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Home , Climate crisis, Dale Maharidge, Eric Hobsbawm, Ferdinand Lassalle, Fifth International, Hugo Blanco (politician)

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SEEING RED OVER THE CRISIS:

ECOSOCIALISM AS EMERGENCY BRAKE

A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of California University, Stanislaus

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in

By Ken Boettcher May 2021

CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL

SEEING RED OVER THE CLIMATE CRISIS:

ECOSOCIALISM AS EMERGENCY BRAKE

by Ken Boettcher

Signed Certification of Approval page is on file with the University Library

Dr. Philip Garone Date of History

Dr. Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt Date Associate Professor of History

Dr. Marjorie Sanchez-Walker Date Professor of History © 2021

Ken Boettcher ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE

Abstract ...... vi

CHAPTER Introduction: Through the Portal of the Pandemic ...... 1

Within the Civilizational Climate Crisis ...... 16

I. A Short History of the Crisis ……...... 30

The Science Behind the Consensus……...... 33 Expanding Crises ...... 37

II. Fossil-Fuel-Funded Denialism & the Failure to Act ...... 49

The Forces Behind Denialism ...... 58 Lies & Tricks…...... 66 Rightwing Reshaping of the Media Landscape ...... 72 The Military View ...... 77

III. Behind the Destruction – EcoMarxism as Antidote ...... 83 ...... Marx as Promethean?...... 96 The First Century After Marx ...... 113 Western Trends Since the 1960s ...... 130 The ...... 135

IV. Fast and Furious Acceleration ...... 139

The Withered ‘Soul’ of Neoliberal ...... 161 Political and Social Effects ...... 171 Workers and ...... 178

iv 83

V. Revolutionary Opportunities from Nature’s Revenge ...... 188

Opposing ’s Globalism ...... 201 Pulling the Emergency Brake ...... 215 ’s Revolutionary Romanticism ...... 218 , Praxis and Organization ...... 228 The Revolutionary Agenda ...... 236

Epilogue: The Era of Tipping Points & Revolutionary Rage ...... 239

Hope, But Not Optimism ...... 246

Bibliography ...... 256

v

ABSTRACT

The pandemic and the civilizational climate crisis in which it is embedded are crises of capitalism far worse than they might have been without the austere rule of neoliberal capitalists and politicians, who publicly scorn society and the working people who built it.

Working for decades to eviscerate and free themselves of and that inhibit profit-making, they greatly accelerated capitalism’s bringing of all life on Earth to the brink of extinction. This thesis sketches the history of the crisis, the history of fossil- fuel--funded denialism that has so effectively forestalled action that might have prevented it, and the history of a powerful oppositional Marxist ecology that represents a path to a truly sustainable Earth. It explains the furious acceleration of the crisis over the past four decades as the result of a vengeful, ruthless effort of the ruling elements of US society beginning in the mid-1970s to boost their rate of profit and protect their positions of power and privilege—at the price of vast economic damage to working people and incredible devastation to Earth and its atmosphere. Further, it postulates that a peaceful revolutionary movement is needed to enforce immediate demands to “pull the emergency brake” and end the destruction—and that nature, in wreaking its own revenge against capitalism, may well assist workers to accomplish this historic task. Finally, it sees the possibility that we are now entering an era of disastrous climate tipping points that could build a revolutionary rage to finally end capitalism and establish an ecosocialist society.

vi Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it. —Arundhati Roy, Azadi: Freedom. . Fiction.1

INTRODUCTION

THROUGH THE PORTAL OF THE PANDEMIC

The past we seek to leave behind through the portal of the pandemic is our world today, beset by so much more than the devastating Coronavirus pandemic. As this thesis will show, we face a profound nexus of problems arising from the profit motive in production and the destruction of labor and nature it promotes, giving rise to the climate crisis and a Gordian knot of interrelated economic, political, ecological and epidemiological crises. A Marxist analysis situates the climate crisis within this cluster of systemic emergencies,2 introduced through the lens of the integral COVID-19 pandemic. It seeks to frame the class-based genesis of the climate crisis and to show the crucial need for a class-based solution to build a sustainable society and replace the destructive capitalist order increasingly recognized by contemporary environmental history as the root of these crises.3 This introduction lays out the approach of the paper and its chapter-by-chapter

1 Arundhati Roy, Azadi: Freedom, Fascism, Fiction (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2020), 214. 2 Economic depressions, systemic and sexism, militarism and war, poverty and hunger, environmental crises, to name a few. 3 As Ted Steinberg, a leading environmental , writes in the fourth edition of his widely used text, Down to Earth, Nature’s Role in American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 246: “Interpretations of the planet’s ecological woes that eschew an examination of capitalism and instead single out ‘human action’ fall short. To point a finger at diverse aspects of postwar life such as population growth, cities, and fossil fuels without looking for the driving force behind the individual changes ignores the systemic factors structuring human interactions with the planet.” 1 2 sketch of climate-crisis literature.

That the coronavirus pandemic comes to us thanks ultimately to capitalist and the priorities of production for the private profit of a tiny wealthy minority is clear. Globalization of chains is driven by growing worldwide , which motivates capitalists to engage in a global race to the bottom in pursuit of the lowest wages and cheapest resources with the fewest governmental safeguards for labor and the environment. This was not feasible until the last quarter of the twentieth century when transportation costs dropped thanks to bigger ships and improved shipping technology—and until automation, roboticization, and computerization developed to the point where minimal training can make a relatively uneducated, low-wage peasant productive enough compared to US workers to increase profits despite increased transportation costs.1

Globalization moved in lockstep with these factors not necessarily because some

US politicians pushed it, as many rightwing voices rail, but because the very US capitalists venerated as job producers, facing increased competition, sought to bolster their profits by reducing their US workforces—and technological developments showed them a pathway to do so. Some politicians no doubt believed their own propaganda that globalization would be good for US workers rather than tossing millions out of work—creating the

US rust belt in the process—but many chose to serve the profit of those who fueled their political campaigns, happily making it easier to ship US jobs overseas.

Some insist that COVID-19 is the “China virus,” feeding anti-Chinese racism and

1 For further discussion of the dynamics of globalization, see Samir Amin, Capitalism in the Age of Globalization: The Management of Contemporary Society (: ZED Books, 2020). 3 violence, simply because it first appeared there. However, viruses like COVID-19—and the

1918 Flu pandemic, first identified in Kansas before killing 50 million people around the world1—can occur almost anywhere, especially where humans have disturbed the balance of nature. This includes capitalism’s feedlots and slaughterhouses or in “wet markets”— fresh produce markets that hose down their stalls, only some of which also sell wild animals.

As an article by John Bellamy Foster and Intan Suwandi put it in 2020,

SARS-CoV-2 [COVID-19], like other dangerous pathogens that have emerged or reemerged in recent years, is closely related to a complex set of factors including: (1) the development of global with its expanding genetic monocultures that increase susceptibility to the contraction of zoonotic diseases from wild to domestic animals to humans; (2) destruction of wild habitats and disruption of the activities of wild species; and (3) human beings living in closer proximity. There is little doubt that global commodity chains and the kinds of connectivity that they have produced have become vectors for the rapid transmission of disease, throwing this whole globally exploitative pattern of development into question.2

The global warming fueling the climate crisis also fuels pandemics. Warming puts many insect and animal populations on the move, seeking cooler areas and bringing with them diseases for which their new environments often have few defenses.

The ever more extreme and frequent floods and , storms and heatwaves brought on by the climate crisis also sets in motion masses of displaced people around the world, removes them from traditional lands, and plants them in overcrowded slums—often

1 Centers for Disease Control, “1918 Pandemic Influenza Historic Timeline,” CDC.gov; March 20, 2018; Internet; available at https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-commemoration/pandemic-timeline- 1918.htm; accessed January 5, 2021. 2 John Bellamy Foster and Intan Suwandi, “COVID-19 and Catastrophe Capitalism: Commodity Chains and Ecological-Epidemiological-Economic Crises,” .org, Vol. 72, No. 2, June 2020, Internet; available at https:// monthlyreview.org/2020/06/01/covid-19-and-catastrophe-capitalism/; accessed January 5, 2021. Foster is an ecological sociologist at University of Oregon and editor of Monthly Review; Suwandi is a sociologist and anthropologist at Illinois State University. 4 adjacent to deforested areas where insects and animals are already in motion seeking new homes themselves. As an article on the subject observes, “[f]orest disease dynamics, the pathogens’ primeval sources, are no longer constrained to the hinterlands alone.”

Instead, “associated epidemiologies have themselves turned relational, felt across time and space.” Today, “[a] SARS can suddenly find itself spilling over into humans in the big city only a few days out of its bat cave.”1

Previously unknown species of virus, the majority of which originate in animals, are now being found at the rate of three to four per year, with more than 200 found to cause disease in humans since 1901. A recent Cable News Network report noted that, “as their natural habitats disappear, animals like rats, bats, and insects survive where larger animals get wiped out.” It noted that “[t]hey’re able to live alongside human beings and are frequently suspected of being the vectors that carry new diseases to humans.”

Moreover, the report continued, “[s]cientists have linked past Ebola outbreaks to heavy human incursion into the rainforest.” It also reported that “[i]n one 2017 study, researchers used satellite data to determine that 25 of the 27 Ebola outbreaks located along the limits of the rainforest biome in Central and West Africa between 2001 and 2014 began in places that had experienced deforestation about two years prior.”2

In the same time period deforestation in the Congo River basin rainforest fell the trees in “an area larger than the size of .” At that rate, the rainforests of the

1 Rob Wallace, et al., “COVID-19 and Circuits of Capital,” Monthly Review.org; Vol. 72, No. 1, May 01, 2020; Internet; available at https://monthlyreview.org/2020/05/01/covid-19-and-circuits-of-capital/; accessed January 5, 2021. 2 Sam Kiley and Alex Platt, “Hunting for ‘Disease X’: In the Congo Rainforest, the Doctor Who Discovered Ebola Warns of Deadly Viruses Yet to Come,” CNN.com; December 23, 2020; Internet; available at https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/22/africa/drc-forest-new-virus-intl/index.html; accessed January 6, 2021. 5

Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) “may have completely disappeared by the end of the century,” which would mean that “animals and the viruses they carry will collide with people in new and often disastrous ways.” The same process is going on in Brazilian and Indonesian rainforests, two additional massive areas of concern, thanks to both global warming and increasing conditions that bring more and larger forest fires as well as capitalist investment intended to boost beef production and monocrop .1

This is a dialectical process that also contributes to greater human population density in nearby urban areas and thereby compounds interactions with animals on the move. Deforestation not only drives global warming and all its damaging effects by reducing the ability of rainforests to sequester CO2 and produce oxygen, it also drives ongoing “depeasantization” or “deindigenization,” which serve the material interests of capital today much as the primitive accumulation of the English movement threw peasants off common lands to furnish cheap labor for the rise of early capitalism.2

Many small landholders illegally clear the forests too, forced to engage in this self- destructive behavior by the lack of economic opportunity in a world where the interests of global capital rule.

The human losses in this age of pandemics and the climate crisis are already huge. Deaths from the pandemic alone exceeded 2.97 million worldwide from over 138 million cases and a disproportionate 562,994 died from over 31.3 million cases in the

1 Ruth Delzeit, “Mass Deforestation: How Trade Fells Trees in and Indonesia,” DW.com; March 27, 2018; Internet; available at https://www.dw.com/en/mass-deforestation-how-trade-fells-trees-in-brazil-and-indonesia/a- 48280649; accessed January 7, 2021. 2 , The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View (London: Verso, 2002), 108-109, 127-128, 162-163. 6

United States1 by mid-April of 2021, after a year of neglect, denial, bumbling chaos and purposeful misdirection in 2020 by the Trump administration.2

Many other countries acted quickly and in accordance with public health science when the virus first appeared and thereby avoided massive death and illness tolls.

Hospitalizations, illness and deaths in the from the coronavirus pandemic consistently hit indigenous people and people of color hardest,3 as they did the poor worldwide. Hundreds of thousands of additional US deaths are likely in 2021 as a result of the Trump administration’s notoriously late and chaotic response to the pandemic and its bungled vaccine rollout.4 COVID-19 had by the beginning of the second week of the new year already mutated at least twice, threatening the efficacy of existing vaccines and boosting the possibility that it could mutate again, speed ahead of mitigation efforts, and forestall any hoped-for herd immunity in the coming year.5 Moreover, plentiful viruses

1 Ben Kamisar, “Fauci Pushes Back on Trump: Covid Death Numbers Are ‘Real,’” NBC News.com; January 3, 2021; Internet; available at https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/fauci-pushes-back-trump-covid- death-numbers-are-real-n1252684; accessed January 3, 2021. Statistics updated April 14, 2021 at nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html 2 Press Release, “Select Subcommittee Analysis Shows Pattern of Political Interference By the Trump Administration in Coronavirus Response,” Coronavirus.house.gov; October 2, 2020; Internet; available at https://coronavirus.house.gov/news/press-releases/select-subcommittee-analysis-shows-pattern-political- interference-trump; accessed January 3, 2021. Also Laura Davison, “Trump Official Pushed for ‘Herd Immunity’ Strategy, Emails Show,” Bloomberg.com; December 16, 2020; Internet; available at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-16/trump-official-pushed-for-herd-immunity- strategy-emails-show; accessed January 3, 2021. See also Google search results for “pandemic statistics.” 3 CDC, “Health Equity Considerations and Racial and Ethnic Groups,” CDC.gov; July 24, 2020; Internet; available at https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/health-equity/race-ethnicity.html; accessed January 8, 2021. 4 David Wallace-Wells, “America’s Vaccine Rollout Is Already a Disaster,” NewYorkMagazine.com; December 30, 2020; Internet; available at https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/americas-vaccine-rollout-disaster.html; accessed January 3, 2021. Also Victoria Bekiempsis, “Hundreds of Thousands More US Covid Deaths Possible Amid Vaccine Chaos,” TheGuardian.com; January 2, 2021; Internet; available at https:// www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/02/hundreds-thousands-more-us-covid-deaths-likely-vaccine-delay; accessed January 9, 2021. 5 Zynep Tufecki, “The Mutated Virus is a Ticking Time Bomb,” TheAtlantic.com; December 31, 2020; Internet; available at https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/12/virus-mutation-catastrophe/ 617531/; accessed January 9, 2021. 7 still lurk, awaiting the opportunity to jump from animals to humans as the climate crisis continues to worsen.1

The human toll from the climate crisis might at present be growing at a rate slower than that of the pandemic, save in the case of rapid, relatively short-term events like storms and floods, hurricanes, heatwaves and wildfires, but cumulatively the overall climate crisis threatens vastly increased death and illness from heatwaves, air and water pollution, drought and hunger, according to a recent study by the US National Bureau of

Economic Research. As reported on that study, “[t]he growing but largely unrecognized death toll from rising global temperatures will come close to eclipsing the current number of deaths from all the infectious diseases combined if planet-heating emissions are not constrained…. global mortality rates will be raised by 73 deaths per

100,000 people by the end of the century.” This nearly matches the current death toll from all infectious diseases, including tuberculosis, HIV/Aids, malaria, dengue and yellow fever.”2

The pandemic set off the worst economic crisis since at least the 2007-2009

“Great Recession,” from which millions of workers had not yet fully recovered. The economy was partially shut down to quash the pandemic’s surge, quickly pushing

“headline” to almost 15 percent. However, real unemployment levels were far higher. “Official unemployment” has long been fictionalized in service to political goals by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The headline rate announced by its U-3 measure

1 UN News, “Flagship UN Study Shows Accelerating on Land, Sea and in the Atmosphere,” News.UN.org; March 10, 2020; Internet; available at https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/03/1059061; accessed January 9, 2021. 2 Oliver Milman, “Rising Temperatures Will Cause More Deaths Than All Infectious Diseases–Study,” TheGuardian.com; Internet; available at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/04/rising-global- temperatures-death-toll-infectious-diseases-study; accessed January 9, 2021. 8 counts “total unemployed persons, as a percent of the civilian labor force,” but exempts from that labor force any who stop looking for work after 4 weeks of searching. Even the

U-6 “real” measure, which includes those workers, fails to register all those who need and want full-time work.1

Accordingly, the actual extent of unemployment is significantly understated by both measures. As the U-3 measure jumped to almost 15 percent in the spring of 2020, the U-6 jumped to over 22 percent. By December 31, 2020, months after the Trump administration and many states began to “reopen” the economy, tailoring their pandemic

“response” to prioritize continued production and profit-making regardless of the public health risks of the pandemic, the U-6 measure still showed 11.6 percent unemployed,2 while credible measures from alternative sources that include additional factors, like the percentage of US workers who are “functionally” unemployed because they do not earn a livable wage, put the “true” rate of unemployment in December 2020 at 25.1 percent.3

Hunger, poverty and homelessness accelerated as the virus spread. According to the nonprofit group Feeding America, even “before the coronavirus pandemic, more than 35 million people struggled with hunger in the United States, including more than 10 million children.” However, as 2021 arrived, that number ballooned to “more than 50

1 BLS, “Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survey–Concepts and Definitions,” BLS.gov; June 19, 2020; Internet; available at https://www.bls.gov/cps/definitions.htm#unemployed; accessed January 10, 2021. 2 Ycharts.com, “US U-6 Unemployment Rate,” YCharts.com; January 8, 2021; Internet; available at https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_u_6_unemployment_rate_unadjusted#:~:text=US%20U%2D6%20Unemploym ent%20Rate%20is%20at%2011.60%25%2C%20compared,long%20term%20average%20of%2010.45%25; accessed January 10, 2021. 3 LISEP.org, “True Rate of Unemployment,” LISEP.org; December 2020; Internet; available at https://www.lisep.org; accessed January 10, 2021. 9 million people, including 17 million children.”1 The miserly initial pandemic aid for US workers ended in June 2020 with only a fifth of the $4 trillion bailout actually reaching individuals. The bulk went to the wealthy and to companies that laid off workers, despite billions in corporate cuts for the wealthy in 2017 from the Trump administration.2

Since June 2020, an additional 7.8 million Americans fell into poverty, 2.7 million of them children, according to US poverty measures that are pinned to unrealistic standards that have barely changed from when they were first implemented in the 1960s.

The total number living in poverty is far more than the official number according to the nonprofit anti-poverty group American Progress. As it observed last year after the growing pandemic shut down the economy:

In 2018, 38.1 million people were in poverty. Or at least that’s the number the US Census Bureau has calculated. For decades now, researchers and advocates have argued that the official number is much too low. Using more complex measures of economic insecurity and the costs facing low-income households, one study found that at least 3.2 million more people should be classified as being “in poverty” based on inflation changes alone; another analysis found that almost 51 million households struggle to pay for basic necessities such as food, housing, and health care.3

Authors Joanne Goldblum and Colleen Shaddox, in their recent book Broke in

America: Seeing, Understanding, and Ending US Poverty, argue that today “over 120 million people living in the United States struggle to meet their most basic needs,”

1 Feeding America, “Facts About Poverty and Hunger in America,” FeedingAmerica.org; 2021; Internet; available at https:// www.feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/facts; accessed January 10, 2021. 2 Peter Whoriskey, Douglas MacMillan et al.,”‘Doomed to Fail’: Why a $4 Trillion Bailout Could not Revive the American Economy,” TheWashingtonPost.com; October 5, 2020; Internet; available at https:// www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/business/coronavirus-bailout-spending/; accessed January 12, 2021. 3 Areeba Haider and Justin Schweitzer, “The Poverty Line Matters, But It Is not Capturing Everyone It Should,” Center for AmericanProgresss.org; March 5, 2020; Internet; available at https://www.americanprogress.org/ issues/poverty/news/2020/03/05/481314/poverty-line-matters-isnt-capturing-everyone/; accessed January 13, 2021. 10 according to an interview in Jacobin magazine.1 As the pandemic continues to spread through 2021, it will continue to exacerbate the ongoing unemployment and poverty that have become part of the structural economic crisis of capitalism, further increasing hunger and homelessness as the pandemic forces more joblessness. Many in Congress insist on very little additional aid for working people, far less than in many other countries where a stronger labor movement forges a better countervailing force against ruling-class policies.2

The new Biden administration promises increased aid, but with slim majorities in Congress and lacking any substantial labor movement to force his hand, Biden’s agenda—whatever it may be—faces an uphill battle for a return to pre-pandemic “normal,” let alone the significant gains needed for the climate and working people.

Homelessness is rising despite temporary federal and some state eviction moratoriums during 2020 and into 2021, which cannot solve the inability of tens of millions of working people to pay rent when they have no jobs. Such measures only forestall the inevitable, postponing rent to a future date when, without aid, workers will still be unable to pay. Indeed, most eviction bans applied only to certain types of and included no enforcement measures, producing plenty of evictions even in the midst of the pandemic.3 That is hardly surprising, since a housing crisis for workers has

1 Fran Quigley, “Ending Poverty in the United States Would Actually Be Pretty Easy,” JacobinMag.com; December 29, 2020; Internet; available at https://jacobinmag.com/2020/12/broke-in-america-ending-us- poverty; accessed January 13, 2021. 2 Benjy Sarlin and Stephanie Ruhle, “As Coronavirus Surges, Countries Spend More on Economic Aid. But Not the US,” NBCNews.com; December 9, 2020; Internet; available at https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics- news/coronavirus-surges-countries-spend-more-economic-aid-not-u-s-n1250411; accessed January 14, 2021. 3 Jeff Ernsthausen, et al., “The Pandemic Economy: Despite Federal Ban, Landlords Still Moving to Evict People During the Pandemic,” ProPublica.org, April 16, 2020; Internet; available at https://www.propublica.org/ article/despite-federal-ban-landlords-are-still-moving-to-evict-people-during-the-pandemic; accessed January 14, 2021. 11 been a fundamental feature of capitalism since its beginning in the early 1600s, a fact amply attested to by unrelenting housing crises for the in virtually every country across the world.1

Under capitalism, the most profitable housing is always produced primarily for those with the ability to pay the highest prices—the wealthy. Its construction has always been prioritized by the for-profit construction industry and landlords, with affordable housing for working people never sufficient for everyone. Frederick Engels noted in 1872 in his The Housing Question that the conditions of the remaining housing into which much of the working class has always been crowded as a result is a common source of pestilence and disease. Moreover, wages—in the long run—are determined by the cost of the means of life, moderated by supply and demand and subject to historical standards like the degree of unionization and the total of . Those means of life include housing, so many attempts to solve the housing crisis with subsidies eventually result in lower real wages, which tend to reproduce the crisis, even today, everywhere capitalism exists.2

Homelessness is related to the built-in problem of the housing crisis under capitalism. It has to do with the same inability to pay that plagues workers’ hunt for housing, subject as they are to the system’s constant drive to lower wages and its inability to fully employ all who need and want full-time work. Finding affordable housing, however, is only part of the problem of homelessness, which owes much to the

1 Laura Kusisto and Peter Grant, “Affordable Housing Crisis Spreads Throughout World,” WallStreetJournal.com; April 2, 2019; Internet; available at https://www.wsj.com/articles/affordable-housing- crisis-spreads-throughout-world-11554210003; accessed February 6, 2021. 2 Frederick Engels, The Housing Question (New York, International Publishers, 1935), 43-77. 12 unwillingness of capitalism’s political state to shoulder the weight of the economic misery its system always places more heavily on some, including the disabled, single mothers, minorities and those with mental health problems, especially those victimized by racism and war.

As the pandemic began ramping up in 2020, the National Alliance to End

Homelessness already listed a total of 567,715 people as homeless in the United States.1

A report released by the global nonprofit Aspen Institute estimated by May that “30-40 million renters in America” were at risk of eviction in 2020–2021 as a result of the pandemic.2 The eviction crisis that results will further fuel the pandemic,3 which is expected to be increasingly driven by new faster-spreading viral mutations.4 Small landlords also face a problem, too, as pandemic deaths, illness and economic devastation continue in

2021, further diminishing the ability of millions to pay rent, and thinning the ranks of middle-class landlords. More small landlords will be forced to sell their holdings to hedge funds and private-equity groups for the very wealthy, as they were after the Great

Recession, when the same wealthy groups snapped up the homes of hundreds of thousands of families who lost them.5

1 Joy Moses, “COVID-19 and the State of Homelessness,” EndHomelessness.org; May 19, 2020; Internet; available at https://endhomelessness.org/covid-19-and-the-state-of-homelessness/; accessed January 14, 2021. 2 Emily Benfer et al., “The COVID-19 Eviction Crisis: An Estimated 30-40 Million People in America Are at Risk,” AspenInstitute .org; August 7, 2020; Internet; available at https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/the-covid- 19-eviction-crisis-an-estimated-30-40-million-people-in-america-are-at-risk/; accessed January 14, 2021. 3 Kat Eschner, “In 2021, a New Wave of Evictions Could Also Fuel a Rise in COVID Cases,” PopularScience.com; January 4, 2021; Internet; available at https://www.popsci.com/story/health/housing- eviction-covid-19-pandemic-spread/; accessed January 15, 2021. 4 Joel Achenbach, “CDC Warns Highly Transmissible Coronavirus Variant to Become Dominant in US,” WashingtonPost .com; January 15, 2021, Internet, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/ health/coronavirus-variant-dominant-us/2021/01/15/4420d814-5738-11eb-a817-e5e7f8a406d6_story.html; accessed January 15, 2021. 5 Alana Semuels, “When Wall Street Is Your Landlord,” TheAtlantic.com; February 13, 2019; Internet; available at https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/02/single-family-landlords-wall-street/582394/; accessed January 15, 2021. 13

In short, the pandemic crisis has devastated working people. Millions are being forced to return to work without proper protective equipment and few mandated on-the-job safeguards.

