Eco-Socialism Flashcards
(23 cards)
What is meant by the multiplicity of environmental politics?
- Environmental politics or eco-politics currently takes many different forms
- Each form has different diagnosis-prescriptions about what’s causing environmental degradation and what would be needed to correct it
- But this moment of political confusion is also one of possibility
Examples of the forms of eco-politics
- Youth activists
- Degrowthers
- Indigenous communities pitted against corporate extractors
- Environmental feminists
- Green New Dealers
- Eco-nationalists
What three characteristics are included in Fraser’s eco-socialism
- Trans-environmental
- Anti-capitalist
- Counter-hegemonic
Trans-environmental (Fraser’s eco-socialism)
- Environmental crises linked to social and political crises
- Environmental issues bound to non-environmental issues
Anti-capitalist (Fraser’s eco-socialism)
- Capitalism is a common driver behind environmental, social, and political crises
- A fundamental contradiction within capitalism means it creates crises in all three domains
- Therefore, shared rejection of capitalism could unite them
Counter-hegemonic (Fraser’s eco-socialism)
- In a world organized by capital, an anti-capitalist position is definitionally counter-hegemonic
What is the connection between capitalism and environmental harm?
- “Capitalism non-accidentally creates environmental crises” ≠ “Only capitalism creates environmental crises”
- Non-capitalist societies can, but are not structurally compelled, to generate environmental harm
- By contrast, capitalism can’t help but generate environmental harm because of a contradiction baked into its structure
- For eco-socialists, unlike for green Keynesians, capitalism cannot be made adequately greener
What is capitalism?
- System of economic production and exchange predicated on growth and accumulation
- System for organizing the relationship between economic production and exchange, and their supporting, “non-economic” conditions and materials
Contradiction within capitalism
- Capitalism organizes the relationship between economy and non-economy in a contradictory and self-undermining way
- Capitalism divorces economy (value creating) from non-economy (not value creating)
- Therefore, capitalism invites economy to free ride on non-economic resources
What does capitalism need? (3 “non-economic” contradiction)
- Environment as
– tap for inputs
– sink for waste - Society for
– carework of human labor
– carework of human cooperation - Politics for
– security
– legal protection of private property
– policies that enable accumulation
What does capitalism encourage economy to free ride on and corrode? (3 “non-economic” contradiction)
- Environmental resources
- Social resources
- Political resources
What does capitalism simultaneously need and trash? (3 “non-economic” contradiction)
- Environment, leading to environmental crises
– ie. capital’s environmental or ecological contradiction - Society, leading to social crises
– ie. capital’s social contradiction - Politics, leading to political crises
– ie. capital’s political contradiction
How the “non-economic” are interconnected and what this means
- Environment, society, and polity interconnected
- Therefore, crisis in one domain likely to mean crisis in others
- This analytical complexity is an opportunity for solidarity and coalition building
– ie. those concerned about seemingly different crises actually have a shared enemy: capitalism - eg. environmental crises are often also political crises because states manage the boundary between environment and economy, making environmental decisions also political decisions
Eco-socialism vs single-issue environmentalism (and critiques of single-issue)
- Interconnection of “non-economic” domains, and their racialization, challenges single-issue environmentalism
- As strategy (shallower critique): single-issue environmentalism bypasses opportunity for coalition building
- As ideology (deeper critique): single-issue environmentalism accepts capitalism’s separation of economy and environment
Capital’s contradiction in history
- The history of capitalism demonstrates systematic creation of interconnected environmental, social, and political crises
- When crises come to a head, one “accumulation regime” will be replaced by another
– NB Fraser tracks four such “accumulation regimes” - But each new period will eventually create new environmental, social, and political crises of its own
- Because it too will segregate economy from non-economy, generating environmental, social, and political free-riding
- The history of capitalism is a cyclical pattern of accumulation regime, crisis, new accumulation regime, new crisis, etc.
- Fraser is agnostic about whether climate change will put an end to this pattern
What is metabolic rift?
Disruption of society’s ability to generate energy needed to sustain and regenerate itself
- Eco-socialists see capitalism as especially vulnerable to metabolic rifts because of how it relates to its “non-economic” bases
What is ecological imperialism?
Taking resources from capital’s periphery to compensate for metabolic rift at capital’s core
- Eco-socialists see this as capitalism’s standard “fix” to metabolic rifts
- Unsustainable growth at capitalism’s center or core is propped up and sustained via material pillaging and degradation at capitalism’s periphery
Fraser’s liberal-colonial period (one of Fraser’s accumulation regimes)
- Characterized by metabolic rift in Global North
- Mass agriculture shipped from countryside to cities to feed newly concentrated factory laborers
- Food produced and consumed in one place returns nutrients to the soil, but food produced and consumed in different places doesn’t, leading to declining soil fertility
- Newly industrialized Global North experiences soil-nutrient crisis threatening food supplies
- Industrial capital creates a metabolic rift within capitalist society
What is guano?
Fertilizer traditionally used by indigenous people of South America
Why was guano a 19th century must have natural resource?
- As industrial agriculture depletes soil fertility in the Global North, interest in Global South guano deposits grows
- Peru: key guano exporter to Global North, guano revenue make up large part of state revenue by late 1800s
- Guano trade profitable but environmentally taxing
– Unique geography and aesthetic of guano islands erased by extraction
– Guano producing birds driven away and slaughtered - Metabolic rift in North creates environmental destruction in South
Guano and labor
- Early 19th century Peruvian labor shortage leads to immigration law subsidizing import of contract laborers
- European merchants import Chinese laborers through coercion and deception under horrific transport conditions
- Chinese laborers employed on plantations, railroads, and in the guano business under slave-like conditions (guano mining thought to be worst)
- Compensating for metabolic rift in the Global North via ecological imperialism leads to inhumane, racialized exploitation of labor (ie. social crisis) in the Global South
History of nitrates as a must have natural resource
- Nitrates: a second fix for capital’s depletion of soil fertility in the Global North
- Found in Peru and Bolivia, nitrates start to rival guano as the export fertilizer of choice
- Peru monopolizes nitrates, expropriates private investors, most of whom are foreign (especially British)
- Bolivia raises taxes on nitrate exports
- Monopolization and taxation anger foreign investors
- War of the Pacific, aka. the Nitrate War, 1879-1883
The Nitrate War
- Chile backed by Britain vs Peru and Bolivia
- Chile, victorious, claims all nitrate zones held by Peru and Bolivia
- British investors also win big
– They buy up nitrate certificates issued by Peru during monopolization
– After the war Chile recognizes there certificates as proof of ownership
– Meaning British stake in South American nitrates balloons on the heels of war - Nitrates War seen at the time as a “case of British-instigated, Chilean-executed aggression” motivated by the quest for fertilizer
- Metabolic rift in Global North creates not just environmental and social crises but here also political crisis in the form of war
