also being damaged. Before it was banned, DDT drove several species of birds of prey to the verge of extinction. The 1981/2 crop saw a 20% rise in the use of herbicides and 15% increase fungicides. 60,000 acres sprayed from the air, leading to cases
of "drift" in which people away from agricultural land Sprays such as 245T which contains Dioxin are still being used, although banned in the US. (ethylene dibromide) was described by the US agency as the "most carcinogenic pesticide we have ever tested". While damaging otten pesticides sometimes hae a reverse effect on their intended victim which may develop a resistance. The build fertilisers of up dangerous as the contamination of water supplies by nitrates has shown. production more apparent than in agriculture, where foodstuffs are sought at huge cost in terms of energy and resource expen- diture, as well as to the environment, only to be destroyed or stockpiled by i ravaging agriculture is loss to urbanisation of frastructure dams, etc. In Britain 275,000 acres were lost from agriculture between 1975 and 1980. In the US loss runs at the rate Translated onto a global scale deser- tification either as degradation or of urbanisation is pro- ceeding at an alarming rate. transnational the chemicals, machinery or construction; the com- modity speculators, the financial in- stitutions, and militarists the collapse global starvation on an apocalyptic scale. The Ecological Crisis and Socialism Only a few ecological crisis have been outlined above. The full scale of the problem was summed up by a meeting of the UN Environment Programme in 1982 with a forecast "that the world faces an ecological disaster chemicals of in weIe
affected were EDB Another, environment protection organisms, other also be can Nowhere is the insanity of capitalist high yields of land compounded by the and the in- capitalism, Ioads, of 2,471,000 per annum. a result of soil Again, the beneficiaries of it are companies in farm plantations, their puppet governments the ee engiem and of the ecosystem examples of the world as final as "Of course what me ro doing is wrong. but that doesn't make it indetonsible!
nuclear war within a couple of decades unless governments now." (Guardian, 2.5.82)
This has tremendous implications for the struggle for Socialism and for the concept of what Socialism entails. It means basically that planning for human needs is unattainable without planning for the protection of the enrelations will not solve the ecological crisis unless it is accompanied by a changing relationship with nature. Socialism cannot simply be the productive forces of capitalism democratic workers' control.
Capitalism has already created the technolgy capable of resolving the ecological crisis, but this cannci be achieved under the present mode of production. Socialism requires the
reoganisation technology in a way which minimises conflict with the environment, con-
energy and resources and eradicates pollution. It must remove the antagonism between country, between the predominantly
Tall that the world's resources cannot be drained away to benefit only a part of the world's population. This will entail a change in work and consumption patterns for
industrialised capitalist heartlands,
constant industrial
Consumerism, are all essential parts of bourgeois
development ecological consciousness has a key role to play in the defeat of this must have a programme to contront the ecological crises of capitalism as it has to deal with the economic, capitalism. Without this, Marxism is reduced from a scientific method of liberation to just just another utopian
The rise and decline of the Teamsters'
The renegotiation this year of the