Millions may never return to their old jobs as a result of the vast structural economic changes the pandemic has caused, with the future of whole industries now in serious doubt.1 Millions face eviction and homelessness.

The ultra-rich, on the other hand, have benefitted greatly from their and control of industry and services during the pandemic. According to a recent report by the nonprofit Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), a progressive think tank, “the collective wealth of America’s 651 billionaires”…”jumped by over $1 trillion since roughly the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to a total of $4 trillion” by December 2020. The total $4 trillion collective wealth of this tiny group of billionaires “is nearly double the $2.1 trillion in total wealth held by the bottom half of the population, or 165 million Americans.”2

While the billionaires who own and control the economy continue to expand their wealth, working people worldwide will face this crisis for years, with the poorest here and abroad suffering the worst. A recent article in the Journal of the American Medical

Association estimated that even if the pandemic ends by the fall of 2021—a scenario made doubtful by the slow vaccine rollout and the appearance of faster-spreading new virus mutations—the economic costs of the coronavirus pandemic to the US alone over the

1 Chris Isidore, “The Ugly Truth About Millions of American Jobs: They Are Not Coming Back,” CNN.com; July 7, 2020; Internet; available at https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/07/economy/job-losses-coronavirus/index.html; accessed January 15, 2021. 2 Chuck Collins, “US Billionaires’ Total Wealth Grows to $4 Trillion—Over $1 Trillion Since Beginning of Pandemic,” Inequality.org; December 9, 2020; Internet; available at https://inequality.org/great- divide/updates-billionaire-pandemic/; accessed January 16, 2021. 14 next 10 years of expected economic recession will be at least $16 trillion. The pandemic, says David Cutler, one of the authors of the article, is “the greatest threat to prosperity and well-being the US has encountered since the Great Depression.”1 The ultra rich will prosper, workers will pay.

Moreover, the pandemic is just the beginning of an extended, perhaps permanent, period of increasing environmental chaos and concurrent economic damage that will dwarf the effects of the pandemic to date. First, the present pandemic is but one possible pandemic in a world where the capitalist destruction of nature is fast multiplying the possibilities for others. Furthermore, the rapidly worsening climate crisis itself is already a much more existential, final threat to life on Earth than the COVID-19 pandemic. The two crises are far more related than perhaps one might expect. Global warming does not directly produce viruses, but viruses do commonly originate from the same ecologically destructive practices that have produced the climate crisis, which create conditions that provide more pathways to new human viruses. Destruction of the environment puts animal and human populations on the move, often closer to each other or each other’s food supplies.

A recent article at Bloomberg|Quint on the COVID-19 outbreak shows how such pathways can work. Research on coronavirus was for years “considered a backwater,” it noted, but “[t]he SARS outbreak almost two decades ago abruptly changed things, and helped jump-start a worldwide search for other viruses that could spill into humans after contact with animal excrement, saliva or mucus.” That search “has often led back to

1 Alvin Powell, “What Might COVID cost the US? Try $16 Trillion,” The Harvard Gazette/news.harvard.edu; November 10, 2020; Internet; available at https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/11/what-might-covid- cost-the-u-s-experts-eye-16-trillion/; accessed January 16, 2021. 15 infected bats as the source,” the article noted, adding that an “early clue of bats’ role came from a 1998 outbreak of brain-infecting Nipah virus in Malaysia that killed more than

100 people.” As the article noted, “[i]t turned out that bats with the virus were feeding on mango trees overhanging a pig enclosure.” Research showed that “bats dropped fruit into the pens and infected the pigs; the pigs then passed the pathogen on to people.”1

Renee Salas, lead author of a recent report in The Lancet, a prominent peer- reviewed medical journal, wrote in a statement accompanying the report, “[t]his past year, we have seen the harms of our converging crises—COVID-19, climate disasters, and systemic racism; it’s been a preview of what lies ahead if we fail to urgently make the necessary investments to protect health.” As she put it, “[w]e must take an integrated approach when tackling these challenges.” Accordingly, she wrote, “[c]limate action is the prescription we need for better health and equity as we emerge from this pandemic.”2

John Bellamy Foster and Intan Suwandi, in an article cited earlier, contextualize the crisis stage we face, where “[t]he COVID-19 crisis is not to be treated as the result of an external force or as an unpredictable ‘black swan’ event, but rather belongs to a complex of crisis tendencies that are broadly predictable, though not in terms of actual timing.” Foster and Suwandi note that “[t]oday the center of the capitalist system is confronted with secular stagnation in terms of production and investment, relying for its expansion and

1 Robert Langreth, “Coronavirus Outbreak Likely Began With Bats, an Omen for Next Epidemic,” BloombergQuint.com; February 7, 2020; Internet; available at https://www.bloombergquint.com/china/where- did-coronavirus-come-from-why-bats-may-be-to-blame; accessed February 6, 2021. See also Damian Carrington, “Pandemics Result From Destruction of Nature, Say UN and Who,” TheGuardian.com; June 17, 2020; Internet; available at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/17/pandemics-destruction-nature-un- who-legislation-trade-green-recovery; accessed February 6, 2021. 2 Catherine Clifford, “2020 Is a ‘Preview’ of How Bad Things Can Get If We Don’t Fix Climate Change, Other Systemic Problems: Lancet Report,” CNBC.com; December 2, 2020; available at https://www.cnbc.com/ 2020/12/02/2020-just-a-preview-if-we-dont-fix-climate-change-the-lancet.html; accessed February 6, 2021. 16 amassing of wealth at the top on historically low rates, high amounts of , the drain of capital from the rest of the world, and financial speculation.” As they pointedly observe, “[i]ncome and wealth inequality are reaching levels for which there is no historical analogue.” Moreover, “[t]he rift in world ecology has attained planetary proportions and is creating a planetary environment that no longer constitutes a safe place for humanity.”1

Within the Civilizational Climate Crisis

News of the planetary climate crisis only occasionally broke through the daily reports of the rising pandemic body count throughout 2020, despite the far greater threat to humanity, its cities and economies as a result of its existential nature across a far larger scale of time and space, flora and fauna. However, the year was still packed with unavoidable evidence that the overall climate crisis from which the pandemic springs is steadily approaching the point of irreversible worsening we have long been warned of by the most lucid of the world’s climate scientists and writers who follow their research.

On December 30, 2020, an article at The Conversation, a network of nonprofit media that publishes work by academics and researchers, addressed this reality.

Headlined “Overshadowed by COVID: the Deadly Extreme Weather of 2020,” it observed that “the year 2020…is on target to be one of the warmest on record…and as the climate warms, natural hazards will happen more frequently—and be ever more lethal.” Lest we forget, clouded by the fog of pandemic news, its authors catalogued the vast effects of the climate crisis across much of the world: the heatwaves and massive wildfires that

1 Foster and Suwandi, “COVID-19 and Catastrophe Capitalism.” 17 incinerated much of ’s land and wildlife at the beginning of the year; unprecedented record temperatures and fires that burned across Siberia beginning in July; and the worst wildfire season in 70 years as the whole US west coast blazed through July and August, incinerating several small towns.1

Their recitation included, too, the burning of the Amazon rainforest and the wetlands of the Pantanal; ferocious storms in the Philippines and Vietnam, Haiti and

Louisiana, Honduras and ; widespread flooding in east Africa—to most deadly effect in Kenya, fostering the breeding of locusts that devastated crops in the area this year, and promising increased devastation in the future—plus an unprecedented

“billion-dollar” throughout the US southwest; and widespread heatwaves across and Bangladesh, Japan and the UK.2

The most reliable climate science we have, from United Nations-affiliated agencies sharing the research of thousands of climate scientists worldwide, has since late 2018 released four warnings in relatively quick succession about the rapidly worsening extent of the climate crisis. On Oct. 8, 2018, an “emergency warning” was issued by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and related global emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty.”

The Climate Agreement’s 1.5°C–2°C target is the latest feeble international attempt

1 Chloe Brimicombe et al., “Overshadowed by COVID: The Deadly Extreme Weather of 2020,” TheConversation.com; December 30, 2020; Internet; available at https://theconversation.com/overshadowed-by- covid-the-deadly-extreme-weather-of-2020-151237; accessed January 18, 2021. 2 Brimicombe et al., “Overshadowed by COVID.” 18 to prevent the catastrophic effects of climate warming—though it has been widely criticized as insufficient for that end.1 The IPCC’s report warned that limiting warming to 1.5°C, if it is possible at all at this point, will require major and immediate “economic and social transformations,” among them a 50 percent reduction in the burning of fossil fuels by 2030 and 100 percent cut by 2050, plus a switch to alternative energy production, electric transportation systems and sustainable, regenerative agriculture. Even then, the report said, halting warming would require atmospheric carbon removal to some extent.2

Next, on May 6, 2019, another UN organization, the Intergovernmental Science-

Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), declared a related “social and ecological emergency.” Titled “Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented,’

Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating,’” it described Earth’s harrowing biological condition, including these details:3

• The current dramatic rate of extinction is likely to accelerate rapidly and wipe out up to a million of Earth’s estimated eight million species, many within decades. • Over 90% of major marine fish stocks are in decline or overexploited. • Humanity dumps up to 400 million tons of heavy metals, toxic sludge and other waste into oceans and rivers each year. • Soil degradation has been exacerbated by increased use of fertilizers, which have risen four-fold in just 13 years in Asia, and doubled worldwide since 1990. • Fertilizers entering coastal ecosystems have produced more than 400 ‘dead zones.’

1 Georgina Gustin, “The Paris Climate Problem: A Dangerous Lack of Urgency,” InsideClimateNews.org; November 7, 2019; Internet; available at https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07112019/paris-climate-agreement- pledges-lack-urgency-ipcc-timeline-warning/; accessed January 21, 2021. 2 IPCC, “Global warming of 1.5°C,” IPCC.ch; October 8, 2018; Internet; available at https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/; accessed January 18, 2021. 3 IPBES, “Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented,’ Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’,” IPBES.net; May 6, 2019; Internet; available at https://www.ipbes.net/news/Media-Release-Global-Assessment; accessed January 18, 2021. 19

• Land degradation has reduced the productivity of 23% of the global land surface.1

Among its key findings were that “nature and its vital contributions to people, which together embody biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services, are deteriorating worldwide.” Moreover, it noted, “goals for conserving and sustainably using nature and achieving sustainability cannot be met by current trajectories, and goals for 2030 and beyond may only be achieved through transformative changes across economic, social, political and technological factors.”2

On August 7, 2019, the IPCC issued yet another warning, this time on “Climate

Change and Land,” including “climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems.”3 It found, among things, that, “[s]ince the pre-industrial period, the land surface air temperature has risen nearly twice as much as the global average temperature... Climate change, including increases in frequency and intensity of extremes, has adversely impacted food security and terrestrial ecosystems as well as contributed to desertification and land degradation in many regions.”4

Since land is both a source of and sink for , moderating the deterioration of arable land by switching to regenerative, is crucial to fighting the

1 EU Science Hub, “Nature’s Dangerous Decline: Extinction Rates Set to Accelerate,” May 6, 2019; Ec.Europa.eu; Internet; available at https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/science-update/natures-dangerous-decline- extinction-rates-set-accelerate; accessed January 18, 2021. 2 IPBES, “Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented.’” 3 IPCC, “Climate Change and Land,” IPCC.ch; August 8, 2019; Internet; available at https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/; accessed January 19, 2021. 4 IPCC, “Climate Change and Land: Summary for Policymakers,” IPCC.ch; August 8, 2019; Internet; available at https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/chapter/summary-for-policymakers/; accessed January 19, 2021. 20 climate crisis, the report said. A scientific summary by the World Resources Institute said the next day, “the very land we depend on to stabilize the climate is getting slammed by climate change.” Without profoundly changing the way food is produced and land is managed, “it will be impossible to limit temperature rise to safe levels.”1

The next month, on September 25, 2019, the IPCC issued its “Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate,”2 continuing its nearly year-long drumbeat of dire emergency warnings. It found that “the rate of ocean warming has doubled since 1993,” threatening foundational species like kelp and corals. Destructive marine heatwaves, rising ocean acidity, species loss, from melting together with consequent slow-motion collapse among flooding low-lying coastal cities and areas, loss of snow depth near areas where it is crucial for water supplies, and many other effects are expected to accelerate as warming continues. A summary observed,

“[a]s a result of impacts to the ocean and cryosphere, communities around the world will see their water resources disappear, experience floods and landslides, face changes in food supply, and witness the degradation of ecosystems, infrastructure, recreation and culture.”3

An article at Common Dreams, a nonprofit progressive news site, published the day after the IPCC’s October 8, 2018 emergency warning made it plain that even the UN

1 Kelly Levin and Sarah Parsons, “7 Things to Know About the IPCC’s Special Report on Climate Change and Land,” World Resources Institute/wri.org; August 8, 2019; Internet; available at https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/08/7-things- know-about-ipcc-special-report-land-and-climate; accessed January 19, 2021. 2 IPCC, “Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate,” IPCC.ch; September 25, 2019; Internet; available at https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/chapter/summary-for-policymakers/; accessed January 19, 2021. 3 Kelly Levin and Eliza Northrup, “4 Things to Know About the IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere,” World Resources Institute/wri.org; October 9, 2018; Internet; available at https://www.wri.org/ blog/2019/09/4-things-know-about-ipcc-special-report-ocean-and-cryosphere; accessed January 19, 2021. 21 warnings do not tell the whole story. Statements from UN bodies require near-unanimous agreement from all concerned, and hundreds of scientists from hundreds of different countries participate in that consensus. The article reported that “Jamie Henn, co- founder and the program director for the international climate group 350.org,” noted that “the ‘scariest thing about the IPCC report’ is the fact that ‘it’s the watered down, consensus version. The latest science is much, much, much more terrifying.’” The problem is tipping points—positive feedback loops that, once entered into, can push warming so far and so fast that it reaches a point of no return and cannot be reversed. The IPCC report,

“[a]ccording to Durwood Zaelke, founder of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable

Development,” is that it “fails to focus on the weakest link in the climate chain: the self- reinforcing feedbacks which, if allowed to continue, will accelerate warming and risk cascading climate tipping points and runaway warming.”1

Positive feedback loops in the include the increasing likelihood of the release of massive amounts of frozen CO2 and methane as global temperature rises.

Methane is a greenhouse gas many times more potent than CO2. As rising global temperatures thaw the permafrost and raise ocean temperatures, massive amounts of frozen CO2 and methane hydrate deposits are being gasified and released, and the increasing concentration of methane in the atmosphere will in turn greatly accelerate global warming, sea level rise and climate destabilization. This will in turn accelerate the release of more frozen greenhouse gases.2

1 John Queally, “What’s Not in the Latest Terrifying IPCC Report?,” CommonDreams.org; October 9, 2018; Internet; available at https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/10/09/whats-not-latest-terrifying-ipcc-report- much-much-much-more-terrifying-new-research; accessed January 19, 2021. 2 Ian Johnston, “Earth’s Worst-Ever Mass Extinction of Life Holds ‘Apocalyptic’ Warning About Climate Change, Say Scientists,” Independent.co.uk; March 24, 2017; Internet; available at https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/earth- permian-mass-extinction-apocalypse-warning-climate-change-frozen-methane-a7648006.html; accessed May 5, 2019. 22

It is not known what the exact tipping point for this massive release will be, which is a very large problem on which humanity must not gamble. Global temperatures are already around 1.2°C above preindustrial levels. Will this event be triggered between

1.2°C and 1.5°C of warming? Will it happen between 1.5°C and 2.0°C, or perhaps a bit higher? What is clear is that the process is already slowly beginning. By July of 2017 at least fifteen giant craters had been discovered over a three-year period across Siberia caused by massive burps of gases thawed by rising temperatures.1 Moreover, as an article in announced last year, “[a]cross the Arctic, lakes are leaking dangerous greenhouse gases.” Many are already bubbling and hissing as frozen CO2 and methane from permafrost and deeper geologic sources thaws and rises to the surface, a source that “could more than double the coming from the Arctic’s soils by 2100.”2

Collectively, these emergency warnings and others from scientific quarters since

2019 make it plain that vast and rapid responses are required if we wish life on Earth, including our own, to survive. In a society where the interests of the public and society as a whole were dominant rather than the profit interests of the owners of the economy, such warnings would have prompted immediate action. Plans would have been drawn up at all levels of government to educate the public at large about the nature of the crisis and to garner understanding of and support for the steps needed to address it. Humanity would have been quickly mobilized to address the crisis. Yet little progress has been made

1 Jeremy Plester, “All Hell Breaks Loose as the Tundra Thaws,” TheGuardian.com, July 20, 2017, Internet; available at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/20/hell-breaks-loose-tundra-thaws-weatherwatch; accessed May 5, 2019. 2 Chris Mooney, “Arctic Cauldron,” WashingtonPost.com, September 22, 2018. Internet; available at https:// www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/arctic-lakes-are-bubbling-and-hissing-with-dangerous-greenhouse- gases/; accessed May 5, 2019. 23 toward ameliorating the climate crisis—indeed, it is accelerating.1

That is hardly surprising given that the IPCC and other scientific bodies have been warning of this crisis since the late 1980s—a history that is presented in the body of this paper—while the dominant political representatives of capitalism have chosen no significant action—save to watch the crisis continue to worsen while profits pile up for their fossil-fuel industry sponsors. Indeed, the Trump administration was more interested in accelerating the extraction of fossil fuels and bolstering capitalist rule by building an increasingly rightwing movement of supporters to push that agenda.2 It remains to be seen how President Biden, long a supporter of neoliberal lean government and austerity for workers,3 might act regarding the crisis, though it is already known that he does not support a full , a project considered essential by climatologists if rapid transformation of the economy in line with IPCC recommendations is to be achieved before the crisis reaches the point of no return.4

The idea of these crises as contemptuously chosen is crucial in thinking about how to cut the Gordian knot of capitalist crises that exists today and build a sustainable future. It is a theme that runs through this paper and its historical materialist approach

1 Tia Ghose, “10 Steamy Signs in 2020 that Climate Change is Speeding Up,” LiveScience.com; January 1, 2021; Internet; available at https://www.livescience.com/climate-change-worsening-2020.html; accessed January 21, 2021. 2 Basav Sen, “How the Industry Funds Fascism,” CommonDreams.org; January 21, 2021; Internet; available at https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/01/21/how-fossil-fuel-industry-funds-fascism; accessed January 22, 2021. 3 Kelly Hayes, “Don’t Fawn Over Biden. Fight Neoliberalism,” Truthout.org; December 16, 2020; Internet; available at https://truthout.org/audio/dont-fawn-over-biden-fight-neoliberalism/; accessed January 22, 2021. See also David Sirota, “Joe Biden’s Love of Austerity Cut the Stimulus Bill in Half,” JacobinMagazine.com; December 22, 2020; Internet; available at https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/12/joe-biden-austerity-stimulus- bill-cut-in-half-covid-19; accessed January 2, 2021. 4 Lisa Kashinsky, “Joe Biden Rejects Green New Deal and Other Progressive Policies in Debate, Irking Activists,” Boston Herald.com; , 2020; Internet; available at https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/09/30/joe-biden- rejects-green-new-deal-and-other-progressive-policies-in-debate-irking-activists/; accessed January 22, 2021. 24 to history. A recent article in The Nation on rising US homelessness succinctly encapsulated the idea when it wrote: “[f]or months now, our leaders have known that the COVID-19 crisis could force millions of people from their homes.” However, it continued, “[t]hey decided to let it happen.” The article was titled, “How the United States

Chose to Become a Country of Homelessness.”1 Homelessness has never been an issue of concern to the wealthy in society—it is something they will never suffer.

In short, the way ruling-class representatives and their capitalist-class sponsors choose to react to a crisis, or not to react, is dictated not by rational policies based on humanistic concerns for the public and society, but by the selfish material interests of those who dominate the economy. This has always been the case in class-ruled societies. The last five decades, however, poignantly show the extent to which the increasingly overwhelming dominance of ruling-class self-interest over society and the rapid expansion of capitalist accumulation worldwide has poisoned humanity and the environment, threatening society itself and stripping any semblance of legitimacy from capitalist rule. Capitalists responded to reduced profit-making opportunities as international postwar competition ramped up in the mid-1970s by squeezing working people ever harder, in an ongoing attack on unions that accelerated since the Reagan administration.2 They increased pressure on wages by accelerating offshoring, outsourcing and globalization and by virulently spreading the gospel of neoliberalism—the idea that society benefits by prioritizing the wealth of the

1 Dale Maharidge, “How the United States Chose to Become a Country of Homelessness,” TheNation.com; January 13, 2021; Internet; available at https://www.thenation.com/article/society/how-america-chose-homelessness/; accessed January 17, 2021. 2 Lawrence Mishel, “Explaining the Erosion of Private-Sector Unions: How Corporate Practices and Legal Changes Have Undercut the Ability of Workers to Organize and Bargain,” Institute/EPI.org; November 18, 2020; Internet; available at https://www.epi.org/unequalpower/publications/private-sector-unions-corporate-legal- erosion/; accessed January 25, 2021. 25 richest, who will “trickle down” some of their increasing wealth to the majority, the working class. Capitalist-class choices became the only choices that counted.

The overall profit interests of the richest element in society dictated that a blind eye be turned toward climate change, and so they chose to turn a blind eye to it.1 The rich assumed that they could stall action on that front without harming themselves, because science showed that areas where brown, black and poor white working people lived or were forced to live worldwide would likely pay the price of the worst effects of climate change long before they would—a modern-day version of King Louis XVI’s choice to ignore the plight of starving French peasants and continue the lavish lifestyle of the aristocracy: Après moi le deluge—after me the flood. This is not a cynical view of history; it is just history.

Capitalist response to COVID-19 reflected fissures among ruling-class elements on this crisis, which more immediately threatened profits as the economy collapsed.

Some recognized the threat it represented to them personally. Others, like Trump, trusted that their wealth would protect them and recognized that it could be used to bolster aspects of the rightwing movement they sought to build. That tactic itself is one that dominant elements of the capitalist class chose to use given that public resistance to globalization and neoliberal lies is growing and their effectiveness as defenses of capitalism is therefore threatened. Propaganda about the pandemic was also used to advance a racist, xenophobic and often violent response to increasing numbers of climate- crisis refugees and migrants—numbers that will only grow as the climate crisis

1 See Andreas Malm, Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War in the Twenty-First Century (London: Verso, 2020). 26 worsens, absolutely necessitating a humane and planned response if we wish to prevent a vast humanitarian crisis across the planet.1

The pandemic was treated as a political wedge issue by the Trump administration. It not only chose to divide US citizens along the lines of race and sex during its 2016 campaign and after. It also chose during the pandemic to create divisions between those who accepted the science of the pandemic and those who did not; between those who wear masks and those who do not; between those who will submit to vaccination and those who will not; indeed, between those who believe in science and those who do not.2 To save those who own and control the economy some tax money, voices in the administration actually pushed “for millions of Americans to be infected” as a means of developing so-called

“herd immunity”—an idea thankfully rejected by Trump’s own public health authorities.3

The anemic, chaotic response to the pandemic chosen by Trump and those politicians who supported him has its analogue in the way the capitalist class as a whole has so far responded to the worsening climate crisis. While the extent of the crisis cries out for immediate action, this paper will make the case that responsibility for action cannot be left in ruling-class hands, but must be taken up as a mass project by the great majority of working people seeking to end class rule and capitalist accumulation forever.

1 Tim Gaynor, “Climate Change Is the Defining Crisis of Our Time and It Particularly Impacts the Displaced,” UNHCR.org; November 30, 2020; Internet; available at https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/latest/2020/ 11/5fbf73384/climate-change-defining-crisis-time-particularly-impacts-displaced.html; accessed January 20, 2021. 2 Christian Paz, “All the President’s Lies About the Coronavirus,” TheAtlantic.com; November 2, 2020; Internet; available at https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/11/trumps-lies-about-coronavirus/608647/; accessed January 20, 2021. 3 Dan Diamond, “‘We Want Them Infected’: Trump Appointee Demanded ‘Herd Immunity’ Strategy, Emails Reveal,” Politico.com; December 16, 2020; Internet; available at https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/16/ trump-appointee-demanded-herd-immunity-strategy-446408; accessed January 20, 2021. 27

The body of this paper will pick up the themes presented in this introduction and contextualize the crisis into a broad but succinct understanding that the ruling capitalist class has, through its historic treatment of nature—humanity and the environment—fully disqualified itself from further rule. It cannot be counted on, thanks to the precedence it gives to its own self-interest, to work to permanently end all the interrelated economic, political, ecological and epidemiological crises that its system has called into being.

