Soviet Environmentalism

no TOWARD AN ECOLOGICAL MARXISM but that are not captured in any intentional characterization of the labor process in terms of its raw materials, instruments and product. This, in turn, would need to be recombined with Marx's analysis ofthe overriding capitalist intentional structure of surplus-value maximization to provide a Chapter 5 three-dimensional characterization of any example of capitalist produc tion: social relations ofproduction, labor process as intentional structure, and labor process as material combination ofcausal mechanisms. This approach can now be turned into a provisional strategy for explainingwhy capitalistproductiontends to undermine its ownecological conditions. The forms of economic calculation that govern patterns of SOVIET capital investment and accumulation, and, through that, the distribution ofactivity as between different "concrete" labor processes, are conducted ENVIRONMENTALISM in terms of abstract values. They are thus not only highly insensitive to qualitative differences between different concrete labor processes and use The Path Not Taken values but also, and for the same reasons, insensitive to ecological context dependence, ecologically significantunintended consequences, timescales oforganic processes, and so on. Marx's undertheorization ofthese aspects ARRAN GARE ofcapitalist economic calculation merelyreflects actuallyexistingpractice, the result ofwhich is a tendency to materially assimilate all labor processes to the productive-transformative model, and to drive productive practices themselves beyond their sustainable limits. However, there are importantlimits to the argument thus stated. What INTRODUCTION is characterized here is a general tendency of capitalist production. The consequences of any actualization of this tendency in any specific branch Capitalism is 'a system that by its very nat~re must expan~ ~ntil it destroys ofproduction could not be predicted in advance of the kind of threefold the conditions of its own existence. It IS hardly surpnsmg,. then, that analysis suggested above. Inparticular, this confirms Leffsinsistence onthe Marxists in the Soviet Union argued that in the current envIronmental need for interdisciplinary collaboration between a revised historical mate crisis lay the ultimate reason for replacing capitalism with sociali.s~: ~ A. rialism and ecology, as well as othernaturalsciences. In particular, this form D. Ursal, the editor ofPhilosophy and the Ecological Problems ofCivilization, ofanalysis raises problems for any account, such asJames O'Connor's, that argued: seeks to identify a contradiction between capitalist forms and relations of production and their conditions. This approach also suggests that the The crisis ofthe environment, which is reaching extreme develo~n:ent question of capitalism's long-term ecological sustainability cannot be an almost everywhere, coincides with the last stage ofthe general cnSIS of swered a priori from an economic theory of capital, but can only be capitalism. A conviction is growing throughou~ t~e world that only addressed in terms of the relationship between the requirements of ex collapse ofthe capitalist system and victory ofSocialism t~rougho~t the panded capital accumulation and the possibilities for social and technical world will create a general, fundamental, social oppor~umty~or ratlO~al reorganization oflabor processes as forms ofappropriation ofnature. use ofnatural resources and the highest degree ofoptlmum mteractlon with nature. ... Convincing evidence that socialism is a necess~ry condition for optimizing relations between society and nature is SOCial ism as it actually exists, and the policy of socialist countries in respect NOTE I ofthe environment. 1. See, e.g., MurrayBookchin, The Ecology ofFreerkJm (Montreal: Black Rose ~at Books, 1991). With the collapse of the Soviet Union, however,.all hope Soviet communism mightbe transformed into a more attractlve, less environmen- ill li2 TOWARD AN ECOLOGICAL MARXISM Soviet EnviroIlll1entalisIll: The Path Not Taken li3 tally degradedsocial orderthan the liberal democratic societies ofthe West The origins of environmentalism in Russia go back long before the has been destroyed. The description ofthe modern predicament by Alvin revolution; also, there were a number of strands to Bolshevik environ W. Gouldner has become even more poignant: "The political uniqueness mentalism. In his monumental history of Soviet environmentalism up of our own era then is this; we have lived and still live through a desperate until 1935, Douglas Weiner pointed outthe strong commitmentby Lenin political and social malaise, while at the same time we have outlived the to the cause of conservation. In 1919, with Kochak's armies crossing the desperate revolutionary remedies that had