Indeed, its choice to defend capitalism despite its risk to life on Earth makes unlikely even any honest attempt to do so.

Chapter One takes up the nature and development of the climate crisis, in answer to two questions: What is the history of the crisis, and what is the scientific consensus on where it stands today? The chapter presents a wide variety of writing in answer to these questions.

Chapter Two moves on to reasons for the lack of effective action on this existential crisis. It seeks to answer the question: What are the main historical reasons for a complete absence of real progress in dealing with this crisis? The lack of public awareness of and support for addressing the crisis is analyzed first, including psychological issues popularized in the procapitalist media. The paper then takes up the spread of denialism targeting the public, paid for and promoted by the fossil fuel industry and much of the rest of the US capitalist class. Finally the preparations and pronouncements of the US military establishment on the crisis are addressed, showing that the US government has often had one message for the public and another for its military defense of capitalist interests. Again, writings referenced are wide-ranging.

The project situates government inaction on the crisis within the overall crisis of 28 capitalism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, which produced globalization and neoliberalism. It shows that the US government has moved over the past five decades from initial acknowledgement of the crisis to active promotion of its worsening in keeping with the material interests of the wealthiest elements in society, and against the interests of the majority. What progress the Biden administration might make largely remains to be seen, but the prognosis is not good given its opposition to a full-scale Green New Deal, itself a mere stopgap measure that cannot permanently end capitalist destruction of labor and the environment, and its lack of substantive majorities in Congress.

In Chapter Three the thesis counterpoises to this denialism the historical development of Marxist writing on why the growth of capitalism on a finite Earth was virtually foreordained to lead to planetary catastrophe, thanks to its inherent disregard for the environment, human labor and society—indeed, to anything but private profit for the tiny capitalist minority. The paper contextualizes the climate crisis within this overall disregard, in answer to the question: Why is capitalism driven to destroy the environment?

This section also addresses writing on the record of supposedly “socialist” countries on the exploitation of land and labor in answer to the question: What is the record of so-called socialist countries on the environment? It connects that record to the context of the cold war and the methodology and goals of the original that established them.

Chapter Four draws on the writing of Marxists and others regarding the acceleration of the crisis in the last half of the twentieth century, thanks to the economic contradictions of capitalism and the neoliberal capitalist that spread capitalist relations and into every capillary of human social relations 29 everywhere, ratcheting up a ruling-class attack on labor and the environment worldwide.

As the paper contends, this acceleration brought us to the double emergency humanity now faces: the existential climate and associated biological crises on the one hand and, on the other hand, the continuing threat of increasingly rightwing government in the US and worldwide, reflecting the vastly increased concentration of capital in the hands of a few billionaires and the vastly increased exploitative power over Earth and humanity that this concentration enables. It seeks to contextualize the accelerating climate crisis within this overall profit-motivated disregard for human rights and the environment, and to bring both science and history together to answer the question: Why has the crisis accelerated so rapidly?

Chapter Five, the last section of the project, asks the question: Are there any countervailing forces capable of resolving the crisis? This concluding section contrasts several writers who have worked in the past century to identify and develop forces they believe are capable of pulling the emergency brake on the runaway train of profit-driven capitalism, positing the possibility that humanity may yet regain control of its life and health and prevent the destruction of all life on Earth.

In the Epilog, recent updates on the crisis are referenced, emphasizing that we have already entered the era of tipping points and positive feedback loops. It expresses hope for a working-class revolutionary movement to force action on the crisis, both for the short term and for a long-term change to ecosocialist society. 30

“Our house is on fire. I am here to say, our house is on fire.” —Greta Thunberg1

CHAPTER I

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE CRISIS

What is the history of the crisis, and what is the scientific consensus on where it stands today?

Almost two centuries of climate research brought the international climate science community to an overwhelming, settled consensus at least two decades ago—that global warming and resulting climate destabilization not only exist, but are caused by the burning of fossil fuels and increasingly threaten life on Earth, at least as we know it. That history is now fully documented by environmental , none perhaps more completely than Joshua P. Howe in Behind the Curve: Science and the Politics of Global Warming and his subsequent volume, Making Climate Change History: Documents from Global

Warming’s Past, which weaves a compendium of original documents into their historical context. However, Howe hamstrings his analysis by focusing on the failures of scientists, limiting his contribution to a nonetheless useful exposition of details.2 As he writes in

Behind the Curve, “[t]ragedy provides a good model for understanding the shortcomings of climate change advocacy from the early 1950s until the beginning of the twenty-first century.” He adds that “[t]he failure of climate change advocates to overcome the limitations of science-first advocacy has had real and destructive consequences for

1 , (from 2019 speech to the World Economic Forum at Davos-Klosters, ), “‘Our House Is on Fire’,” TheGuardian.com; January 25, 2019; Internet; available at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ 2019/jan/25/our-house-is-on-fire-greta-thunberg16-urges-leaders-to-act-on-climate; accessed January 24, 2021. 2 See Joshua P. Howe, Behind the Curve: Science and the Politics of Global Warming (Seattle, University of Washington Press, 2014). See also Joshua P. Howe, Making Climate Change History: Documents from Global Warming’s Past (Seattle, University of Washington Press, 2017). 30 31 individual organisms, species, ecosystems, and human populations, and these consequences can rightly be called tragic.”1

In short, Howe announces that his main focus will be on the failure of “science- first advocacy” to bring the changes needed to address the climate crisis, though he does close with a wish for “the political weight of a morally engaged constituency willing to make hard decisions about global warming.”2 This paper, on the other hand, focuses on the systemic nature of the climate crisis. It affixes blame for the lack of action on climate change primarily on the beneficiaries of the most responsible for the crisis in the first place—the capitalist owners of that economy whose malignant devotion to their own pecuniary interests powered globalization and vastly accelerated warming over the last 50 years. It is a perspective akin to that of Edward S. Herman and Noam

Chomsky in their book Consent regarding what receives attention, and how the capitalist major media “serve, and propagandize on behalf of, the powerful societal interests that control and finance them.” Those societal interests, they write, “have important agendas and principles that they want to advance, and they are well positioned to shape and constrain media policy.” Further, “[t]his is normally not accomplished by crude intervention, but by the selection of right-thinking personnel and by the editors’ and working ’ internalization of priorities and definitions of newsworthiness that conform to the institution’s policy,” Herman and Chomsky maintain.3

The power of capitalists over the media, then, and over many other aspects of society

1 Howe, Behind the Curve, 10. 2 Howe, Behind the Curve, 208. 3 Edward S. Herman and , Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the (New York, ), xi. 32 including and religion, played a dominant role in seeing to it that climate science was not believed. The short history in Chapter One and even more so that of Chapter Two of this thesis adequately attest to this. Despite this effort, continuing climate research produced a settled consensus on global warming and climate destabilization by 2013 that was shared by a proven 97 percent of the thousands of published and peer-reviewed climate scientists worldwide. By 2019 the consensus was more like 99 percent.1

Today science reveals that global warming is still accelerating and that we have only about three decades left to make the changes—and only about 10 years to be well into them—needed to avoid a catastrophic sixth great extinction over the coming century that may include humanity.2 The efforts of rightwing, libertarian politicians and think tanks—identifiable by their virulent support of laissez-faire capitalism, in collusion with the fossil-fuel industry and other defenders of private enterprise, have been instrumental in forestalling effective action to tackle the problem.3 Many fundamentalist

1 Paul N. Edwards, A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data and the Politics of Climate Change (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2013), xiv-xv; Mario Malina et al., “What We Know: The Reality, Risks and Response to Climate Change,” AAAS Climate Science Panel, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2014, 15-16, cited in , This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014), 31; IPCC TAR WG3 (2001), Metz, B., et al., eds., Climate Change 2001: Mitigation, Contribution of Working Group III to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, “3.2 Trends in Energy Use and Associated Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” 27-28; David Wallace-Wells, “The Uninhabitable Earth,” New York Magazine.com, July 14, 2017; Internet; available at http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for- humans-annotated.html, accessed January 24, 2021; David Nuccitelli, “The Cook et al. (2013) 97% consensus result is robust.” SkepticalScience.com, https://skepticalscience.com/97-percent-consensus-robust.htm; accessed November 10, 2017; Jonathan Watts, “‘No Doubt Left’ About Scientific Consensus on Global Warming, Say Experts,” TheGuardian.com; July 24, 2019; Internet; available at https://www.theguardian.com/ science/2019/jul/24/scientific-consensus-on-humans-causing-global-warming-passes-99; accessed January 24, 2021. 2 Mark C. Urban, “Accelerating Extinction Risk from Climate Change,” ScienceMagazine.org; May 1, 2015; Internet; available at http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6234/571.full; accessed January 25, 2021. 3 Michael E. Mann and Tom Toles. The Madhouse Effect: How is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy (New York: Press, 2016), 69-89. 33

Christian leaders fueled denialism as well.1

That continuing collusion and the growth imperatives of capitalism augur for continuing utter failure to address the crisis. In the context of the rapid changes needed and the massive resources that must be brought to bear to surmount the problem, this paper posits that only a fundamental and democratic socio-economic restructuring of society can effectively end the crisis and bring about a truly sustainable world. What kind of restructuring and how to build the mass movement needed to bring it about are crucial questions for the survival of humanity.

The Science Behind the Consensus

The history and conclusions of climate science are relatively straightforward and not at all difficult to understand. It begins with advances in temperature measurement in the 1600s and 1700s. The development of accurate thermal measurements set the stage for continuous climate data collection, leading eventually to increasingly widespread climate research.2

In 1824 Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier’s research in moved him to theorize that atmospheric gases could trap heat, similar to glass in a greenhouse, acting much like an insulating blanket to warm Earth to higher temperatures than should be expected on a planetary body so far from the sun.3 In the 1860s Irish physicist John Tyndall

1 Adrian Bardon, “Faith and Politics Mix to Drive Evangelical Christians’ Climate Change Denial,” TheConversation.com; September 9, 2020; Internet; available at https://theconversation.com/faith-and- politics-mix-to-drive-evangelical-christians-climate-change-denial-143145; accessed January 25, 2021. 2 Douglas MacAyeal, “Lab A—Instrumental Record of Earth’s Climate,” LFCCS and Climate Change.pbworks.com; October 1, 2013; Internet; available at http://lfccsandclimatechange.pbworks.com/w/file/fetch/119857419/ 5%20Lab%20A%20–%20Instrumental%20Record%20of%20Earth’s%20Climate.pdf; accessed Jan. 24, 2021. 3 John Mason, “The History of Climate Science,” SkepticalScience.com; April 7, 2013; Internet; available at https://www.skepticalscience.com/history-climate-science.html; accessed January 25, 2021. Mason is a historian and a past president of the UK’s Royal Meteorological Society. 34

researched the thermal absorption properties of water vapor and CO2 (despite the latter being only a trace gas in the atmosphere), further bolstering the idea of a .1 In a theory put in 1896, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius (an ancestor of contemporary climate activist Greta Thunberg) calculated that a doubling of CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels would cause a warming of 5-6°C on Earth. At the rates of CO2 emissions at the time, and counting on the ability of the oceans to absorb more CO2 than later scientists proved it is able to, he and others calculated it could be thousands of years before CO2 emissions could be a problem. In a book published in

1908, that time frame was reduced to centuries, due to a rapid increase in the burning of fossil fuels by that time.2

Concluding that Arrhenius was wrong, another Swedish scientist, Knut

Ångström, theorized that CO2 had a heat saturation point beyond which further warming would be limited.3 Further research on this subject in 1931 by American physicist E.O. Hulburt rebutted Ångström, and recalculated the effect of a doubling of CO2 to be about 4°C of warming.4 In 1938 Guy Callendar, an English engineer who had studied a warming trend in the twentieth century based on proliferating worldwide temperature records, calculated only a 2°C warming.5

After nuclear testing began in the 1950s, other scientists found ways to identify specific sources of CO2 in the atmosphere, finding that nuclear tests released

1 Mason, “The History of Climate Science.” See also Spencer R. Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming (Cambridge, MA: Press, 2008), 1-18. 2 Mason, “The History of Climate Science.” See also Weart, Discovery of Global Warming, 1-18. 3 Mason, “The History of Climate Science.” See also Weart, Discovery of Global Warming, 1-18. 4 Mason, “The History of Climate Science.” See also Weart, Discovery of Global Warming, 1-18. 5 Mason, “The History of Climate Science.” See also Weart, Discovery of Global Warming, 1-18. 35

an isotope called carbon 14, while the bulk of CO2 in the atmosphere was primarily carbon 12 and the much rarer carbon 13, resulting primarily from the burning of fossil fuels. Further scientific research showed there was a definite limit to the ability of oceans to absorb CO2. By the late 1950s routine measurements of CO2 concentrations were being made in Antarctica and atop Mauna Loa in Hawaii. Older measurements are from ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica that retain trapped bubbles of air that can be analyzed to show greenhouse gas concentrations, while newer measurements are direct measurements from the atmosphere.1

By 1988, concern about rising greenhouse gas emissions and consequent global warming prompted the formation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

(IPCC) by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the World

Meteorological Organization (WMO), “to prepare, based on available scientific information, assessments on all aspects of climate change and its impacts, with a view of formulating realistic response strategies.”2 In short, the planetary crisis for humanity represented by global warming was recognized by these international bodies and their signatories by the late twentieth century. As an article observes at

SkepticalScience.com, a website where scientists explain the peer-reviewed science of climate warming, as the twenty-first century opened, “the serious risks…included a wide range of problems: severe and unprecedented droughts affecting agriculture in some areas and severely inflating global food prices and also making conditions more favorable for

1 Mason, “The History of Climate Science.” See also Weart, Discovery of Global Warming, 20-37. 2 IPCC, “History of the IPCC,” IPCC.ch; undated; Internet; available at https://www.ipcc.ch/about/history/; accessed January 25, 2021. 36 wildfires; in other areas, increases in extreme rainfall events leading to widespread inundation, destruction of crops, casualties and loss/damage.” Further, the article said, “[s]ea level rise over the decades would again affect agriculture due to loss of fertile low-lying lands and would also lead to population displacement and mass migration.” In short, “[m]ankind was… busily engaged with making areas of the planet’s surface uninhabitable for future generations.”1

As Christian Parenti discerns in Jacobin magazine, the greatest likelihood is that these effects, if unhalted, will by 2100 engender a slow-motion collapse of human society—beginning soon—with all the possible ramifications for militarism and war, racial and political strife, unemployment and poverty and other social, economic and political problems that have already shown themselves to be features of contemporary capitalist society.2

However, possible effects down the road also include a more rapid collapse and more catastrophic destruction, depending upon what are called “positive feedback loops” like the release of massive amounts of both CO2 and methane, a greenhouse gas at least 25 times more potent than CO2, as global temperatures rapidly thaw these gases frozen in permafrost and raise ocean temperatures so fast that widespread oceanic and northern lake deposits of methane hydrate are gasified and released.3

1 Mason, “The History of Climate Science.” 2 Christian Parenti, “If We Fail: The effects of climate change are already upon us. Here’s what the 2020s and 2030s will look like if we fail to change things.” Jacobin Magazine; August 29, 2017; available at https://jacobinmag.com/2017/08/if-we-fail; accessed January 25, 2021. 3 Ian Johnston, “Earth’s Worst-Ever Mass Extinction of Life Holds ‘Apocalyptic’ Warning About Climate Change, Say Scientists,” Independent.co.uk; March 24, 2017; Internet; available at https://www.independent.co.uk/ environment/earth-permian-mass-extinction-apocalypse-warning-climate-change-frozen-methane- a7648006.html; accessed January 25, 2021. 37

Expanding Crises

Today, science shows we have traveled far along the continuum from slow collapse toward rapid catastrophe as global warming goes unaddressed. Atmospheric CO2 concentration increased from about 280 ppm (parts per million) in the late 1800s to around

390 ppm by 2007.1 By November 2020, the latest figure available from Mauna Loa

2 showed CO2 concentration had risen to 415 ppm.

Moreover, concentrations of other potent greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide are also rising. According to Ed Dlugokencky, a senior scientist with the

Earth Systems Research Laboratory of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric

Association (NOAA), “[t]he warming impact of gases other than CO2 are equal to an additional 85 ppm of carbon dioxide. In other words, the atmosphere is warming as if it contained 21 percent more carbon dioxide than it does today.”3

Tack that 85 ppm onto the existing 415 ppm measured in September and the total is now 500 ppm of CO2 and equivalents. That’s only 60 ppm from the old target of

560 ppm scientists thought could keep global warming under 2°C—using Guy Callendar’s

1938 calculation of a doubling of greenhouse gas concentration producing a 2°C warming. However, we are adding 2.5 ppm per year, and that amount is accelerating,

1 American Chemical Society, “What Are the Greenhouse Gas Changes Since the Industrial ?,” ACS.org; undated; available at https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/greenhousegases/ industrialrevolution.html; accessed January 25, 2021. 2 NASA, “Carbon Dioxide, Latest Measurement: November 2020,” Climate.NASA.gov; November 2020; Internet; available at https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/carbon-dioxide/; accessed January 25, 2021. 3 UN Environment Programme (UNEP), “Record Global Carbon Dioxide Concentrations Despite COVID-19 Crisis,” UNEnvironment.org; May 11, 2020; Internet; available at https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and- stories/story/record-global-carbon-dioxide-concentrations-despite-covid-19-crisis; accessed January 25, 2021. 38 save for an insignificant slowdown during the pandemic.1 That, if it were the end of the story, gives us about three decades before we reach global warming of 2°C, the point many scientists consider a tipping point for positive feedback loops that may trigger runaway warming and existential social, economic and ecological catastrophes.2

Those catastrophes may take a century or more to bring all life on Earth to such reduced and suffering populations that we might call it virtual extinction—but there is a growing threat of runaway warming that could bring extinction far more rapidly and completely. Scientists are presently reevaluating how sensitive the climate is to CO2 emissions, i.e., how much warming can be expected with the doubling of greenhouse gas concentrations we are now approaching (relative to preindustrial times). A 2016 study for the American Association for the Advancement of Science published in

Science Advances argues that as global temperatures increase, so too does climate sensitivity, such that up to 7°C warming can be expected by 2100—way past the so far commonly agreed upon tipping point of 2°C for runaway warming.3

There is also debate about exactly how much warming might carry us past the tipping point, with some scientists arguing that 1.5°C is more appropriate, given the already large amount of damage worldwide from climate-driven catastrophes—

1 Rebecca Lindsey, “Climate Change: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide,” NOAA/Climate.gov; August 14, 2020; Internet; available at https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric- carbon-dioxide; accessed January 25, 2021. 2 IPCC, C.B. Field, et al., eds. “Summary for Policymakers, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 1-32. 3 Tobias Friedrich et al., “Nonlinear Climate Sensitivity and Its Implications for Future Greenhouse Warming,” AAAS/ Advances.ScienceMag.org; November 9, 2016; Internet; available at http://advances.sciencemag.org/ content/2/11/ e1501923.full; accessed January 25, 2020. 39 stronger and more frequent hurricanes, storms and floods as well as desertification and drought, among many other serious effects. We have already seen warming of up to

1.2°C from preindustrial times to date (warming varies from place to place).1

Unfortunately there is enough CO2 already in the atmosphere—it continues to affect climate for thousands of years—to take us past 1.5°C including ongoing emissions.2

These debates will be resolved and climate science will become even more certain as research proceeds, methodically applying the scientific method to new peer-reviewed research to produce conclusions that will also be peer-reviewed by scientists in many nations. The computer models required to analyze the vast amounts of varied data being collected worldwide—from melting ice, the warming atmosphere, the acidifying oceans, the drying farmlands, the flooding lowlands, the more frequent and more severe storms, the battered and increasingly threatened coastal cities and island nations, and so on—are being rapidly honed to even more accurately reflect the actual natural processes underway, and their probable future effects.

It is already clear that global warming and consequent climate destabilization have emerged over the past few decades as the greatest challenge ever faced by humanity. If we fail to address it rapidly, there will be little time left to solve any other problems in the

Gordian knot of interrelated crises capitalism presents us today3—and the grim array of

1 Chris Mooney et al., “2020 Rivals Hottest Year on Record, Pushing Earth Closer to a Critical Climate Threshold,” WashingtonPost.com; January 14, 2021; Internet; available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/ interactive/2021/2020-tied-for-hottest-year-on-record/; accessed February 6, 2021. 2 Richard B. Rood, “If We Stopped Emitting Greenhouse Gases Right Now, Would We Stop Climate Change?,” TheConversation.com; July 4, 2017; Internet; available at https://theconversation.com/if-we-stopped- emitting-greenhouse-gases-right-now-would-we-stop-climate-change-78882; accessed February 6, 2021. 3 Edwards, A Vast Machine. 40 environmental problems that are already at or nearing crisis stage is very long. It includes soil depletion and erosion; toxic chemical pollution of our air, water and soil and thereby our food supply; toxic fracking pollution of our aquifers; long-lasting hazards from nuclear waste disposal and storage while nuclear power continues to generate more; toxic waste disposal; and growing fresh water shortages that increasingly threaten whole regions of the

United States and the world. It also includes continuing slow ozone layer depletion;1 acid rain; and warming; deforestation; rapidly accelerating biodiversity loss that threatens the balance of nature and the bounty of potential medicines and other of nature’s possible aids to humanity; and natural resource depletion—including a shortage of nonrenewable phosphorus. Any one of these crises is serious enough for working people to plan an organized response to abolish capitalist control of society and replace it with their own democratic administration.

Take the accelerating crisis of soil depletion and erosion, for example, and its threat to food production, especially given other factors which multiply that threat, including climate-crisis driven water and drought problems and massive damage to arable land due to the increasing frequency and severity of floods. According to David

R. Montgomery in his history titled, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, “[w]e are degrading and eroding the world’s soils far faster than they form.” He writes, “[w]e are running down our stock of fertile topsoil, the one thing we absolutely need to support civilization in the long run.” Montgomery documents the role of soil erosion and

1 World Meteorological Organization, “2020 Antarctic Ozone Hole Is Large and Deep,” WMO.int; October 6, 2020; Internet; available at https://public.wmo.int/en/media/news/2020-antarctic-ozone-hole-large-and-deep; accessed February 16, 2021. 41 depletion in the collapse of several ancient civilizations in , noting that his historical studies showed that “the state of the land—the state of the soil—directly affects the health and resilience of societies.” He observes that, while “individual droughts, wars, and economic disruptions or dislocations” can serve as triggers for the collapse of a society,

“the state of the land loads the gun.” Erosion and soil degradation “help explain why particular events or circumstances take down societies,” says Montgomery.1

The state of the soil today under world capitalism is thus at a critical stage. In Dirt,

Montgomery notes research reported in the 1990s which showed that worldwide, “since the Second World War, soil erosion caused farmers to abandon an area equivalent to about one-third of all present cropland.” That is an area larger than the subcontinent of

India. At that rate the world will be out of topsoil from soil loss alone, not counting nutrient depletion, in barely a hundred years.

The whole history of capitalist agriculture is characterized by its perennial treatment of soil and many other natural resources as free gifts from nature to be exploited and abused for private profit. In the United States, for example, plantation agriculture—whether for rice, sugar, tobacco or cotton—was typified by monocrops

(with little to no crop rotation or manuring) for sale and profit that depleted the land within just a few years, at which time slaves were forced to move most plantation operations to new lands. Repeatedly, the most profitable, and increasingly ruthless, path was to throw more Native Americans off their lands a bit farther west, through bloody violence or trickery. The land was simply expropriated by the plantation

1 David R. Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), x–xi.

42 owners, who forced slaves to clear more forests. The whole ugly process would then start all over again.1

The costs for rebuilding nutrient-depleted soil, where possible, are externalized by individual capitalists and left to be absorbed by the next owner or by society as a whole.

As environmental historian Jason W. Moore writes in “The Rise of Cheap Nature,” ecological economist “William Kapp…famously characterized the modern economy as a system of ‘unpaid costs.’” Continuing, Moore asserts that today, “we know this all too well—heavy metals in children’s bloodstreams and Arctic ice, massive garbage patches in the oceans, agro-toxic overload in our soil and water, never mind that small matter of climate change.”2

In fact, as Immanuel Wallerstein observed in World-Systems Analysis: An

Introduction, most capitalists do not pay all the costs that are really involved in production.

Wallerstein wrote that “[t]he least expensive way for a producer to deal with waste is to cast it aside, outside its property.” Moreover, he writes, “the least expensive way to deal with transformation of the ecology is to pretend it is not happening.” Both methods work well to lower production costs. However, he added, “these costs are then externalized

…either immediately or, more usually, much later.” Many times the negative consequences are never adequately dealt with by those who cause the damage.3

In Dirt, Montgomery argues that there are new (or renewed ancient) agroecological

1 Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, 115–144. 2 Jason W. Moore, ed., ”The Rise of Cheap Nature,” in Anthropocene or Capitalocene?: Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism (Oakland: PM Press, 2016), 112. 3 Immanuel Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004, Kindle Edition), 47–48. 43 methods that can make modern agriculture sustainable. “The philosophical basis of the new agriculture lies in treating soil as a locally adapted biological system rather than a chemical system,” he writes. Agroecology does not just mean small rather than large, or simply organic, or simply manual rather than mechanized. The main point is that soil must be protected: “agricultural land should be viewed —and treated—as a trust held by farmers today for farmers tomorrow.”1 Generally, agroecological approaches accent no- till methods to minimize soil erosion with little use of heavy equipment, more use of local composting to halt nutrient depletion, biological pest management, and minimal use of chemical fertilizers. They are more labor-intensive but are being successfully used in many places in the world—notably in Cuba, which embraced them after the collapse of the and the loss of its support for the Cuban economy. They mark a break from the still dominant cookie-cutter agribusiness approach to industrial agriculture.

With less than a century of soil left, to leave the needed worldwide transformation to the private interests of agricapitalists whose focus on short-term profits brought us to this critical point in the first place is drastically irresponsible.2 For his part, Montgomery does not believe that food production should be left to the profit-motivated markets of capitalism. “Sustaining our collective well-being requires prioritizing society’s long- term interest in soil stewardship,” he writes. “We simply cannot afford to view agriculture as just another ,” Montgomery maintains, “because the economic benefits of soil conservation can be harvested only after decades of stewardship, and

1 Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, 241–245. 2 Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, 230–232. 44 the cost of soil abuse is borne by all.”1

Montgomery believes that both capitalist and Marxist economics “neglect the fundamental problem of resource depletion.” In fact, he asserts, Marx and Engels

“never put the idea that society could run out of resources in their lexicon.”2 That characterization certainly applies to the cases of the Soviet Union under Stalinism3 and China under .4 However, these cases hardly exemplify itself, as this paper will show in Chapter Three. Rather, they exemplify the abandonment of Marx’s views on nature and humanity, for example, in his work on Capital and in his research and notes for and beyond it, before his death.5

As Montgomery notes, there is only a hundred-year fuse on this staggering crisis of soil erosion and nutrient depletion, at a time when other ecological crises—growing water shortages and climate change for example—threaten further disruptions in the food supply for Earth’s increasing human population. Despite the urgency, Montgomery merely posits that “nonmarket mechanisms—whether cultural, religious, or legal—must rise to the challenge of maintaining an industrial society with postindustrial agriculture.”6 However, progressive regulations of any sort, from any quarter—let alone a complete halt to the crisis—will require an organized, radical mass movement to overcome the neoliberal trend of

1 Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, 234–235 2 Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, 234–235. 3 See Paul Josephson, et al., An Environmental (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 71–253. See also Douglas R. Weiner, Models of Nature: Ecology, Conservation and Cultural Revolution in Soviet Russia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000), 223–237. 4 See Judith Shapiro, Mao’s War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 67-193. 5 See Kohei Saito, ’s Ecosocialism: Capitalism, Nature and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2017). 6 Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, 245. 45 the last 50 years or more, during the so-called Great Acceleration.

Virtually every presidential administration since that of President Reagan has sought to constrict the role of government relative to the power of capital, or at least failed utterly to halt that trend. The Trump administration accelerated to a furious pace its work toward what Steve Bannon, at one time that administration’s most spokesman, characterized as a major goal—the “deconstruction of the administrative state.”1 They actively sought to dismantle not only enforcement of most environmental protections but enforcement of regulations on food safety, industrial and mine safety, workers’ rights, public health and safety, housing reforms, , Social Security, Medicare and every other agency that does not directly favor higher profits and greater flexibility and control for business. While the new Biden administration has rolled back some of Trump’s destruction, its ultimate effect on needed changes remains to be seen, for Biden himself has in the past been known to generally support neoliberal austerity for working people.

Historian Nancy MacLean makes it plain that Bannon’s “deconstruction” efforts were part of the decades-long rise to power of arch-reactionary, neoliberal capitalist-class political elements, funded by fossil-fuel and other capitalists, who sought to vastly improve profitmaking opportunities for the capitalist class—at the expense of workers and the environment—by curtailing every aspect of government that does not specifically support capitalist interests, predominantly through the police and the military.

Her book, in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for

1 Philip Rucker and Robert Costa, “Bannon Vows a Daily Fight for ‘Deconstruction of the Administrative State,’” WashingtonPost.com; February 23, 2017; Internet; available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/top-wh- strategist-vows-a-daily-fight-for-deconstruction-of-the-administrative-state/2017/02/23/03f6b8da-f9ea-11e6- bf01-d47f8cf9b643_story.html; accessed February 16, 2021. 46

America traces the rise of this element all the way back to economist James M.

Buchanan’s so-called Public Choice movement and its support for racists in the desegregation struggle that led to the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of

Education decision.1

Given the present scenario for the unlikely of soil erosion and nutrient depletion, the need for a mass movement to challenge class rule by the tiny and despotic capitalist minority in general is paramount if we are to halt the crisis of soil erosion and nutrient depletion. Like the climate crisis, the problem is systemic in nature and needs a systemic solution. Many other aspects of the overall ecological crisis reinforce that conclusion. One additional example is the growing emergency relating to phosphate use for fertilizers required by capitalist industrial agriculture.

The phosphate crisis is twofold. First, there is a growing shortage of phosphate, which supplies phosphorus fertilizer for capitalist agriculture. It is a nonrenewable resource that must be mined. Recycling it is costly and therefore not typical in a profit- motivated world. Global demand is rapidly increasing as more and more food must be produced for a growing population, and as more of the world’s population eats meat, which uses more phosphorus for fertilized production.2 Complicating demand problems are constricting supply problems, not the least of which is that up to 85

1 See Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America (New York: Viking, 2017). 2 Eliza Barclay, “Should You Be Worried About Your Meat’s Phosphorus Footprint?” NPR.org; February 17, 2013; Internet; available at https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/02/14/172009950/should-you-be- worried-about-your-meats-phosphorus-footprint; accessed February 22, 2021. 47 percent of reserves are located in Morocco or Western Sahara,1 which are engaged in conflict over who actually owns them. Second, up to four-fifths of mined phosphate is wasted during production, “from the moment it is mined to the final moments of processing.” The mine waste as well as agricultural applications end up in runoff that enters rivers, bays and oceans, where it causes algal blooms that produce toxic effects for human and ocean life.2

Estimates of available reserves of phosphate range from as little as 35 years3 to 300–400 years4—depending upon how exponentially demand actually increases — before peak phosphate is reached, after which production will rapidly decline.

Estimates are also dependent upon the quality of the mined phosphate, which is diminishing over time, thanks to the increased inclusion of heavy metals often gathered with the phosphate, necessitating extra processing to remove it.

A switch to agroecological methods could reduce the need for phosphorus significantly over time, as no-till methods abate runoff and phosphate leaching. Reducing food waste could help as well. Increasing efficiency could help. If recycling were efficient it could reduce demand as well, but it is not currently profitable for capitalists. Eating less meat could reduce demand, as could recovering phosphorus from human waste and

1 Renee Cho, “Phosphorus: Essential to Life—Are We Running Out?” Columbia.edu; April 1, 2013; Internet; available at https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2013/04/01/phosphorus-essential-to-life-are-we-running-out/; accessed February 16, 2021. 2 EPA, “National Aquatic Resource Surveys; Indicators: Phosphorus,” EPA.gov; undated; Internet; available at https://www.epa.gov/national-aquatic-resource-surveys/indicators-phosphorus; accessed February 16, 2021. 3 Vera Thoss, “Phosphorus Is Vital for Life on Earth—and We’re Running Low.” TheConversation.com; March 14, 2017; Internet; available at https://theconversation.com/phosphorus-is-vital-for-life-on-earth-and- were-running-low-74316; accessed February 16, 2021. 4 Cho, “Phosphorus: Essential to Life.” 48 using more manure for fertilizer.

Regardless of how all these factors play out, having an educated public with democratic control of a collectively owned and democratically administered economy, a primary goal of an ecosocialist mass movement to end the crisis, will give humanity options to deal with the systemic ecological crisis in the best possible way. Leaving the decisions up to the private profit interests of the tiny elite that presently owns and controls production makes no sense. That is the selfsame minority whose private and self-interestedly despotic control of the means of life brought us to this multifaceted ecological crisis in the first place. That is a virtual guarantee that the interests of nature and humanity in general will be given short shrift, and that the interests of the most affected, poorest in the world will be all but discounted completely, while those of the wealthiest in the world will retain their increasing primacy.

49

“It’s not easy to shape public opinion when the facts are against you. So, the industry began attacking the facts, creating an alternate universe where decades of rising CO2 and rising temperatures had nothing to do with each other and scientists who claimed that we had to act were alarmists not to be trusted.” —The Climate Reality Project1

CHAPTER II

FOSSIL-FUEL-FUNDED DENIALISM & THE FAILURE TO ACT

What are the main historical reasons for a complete lack of progress in dealing with the crisis?

The governmental response to the then-gathering consensus among climate scientists was at least public recognition of the problem—at first. President Johnson, in a special message to Congress on February 8, 1965, acknowledged that “[a]ir pollution is no longer confined to isolated places. This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.”2 Johnson received a report on carbon dioxide science later that year from his Science Advisory Panel. As Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist at the Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution for Science, wrote of that report in an email cited at TheDailyClimate.org in 2015, “[t]o the best of my knowledge, 1965 was the first time that a US president was ever officially warned of environmental risks from the accumulation of fossil-fuel carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”

Moreover, Caldiera wrote, “[t]he science of climate and the carbon-cycle that was reported to

1 Climate Reality Project, “The Climate Denial Machine: How the Fossil Fuel Industry Blocks Climate Action,” ClimateRealityProject.org; September 5, 2019; Internet; available at https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/ climate-denial-machine-how-fossil-fuel-industry-blocks-climate-action; accessed March 19, 2021. 2 Lyndon B. Johnson, “Special Message to the Congress on Conservation and Restoration of Natural Beauty, February 8, 1965,” The American Presidency Project; Internet; available at https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/ special-message-the-congress-conservation-and-restoration-natural-beauty; accessed November 12, 2017. 49 50

President Johnson in 1965 largely holds up today, demonstrating that climate science is a mature science.” As Caldiera noted, “knowledgeable people have agreed about the fundamentals for a long time.

Over the next 15 years many environmental laws and regulations were enacted— until the Reagan administration and its neoliberal plan to emasculate government in favor of lower taxes for the rich came to power. Reagan did sign the Montreal Protocol, whose covenants eventually began closing the ozone hole caused by chlorofluorocarbons.

However, none of the enacted environmental laws or regulations specifically targeted global warming. The Clean Air Act and the Agency established under President Nixon had the effect of a slight and temporary slowing of emissions growth, resulting from an attempt not specifically to target CO2, but to cut back or otherwise control at least the most egregious pollutants loosed on the American public by capitalist industry.1

That was then; massively accelerated emissions are now the order of the day.

Other presidents as well as lesser politicians have paid lip service to the global warming or climate destabilization crisis over the years. However, while some minimal efforts have been undertaken through voluntary agreements to reduce carbon emissions in the United States and elsewhere, no legally binding agreements to cut them have ever been signed and ratified by the United States. Even the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, which the Trump Administration pulled out of and the Biden administration rejoined, contains few legally binding provisions. As Climate Change News (CCN) puts it, “So how could

1 Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014), 201-204. 51 the actually work?” Since the agreement “is mostly non-binding on substance but binding on reporting,” CCN says, “the efficacy of the whole deal depends on countries ‘naming and shaming’ each other to do better.” There are no enforcement mechanisms.1

Moreover, while some Republican party politicians acknowledged global warming in the past, few do so today,2 thanks to the sharply rightward turn of that party over the past two decades and a massive campaign funded primarily by the fossil-fuel industry to throw doubt on the settled nature of climate science (indeed, of all science)—two facts that are closely related. Most elected Democrats at least believe the consensus exists; not many acknowledge the extremely critical nature of the crisis; fewer still seem to have any will to act decisively.

The fossil-fuel industry itself has no problem engaging the facts of climate change—privately or in campaigns intended to create the impression they are “doing something” about it. For the oil, gas and coal industries, science is, after all, the basis of their extraction operations. In an eight-month investigation, a team of reporters for InsideClimateNews found that, “[a]s it turns out, Exxon did not just understand the science, the company actively engaged with it.” The reporters found that,

“[i]n the 1970s and 1980s it employed top scientists to look into the issue and launched its own ambitious research program that empirically sampled carbon dioxide and built

1 Timmons Roberts and Angelica Arellano, “Is the Paris Climate Deal Legally Binding or Not?,” ClimateChange News.com; February 11, 2017; Internet; available at https://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/11/02/paris-climate- deal-legally-binding-not/; accessed January 25, 2021. 2 See Elizabeth Kolbert, Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change. (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2015). 52 rigorous climate models.” Further, “Exxon even spent more than $1 million on a tanker

1 project that would tackle how much CO2 is absorbed by the oceans.”

After analyzing hundreds of pages of internal company documents and interviewing former Exxon employees, scientists and federal officials, reporters found that “the company’s knowledge of climate change dates back to July 1977.” That is when senior scientist James Black told Exxon’s management committee that, “[i]n the first place, there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels.”2 According to Scientific American, a year later Black warned that doubling atmospheric CO2 “would increase average global temperatures by two or three degrees —a number that is consistent with the scientific consensus today.” Black also warned that “present thinking holds that man has a time window of five to 10 years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical.” In short, as the article in Scientific American noted, “Exxon needed to act.”3

Exxon did act—not, however, by working as rapidly as possible to produce and alternative sources of energy so that the burning of fossil fuels could be reduced to ameliorate global warming. That would have been the rational thing to do, given that global warming presents a truly existential crisis for all life on Earth. But

1 Shannon Hall, “Exxon Knew About Climate Change Almost 40 Years Ago; A new investigation shows the oil company understood the science before it became a public issue and spent millions to promote misinformation,” ScientificAmerican.com; October 26, 2015; Internet; available at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon- knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/; accessed January 25, 2021. 2 Hall, “Exxon Knew About Climate Change” 3 Hall, “Exxon Knew About Climate Change” 53 are not built primarily to serve humanity. They exist first and foremost to produce profits for their owners. Any other benefit is often an unintended side-effect. Exxon proved this beyond doubt by instead choosing to become the number-one funder of a vast proliferation of right-wing and libertarian think tanks, other organizations, politicians and “experts” whose increasing efforts served primarily to cast doubt on the existence of the crisis and thereby cut off at the knees any public pressure to mandate emissions reductions.1

Reducing and eventually ending fossil-fuel emissions was what the data suggested from the beginning was the only real solution to global warming. But that was taken as a visceral threat to the . Rather than sounding the alarm, working to cut its emissions, and changing its product lineup, Exxon was joined by a Who’s Who of American capitalism in responding to global warming by funding denialist organizations and politicians. Among the earliest global warming denialist groups was the green- sounding Global Climate Coalition (GCC), an industry-funded group that lobbied against any government efforts to mandate emissions reductions or to boost alternative energy. It was formed in 1989, not long after the first meetings of the

IPCC in 1988–1989.2

Members of the GCC included the National Association of Manufacturers, the

American Association of Automobile Manufacturers, the American Petroleum Institute, the

National Coal Association, the Aluminum Association, Inc., the Chemical Manufacturers

1 James Lawrence Powell, The Inquisition of Climate Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 110-120. 2 Weart, Discovery of Global Warming, 158, 167, 180. 54

Association, the American Forest and Paper Association, Chevron, Chrysler, Cyprus

AMAX Minerals, Exxon, Ford, General Motors, McDonnell-Douglas, Shell, Texaco, the

US Chamber of Commerce and dozens more groups and companies. Today the GCC no longer exists. It disbanded in 2002 but dozens of new denialist organizations and hundreds of often affiliated individuals have sprung up since, thanks to continuing and plentiful industry funding, as a Drexel University study has shown.1

Funding is now often led by a secondary tier of organizations like the Searle

Freedom Trust, John Williams Pope Foundation, Howard Charitable Foundation and

Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Koch Affiliated Foundations and ExxonMobil

Foundation, according to a study cited in a 2013 article in Scientific American.2 That strategy puts “plausible deniability” between “respectable” corporate sources and the sometimes embarrassingly coarse and simplistic climate change denialism put forward on denialist blogs, websites and the think tanks with which they are associated. The study, by Drexel University environmental sociologist Robert Brulle, also found “a number of well-funded conservative foundations built with so-called

‘dark money,’ or concealed donations”—a third tier of funding that makes corporate contributions harder to trace. The study reported “that the amount of money flowing through third-party, pass-through foundations like and Donors Capital, whose funding is difficult to trace, has risen dramatically.” Scientific American reported that in all,

1 DesmogBlog, “Global Climate Coalition,” DeSmogBlog.com, Internet; available at https://www.desmogblog.com/ global-climate-coalition; accessed January 26, 2021. 2 Douglas Fischer, “‘Dark Money’ Funds Climate Change Denial Effort,” Scientific American; December 23, 2013; Internet; available at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dark-money-funds-climate-change-denial-effort/; accessed January 25, 2021. 55

“140 foundations funneled $558 million to almost 100 climate denial organizations from

2003 to 2010.”1 An article at TheConversation.com puts the total of corporate funding from 2003 to 2010 of all “organizations promoting climate misinformation” at more than

$900 million per year, also based on information from Brulle’s report.2

Given that corporate funding sources are going undercover, it is more difficult to keep track of their contributions to denialist groups. However, the environmental group

Greenpeace, for example, monitors—among other records—tax filings of federal Form

990, the Internal Revenue Service “Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax” that provides financial information about nonprofit organizations. An article at

Greenpeace.org shows Form 990-identified heavy funding from oil industry giant Koch

Industries, owned by billionaire Charles G. Koch and family—also funders of the rightwing Tea Party “movement.”3

A pick list—a drop-down list of choices on a web page—in the article at Greenpeace’s website allows separate identification of donations to 90 climate-denial front groups from four

Koch family foundations—the Charles Koch Foundation, Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation,

David H. Koch Charitable Foundation and Charles Koch Institute—from 1997–2018. The article observes that “Koch Family Foundations have spent $145,555,197 directly financing 90 groups that have attacked climate change science and policy solutions from 1997–2018.”4

1 Fischer, “‘Dark Money’ Funds Climate Change Denial.” 2 John Cook, “A Brief History of Fossil-Fueled Climate Denial,” TheConversation.com; June 20, 2016; Internet; available at http://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-fossil-fuelled-climate-denial-61273; accessed January 25, 2021. 3 Greenpeace, “Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine,” Greenpeace.org; 2018; Internet; available at https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/ending-the-climate-crisis/climate-deniers/koch-industries/; accessed January 25, 2021. 4 Greenpeace, “Koch Industries: Secretly Funding.” 56

Real totals for industry support are likely far higher, given the purposeful attempts to keep them out of the public eye. But the relationship between publicity for climate destabilization denial and the fossil fuel industry has been comprehensively established in other ways. A vast computer study by Justin Farrell, a sociologist at

Yale University’s School of and Environmental Studies, was reported at

Slate.com in 2015. The study conducted a computerized analysis of “all known organizations and individuals promoting contrarian viewpoints, as well as the entirety of all written and verbal texts about climate change from 1993–2013 from every organization, three major news outlets [New York Times, Washington Times, and USA Today], all US presidents, and every occurrence on the floor of the US Congress.” The network of climate change denialists studied included 4,556 individuals and 164 organizations.1 As

Slate.com reported, “[b]y machine-reading this massive amount of information—more than

39 million words—Farrell was able to link a significant amount of the most resonant denialist rhetoric over the last two decades directly to two entities that have derived a significant amount of their wealth from exploiting fossil fuels: ExxonMobil and the Koch family foundations.”2

In her book Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on

Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, historian of science Naomi Oreskes details the growth of this well-funded propaganda industry of denialism, showing how it has played a leading role in creating doubt not only about climate science, but about many issues

1 Eric Holthaus, “Exxon, Koch Family Have Powered the Climate-Denial Machine for Decades.” Slate.com; December 1, 2015, Internet; available at https://slate.com/technology/2015/12/exxonmobil-koch-family-have- powered-climate-change-denial-for-decades.html; accessed January 25, 2021. 2 Holthaus, “Exxon, Koch Family Have...” 57 involving dangerous products and capitalist profit interests.1 Oreskes traces how rightwing, libertarian and neoliberal politicians and think tanks, funded by capitalist industry and using

“deniers-for-hire” (“experts” that are re-used in scientifically unrelated denialist campaigns in service to various capitalist interests) forestalled effective action for decades on the dangers of

DDT, tobacco, fire retardants, industrial chemicals and climate destabilization from the burning of fossil fuels, as tactics developed by the were repeatedly used by many other industries.

In this effort, capitalists used the vast wealth expropriated from working people against those very people, indeed, against all life on Earth, by paying hired guns to manufacture “‘uncertainty by questioning every study, dissecting every method, and disputing every conclusion’ and in the end ‘successfully delayed regulation and victim compensation for decades,’” as David Michaels, former Assistant Secretary of Labor, writes in his book Doubt Is Their Product. Doubt was enough to assure many political representatives of capital they would be largely free of public anger for their failure to regulate the dangers produced by capitalist industry. In short, doubt about the claims of reformers enabled an additional 50 years’ worth of tobacco and other profits to pile into their coffers until the public and legislative bodies caught on to their deceitful charade.2

There are some who theorize reasons for the lack of progress on the climate crisis in idealist terms. Indeed, a cottage industry of such writing has sprung up in response to this lack of progress, accenting biological as well as psychological and psychosocial attributes of

1 Naomi Oreskes and Eric M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011), 10-35. 2 David Michaels, Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 4. 58 humans and societies as reasons for a lack of progress. Mike Hulme, in Why We Disagree

About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity, for example, makes a case for such factors. So do others like George Marshall, in Don’t Even

Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change, or Per Espen

Stoknes, in “What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Climate Change:

Toward a New Psychology of Climate Action.1 Writing in this vein, however, blames the victims—the public, as well as scientists—and gives short shrift to the most important reason for this lack of progress.

The Forces Behind Denialism

This paper, on the other hand, in keeping with its historical materialist approach, sees a vastly stronger case for the lack of progress on understanding and acting on the crisis as the result of a powerful, concerted effort by ruling-class elements to confuse and misdirect.

The overarching material reality is that a wide spectrum of billionaire and millionaire capitalists—and a supporting coterie of politicians at every level of government—have funded or promoted thousands of rightwing individuals, websites, think tanks and foundations in a self-interested but short-sighted, multi-billion-dollar effort over decades to inject doubt about climate change into the minds of millions. Given this tidal wave of misinformation, it is hardly surprising that even trustworthy UN science and the increasingly visible, worsening effects of the climate crisis are only beginning to produce a mass

1 Mike Hulme, Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); George Marshall, Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change, (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015); Per Espen Stoknes, What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Climate Change: Toward a New Psychology of Climate Action, (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2015). 59 movement targeting its causes.