once been thought to solve Urals and making their way toward the heartland of Soviet-controlled them.,,2 If this is the case, there is reason to examine the environmental Russia, Lenin personally took time out from dealing with this crisis to failures ofthe Soviet Union more closely. Was it possible that things might hear the case for conservation.s Lenin's conservation policies and gen have worked out differently? Ifso, does this provide any orientation for the eral attitude to government were for the most part very similar to those present? In this chapter, I will showhowan alternative pathfor Soviet society of the Progressive conservation movement that developed in the United had been charted and partly implemented in the 1920s by the radical wing States under Theodore Roosevelt.9 Like Roosevelt, Lenin had a strong ofBolshevism, a paththatmade environmentalconservationa centralissue. faith in science and was committed to creating an efficiently managed And I will suggest that this is the path that holds most hope for the future.3 society. Lenin's environmentalism, while important and enlightened, offers us little that is new. In fact, there are good grounds for acceptmg the argument of the communist but anti-Bolshevik Anton Pannekoek SOCIALIST ENVIRONMENTALISM that Leninism was simply the expression ofthe late drive by Russians for industrialization.1o Marxism, as it was used by such Russians as Struve, One of the unfortunate legacies of Soviet communism was to leave Plekhanov, and Lenin, provided an ideology that enabled them (as it has Russians ignorant of much of their own past. In the last decades of the since enabled a number of political leaders in the Third World) to Soviet Union, there emerged a large environmental movement:4 This was appropriate the Western drive for technological development while more than a movement concerned with the environment. While some struggling against efforts by the advanced capitalist societies ofthe West Soviet ideologists such as Ursal attempted to use environmental destruc to subjugate them. The history of the Soviet Union has been a conti~u tion in the West as an instrument ofideological struggle, and others such ation of this struggle. It is impossible to understand the oppressIve, as Boris Komarov used this destruction to condemn communism as an technologically oriented policies of the Soviet Union except in relation inherently environmentally destructive system,5 some saw in the environ to almost-constant threats of invasion from the West. However, many mental crisis a common cause for all humanity. Environmental destruction more radical ideas than those supported by Lenin were not only pro throughout the world was seen by Ivan Frolov (who under Gorbachev moted, but also to some extent put into practice. The central theme of became editor ofthe Communist Party's theoreticaljournalKommunist) to these radical ideas was that to create a socialist society it would be providejustificationfor ending the cold war, for reorganizing societies for necessary to develop a new culture, which, among other things, would the benefit of their members rather than for the struggle for world transform humanity's relationship to its environment. supremacy, and more fundamentally, for replacing anthropocentricism In September 1918, the Proletarian Cultural and Educational Organi with "biocentricism" or "biosphere-ocentricism."6 Since the overthrow of zations, or Proletkul't, held its first All-Russian Conference to give sub communism, new environmental movements have formed, mostly anti stance to the dreams of these radical Marxists to create a proletarian Marxist either of a right-wing, extreme nationalist, and racist stripe, or of culture. The leader of the radical Bolsheviks was Aleksander Aleksan a left-wing, anarchist variety. However, none of these environmentalists drovich Bogdanov. To fully understand his ideas and their significance, it appear to be aware that a strong environmental movement developed in is necessary to see his work in relation to his political views and those of the 1920s as one of the outcomes of the Revolution of 1917,7 nor of the the philosophers and scientists whom Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks roots ofthis environmentalism in the ideas ofthe left wing ofBolshevism; condemned as idealists. These thinkers were influenced primarily by a movement that attempted to create a synthesis ofsocialism and anarcho thermodynamics or energetics. Their "empiricism" was elaborated as part syndicalism and which was aligned with Western Marxists opposed both oftheir efforts to overcome the dualism between matter and mind associ to the control of society by markets and to the domination of society by ated with the mechanistic view ofthe

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