On the receiving end of this corporate and capitalist largesse is a collection of libertarian, neoliberal, rightwing think tanks and other organizations that have long been funded, if not founded, to work propaganda magic for the fossil-fuel industry and other antidemocratic corporate interests. Many of the techniques and dirty tricks employed by this well-funded climate denialist industry fit the propaganda model developed by

Herman and Chomsky, the structural factors of which include not only obvious factors

“such as ownership and control, dependence on other major funding sources (notably advertisers), and mutual interests and relationships between the media and those who make the news and have the power to define it and explain what it means.” Also included are

“related factors such as the ability to complain about the media’s treatment of news (that is, produce ‘flak’), to provide ‘experts’ to confirm the official slant on the news, and to fix the basic principles and that are taken for granted by media personnel and the elite.” Further, these same sources “also play a key role in fixing basic principles and the dominant ideologies.” Accordingly, Herman and Chomsky assert that “[w]hat journalists do, what they see as newsworthy, and what they take for granted as premises of their work are frequently well explained by the incentives, pressures, and constraints incorporated into such a structural analysis.”1

One of the favorite sleight-of-hand acts performed by the major is the split-screen equivalence of “experts” on a subject. This technique, analogues of which are also used in radio and print media, which seems to present two equal but opposing

1 Herman and Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, xi. 60 views, has been used so many times it is now clichéd—and should be considered suspect whenever it is encountered. Consider, for example, the dangerous deception involved in equating the view of a real climate scientist, who speaks with the authority of a consensus that now involves over 99 percent of working climatologists,1 with that of a mouthpiece for climate denialism who is often not even a climate scientist at all but rather simply a hired gun for a green-sounding think tank spewing the views of corporate and capitalist interests.2

The list of major denialist influencers is long, but a few deserve special mention for the major roles they have played in producing lies and doubt. Some have gone far beyond mere propaganda in their efforts to poison climate science in the public mind. The

American Enterprise Institute is one of those, according to the Union for Concerned

Scientists (UCS). AEI “received $3,615,000 from ExxonMobil from 1998–2012, and more than $1 million in funding from Koch foundations from 2004–2011.” UCS notes that

AEI was heavily involved in propagating “Climategate,” an attempt to undermine the

2009 IPCC conference so named by denialists to create a splash in the media.3 Frequent attempts are made to undermine international summits addressing climate destabilization, and Climategate was one such attempt. As climatologist Mann observed in his book

Madhouse Effect, thousands of emails were stolen from a university server in Great

Britain in the summer of 2009 ahead of the IPCC conference in Copenhagen later that

1 Watts, “‘No Doubt Left’ About Scientific Consensus…,” TheGuardian.com. 2 Joseph Winters, “The Curse of ‘Both-Sidesism:’ How Climate Denial Skewed Media Coverage for 30 Years,” Grist.org; July 28, 2020; Internet; available at https://grist.org/climate/the-curse-of-both-sidesism-how- climate-denial-skewed-media-coverage-for-30-years/; accessed January 26, 2021. 3 Union of Concerned Scientists, “Global Warming Skeptic Organizations,” UCSUSA.org; August 16, 2013; Internet; available at https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/global-warming-skeptic-organizations#.Wbyc4q0UUUE; accessed January 25, 2021. 61 year. Bits and pieces of emails between climate scientists were taken out of context and juxtaposed in ways that created the impression that scientists were lying about climate change and knew they were.1

Fox News, , the Drudge Report, Rush Limbaugh and other “news” outlets on the right jumped on the story in an attempt to strike a death blow to climate science. But the story was not true. As Mann observes, “[a]t least nine different investigations in the United States and the ultimately determined, however, that there had been no impropriety on the part of the scientists, no fudging of data, no attempt to fool the public about the scientific evidence for climate change.” Mann notes that “[i]n the end, the only wrongdoing that could be found was the criminal of the emails in the first place.”2

Other denialist groups use more traditional, if nonetheless dishonest, propaganda tactics. Americans for Prosperity is heavily Koch-funded and, as Mann writes, has spent “hundreds of millions of dollars in campaign and get-out-the- vote efforts for climate change-denying politicians over the past several election cycles.”3

Another outlet, the Beacon Hill Institute, is the research arm of the Department of

Economics at Suffolk University. It regularly publishes deliberately misleading analyses of alternative energy and climate change policies. Its director has claimed that “the very question of whether the climate is warming is in doubt…” Its reports include such statements as “wind power actually increases pollution.”4

1 Mann and Toles, The Madhouse Effect, 103-105. 2 Mann and Toles, The Madhouse Effect, 105-109. 3 Mann and Toles, The Madhouse Effect, 109-110. 4 Union of Concerned Scientists, “Global Warming Skeptic Organizations.” 62

Some groups intend merely to cast doubt on, while others completely deny, established science. The CATO Institute is one of the former. Co-founded by Charles

Koch in 1977, it received at least $5 million from Koch foundations from 1997–2011, and the Koch family is still involved in its operations according to UCS. CATO has acknowledged that global warming exists, but throws doubt on its cause and argues against legislation to restrict carbon dioxide emissions.1 The Competitive Enterprise

Institute, another rightwing think tank, has sometimes acknowledged that global warming exists, but contends that “[t]here is no ‘scientific consensus’ that global warming will cause damaging climate change.” In 1991, in fact, CEI claimed that “[t]he greatest challenge we face is not warming, but cooling.” It has received funding from ExxonMobil and the

Koch family.2

The , also a rightwing think tank, prominently engages in misinformation about climate science, frequently threatening violence and attacking individual climate scientists with email and other campaigns. It has received funding from fossil-fuel interests, as well as from tobacco interests for its services attacking science that showed the dangers of smoking and secondhand smoke.3 Heartland founding President Joe Bast dangerously incited violence against climate scientists, claiming that “the most prominent advocates of global warming are not scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.”4 Onetime Heartland Senior Fellow Siegfried

1 Union of Concerned Scientists, “Global Warming Skeptic Organizations.” 2 Union of Concerned Scientists, “Global Warming Skeptic Organizations.” 3 Mann and Toles, The Madhouse Effect, 75-77. 4 Union of Concerned Scientists, “Global Warming Skeptic Organizations.”

63

Frederick Singer, who was not a climate scientist, was “the principal behind the founding and infamous 2008 report of what he deceptively called the Nongovernmental

International Panel on Climate Change.” Funded by Heartland, the report was intentionally formatted to look like an IPPC assessment report, in an attempt to undermine the original report’s credibility. As Mann observed in Madhouse Effect, the

NIPPC report “has been dismissed by ABC News as ‘fabricated nonsense.’”1

The George C. Marshall Institute is a reactionary think tank founded in 1984 in an attempt to bolster the Reagan Administration’s Strategic Defense, or “Star

Wars” Initiative against the criticisms of, among others, scientist and the

“Nuclear Winter” theory. Frederick Seitz, a onetime president of the National

Academy of Sciences who never worked as a climate scientist, joined GMI and became its primary mouthpiece against global warming science. He was opposed in principle to any government regulation, and went on to decry the science of global warming, acid rain, and . Seitz also attempted to legitimize the so- called Oregon Petition Project, sponsored by a tiny group of survivalist conspiracy theorists calling themselves the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine (OISM), tucked away in a metal shop on a small farm in the tiny town of Cave Junction, Oregon, a remote haven that has long attracted rightwing, survivalist elements.2 Seitz lent to the Petition Project whatever weight his name still had after decades of obedient service to tobacco, CFC

1 Mann and Toles, The Madhouse Effect, 77. 2 OISM, “Nuclear War Survival Skills,” OISM.org; 2015; Internet; available at http://www.oism.org/ s32p903.htm; accessed January 26, 2021. See also Camilla Mortensen, “Wingnut Is As Wingnut Does: Know Your Congressional Candidate,” EugeneWeekly.com; August 12, 2010; Internet; available at https://www.eugeneweekly.com/2010/08/12/coverstory-html/; accessed January 26, 2021. 64 and fossil-fuel capitalists.

That project promoted its petition in 1998 after the IPCC-sponsored Kyoto

Protocols in 1997 set emissions reduction targets for signatories. The petition successfully sought to prevent US ratification. It contended that Kyoto’s “proposed limits on greenhouse gases would ‘harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and of mankind.’”1 Continuing its attack on two centuries of climate science, it asserted that “[t]here is no convincing evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”2

Seitz included a “report that attacked climate science while disguised to look like an official National Academy of Sciences report, and a personal letter requesting a signature.

The NAS publicly denounced the project, and Scientific American researched the 31,487 signatures, finding that “few of the signatories were scientists and a number of those who were indeed scientists were deceased.”3 Snopes.com notes that “[t]he petition was created by individuals and groups with political motivations, was distributed using misleading tactics, is presented with almost no accountability regarding the authenticity of its signatures, and asks only that you have received an undergraduate degree in any science to sign.”4 The debunked

1 Petition Project, “Global Warming Petition Project,” PetitionProject.org, undated; Internet; available at http:// www.petitionproject.org; accessed January 26, 2021. 2 Petition Project, “Global Warming Petition Project.” 3 Mann and Toles, The Madhouse Effect, 72-76. 4 Alex Kasprak, “Did 30,000 Scientists Declare Climate Change a Hoax?,” Snopes.com; October 26, 2016; Internet; available at https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/30000-scientists-reject-climate-change/; accessed February 7, 2021. 65 petition nonetheless still appears in rightwing propaganda.

The Heritage Foundation, a leading rightwing think tank, is also heavily funded by

ExxonMobil and the Koch family. Heritage considers climate science “far from settled,” in one report going so far as to claim that “[t]he only consensus over the threat of climate change that seems to exist these days is that there is no consensus.” Officials at the denialist

Institute for Energy Research claim that the warnings of scientists about the effects of global warming are “climate alarmism,” and that scientists purposely misstate the case for urgency to procure funding for personal gain. IER also benefits from the largesse of

ExxonMobil and the Kochs. Another denialist group, the Institute, acknowledges warming, but denies its urgency, contending that “[t]he science is not settled, not by a long shot.” The Manhattan Institute has received at least $635,000 from ExxonMobil since

1998, with annual contributions continuing as of 2012, and nearly $2 million from Koch foundations from 1997–2011.1

The work of this vast network of denialists does not involve peer-reviewed science.

Their work is simplistic propaganda, in concert with the structural factors involved in capitalist control of the media mentioned in Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model.2

They merely pay for printing, website development and other promotional services to spread one or more of a long list of common denialist lies discerned by researchers like Mann in

The Madhouse Effect or Coby Beck at Grist.org. Listing just those cited at Grist.org, an environmental news site, would take a book of its own.3

1 Union of Concerned Scientists, “Global Warming Skeptic Organizations.” 2 See page 35. 3 Mann and Toles, The Madhouse Effect, 53-67. See also Coby Beck, “How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic: Responses to the Most Common Skeptical Arguments on Global Warming,” Grist.org; undated; Internet; available at https://grist.org/series/skeptics/; accessed January 27, 2021. 66

Lies and Tricks

In the 1990s, for example, denialists used a research mistake to attack the consensus. Two climate researchers presented a set of data that appeared to show no rise in temperature, but rather a cooling for a short period. But this, like every climate denialist claim to date, has been methodically debunked by actual, peer-reviewed science. Science addressed the issue in this case, and found that a minus sign had mistakenly been used in a calculation where a plus sign should have been, solving the mystery. Another effort involved denialists’ cherry-picking data over a very short period influenced by an El Niño event. In each case science resolved the questions, though denialist outlets commonly still perpetuate the lies that these instances supposedly prove global warming does not exist.1

A common lie is that global warming is happening, but it is just a natural occurrence and therefore nothing to worry about. Some contend that there have been previous warm periods followed by a return to more normal temperatures, citing a period called the “Medieval Warm Period” to ostensibly prove this, but science has shown that when temperatures are averaged over the whole globe there was no medieval warm period. Moreover, most earlier warm periods occurred over millennia, while the present warming is happening much more dangerously over only a century or two.2

Other denialists contend that negative feedback loops will counter positive feedback loops to stabilize the temperature over time, and yet others contend that far less warming will

1 Mann and Toles, The Madhouse Effect, 53-56. 2 Mann and Toles, The Madhouse Effect, 56-58. 67 occur than predicted. But peer-reviewed science disproves these contentions as well.

Science has found that positive feedback loops are so strong that the faster warming occurs, the faster it accelerates—in short, its acceleration is exponential, producing more warming than expected, notwithstanding weak negative feedback loops.1

In fact, there is already enough rising damage, especially after all the spreading droughts and wildfires, damaging hurricanes and floods over the past decade, that the reinsurance industry and the US military began to figure it into their future projections. Then the powerful 2017 hurricane season hit. Still, neither the industry nor the military seem much interested in becoming advocates for change among the other dominant elements of the capitalist class, many of whom are still funding the denial of climate science.2

Some climate denialists contend that it is too late or too expensive to act, assertions just as false as all the other denialist lies. As the IPCC reports show, the only real solution to the crisis is to halt emissions as rapidly as possible by completely ending the burning of fossil fuels, swiftly transitioning to alternative energy production, quickly transitioning to electric transportation and sustainable, regenerative agriculture, and removing carbon from the atmosphere. The world’s automotive manufacturers could have a replacement fleet of all-electric vehicles ready within years. Many are already working toward that. Furthermore, a researcher for and retired director of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced in 2016 that NOAA’s own research showed the United States—which is

1 Mann and Toles, The Madhouse Effect, 58-62. 2 Powell, The Inquisition of Climate Science, 116-120, 155-158. 68 responsible for 25% of cumulative global greenhouse gas emissions—could “transition to a reliable, low-carbon, electrical generation and transmission system …with commercially available technology and within 15 years.”1

Much has been made by opponents of addressing climate change that China is now the leading emitter of greenhouse gases, though it has not yet come close to cumulative US emissions. However, it should be remembered that much of Chinese—and for that matter of Indian, Brazilian, Bangladeshi and Mexican—manufacturing is actually

US manufacturing shipped to those countries by US capitalists (without permission from the US workers who built the factories they shipped) as the US capitalist class moved to solve its profit crisis in the 1970s by globalizing, offshoring and outsourcing production. Much of the manufacturing—and thus the pollution—that exists in those countries could therefore be assigned to the US emissions scorecard.

After all, US capitalists offshored much of US industry there precisely because they would not have to face environmental or worker protections, and could thereby produce, or hire out production, more cheaply.

With a helping hand from the greatest cumulative emitters of global carbon—

Europe and the United States—the remaining worst offenders worldwide could reduce emissions to zero within the two to three decades needed to avoid the most dangerous effects of global warming. In fact, China has become such an industrial powerhouse that it might be able to accomplish its own regeneration without help. It

1 NOAA, “Rapid Affordable Energy Transformation Possible,” Research.NOAA.gov; January 25, 2016; Internet; available at https://research.noaa.gov/article/ArtMID/587/ArticleID/542/Rapid-affordable-energy- transformation-possible; accessed January 27, 2021. 69 has already announced plans to be carbon neutral by 2060.

Another common lie of denialists is that a technological solution will be developed to solve the problem. This, too, is an assertion that peer-reviewed science demonstrates to be bankrupt. We have about a decade to be well on our way to a 50 percent reduction in emissions, with 2050 as our target for a complete end to emissions, to avoid an ever more rapid slide to more than 2°C of warming and the catastrophic effects that will bring. We have even less time if we wish to hold warming to a less dangerous 1.5°C. There is no technology ready or on the horizon that can be deployed in time to make a bigger difference than ceasing emissions. Doing nothing is definitely not the cheapest route to go, as the ballooning costs of worsening

“natural” disasters especially since 2017 have shown. Even the so-called “promise” of

“clean” fracked natural gas that fossil-fuel companies advertise will slow emissions while coal use is cut back is a fallacy. Its effects from development, and consumption, according to NOAA studies, is worse than coal, with massive amounts of the potent greenhouse gas methane leaked into the atmosphere.1

Geoengineering technologies being considered at present by procapitalist forces seeking to minimize disruption to fossil-fuel companies are risky at best. One method, adding reflective calcium carbonate or sulfur dioxide to the atmosphere, risks real horrors in boosting disasters unevenly across the world and arguably should be

1 Jennifer Krill, “Fracked Shale Gas Is Part of Climate Change Problem, Not Solution,” EarthworksAction.org; June 25, 2013; Internet; available at https://www.earthworks.org/media-releases/fracked_shale_gas_is_part_of_ climate_change_problem_not_solution/; accessed January 27, 2021. 70 permanently banned in the name of .1 Enough is already known from

“natural” experiments—volcanic events that spew sulfur dioxide, for example—for peer- reviewed science to recognize that attempts to solve warming this way are fraught with unpredictability with respect to some results, and known patterns with respect to others, that would exacerbate drought conditions and desertification in some regions of the world that climate change has already impacted with extreme climate events.2 Carbon removal and sequestration, especially in saline or basaltic formations—where it turns to stable limestone—holds promise, but not for the foreseeable future thanks to extremely high facility construction costs that fail to interest capitalist minority. In short, carbon removal and sequestration is not likely to be implemented in time to do much good, though it might help at some point in a truly democratic future together with completely ceasing emissions from agriculture and industry.3

Furthermore, geoengineering schemes mostly ignore the problem of continuing greenhouse gas emissions, and seek to temporarily “solve” the pollution problem by adding more pollution. In the acidifying ocean, that means adding iron dust to attempt to deacidify and stimulate the growth of phytoplankton, which might increase the ocean’s ability to soak up carbon dioxide. That might also harm sea life by boosting the growth of some kinds of phytoplankton blooms that produce neurotoxins that can kill

1 Ariel Cohen, “A Bill Gates Venture Aims to Spray Dust into the Atmosphere to Block the Sun. What Could Go Wrong?”, Forbes.com; January 21, 2021; Internet; available at https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2021/ 01/11/bill-gates-backed-climate-solution-gains-traction-but-concerns-linger/?sh=55f23057793b; accessed January 27, 2021. 2 Mann and Toles, The Madhouse Effect, 121-124. 3 Peter Kelemen et al., “An Overview of the Status and Challenges of CO2 Storage in Minerals and Geological Formations,” Frontiers in Climate/frontiersin.org; November 15, 2019; Internet; available at https:// www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fclim.2019.00009/full; accessed January 27, 2021. 71 other ocean animal life. Ocean currents make this “laboratory” inherently unsafe to use for experimentation, and results are difficult or impossible to measure. In fact, very little has been concluded as a result of the mostly clandestine, proprietary experiments that have been conducted to date.1

It is important to contextualize this massive propaganda effort—involving, as has been shown, up to $900 million per year—by much of the capitalist class and at times by government at many levels, to propagandize working people into doubting the existence of a civilizational climate crisis that we may not survive if we do not clearly understand and act upon its causes and implications. That effort was grim enough, but this attack was made all the more grim in that it was concurrent with and dialectically related to the postwar “great acceleration” of capitalism across the face of the world— along with growing emissions of greenhouse gases—which many now call the

Anthropocene. As J.R. McNeill and Peter Engelke, authors of The Great Acceleration, observe, that “[e]scalation since 1945 has been so fast that it sometimes goes by the name the Great Acceleration.” In that time period,

[T]hree-quarters of the human-caused loading of the atmosphere with carbon dioxide took place. The number of motor vehicles on earth increased from 40 million to 850 million. The number of people nearly tripled, and the number of city dwellers rose from about 700 million to 3.7 billion. In 1950 the world produced about 1,000,000 tons of plastics but by 2015 that rose to nearly 300 million tons. In the same time span, the quantities of nitrogen synthesized (mainly for fertilizers) climbed from under 4 million tons to more than 85 million tons.2

1 Jeff Tollefson, “Iron-dumping ocean experiment sparks controversy,” Nature.com; May 23, 2017; Internet; available at https://www.nature.com/news/iron-dumping-ocean-experiment-sparks-controversy-1.22031; accessed January 27, 2021. 2 J.R. McNeill and Peter Engelke, The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene Since 1945, (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), 4. 72

By the mid-1970s US capitalists were responding to constricted rates of profit and profitmaking opportunities in general due to rising international competition and other factors in the postwar period. The industrial capacity of many other nations destroyed in the war was back online by the late 1960s with state-of-the-art means and methods of production, while much of US capacity was somewhat aged, dating to the interwar years or even earlier. Nuclear weapons limited capitalism’s usual imperialist options for expansion and greater profits. With the advantage of the world’s most powerful military machine to back it up, US capitalism massively globalized, pushing capitalist development into all the capillaries of human society, using the gospel of neoliberalism—in short form, the that the rule of capital is good for everyone—to knock down its opposition, including unions. It sought the lowest paid workers and fewest protections for people and the environment, confident that computerization, roboticization and eventually artificial intelligence would render their exploitation as profitable as had been hundreds of thousands of US workers now left jobless. Its billionaires, as has been noted, benefited greatly.

Rightwing Reshaping of the Media Landscape

One development that greatly increased the ruling-class ability to spread lies with impunity at a time when global fossil-fuel emissions were literally going sky-high was the small government, big business neoliberalism of the Reagan administration—a philosophy that both justified and further powered the “great acceleration,” by pointedly and purposely legitimizing the generalized broadcasting of lies. An article for the Huffington Post put it this way: “Arguably the most pernicious aspect of President

Reagan’s environmental legacy was the 1987 decision by his Federal Communications 73

Commission to repeal the Fairness Doctrine, a nearly 40-year-old legislative effort to ensure that broadcasters were legitimately fair and balanced in their presentation of controversial issues.”1

Shortly thereafter Rush Limbaugh and appeared, followed by many other outlets that paid far less attention to the truth than even normal procapitalist media—which according to the propaganda model of Manufacturing Consent is already class-, race- and sex-biased. Abolition of the Fairness Doctrine was an important step toward the fake news, no-holds-barred lying we face in today’s world, because it did away with the legal right to reply to lies and distortions being spewed from broadcast facilities.

They could no longer be easily held liable for even grotesque and transparent lies or hate speech of any variety. Though its enforcement was hardly perfect, eliminating the Fairness

Doctrine radically transformed the electronic media landscape, eventually establishing today’s parameters of allowable discourse—anything goes—on the Internet and all electronic media, to the extent of threatening even the semblance of political democracy that remains in a country where the rule of big capital extends from its control of the economy to virtually all aspects of society.2

The domination of media by particular interests—in this case rightwing capitalists in AM radio —provided the original motivation for passage of the something like the

Fairness Doctrine. An article in the Boston Globe asserts that the appearance of virtually

1 Betsy Rosenberg, “The Reagan Fetish II: Green Versus Greed,” HuffPost.com; September 15, 2012; Internet; available at https://www.huffpost.com/entry/reagan-environment-policy_b_1678153; accessed January 28, 2021. 2 Elliot C. Rothenberg, “What Can You Do When They Spew Lies: Revisiting the Fairness Doctrine,” MinnPost.com; May 30, 2020; Internet; available at https://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/ 2020/05/what-can-you-do-when-they-spew-lies-revisiting-the-fairness-doctrine/; accessed January 28, 2021. 74 instantaneous mass media like radio created a widely recognized “democratic crisis.” The feeling of many, the Globe article maintains, was that “[t]he framers of the Constitution simply never envisioned that a free press would someday include a technology that could reach an audience of millions instantly.” In the leadup to the Radio Act of 1927, which first established regulation of the industry, Luther Johnson, a Texas legislator, argued that “when such a weapon is placed in the hands of…a single selfish group [that] is permitted to either tacitly or otherwise acquire ownership or dominate these broadcasting stations throughout the country, then woe be to those who dare differ with them.” Eventually, as the Globe noted, “[s]uch concerns led Congress to pass a series of measures that culminated in the Fairness Doctrine of 1949.” As the Globe observed, the doctrine argued for fact-based programming that, when controversial topics were addressed, afforded “reasonable opportunity for opposing viewpoints”—language vague enough to assure that it would not cause too much trouble for radio capitalists with plenty of lawyers. Nonetheless, the reasoning for such regulation was, the Globe noted, “pretty intuitive: the public airwaves should be used to serve the public good.”1

The impact of dropping this regulation was to drop any pretense of fairness. By

2007, a report titled “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio,” produced by the

Center for American Progress, showed that 91 percent of total weekday talk programming from the nation’s 1,700 talk radio stations was conservative in nature, with 50 million listeners tuned in each week. This nearly absolute dominance of rightwing AM radio

1 Steve Almond, “Want to Stop Fake News? Reinstate the Fairness Doctrine,” BostonGlobe.com; April 17, 2018; Internet; available at https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/04/17/want-stop-fake-news- reinstate-fairness-doctrine/BpMw4D3s9qLrDwA2geLywN/story.html; accessed February 7, 2018. 75 content was due to structural imbalances—not to popular demand. Rather, the report said, it reflected “the complete breakdown of the public trustee concept of broadcast, the elimination of clear public interest requirements for broadcasting, and the relaxation of ownership rules including the requirement of local participation in management.”1

The neoliberal assault on government regulation spearheaded by the Reagan administration’s revoking of the Fairness Doctrine produced a communication industry milieu that was particularly conducive to the efficient spread not only of procapitalist economic views, but also of divisive rightwing political theories and fake news.

Several decades of this free-for-all among the monied, dominant elements of the capitalist class that own and control broadcast radio, television, cable and the Internet produced a scenario summed up by John Bellamy Foster, writing in Monthly Review in 2019.

“The mass media-propaganda system, part of the larger corporate matrix,” Foster wrote, “is now merging into a social media-based propaganda system that is more porous and seemingly anarchic, but more universal and more than ever favoring money and power.” Today, all interactions in the digital domain are dominated by “modern marketing and surveillance techniques,” meaning, Foster writes, that “vested interests are able to tailor their messages, largely unchecked, to individuals and their social networks, creating concerns about ‘fake news’ on all sides.”2

Ominously, Foster notes, “[n]umerous business entities promising technological

1 Center for American Progress, “Talk Radio by the Numbers,” AmericanProgress.org; July 10, 2007; Internet; available at https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/news/2007/07/10/3297/talk-radio-by-the- numbers/; accessed February 8, 2021. See also John Halpin, et al., The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio (Washington, DC: Center for American Progress; Free Press, 2007). 2 John Bellamy Foster, “Capitalism Has Failed—What Next?,” MonthlyReview.org; February 1, 2019; Internet; available at https://monthlyreview.org/2019/02/01/capitalism-has-failed-what-next/; accessed January 28, 2021. 76 manipulation of voters in countries across the world have now surfaced, auctioning off their services to the highest bidders.” Moreover, the abolition of so-called net neutrality in the United States in service to large corporate users “means further concentration, centralization, and control over the entire Internet by monopolistic service providers.”1 Net neutrality was the legal requirement that internet providers must treat all users—business and individuals—equally with regard to speed of access. The Federal Communications

Commission under the Trump administration repealed the requirement in 2018. Whether or not the Biden administration or Congress restores it remains an open question, as does its enforcement beyond the purposes of window dressing if restored.

It was the choice of many elements of the capitalist class to promote the

Orwellian reversal of truth and reality on economic, political, social and environmental matters. They engineered the structural media dominance they needed and clearly did so for the darkest of reasons—in order to promote their own selfish material interests above the health and lives of the rest of humanity. Then they increasingly bent the growing rightwing movement—which their efforts helped produce and initially shape—to serve those interests. However, there was always an important element among the that, thanks to its role as the physical defense for ruling-class domestic and imperialist interests, was bound to the truth of the climate crisis: the military defenders of capitalism.

Christian Parenti, in his book Tropic of Chaos, attests to that reality. Parenti quickly cuts to the heart of the matter by beginning the book with reference to reports

1 Foster, “Capitalism Has Failed.” 77 by or for the US military itself and its allied equivalents in other capitalist nations— reports showing they are actually planning for the present and future of the climate crisis. Those reports show they are not only taking the matter seriously; theirs is a largely inhuman, militaristic response to the crisis—the “politics of the armed lifeboat,”

Parenti calls it. While much of the rest of the world struggles—however ineptly to date—to come to terms with adaptation to and mitigation of the increasingly intensifying climate crisis, the US military itself is responding in wholly predictable ways.1

The Military View

Parenti observes that planning to respond to events in primarily military ways often exacerbates problems and precludes other more peaceful responses. He writes that

“America’s overdeveloped military capacity, its military-industrial complex, has created powerful interests that depend on, [and] therefore promote, war.” Today a host of newer security companies join the older members of that fraternity to form a “security- industrial complex,” Parenti notes. This emerging complex of industries and companies “offers an array of services at home and abroad: surveillance; intelligence; border security; detention; facility and base construction; antiterrorism consulting; military and police logistics, analysis, planning, and training; and, of course, personal security.” In short, they have a compelling interest in promoting and maintaining a repressive response to the largest humanitarian crisis we have ever faced—the existential climate crisis.2

A report produced by an advisory board of “high-ranking former military

1 Christian Parenti, Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence (New York: Nation Books, 2011), 9-11, 20, 225-226. 2 Parenti, Tropic of Chaos, 13-14. 78 officers” for “the Pentagon-connected think tank CNA Corporation” shows the US military’s awareness and acceptance of the veracity of climate-crisis science. The report maintains that “[c]limate change acts as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world,” and that “[m]any in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East are already on edge in terms of their ability to provide basic needs: food, water, shelter and stability.” It also asserts that “[p]rojected climate change will exacerbate the problems in these regions and add to the problems of effective governance.” In fact, it asserts, “[c]limate change has the potential to result in multiple chronic conditions, occurring globally within the same time frame.” Sounding something like an IPCC report, it continues: “Economic and environmental conditions in these already fragile areas will further erode as food production declines, diseases increase, clean water becomes increasingly scarce, and populations migrate in search of resources.” It advised that

“[w]eakened and failing governments, with an already thin margin for survival, foster the conditions for internal conflict, extremism, and movement toward increased authoritarianism and radical ideologies”—a conclusion which, as the Trump years show, could be applied to the US as well. As the report ominously asserted, “[t]he US may be drawn more frequently into these situations.”1

A report entitled The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy National Security

Implications of Global Climate Change, was produced for the Center for Strategic and

International Studies and the Center for a New American Security. Its section on the worst- case scenario for the crisis observes that “[i]n a world that sees two-meter sea level rise, with

1 Parenti, Tropic of Chaos, 15-17. 79 continued flooding ahead, it will take extraordinary effort for the United States, or indeed any country, to look beyond its own salvation.” The report concludes that “[a]ll of the ways in which human beings have dealt with natural disasters in the past could come together in one conflagration.” Among the many possibilities it includes are “rage at government’s inability to deal with the abrupt and unpredictable crises; religious fervor, perhaps even a dramatic rise in millennial end-of-days cults; hostility and violence toward migrants and minority groups.” All this will happen, it says, “at a time of demographic change and increased global migration; and intra- and interstate conflict over resources, particularly food and fresh water.” Even such human characteristics as “[a]ltruism and generosity,” the report asserts, “would likely be blunted.”1

Parenti shows how historic vulnerability to the crisis is shared by many nations between the Topic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn—a zone he calls the Tropic of

Chaos—around the globe thanks to a history of exploitation and oppression in the region by colonial and imperialist powers. That vulnerability means great masses of people will become climate refugees as the crisis worsens. Immigration by climate refugees into what he calls the

“Land of Violent Talk,” the land of the demagogues who inhabit the vast network of rightwing talk radio and other media in the United States, prompts Parenti’s characterization of the US-

Mexico border as “a template for understanding dangerous global dynamics.” Around the world, Parenti writes, “borders and policing regimes are hardening as restrictive immigration policies are matched by a xenophobic style of politics.”2

Parenti contends that if we continue to respond to the crisis in that way we are

1 Parenti, Tropic of Chaos, 15-17. 2 Parenti, Tropic of Chaos, 181-184. 80 doomed. Estimates of the number of climate refugees, including tens of millions of internal US refugees as rising sea levels flood our own coastal cities, show that nations that may be spared the worst effects of the climate crisis could also be swamped by up to a billion refugees over the next century who are fleeing what he calls “the catastrophic convergence of poverty, violence and climate change.” That repressive approach will spell nothing but blood as repression and war dominate the future.1

Michael T. Klare, in his book All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change, notes the many ways the US military is incorporating acceptance of the truth of climate-crisis science into its planning: protecting or moving its own facilities that are facing sea-level rise; planning for the possible collapse of US ports or port cities; facing the results of the many states the crisis will move toward the brink of collapse; powering its forces—the world’s largest single emitter—without adding to the problem of emissions; facing the effects of resource and food scarcity as a result of droughts, floods and other climate emergencies; and “great-power clashes” over resources in the Arctic as that region becomes increasingly free of ice, among many other concerns. In short, while much of the capitalist class and its admirers have cynically fought the reality of the climate crisis tooth and nail in defense of profit interests, the no-nonsense military defenders of those interests have recognized that they cannot keep the nation safe if they do not take climate science seriously.2

Even now, under this system of production for profit, spurred on by neoliberal

1 Parenti, Tropic of Chaos, 5, 181-184. 2 See Michael T. Klare, All Hell Breaking Loose (New York: Picador/Henry Holt and Co., 2019). 81 sentiment and globalization, the fossil fuel industry wants to continue to extract and burn, to realize profits on what they extract, no matter the consequences for humanity and the rest of life on Earth. The Carbon Tracker Initiative has already identified private and state-owned reserves of oil, gas and coal that would amount to 2,795 gigatons of CO2 emissions once burned. Yet 565 gigatons—most of which has already been released—is the maximum amount that could be released by 2050 and still possibly stay under warming of 2°C. As environmentalist Bill McKibben has observed, what that means is very simple: “This industry has announced in filings to the SEC and in promises to shareholders, that they’re determined to burn five times more fossil fuel than the planet’s atmosphere can begin to absorb.”1 Capitalism has already painted us into an existential corner, but still there are many among its ruling class who are choosing to make plans that will make things far worse.

The monumental decisions humanity is facing with respect to climate destabilization and the degradation of nature not only deserve democratic participation by the millions whose lives are threatened, they require truly democratic control. Once truly democratic education spreads awareness of our collective problems and possible solutions, and truly democratic debate takes place to arrive at decisions about how to address them, we will be able to free ourselves from the drive for capital accumulation by the relatively tiny capitalist class and democratically direct society’s massive resources toward solving the global warming crisis and our many other problems.

1 Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014), 148. 82

The next chapter of this paper explores the reasons why the development of capitalism on a finite Earth was foreordained to lead to planetary catastrophe. It counterpoises to capitalist denialism the historical development of Marxist writing on why the growth of capitalism on a finite Earth was virtually foreordained to lead to planetary catastrophe, thanks to its inherent disregard for the environment, human labor and society.

The chapter contextualizes the climate crisis within this overall disregard, in answer to the question: Why is capitalism driven to destroy the environment? This chapter also addresses the record of supposedly “socialist” countries on the exploitation of land and labor in answer to the question: What is the record of so-called socialist countries on the environment? It connects that record to the context of the cold war and the methodology and goals of the original revolutions that established them.

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“No amount of ‘green capitalism’ will be able to ensure the profound changes we must urgently make to prevent the collapse of civilization from the catastrophic impacts of global warming.” —Richard Smith, Truthout1

CHAPTER III

BEHIND THE DESTRUCTION – ECOMARXISM AS ANTIDOTE

Why is capitalism driven to destroy the environment? What is the record of so-called socialist countries on the environment?

Marxist ecology, or ecosocialism, is arguably uniquely equipped to answer the first question precisely because Marx’s penetrating analysis of capitalism bares the roots of the environmental crisis—capitalism’s profit-motivated destruction of nature and human labor—in what Marx showed were its fundamental internal economic workings.

In short, if capitalism is a system destructive of the environment and human labor, then

Marx’s oppositional analysis of it is the perfect antidote—it seeks to protect both by fostering a new form of society fundamentally opposed to such destruction. The story of capitalism’s violent rise from the seventeenth century to the present through the rapacious enclosure movement, horrendous institutionalized slavery, genocide, wars and ecological damage— four centuries of primitive accumulation—certainly attest to the system’s destructiveness.

This is notwithstanding its massive development of the which has rendered the possibility, though far from the reality, of the liberation of humanity from the realm of necessity.

1 Richard Smith, “Green Capitalism: The God That Failed,” Truthout.org; January 9, 2014; Internet; available at https://truthout.org/articles/green-capitalism-the-god-that-failed/; accessed February 20, 2021. 83

84

Marxist economics shows that the crisis is not merely the result of an ethical problem, as some reform-oriented environmentalists see it—the result of too many bad people making bad decisions, and something that can be turned around if only there were more good people enforcing good regulations. This is a systemic crisis more four centuries in the making. It is a crisis that began to develop as soon as private ownership of the means of production forcibly combined with commodity production for a market to produce the capitalist system of private profit for a few, and that system began to massively generate electric power, transportation systems and wars utilizing steam engines and fossil fuels.1

The disastrous ecological history of production for private profit under capitalism is the largest and longest-acting factor in our multifaceted global environmental crisis. It is so not only because capitalism is above all what amounts to the economic dictatorship of a tiny minority over the overwhelming majority—because it places at the helm of its privately owned economy a relatively tiny and anarchistic assemblage of self-interested capitalists who control their economy, generally, subject only to the barest minimum of state regulatory powers, which they have always sought to curb. It is so also because both individual capitalists and the system they control as a class—a socially produced system of production, distribution, transportation, communication and finance built with the collective knowledge, talent and labor of great masses of workers—are compelled by the core “logic” of the system to constantly grow.

That core logic is driven by competition and the profit motive, which force

1 See Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View (London: Verso, 2002) 85 capitalists, on pain of losing to their competitors in the marketplace, to maximize profits and constantly expand production —at the expense of workers and the environment.

Their mantra has always necessarily been “grow or die” despite the irrationality of that in a finite world, even to the extent of creating artificial wants and desires for often wasteful goods and services and of wasteful planned obsolescence. The motive force under capitalism is the drive to constantly expand production and boost profits, with little concern for what is produced or how it is produced, so long as its sale can realize profit.

The mechanisms by which this “grow or die” imperative courses through the veins of capitalism are several, and are well summarized by British Marxist writer Bill

Blackwater in an essay titled, “Why Do Capitalist Economies Need to Grow?” written in response to Tim Jackson and other advocates for “green capitalism.”1 Jackson is among those who seek to wish away “bad capitalism” and replace it with a “better” version ostensibly freed from the need to grow.2 The simplified Marxist economic analysis that supports Blackwater’s essay not only provides a firm basis to understand why capitalism simply cannot rid itself of the imperative for growth, it also provides the conceptual framework to understand the historical differences between Marxism and capitalism on the subject of nature itself.

The first mechanism Blackwater observes is “[i]t’s capitalism, stupid.” That is, the growth of capital is the whole point of capitalism, the fire in the “boiler”—the main impetus—that made it such an incredibly powerful force in rapidly developing the means

1 Bill Blackwater, “Why Do Capitalist Economies Need to Grow?,” MROnline.org; October 10, 2014; Internet; available at https://mronline.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/why_capitalist_economies_need_to_grow_-_for_green_house_- _10_10_14.pdf; accessed February 18, 2021. 2 See Tim Jackson, Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet (London: Earthscan, 2009). 86 and methods of production that has nonetheless brought us to the brink of extinction represented by today’s climate crisis. As Blackwater puts it, the difference between money and capital is that “money becomes capital when it is amassed not to be spent on the things one desires, nor to be hoarded as savings, but primarily as a fund for ongoing investment, designed to increase itself.”1 Marx’s shorthand for this process was M-C-M’, where money (M) is invested in the production of (C), which are then sold for more money (M’). M’ minus M equals the value added by human labor power above what the worker is paid for that labor power, representing collectively expropriated by the capitalist class from the collective, unpaid labor power of the working class, realized at the point of sale of the commodities produced.2

This is central under capitalism. As Blackwater observes, are “in business to make money.” Exceptions to this dictum do exist, among them charities and some small businesses, which may be “happy simply to tick along in a steady state and pay themselves a steady wage.” However, “on a large scale and across the economy as a whole, the point of economic production is to make more money than you started out with; and not just to do that once and get out, but to do so on a continuing basis.” Since businesses on the whole exist precisely for this reason, Blackwater writes, “then the economy as a whole has to keep growing.”3 If there is no growth of capital, the fire in the boiler ceases, an economic crisis ensues, and the whole system shudders to a halt. Growth in capital also implies a growth in commodities whose sale unlocks surplus value—and as commodities are material

1 Blackwater, “Why Do Capitalist Economies Need to Grow?,” 4. 2 Karl Marx, Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, Volume 1 (New York: International Publishers, 1967), 150. 3 Blackwater, “Why Do Capitalist Economies Need to Grow?,” 5. 87 things, this means the continued expropriation of nature as well. Moreover, the exchange of commodities proceeds via a second mechanism, competition, that makes growth essential under capitalism. Capitalism, Blackwater observes, is a society under which

“there is no more important, socially organizing principle than the market.” For capitalists that means “no one is safe from being outflanked, undercut; capitalist society is intrinsically insecure, and in such a situation economic agents react by getting their retaliation in first, by continually seeking ways to lower their costs and increase their sales.”1

This situation has historically been undercut only rarely and temporarily, as in the period of the Second World War. Then, Blackwater notes, society was to a certain extent temporarily reorganized “by state bureaucracies, according to principles of social utility and national defense.” Moreover, he observes, “[t]here was a long period in the post-war

West, described variously as an age of welfare or monopoly capitalism, where large companies managed to restrict competition, and state authorities insulated large sections of the economy from competitive pressures.” However, this insulation from competition weakened as more competitors rebuilt and entered the postwar market.2

As Blackwater suggests, a structural change in international capitalism occurred in the postwar period. After the war US capital quickly expanded worldwide, often using the ’s international loan program to spur reconstruction in war torn countries as a hedge against Soviet expansion and to gain US access to international resources, labor and markets.3 As the war ended, the Great Acceleration began. War-torn

1 Blackwater, “Why Do Capitalist Economies Need to Grow?,” 5. 2 Blackwater, “Why Do Capitalist Economies Need to Grow?,” 5-6. 3 Office of the Historian, “The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan,” US State Dept., Office of the Historian/ history.state.gov; Internet; available at https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/short-history/truman; accessed February 18, 2021. 88

US economic competitors rebuilt their flattened industries with, in many cases, the most modern means and methods of production—which had not yet spread to US industry, where interwar-era or even earlier technology often still dominated. By the mid-1970s growing competition from efficient producers everywhere panicked US capital, which increasingly took up globalization and neoliberal assaults on regulations to protect workers and the environment, in an effort to increase profits and bolster its hegemony.1

Blackwater notes that “[t]his is something which has only snowballed since, accompanied by a rising insecurity and pressure to grow in all sectors of the economy in the developed world, including state sectors.”2 Militarism and war, often used to stimulate the economy in the past, must be far more carefully used for economic management now that nuclear weapons are widely possessed, though the capitalist class is still sometimes willing to risk using them to help manage its economy and assure profits.

Another factor that spurs capitalism’s drive for unending growth is, according to

Blackwater’s analysis, “[s]oaking up unemployment, smoothing over inequality.” Both natural population growth and competition spur capitalist growth. Too many people entering a workforce without sufficient employment is dangerous for the ruling class.

Yet competition in the marketplace continuously pressures capitalists to cheapen commodities by adding to unemployment with the use of productivity improvements to the means and methods of production that force more labor time out of the process of production. Workers and often whole industries or niches of production within industry are therefore constantly rendered redundant. Most are continuously subject to efforts to

1 As well as other factors dealt with in Chapter Four. 2 Blackwater, “Why Do Capitalist Economies Need to Grow?,” 6. See also Chapter 4 of this paper. 89 drive down their wages in favor of increased capitalist profits. As the introduction to this paper shows, the wealth of capitalists, on the other hand, grows ever more vast. While inequality is no more healthy for ruling classes than joblessness, yet they are still compelled to further increase their wealth.1

A certain level of unemployment works in the interests of capital, though the level cannot be too high or low. In contemporary times the capitalist class uses monetary policy through its political state in an often failing attempt to assure that the level is neither too high nor too low to properly serve its overall profit interests. Blackwater writes that “[i]t’s in the interests of capital for there to be a ‘reserve army of labor,’ because that reserve “helps to keep those in jobs on their toes and in their place.” Moreover, a ready supply of labor is necessary when the economy expands. Capitalism’s misnamed

“full employment” level has historically always left many workers jobless even with massive state intervention during wartime. Presently around 3.5 percent unemployment by the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s U-3 measure is considered to be desirable. Blackwater notes both political and economic concerns for the ruling class in balancing joblessness and employment under capitalism.

If there is too little unemployment, wages rise due to increased demand for workers, which diminishes profits. On the other hand, if the total surplus value expropriated from workers’ labor power shrinks as a result of wages being reduced too far, or from allowing too much unemployment, effective demand is reduced too much, resulting in an economic crisis. As Blackwater notes, then “[t]he capitalist economy

1 Blackwater, “Why Do Capitalist Economies Need to Grow?,” 6. 90 needs to grow in order to catch up with itself.” This balancing act is hardly an exact science, bolstering the need for militarism and war, , racism, sexism and other safety mechanisms to be used when possible to aid the economic and political

“management” of capitalism, notwithstanding the risks to society.1

An additional factor that spurs capitalism’s drive for unending growth is

“[d]ependence on credit,” introduced as a capitalist mechanism to help manage the problems that result from workers as a class not being paid the full product of their labor, which means that they cannot buy all the products they produce—another impetus to militarism, war and imperialist expansion to capture new markets, even constrained as the system is by the proliferation of nuclear weapons (that such mechanisms are still used at all to boost capitalist profits is another testament to the antisocial nature of capitalism). Credit is a tool to increase demand for commodities. As Blackwater observes, it is “not just what allows the economy to grow; it is also what compels it to do so.” Credit bridges the gap between “income from a previous round of sales and the additional costs of expanding production.” Any business startup or expansion requires resource expenditures in advance, and, he says, those expenditures “represent additional purchasing power, additional income for workers and businesses, which has not been earned, but instead has been provided by the banks.” This in turn compels systemwide growth.2

This is fundamental in capitalism. Blackwater observes that, “[i]f capitalist production begins in money debt, it is always, therefore, a game of catch-up; every loan is made with the promise of additional sales income returning as a result.” Consequently, he

1 Blackwater, “Why Do Capitalist Economies Need to Grow?,” 6-7. 2 Blackwater, “Why Do Capitalist Economies Need to Grow?,” 8. 91 notes, this promise has to be fulfilled to assure “a loan the next time, and the next time, and so on.” This requires constant growth; with “the entire economy …in net debt,” he writes,

“the entire economy has to get bigger before it can afford to pay it back.”1

Credit at one time was mostly used by business; today it increasingly involves great masses of workers as a means to stimulate demand. This is largely the result of rising levels of more or less permanent unemployment and partial employment, and falling or stagnant real wages in an economy with rising production.2 Blackwater observes that “when competition proceeds too far it becomes self-defeating for the capitalist.” If workers’

“overall purchasing power,” is cut too far as a result of falling wages, so too is their demand, and “the economy as a whole begins to tank.” Competition from lower-wage workers— countries to which US capitalists purposely spread production to take advantage of lower wages—helps depress the wages of US workers, “in turn applying a downward pressure on purchasing power, and increasing dependence on private credit,”

Blackwater writes. “Growth in private credit,” he says, “then contributes strongly to the need for the economy to grow.”3

One more factor in capitalism’s unending drive for growth, according to

Blackwater, is “[m]ass production for an anonymous market”—or, as Marx put it, the anarchy of capitalist production. As Blackwater observes, “production for an anonymous market means that no one can be sure in advance which products will be successful.” More capitalists enter the market than it can bear, each hoping to succeed. Thus production

1 Blackwater, “Why Do Capitalist Economies Need to Grow?,” 8. 2 Congressional Research Service, “Real Wage Trends, 1979 to 2019,” CRS Reports.Congress.gov; Updated December 28, 2020; Internet; available at https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45090.pdf; accessed February 25, 2021. 3 Blackwater, “Why Do Capitalist Economies Need to Grow?,” 9. 92 always tends to run ahead of demand. While capitalists plan to “produce and sell more by increasing consumption,” Blackwell notes, “there will always be casualties in this process, products and producers that fall by the wayside.”1

This wastefulness is at once a problem for resources—and banks and insurance companies, which must raise interest rates and fees to account for the losses—but at the same time it is one of the features that made capitalism grow so rapidly. Blackwater argues this is a benefit that “comes at a price, for there must continually be an excess of supply in the system, which again means the system as a whole must continually be growing.” It is a feature that, he says, “provides for the freedom for and expansionism, for producers right across the system to launch new products and businesses,”2 even though the overwhelming majority of them—90 percent—fail, exacerbating capitalism’s wastefulness.3

Blackwater’s last reason capitalism is compelled to grow or die is “consumption of energy.” He notes that this factor “has to do with the need for the supply of resources to continually increase.” While banks can create the money or capital resources “out of thin air,” Blackwater observes, the necessary resources also include “things which facilitate the production of commodities for sale.” Labor, raw materials and equipment are among those required resources, and “growth in these resources is compelled by the system’s overall requirement for growth,” he writes.4 The so-called Jevons Paradox5 is a precondition to

1 Blackwater, “Why Do Capitalist Economies Need to Grow?,” 9-11. 2 Blackwater, “Why Do Capitalist Economies Need to Grow?,” 11. 3 Neil Patel, “90% of Startups Fail: Here’s What You Need to Know About the 10%,” Forbes.com; January 16, 2015; Internet; available at https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilpatel/2015/01/16/90-of-startups-will-fail-heres- what-you-need-to-know-about-the-10/?sh=30fd63ae6679; accessed March 11, 2021. 4 Blackwater, “Why Do Capitalist Economies Need to Grow?,” 12. 5 Named for W.S. Jevons, the nineteenth-century British economist who first wrote of this phenomenon in 1865. 93 understanding how energy consumption also compels growth under capitalism. Assuming that demand does not rise at the same time, expanding the supply of natural resources through extraction as well as increased efficiency of use lowers their cost per unit and assists in lowering the cost per unit of all the products produced using them. Accordingly, “this means that the relative economic value of all goods declines, meaning producers can purchase more of them in exchange for their products and workers more in exchange for their labor time,” Blackwater writes.1

Applying this understanding of the dynamics of supply and demand to energy consumption and pricing exposes “the unsustainability of capitalism as a system which can only exist in growth.” The intrinsic value of energy is inherent in its usefulness and scarcity, but “there is an inverse relationship between energy and economic value; the faster a resource is used up, the lower its price will fall, in turn encouraging even greater consumption,” he writes. This is an essential component of economic growth. “It drives up the work got from the economy’s resource base in a self-fueling manner, enabling the magic of productivity growth,” he says, “with the increase in the masses of goods produced lowering their cost and expanding the economy even as the underlying resource base is depleted.” However, as Blackwater pointedly writes: “It is not only magic but an illusion.”2

In short, it is the venerated capitalist market itself that lies at the root of the system’s unsustainability. While an increase in supply of energy or any other resources “necessarily means a decrease in stock,” the message the market sends to capitalists “simply incites them to further exploitation.” For Blackwater, “this economic signal only changes in the face of a

1 Blackwater, “Why Do Capitalist Economies Need to Grow?,” 12. 2 Blackwater, “Why Do Capitalist Economies Need to Grow?,” 13-14. 94 resource’s incontrovertible collapse,” which produces “a sudden crash in connected markets.” Moreover, he notes, “historically, growth has continued beyond such local collapses via the swapping in of new sources of the same resource, or the development of alternatives.” As the alternatives too will become exhausted, this cannot continue forever, even across the whole capitalist world. “As capitalist economies knit together into a globalized system,” he writes, “their ability to cope with the exhaustion of any local resource base increases—but so does the prospect of exhaustion on a global scale, sudden collapses from which it would be impossible to recover.”1

The capitalist system, as Blackwater sees it, is very much like a Ponzi scheme,2 in which investors are paid out rewards based on future investments. Moreover, he believes that it has been so since capitalism began. Thus, Blackwater observes “[t]he entire system is in debt, dependent on future growth, owed by future producers and consumers; the current income of capitalists and workers is drawn on a generational IOU; the entire system must keep growing or it will collapse.” However, in a finite world, unending growth is impossible.3

Blackwater and many other Marxist economists believe that contemporary capitalism is already in its terminal phase—barely able as it has been, in the last quarter of the twentieth century and so far in the twenty-first century, to grow without sequential financial bubbles that inevitably burst, endangering the whole system before moving on to new bubbles. For this paper, whose timeline is constrained by the rapidly developing and existential climate crisis, predictions about the demise of capitalism are not central; it is

1 Blackwater, “Why Do Capitalist Economies Need to Grow?,” 14. 2 Named after the notorious early twentieth century swindler, Charles Ponzi. 3 Blackwater, “Why Do Capitalist Economies Need to Grow?,” 15. 95 enough to know that, like all human creations, capitalism had a birth and will have a death, and the sooner we organize to end it, the sooner we can begin building a better future that moves us away from a catastrophic collapse of life on Earth.

The larger point is that despite its terminal phase it could keep on limping along with a relatively low growth rate for an extended time by employing risky growth bubbles, squeezing workers and defiling the environment. “It could not avoid collapse indefinitely, but left to its own devices it could die a very protracted and painful death,” Blackwater says.

Capitalism’s history assures us that it will continue destroying nature and labor, accelerating and increasing the severity of the climate crisis for all life on Earth, for as long as it exists.1

For Blackwater, then, the development of capitalism on a finite Earth was virtually foreordained to lead to planetary catastrophe. As he observes, “[t]he ecosocialists are clearly right that a post-growth world could not be capitalist.”2 The remainder of this chapter will sketch the history of a Marxist ecology that, in its critique of capitalism’s destruction of nature, helps outline the necessary features of an ecosocialist future. It traces the development of the Marxist analysis of capitalism’s profit-motivated environmental destruction from Marx himself to that of contemporary Marxists writing about our present world-historical crisis of global warming. For some unfamiliar with Marxist history, the very idea of Marxist ecology may seem a contradiction in terms, since none of the ostensibly

Marxist nations of the past had a relationship to nature and labor that was any less destructive than that of capitalist nations. This paper will make a clear distinction between

1 Blackwater, “Why Do Capitalist Economies Need to Grow?,” 15. 2 Blackwater, “Why Do Capitalist Economies Need to Grow?,” 15. 96 the ecological thinking of Marx, Engels and others who hued to their original line of thought, and the thinking of later Leninists, Stalinists, Maoists and others who betrayed that line of thought for a variety of material reasons that will be shown. For any who charge that

Marx was ‘Promethean’ or productivist (anti-environmental)—alleging that Marx thought humans must ruthlessly exploit nature in order to provide for all in a future socialist society—this paper will show that to be the opposite of what his writing advocated.

Marx as Promethean?

In the nineteenth century it was not common for writers on political economy to explicitly emphasize nature or the environment in their writing. Marx and Engels belonged to this milieu, which often saw writers refer to man’s mastery of nature in some way. That fact contributed to the later criticism among conservative writers, many environmentalists and even some on the political left, that neither Marx nor Engels exhibited much care for nature or the environment. But unlike many writers of the time these two foundational writers for were no cheerleaders for the subjugation of nature by man. Nonetheless, both have been criticized for what some see as their

“productivist” or “Promethean praise” for capitalism’s ruthless approach to production.

Commonly cited by critics is a passage from , in which Marx seems to praise the productivism of capitalism:1

The , during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers,

1 See Michael Löwy, “From Marx to Ecosocialism.” Capitalism Nature Socialism, March 2002, Vol. 13, No. 1, 121–133. 97

whole populations conjured out of the ground—what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor?1

A passage in the is also often cited by those who accuse Marx of productivism. In it, Marx seemed to approve that “capital creates the bourgeois society, and the universal appropriation of nature as well as of the social bond itself by the members of society.” As Marx wrote,

Hence the great civilizing influence of capital; its production of a stage of society in comparison to which all earlier ones appear as mere local developments of humanity and as nature-idolatry. For the first time, nature becomes purely an object for mankind, purely a matter of utility; ceases to be recognized as a power for itself; and the theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse so as to subjugate it under human needs, whether as an object of consumption or as a means of production.2

Some who charge Marx with “Prometheanism” point to such passages as consistent with his doctoral dissertation and , in both of which he praised the early Greek materialist Epicurus and compared him to Prometheus —the god in

Greek mythology who gave fire to mankind. The mythology of Prometheus was originally about giving the knowledge of fire to man—which was the sense in which Marx compared

Epicurus to him, the same sense regarding Prometheus understood by Marx’s contemporaries.

Later writers often misinterpret the myth, mistakenly associating it with the giving of power, a metaphor for the coal-fired engines of industrialization. In short, their charge is that

Enlightenment conceptions of human progress via the subjugation of nature constitute

Prometheanism or productivism and pollute Marx’s works, as well as those of Engels.3

1 Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 8. 2 Karl Marx, Grundrisse (New York: Pelican, 1973), 408–409 3 John Bellamy Foster, “The Communist Manifesto and the Environment,” The Socialist Register 1998. (New York: Monthly Review Press), 169-189. Foster is an ecological sociologist at University of Oregon and editor of Monthly Review. 98

Another favorite citation of those who charge Marx and Engels with an anti- ecological stance is a quote from Engels in his Anti-Dühring of 1877, projecting the resolution of the contradictions of life under capitalism after a successful socialist revolution.

“Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organization” under socialism. “The struggle for individual existence disappears,” Engels contends, and “[t]hen for the first time man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of existence into really human ones.”

Engels posits that, under socialism, “[t]he whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of nature because he has now become master of his own social organization.”1 However, phrases like these are not productivist, but rather, as contemporary sociologist and ecologist John Bellamy Foster has observed, they are celebrative not of the “human mastery of nature so much as the human mastery of the making of history, which gives humanity the capacity to reorganize its relation to nature, under conditions of human freedom and the full development of human needs and potentials.” Foster concludes that there is nothing in such thinking “to suggest an underlying antagonism toward nature in Engels’ notion of the realm of freedom.”2

Those who complain of Prometheanism or productivism in Marx and Engels miss the otherwise thoroughly ecological context of their overall writings. Neither Marx nor

Engels revel in what capitalism has done to nature and the environment in ruthlessly

1 Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring: Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science. (: Progress Publishers, 1947), 520-521. 2 John Bellamy Foster, “The Communist Manifesto and the Environment,” The Socialist Register 1998. 99 developing the means of production in pursuit of private profit. Rather, their “praise” is more akin to mocking that system for being so destructively productivist itself. As Marx pointed out in the Grundrisse, “[c]apital drives beyond national barriers and prejudices as much as beyond nature worship, as well as all traditional, confined, complacent, encrusted satisfactions of present needs, and reproductions of old ways of life.” In its drive for profits, he writes, “[i]t is destructive towards all of this, and constantly revolutionizes it, tearing down all the barriers which hem in the development of the forces of production, the expansion of needs, the dual-sided development of production, and the exploitation and exchange of natural and mental forces.”1

Marx is not showering praise or approval on capitalism in this passage, but is directly critical of its destructive methods in revolutionizing production. As Marx presciently observes of the capitalist system’s increasingly devastating, industrial approach to agriculture in his first volume of Capital:

All progress in capitalist agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil; all progress in [chemically] increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time is a progress towards ruining the more long- lasting sources of that fertility. The more a country starts its development on the foundation of modern industry, like the United States, for example, the more rapid is this process of destruction. Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology…only by sapping the original sources of all wealth—the soil and the worker.2

As early as 1844, in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Marx made it clear that he considered humanity to be a part of nature, not separate from it, when he wrote that “[m]an lives on nature…nature is his body, with which he must remain in

1 Marx, Grundrisse. 409-410. 2 Karl Marx, Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, Volume 1 (New York: International Publishers, 1967), 506. 100 continuous intercourse if he is not to die.” Further clarifying that conception of the relationship of humans to nature, Marx continued, “[t]hat man’s physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.”

Capitalism estranges or alienates humanity from its natural being, he protested later in that same work, producing “refinement of needs and of their means on the one hand, and a bestial barbarization, a complete, unrefined, abstract simplicity of need, on the other.”

Under the capitalist system—and this is still true today in many industries, especially in agriculture—“Even the need for fresh air ceases for the worker. Man returns to living in a cave, which is now, however, contaminated with the mephitic breath of plague given off by civilization,” Marx wrote.1

Engels, who has perhaps been criticized even more than Marx for his ostensible productivism, wrote in 1844 that, “[w]herever we turn, leads us into contradictions.” Clearly very disdainful of capitalist property relations, he writes that “[t]o make earth an object of huckstering—the earth which is our one and all, the first condition of our existence—was the last step towards making oneself an object of huckstering.” Such base huckstering was, he wrote, “an immorality surpassed only by the immorality of self- alienation.” Moreover, Engels contended, “the original appropriation—the monopolization of the earth by a few, the exclusion of the rest from that which is the condition of their life—yields nothing in immorality to the subsequent huckstering of the earth.”2

Much later, in 1883, Engels noted how capitalists are forced by competition

1 Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961), 74, 117. 2 Frederick Engels, “An Outline of a Critique of Political Economy,” in Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961. Kindle Edition), 187. 101 and the profit motive to accumulate or die, resulting in a perennial focus on short-term profits to the detriment of nature and the environment, including the generation of environmental catastrophe. It is an analysis fully consistent with Blackwater’s contemporary view of capitalism’s compulsions toward growth:

When an individual manufacturer or merchant sells a manufactured or purchased commodity with only the usual small profit, he is satisfied, and he is not concerned as to what becomes of the commodity afterwards or who are its purchasers. The same thing applies to the natural effects of the same actions. What did the Spanish planters in Cuba, who burned down forests on the slopes of the mountains and obtained from the ashes sufficient fertilizer for one generation of very highly profitable coffee trees, care that the heavy tropical rainfall afterwards washed away the unprotected upper stratum of the soil, leaving behind only bare rock? In relation to nature, as to society, the present is predominantly concerned only about the first, tangible success; and then surprise is expressed that the more remote effects of actions directed to this end turn out to be of quite a different, mainly even of quite an opposite, character.1

In fact, the real context in which all of Marx and Engel’s “praise” and and its effects on nature and working people alike occurs was perhaps best exemplified in the supposedly productivist Communist Manifesto itself in 1848, when they observed that “[m]odern bourgeois society with its , of exchange, and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.”2

The centrality of ecological sustainability under a future socialist system versus the unsustainable agricultural production of capitalism was pointed to by Marx in Capital, Vol.

3. “Instead of a conscious and rational treatment of the land as permanent communal

1 Frederick Engels, of Nature. (New York: International Publishers, 1940), 295-296. 2 Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 8. 102 property, as the inalienable condition for the existence and reproduction of the chain of human generations,” Marx wrote, “we have the exploitation and the squandering of the powers of the earth.” In fact, for Marx the very idea of private ownership and control of agricultural production was absurd:

From the standpoint of a higher socio-economic formation, the private property of particular 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 the 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 households).1

Engels summed up the Marxist approach to humanity’s relationship to nature just as eloquently in his 1883 “The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man” from his unfinished Dialectics of Nature. In it he warned humanity not to seek or celebrate any conquest over nature. “Let us not…flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature” he wrote. “For each such victory,” Engels wrote, “nature takes its revenge on us”:

Each of them, it is true, has in the first place the consequence on which we counted, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only too often cancel out the first...at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature—but that we, with flesh, blood, and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst, and that all our mastery of it consists in the fact that we have the advantage over all other beings of being able to know and correctly apply its laws.2

Examples to show the fallacious characterizing of Marx and Engels as anti- ecological or anti-environmental could go on and on. Using even the few foregoing

1 Marx, Capital, Vol. 3, 909-910, 947-948. 2 Engels, Dialectics of Nature, 291-292. 103 references to contextualize their writings puts their view of nature into an entirely different light. As Foster has written, like many nineteenth-century writers, Marx and Engels focused on human needs rather than the needs of nature, and thereby at most “can be accused of being ‘anthropocentric’ rather than ‘ecocentric.’” This is, however, “a false dualism,” Foster contends. “Nature and society, in their perspective,” he writes, “cannot be viewed as diametrically opposed categories, but evolve in relation to each other as part of a dynamic process of ‘metabolic’ interaction.” Their approach predates the “coevolutionary” perspective, “in which it is argued that nature and human society each coevolve in a complex process of mutual dependence.” However, Foster observes, “[t]he complexity of the interaction between nature and society envisioned by coevolutionary theory leaves little room for such ideas as “anthropocentric” and “ecocentric” since even in defending nature we are often defending something that was reshaped by human beings.1

Paul Burkett, a contemporary writer on Marxist ecology who has done extensive analysis of the ecological concepts embedded in the work of Marx and Engels, sees that work in a similar light. He shows that “Marx could not have foreseen the precise antiecological forms that capitalism’s ‘increasingly one-sided and massive’ production and consumption would eventually take on during the twentieth century.” However, Burkett observes, “Marx and Engels did point out the unhealthy disturbances to the natural circulation of matter and the tendency to overstretch (human and extrahuman) natural limits, which inevitably result from the conversion of labor and nature into conditions of competitive monetary accumulation.” Marx’s criticisms of capitalism’s “mode of

1 Foster, “The Communist Manifesto and the Environment,” 174. 104 consumption,” Burkett notes, “especially on its artificial creation of needs so that its [massive production of commodities can be profitably sold]—certainly bear additional insights into capitalism’s fundamentally antiecological character.” As Burkett pointedly observes, “[a]ll of this demonstrates the distorted one-sidedness of the Promethean interpretation, according to which Marx…envisions life under [socialism] as basically a quantitative enhancement of capitalistic mass production and consumption.”1

Burkett’s research reveals an ecological Marx even where others have seen him as productivist. Regarding the quote from the Grundrisse mentioned earlier in this chapter, for example—often cited as evidence of productivism—Burkett writes, “[w]hen Marx praises

‘the great civilizing influence of capital,’ with its ‘universal appropriation of nature as well as of the social bond itself by the members of society,’ he is not downgrading nature or the natural character of human beings.” Burkett maintains that Marx “is recognizing the possibility of a less restricted, more conscious form of human coevolution with nature” beyond earlier forms of human society that were place-based and had in common a tribal worship of nature.2

The scholarship of historian Kohei Saito for his book Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism is an important addition to the overwhelming evidence against an anti-environmental Marx gleaned from the writing of Marx and Engels. Saito’s research goes deeper than earlier research—because he accesses not only Marx’s published works but also his previously unpublished research notebooks, many of which Saito helped edit as a visiting scholar for

1 Paul Burkett, “Was Marx a Promethean?” Nature, Society, and Thought, Vol. 12, No.1, 1999. 37-38. 2 Burkett, “Was Marx a Promethean?,” 17. By “local developments” is meant traditional small groupings; villages. 105 the Marx-Engels-Gesamptausgabe (MEGA2) project at the -Brandenburg Academy of Sciences in 2015.1 Saito’s exhaustive textual analysis of Marx’s scientific notebooks written while he was working on Capital show what Marx was reading and, in hundreds of marginal notes, what he thought of those readings as he prepared for the writing of the first volume of his most damning critique of capitalism, Capital.2

As a result of his own research Saito concludes that Marx is not anti-ecology.

“Ecology does not simply exist in Marx’s thought,” Saito writes. In fact, he maintains, “[i]t is not possible to comprehend the full scope of his critique of political economy if one ignores its ecological dimension.”3 The notebooks show not only the evolution of

Marx’s ecological thought from his earlier writing, but also the integral nature of humanitarian concerns inherent in his critique of capitalism. Saito summarizes how

Marx’s scientific research affected his ecological development. Saito writes “[i]n comparison with the London Notebooks in the 1850s, in which Marx’s optimism rather neglected the problem of soil exhaustion under modern [capitalist] agriculture, his notebooks of 1865-66” show that Marx’s thinking had grown. The notebooks “vividly demonstrate,” Saito writes, “that various scientists and economists such as [German agricultural chemist] Justus von Liebig, [Scottish agricultural chemist and mineralogist]

James F.W. Johnston, and [French economist] Léonce de Lavergne helped him develop a more sophisticated critique of modern agriculture.”

1 MEGA2 is the second effort, more massive than the first Marx-Engels-Gesamptausgabe (MEGA) project, to assemble the works of Marx and Engels and collate their notebooks as well, which the first MEGA did not include. The original collected works embodied 50 volumes. MEGA2 so far plans 114. 2 Kohei Saito, Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capitalism, Nature and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2017), 9-21. 3 Saito, Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism, 14. 106

As Saito observes of the effect of Liebig’s work on Marx, “Marx’s reception of

Liebig’s theory [of soil exhaustion as a result of capitalist agriculture] in 1865–66 led him consciously to abandon any reductionistic Promethean model of social development and to establish a that converges with his vision of sustainable human development.”

As a result, Saito contends, “Marx started to analyze the contradictions of capitalist production as a global disturbance of natural and social metabolism.” 1 Marx’s study of

Liebig influenced the following thought, from the first volume of Capital. “Capitalist production,” Marx wrote, “disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and the earth, i.e. it prevents the return to the soil of its constituent elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; hence it hinders the operation of the eternal natural condition for the lasting fertility of the soil.”2 Moreover, [t]he influence of Liebig’s work on soil metabolism is directly attributed, parenthetically, by Marx in his third volume of Capital:

Small-scale landownership presupposes that the overwhelming majority of the population is agricultural and that isolated labor predominates over social; wealth and the development of reproduction, therefore, both in its material and its intellectual aspects, is ruled out under these circumstances, and with this also the conditions for a rational agriculture. On the other hand, large landed property reduces the agricultural population to an ever decreasing minimum and confronts it with an ever-growing industrial population crammed together in large towns; in this way it produces conditions that provoke an irreparable rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism, a metabolism prescribed by the natural laws of life itself. The result of this is a squandering of the vitality of the soil, which is carried by trade far beyond the bounds of a single country. (Liebig.)3 [Parenthetical attribution in original.]

Marx’s scientific studies, reflected in his notebooks during the writing of Capital, are crucially important for an understanding of Marxist political economy, Saito observes,

1 Saito, Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism, 19. 2 Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, 505. 3 Marx, Capital, Vol. 3, 949. 107 for they show that he “came to regard ecological crises as the fundamental contradiction of the capitalist mode of production.” As Saito maintains, “[t]he key concept in this context is

‘metabolism,’ which leads us to a systematic interpretation of Marx’s ecology.”1

Much of the distortion of the position of Marx and Engels as Promethean or productivist thus results from a very superficial acquaintance with their writings. But perhaps the greatest reason for characterizations of Marxism as anti-environmental, anti- ecological or anti-nature is the result of something generally far more intentional—the cultural production in the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries to intentionally discredit Marxism by equating it with , and Maoism. Accordingly, understanding the development of ecosocialism requires clarifying the real nature of the

Stalinist Soviet Union, Maoist China, and their satellites as well as their collective irrelevance to Marxist ecology. Students of Marx’s critique of capitalism will recognize that such states were never Marxist societies at all. Russia and China were saddled with largely preindustrial material conditions unsuited to the establishment of socialism.

Marx posited that building socialism first required the industrial development and capital accumulation of capitalism—this was the one sense in which he considered capitalism progressive, even while deeply criticizing its destructive effects on workers and the environment. Russia and China were primarily peasant societies with little industrial capacity and only a small working class—a class to which the development of capitalism normally bestowed some literacy and education at first needed in those who operated its tools of production (less so in the age of computers and automation). Marx

1 Saito, Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism, 13. 108 considered the development of the tools of production to the point where an abundance is producible for all to be a necessary precondition for socialism, and the full development of the —the working class—necessary for its self-emancipation from capitalist class rule. Anything less would merely reproduce the material conditions of scarcity under which class divisions arise and classes contend for supremacy in a class struggle. Marxism wishes to end the class struggle along with the political state.

Stalinists and Maoists self-servingly appropriated the popular Marxist and socialist terminology of the day to garner support for the draconian policies they were required by undeveloped material conditions to deploy in order to force their peasant-based societies into an industrial mold. Many procapitalist writers have been happy to also self-servingly use the grim example of the bureaucratic despotic states that resulted to paint a terrifying picture of

Marxism. In both cases, vanguard parties—the in the Soviet Union and Maoists in China, were able to drive a largely illiterate and uneducated peasantry debilitated by war and hunger into their bureaucratic statist folds, aided by their opportunistic use of the class-struggle language of Marx.

While the Bolsheviks under Lenin pursued for a few years a somewhat progressive scientific approach to environmental and agricultural policies, once Stalin rose to power forced collectivization began and science was sacrificed to politics. Party functionaries were occupied with pleasing Stalin, no matter how unscientific or damaging his ideas were—much as Nazi functionaries were mostly occupied with pleasing Hitler during his dictatorship in capitalist . Over 100 million people were forced into unscientifically managed, giant collective farms or massive, polluting, industrial facilities 109 by the Stalinist bureaucracy—with vast devastation to the environment, and famine and repression that took the lives of as many as 20 million people.1

James C. Scott, in his Seeing Like A State, writes that the Bolsheviks took the rural peasantry, “a social and economic terrain singularly unfavorable to appropriation and control,” and created, in their new despotic bureaucratic state, “institutional forms and production units far better adapted to monitoring, managing, appropriating, and controlling from above.”2 The Marxist goals of abolition of the wage labor system, the rapid withering away of the state, and the rule of the majority were no longer cited as conditions for socialism, but rather as distant goals in a supposedly “communist” future. In short, material conditions were not ripe for socialism, but only for the establishment of a new form of class rule under the Bolshevik Party. 3 This is not to say that

Russian workers and peasants could not have built something that might have led to a socialist society; just that a more democratic approach and international help, or at least the abeyance of attacks from the western powers, might have made a difference in their attempts to produce a better result than bureaucratic state despotism.

This development went deeper than Stalin and his cohorts. , a

Polish contemporary of Lenin active in the European socialist movement until she was murdered by German Social Democrats in 1919, challenged Lenin and Trotsky’s vanguardist views as destructive of Marxist principles from the very beginning.

Luxemburg regarded the conception of the vanguard to be a fatal weakness of .

1 See James C. Scott, Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). 2 Scott, Seeing Like A State, 203. 3 See Socialist Labor Party of America, The Nature of Soviet Society (Palo Alto: New York Labor News, 1978) 110

As Scott writes, Luxemburg thought it was an idea that substituted “the ego of the party for the ego of the proletariat.” This “ignored the fact that the objective was to create a self- conscious workers’ movement, not just to use the proletariat as instruments.” In the

“closed and authoritarian” soviet society the Bolsheviks constructed, says Scott,

Luxemburg’s prediction that “with the repression of political life in the land as a whole, life in the soviets must also become crippled” came true.1 Luxemburg wrote that

“[w]ithout general elections, without unrestricted freedom of the press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution,” and the end result is “a clique affair…a dictatorship in the bourgeois sense.”2

There were others who also criticized what Lenin, Trotsky and then the Stalinists were building, notably and the Workers’ Opposition faction within the

Soviet of which she was a part. That faction was banned by Lenin, and most members were eventually purged by Stalin, although Kollontai herself escaped that fate.3 The Bolsheviks faced material conditions that did not yield the class forces, resources or international alliances they needed to build socialism.

Gabriel Miasnikov and the Workers’ Group voiced their opposition to the Leninists very early on. As historian Paul Avrich observes in Russian Review, fairly quickly the prerevolutionary Bolshevik “party of opposition and revolt” became “the party of discipline and order.” With both internal (lack of industrial and class development) and external (war and imperialist intervention) pressures mounting, “the Bolshevik leadership assumed an

1 Scott, Seeing Like A State, 170-174. 2 Rosa Luxembourg, The Russian Revolution, in The Rosa Luxemburg Reader (New York: Monthly Review Books, 2004), 307. 3 Scott, Seeing Like A State, 174-179. 111 increasingly dictatorial position.” To consolidate their power, Avrich wrote, “[o]ne by one, the goals of 1917 proletarian democracy, social equality, [and] workers’ self-management, were thrust aside.” Lenin and others recast the initially worker-oriented institutions of Soviet society “in an authoritarian mold, and a new bureaucratic edifice was constructed, with its attendant corruption and red tape,” Hierarchy and privilege were restored “[i]n government and party, in industry and army,” Avrich observes, and “[f]or collective management of the factories Lenin substituted one-man management and strict labor discipline.”

Higher pay for specialized and managerial positions was reestablished by Lenin himself, “along with piece rates and other discarded features of capitalism,” and “soviets, trade unions, and factory committees were transformed into tools of the state apparatus,”

Avrich observed. The party elites soon concentrated authority in their own hands.1 By 1921,

Lenin and Trotsky could denounce and violently smash the uprising of disaffected

Bolshevik party members, sailors and soldiers at Kronstadt, many of whom, like

Miasnikov, detested the vanishing of revolutionary principles and practices. Miasnikov strenuously objected to every negative step the Leninists took away from the original goals of the revolution, first breaking with Lenin over the Brest-Litovsk Treaty in 1918.

He was eventually banished, then executed in 1945 after returning to the Soviet Union.

Within months of the revolution the Soviet Union was demonstrating that it clearly was not Marxist. Neither was Maoist China, where, callously using the Stalinist state as a pattern despite its already demonstrated horrors by the time of the Chinese

1 Paul Avrich, “Bolshevik Opposition to Lenin: G. T. Miasnikov and the Workers’ Group,” LibCom.org; August 7, 2005; Internet; available at https://libcom.org/library/bolshevik-opposition-lenin-paul-avrich; accessed February 22, 2021. 112 revolution, Mao established a version of bureaucratic state despotism that was from the very beginning a cult of personality, devastating to both people and the environment.

Millions more people died from starvation as a result of forced collectivization and other unscientific machinations from Mao and the Stalinism he emulated. Bankrupt from the beginning, the new form of bureaucratic class-ruled society built by Stalinism and

Maoism produced what their vanguardist politics largely predestined them to be in peasant countries lacking the development required for an abundance for all under socialism.

The cases of the Soviet Union under Stalinism and China under Maoism do not exemplify Marxism and reflect nothing about it. Rather, they represent the abandonment of Marx’s views on nature and humanity, and especially on the abolition of class rule and the political state. It may be understandable that some later writers on both the environment and failed to question the propaganda blaming Marx for the environmental and other atrocities of Stalinism and Maoism given the depth and intensity of the cultural production of capitalism pushing this view, but it clearly indicates a very incomplete and irresponsible scholarship. A prime reason that the bureaucratic despotic states had such a devastating effect on people and nature is that, facing conditions that could not support the development of socialism, and the active opposition of the Western

Powers and later the Cold War rivalries, they crammed into a few decades the ruthless, primitive accumulation that capitalist development inflicted on humanity and the environment over four centuries or more. The foremost reason for that devastation, however, is a feature shared by capitalism and the bureaucratic despotic states—a feature heavily responsible for past ecological degradation in all so-called socialist societies, and for continued and 113 accelerating devastation under the world-historical capitalist system that now dominates all

Earth. That feature is their shared antidemocratic, authoritarian nature as class-ruled societies: They all put despotic power in the hands of fewer and fewer people over time.

For the two most significant systems of bureaucratic state despotism, ultimate power consolidated largely under a single person—Stalin in the Soviet Union and Mao in China— with their associated and ever-changing, because often-purged, bureaucratic officials making up a new form of bureaucratic class rule in desperate competition with and under threat by international capitalism. For capitalism, the mechanism of state power is class rule in the interests of an inherently unsustainable system that is dependent upon unrestricted growth in thrall to the short-term profit interests of a tiny minority—the capitalist class that owns and controls the economy. In its fascist forms and long-term effects class rule under capitalism was little different in its consequences on people and the environment from Stalinism or Maoism.1 Even in its increasingly diminished bourgeois- democratic form capitalism is largely ruled by a relatively ever-shrinking—because increasingly plutocratic—class that despotically administers the economy in its own class interests. That class dominates socially and politically thanks to its control of the economy, to the grim detriment of working people and the environment.

The First Century After Marx

William Morris—English socialist activist, artist, poet and novelist—was a somewhat younger contemporary of Marx who came late in his life to revolutionary

1 See Judith Shapiro, Mao’s War against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 114

Marxian socialism in the 1880s at a time when Marx was already a dying man. His deep appreciation of nature was cultivated by decades of involvement in English intellectual life advancing the pleasantries of architecture, art and craftsmanship, poetry and literature against the profanity of filth, overwork and sickness rendered by the under capitalism. He blended those interests with a dedication to and a heartfelt revulsion for capitalism’s devastating effects on people and the environment.

These produced in him a natural spokesperson for a more explicitly ecological Marxism.

The Dickensian conditions that pervaded capitalism in its first two centuries and which even today are largely replicated in the poorest sections of many large US cities—especially in the rust belts left by neoliberal capitalism’s profit-motivated abandonment of the US workers who built its wealth, and in proliferating homeless encampments—produced in

William Morris a sharp critic of capitalism. In Morris’s 1884 pamphlet, Art and Socialism, he issued a clear denunciation of capitalist destruction of nature:

[B]oth the leaders and the led are incapable of saving so much as half a dozen from the grasp of inexorable Commerce: they are as helpless in spite of their culture and their genius as if they were just so many overworked shoemakers. Less lucky than King Midas, our green fields and clear waters, nay the very air we breathe are turned not to gold…but to dirt; and to speak plainly we know full well that under the present gospel of Capital not only there is no hope of bettering it, but that things grow worse year by year, day by day. Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die—choked by filth.1

In an 1884 article entitled, “Useful Work Versus Useless Toil,” Morris’s concerns precede by at least a half century those of many contemporary environmentalists over the waste of capitalism’s planned obsolescence and the production of shoddy commodities

1 Bradley J. MacDonald, “William Morris and the Vision of Ecosocialism,” Contemporary Justice Review, Vol. 7, No. 3, September 2004. 297. 115 produced in service to manufactured needs that generate profits for a few while doing little or nothing to improve life or happiness for the many:

There is the mass of people employed in making all those articles of folly and luxury, the demand for which is the outcome of the existence of the rich non- producing classes; things which people leading a manly and uncorrupted life would not ask for or dream of. These things…I will forever refuse to call wealth: they are not wealth, but waste. Wealth is what Nature gives us and what a reasonable man can make out of the gifts of Nature for his reasonable use. The sunlight, the fresh air, the unspoiled face of the earth, food, raiment and housing necessary and decent; the storing up of knowledge of all kinds, and the power of disseminating it; means of free communication between man and man; works of art, the beauty which man creates when he is most a man, most aspiring and thoughtful – all things which serve the pleasure of people, free, manly, and uncorrupted. This is wealth.1

Morris also had choice words for capitalism’s growing dichotomy between city and country, its pollution, its horrible housing for workers and its profit-mongering in general, in a lecture before the Hammersmith Branch of the Socialist Democratic Federation in

England in 1887, titled “How We Live and How We Might Live.” Morris maintained that “[i]t is profit which draws men into enormous unmanageable aggregations called towns, for instance; profit which crowds them up when they are there into quarters without gardens or open spaces.” Furthermore, he wrote, it is “profit which won’t take the most ordinary precautions against wrapping a whole district in a cloud of sulfurous smoke; which turns beautiful rivers into filthy sewers, which condemns all but the rich to live in houses idiotically cramped and confined at the best, and at the worst in houses for whose wretchedness there is no name.”2

1 William Morris, “Useful Work versus Useless Toil,” News from Nowhere and Other Writings (London: , 1981. Kindle Edition), 290. 2 MacDonald, “William Morris and the Vision of Ecosocialism,” 287. 116

Morris regards capitalism as profoundly anti-environmental and wasteful, and asks if it does not make better sense “to keep the air pure and the rivers clean, to take some pains to keep the meadows and tillage as pleasant as reasonable use will allow them to be; to allow peaceable citizens freedom to wander where they will, so they do no hurt to garden or cornfield?” Surely, he maintains, it would be good “to leave here and there some piece of waste or mountain sacredly free from fence or tillage as a memory of man’s ruder struggles with nature in earlier days.” Is it too much to ask of civilization,

Morris muses, “to be so far thoughtful of man’s pleasure and rest, and to help so far as this her children to whom she has most set such heavy tasks of grinding labor?” He considers such questions hardly unreasonable, but asserts that “not a whit of it shall we get under the present system of society,” which is “surely and slowly destroying the beauty of the very face of the earth.”1

Morris wants a life of art and beauty, which he sees as possible only under socialism.

He writes that “[t]he leisure which Socialism above all things aims at obtaining for the worker is also the very thing that breeds desire, desire for beauty, for knowledge, for more abundant life.” Morris insists that “leisure and desire are sure to produce art, and without them nothing but sham art, void of life or reason for existence, can be produced: therefore not only the worker, but the world in general, will have no share in art till our present commercial society gives place to real society—to Socialism.”2 Under socialism,

Morris projects, the exploitative and oppressive conditions of labor under capitalism would

1 MacDonald, “William Morris and the Vision of Ecosocialism,” 298. 2 MacDonald, “William Morris and the Vision of Ecosocialism,” 297. 117 disappear, and the ecological sensibilities of socialism would prevail. Moreover, he writes,

“amidst this pleasing labor would disappear from the earth’s face all the traces of the past slavery.” As he observes, “[b]eing no longer driven to death by anxiety and fear, we should have time to avoid disgracing the earth with filth and squalor, and accidental ugliness would disappear along with that which was the mere birth of fantastic perversity.”1

Contemporary Marxist sociologist Michael Löwy notes the central importance for

Morris of this Fourierian conception of liberated labor in a society freed from environmental nightmares that rejects any Protestant work ethic. “The semitheological dogma that all labor, under any circumstances, is a blessing to the laborer, is hypocritical and false,”

Morris wrote. That is just a “convenient belief to those who live on the labor of others,” he says. In order for labor to be experienced as beneficial, Morris’s conception requires that, “due hope of rest and pleasure” must accompany it, which is not how it is organized or experienced under capitalism.2 As Löwy shows, Morris’s ecosocialist vision requires that

“[t]o render labor attractive it has to be liberated from the tyranny of capitalist profit, thanks to the appropriation of the means of production by the community; labor will then respond to the real needs of the body—food, clothing, lodging—and of the spirit—poetry, art, science

—and not the requirements of the market.” For Morris, after a revolutionary transformation

“labor time will be substantially shortened, because ‘there will be no compulsion on us to go on producing things we do not want, no compulsion on us to labor for nothing.’”3

1 MacDonald, “William Morris and the Vision of Ecosocialism,” 300. 2 Michael Löwy, “Ecosocialism—from William Morris to Hugo Blanco,” LondonGreenLeft.Blogspot.com; April 2, 2017; Internet; available at http://londongreenleft.blogspot.com/2017/04/ecosocialism-from-william-morris-to.html; accessed February 20, 2021. 3 Michael Löwy, “Ecosocialism—from William Morris to Hugo Blanco.” 118

Marxist ecologist and sociologist John Bellamy Foster characterizes Morris’s best- known work, his novel News from Nowhere, or an Epoch of Rest, as the author’s foremost attempt “to present a revolutionary ideal aimed at inspiring a ‘movement towards socialism’ in his day.” Foster observes that News from Nowhere deals largely with “the overcoming of human alienation in relation to the three primary forms of the division of labor— social production, town and country and gender relations.” Morris went beyond the views of other nineteenth-century socialists to provide an inclusive ecological perspective.

He tried, Foster maintains, to avoid “the criticisms that Marxian thinkers, including Morris himself…leveled at , since its role was didactic rather than prophetic.”

Morris’s intent was not merely to predict a future socialist society with better, more equitable productive relations. Instead, he sought to fundamentally reshape the socialist movement of his time “by widening the whole conception of the revolutionary project, building on the romantic .”1

As Foster observes, “[i]t is this expansion of the idea of revolution to encompass the reconstitution not only of society but of the human relation to the earth and the substantive equality of all individuals, that Morris hoped to convey in News from Nowhere—and to give to the movement toward socialism in his time and ours.”2 William Morris’s ecosocialism, for contemporary American political scientist Bradley MacDonald, results from the integration of his pre-Marxist concerns into his understanding of the Marxist critique of capitalism, rather than from any special insistence in socialist thought on the primacy of

1 John Bellamy Foster, “William Morris’s Romantic Revolutionary Ideal: Nature, Labor and Gender in News from Nowhere,” The Journal of William Morris Studies, Vol. 23, No. 2, 2107. 17. 2 Foster, “William Morris’s Romantic Revolutionary Ideal,” 32. 119 ecology and the environment in its critique of capitalism. Morris’s humanitarian and ecological concerns bolster those concerns inherent in Marx’s critique of capitalism. His work should erase any doubt that Marxism both is and must be ecological if it is to make a difference in the world.1

In the early twentieth century, a new bright spot emerged—for a short time—in the development of Marxist ecology. “After the Russian Revolution,” wrote Paul Josephson in

An Environmental History of Russia, “nascent ecological science expanded rapidly during the social upheaval and political experimentation of the 1920s.” As Josephson noted,

“[s]urprisingly, the Russian Revolution enabled the establishment of modern oceanographic and inland fishery research.”2 Environmental historian Douglas R. Weiner writes that Lenin and other early revolutionary leaders of the Soviet society “saw the natural sciences as the answer to both the spiritual and the material problems of Russia.” As Weiner writes,

“[i]dealism was clearly out of style; materialism was the new religion.” Rapid progress vis-

à-vis czarist times was initially made in expanding the total area and number of protected areas—zapovedniki—for conservation and scientific purposes, according to Weiner. 3

Contemporary Indian writer Kunal Chattopadhyay observes that the Soviet zapovedniki were the first protected territor[ies] anywhere to be created by a government exclusively in the interests of the scientific study of nature.”4 However, the zapovedniki were

1 Bradley J. MacDonald, “William Morris and the Vision of Ecosocialism,” Contemporary Justice Review. 300. 2 Paul Josephson, An Environmental History of Russia. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 4, 32. 3 Douglas R. Weiner, “The Historical Origins of Soviet ,” Environmental Review, Vol. 6, No. 2, Special Issue: Papers from the First International Conference on Environmental History (Autumn, 1982), 42-62. 4 Kunal Chattopadhyay, “Early Soviet Commitment to Environment Protection and Its Decline,” originally published in Bhattacharyya, Amit et al., History and the Changing Horizon: Science, Environment and Social Systems. (Kolkata: Setu Prakashani), November 3, 2014; Internet; available at https://climateandcapitalism.com/ 2014/11/03/rise-fall-environmentalism-early-soviet-union/; accessed February 22, 2021. 120 relatively small parcels whose conservation was far easier to manage than many other ostensibly managed or partially protected, much larger parcels of Soviet forest.

Environmental historian Brian Bonhomme, in an article titled, “A Revolution in the Forests?

Forest Conservation in Soviet Russia, 1917-1925,” points out that what early Soviet scientists and conservationists managed to see established in law did not often reflect what happened on the ground.1

Thanks to the chaos of revolution and civil war, peasant , poor central planning and lack of integration with local planning, competition between various new state agencies, and the “sudden evaporation of [tsarist] political and legal authority” in the forest hinterlands that resulted from this toxic mixture, improved forest conservation overall did not happen quickly. While “the Bolsheviks’ ambitions for forest planning and protection may have exceeded those of the tsarist government, their level of success was not proportionately greater,” writes Bonhomme. Though Bonhomme does not contextualize such factors in this way, the struggle to protect Soviet forest resources also reflects the fact that neither the development of the means of production nor the development of the working class, intellectually or politically, were sufficient for a transition from to socialism without the intermediate organization of both via capitalist accumulation or favorable foreign intervention.

If better material support had been available to mere remnants of the peasantry rather than the significant lack of support for the peasant majority that existed, the difference between conservation on paper and conservation in the forests may not have been so significant.2

1 Brian Bonhomme, “A Revolution in the Forests? Forest Conservation in Soviet Russia, 1917-1925,” Environmental History, Vol. 7, No. 3, (July 2002), 411-434. 2 Bonhomme, “A Revolution in the Forests? 121

Nonetheless, there was “early Soviet awareness that practical and immediate economic gains should not be allowed to dictate environmental policy,” Chattopadhyay notes. In “complex struggles” from 1918 through 1929, Chattopadhyay observes, and with many in the new state bureaucracy in support, “the partisans of ecological conservation scored major victories.” What resulted “was well in advance of anything that existed in the capitalist countries,” he writes.1 Chattopadhyay identifies G. A. Kozhevnikov and V. V.

Stanchinskii and other allies of ecological Marxism who acknowledged themselves as

“politically progressive scientific materialists” even before the revolution. “These were also some of the key people who would try to resist Stalinist economic policies on ecological grounds,” Chattopadhyay writes.2

Vladimir Vernadsky, also an early Soviet scientist, introduced the concepts of biosphere, geosphere and noosphere as successive stages in the development of Earth, the latter being “a new state of biosphere in which humans play an active role in change that is based on man and woman’s recognition of the interconnectedness of nature,” observes

Josephson.3 “Vernadsky achieved international renown both for his analysis of the biosphere, and as the founder of the science of geochemistry,” Chattopadhyay notes. He published The Biosphere in 1926, and “has been called the first person in history to come to grips with the real implications of the fact that the Earth is a self-contained sphere.”4

Among other scientists in early Soviet society who contributed to the advance of

Marxist ecology was Vladimir Nikolaevich Sukachev, who “introduced the concept of

1 Chattopadhyay, “Early Soviet Commitment to Environment Protection.” 2 Chattopadhyay, “Early Soviet Commitment to Environment Protection.” 3 Josephson, An Environmental History of Russia. 53. 4 Chattopadhyay, “Early Soviet Commitment to Environment Protection.” 122 biogeocoenosis, which was a more comprehensive concept related to ecosystem, understood as connected to biogeochemical cycles and the biosphere in the Vernadsky tradition,” writes Foster.1 The president of the Lenin Agricultural Academy, N.I. Vavilov,

Chattopadhyay notes, “determined that there were a number of centers of plant diversity in the underdeveloped countries.” He maintains that, “[u]nlike the romantic conservationists,

Vavilov called for a dialectical stance” that showed the interaction between nature and humanity. As Chattopadhyay writes, “[t]he centers of plant diversity were, for him, the products of human culture.”2

Alexei Pavlov, an associate of Vernadsky, was a scientist who in the opening decade of Soviet society originated the term “Anthropocene” to describe the period of human activity as primary cause of “rapid geological transformation of the entire biosphere,” writes Foster.3 Foster notes that, “in the 1920s…the Soviet Union had the most advanced ecological thought in the world, with thinkers like Vernadsky, Alexei Pavlov,

Vavilov, Oparin, Stanchinskii, Hessen, etc.—not to mention Bukharin, who played a key role in this regard.” However, “much of this [group] was obliterated in the purges that followed with major figures (including Bukharin, Hessen, Stanchinskii, and Vavilov) executed or dying in prison in the Stalin period.”4

The years following through the post-World War II period saw

1 John Bellamy Foster, “Marxism, Ecology and the Pioneering Soviet Ecologists,” NewColdWar.org; April 19, 2016; Internet; available at https://www.newcoldwar.org/marxism-ecology-pioneering-soviet-ecologists- interview-john-bellamy-foster/ 2 Chattopadhyay, “Early Soviet Commitment to Environment Protection.” 3 John Bellamy Foster “Three Things You Should Know About Marxism and Ecology,” Green Left Weekly, May 8, 2016; Internet; available at https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/three-things-you-should-know-about-marxism- and-ecology; accessed Nov. 25, 2018. 4 Foster, “Marxism, Ecology and the Pioneering Soviet Ecologists.” 123 contributions to Marxist ecology from the stable of critical thinkers known as the

Frankfurt School, after the Institute for Social Research at the Goethe University in

Frankfurt, Germany, from which its original members were forced by the rise of

Hitler. In Andrew Biro’s introduction to his book Critical Ecologies, he asks “[w]hat… can the critical theory of the contribute to our understanding of contemporary environmental issues?” It would seem a fair question, since Marxist critical theory has not been widely credited for its contributions to environmentalism or ecological Marxism. But Biro sees an issue dealt with by many of the Frankfurt

School writers that makes them relevant: The emphasis they placed on the “domination of nature” under capitalism “as key to understanding human psychological and sociocultural development.” In that sense they are carrying on the work of both Marx and

Morris, who both sought to change the relations of production so as to negate capitalism’s domination of nature and humanity.1

Biro uses the thinking of Frankfurt School writers to help explain “the paradoxes which in some sense define our time: increased power over and vulnerability to nature; a social realm resistant to conscious transformation; and increased knowledge of the pernicious ecological impacts of human behavior without an attendant will to change.” He believes this engagement “necessary if we are to deal with environmental crises with an honest eye and if we are to maintain critical theory’s dictum to engage with and understand

‘the struggles and wishes of the age.’”2

1 Andrew Biro, Critical Ecologies: The Frankfurt School and Contemporary Environmental Crises (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), Kindle Edition, Introduction. 2 Biro, Critical Ecologies, Introduction. 124

Through this engagement Biro sees similarities between the conditions faced by the

Frankfurt School thinkers of the 1930s and 1940s—a world in the chaos of war, with fascism and authoritarianism on the rise—and those of today, with “multiple and intersecting ecological crises,” and similar rising authoritarian political forces. The response of the

Frankfurt School writers to the conditions of their time was, Biro notes, “to conceive of their work as a ‘message in a bottle,’ sent out to future generations, to be uncorked when political conditions had changed.”1 Today, there is no time to send out a new message in a bottle, and possibly no humans left in the future to find it. Rather, we must make use of the messages they sent us, which, Biro notes, the “rising seas of anthropogenic global warming have delivered to us.” Among the messages the bottle delivers, he says, is that technology does not have to lead to increased domination “and also that rational social and ecological relations are indeed possible.”2 We do not have to follow the irrational capitalist prescription for everlasting growth and destruction on a finite Earth.

Among the foremost contributions to the messages in a bottle come from

Walter Benjamin, a writer on the periphery of the Frankfurt School who engaged with it primarily through his friendship with Theodore Adorno, a Frankfurt school philosopher and writer. In his 1928 book One-Way Street, Benjamin characterized capitalist domination of nature as “imperialist” and called for a new conception of productive relations based on mastery of “the relation between nature and man.”3 In his

1938 essay “The Paris of the Second in Baudelaire,” Benjamin wrote ruefully of

1 Biro, Critical Ecologies, Introduction. 2 Biro, Critical Ecologies, Introduction. 3 Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street and Other Writings. (London: NLB, 1979), 104. 125 the greater harmony with nature that existed in ancient societies. He notes that “the murderous idea of the exploitation of nature” did not exist in matriarchal societies which considered nature to be a kind mother. Benjamin wanted no return to a romantic past but rather to the changed social relations of production under socialism without exploitation of human labor, where the labor process would no longer be characterized by “the exploitation of nature by man.’”1

Michael Löwy, author of Fire Alarm, often recognized as a standard reference on

Benjamin’s cryptic 1940 Theses on the Concept of History, writes that, in Benjamin’s eleventh thesis of that work, he “hails as the utopian visionary of ‘a labor that, far from exploiting nature, is capable of extracting from it the virtual creations that lie dormant in her womb.’” It is not that Benjamin favored utopian socialism over

Marxism, but rather, “he regarded Fourier as a supplement to Marx” on the conception of work.2 Benjamin also criticizes the Lassallean elements—reformist followers of

Ferdinand Lassalle—responsible for the inclusion of an economically and socially unsound provision in the first Program of the German that wrongly cast labor as the source of all wealth and culture, as though the use values provided by nature had nothing to do with value.3 It was a conception of labor that “recognizes only the progress in mastering nature, not the retrogression of society; it already displays the technocratic features that later emerge in Fascism.”4

1 Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project. (Cambridge, MA: The Belnap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), 17, 361. See also discussion of Carolyn Merchant on page 104-105. 2 Löwy, “Ecosocialism—from William Morris to Hugo Blanco.” 3 Michael Löwy, Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin’s ‘On the Concept of History.’ (Brooklyn: Verso Books, 2016), Kindle Edition, 71. 4 Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History, Thesis XI,” Selected Writings, Volume 4, 1938-1940, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 393-394. 126

Herbert Marcuse is another contributor to Marxist ecology from the Frankfurt School whose sense of ecology is rooted in the early writings of Karl Marx. For both Marx and

Marcuse, human beings are a part of nature. They both understood that capitalism’s conception of humanity asserts completely the opposite. Capitalism alienates humans from the multifaceted activities they engaged in within earlier civilizations less separated from nature, and forces them to specialize within capitalism’s stultifying division of labor.

Life under the capitalist system is organized under the consciousness-enveloping process of labor in a system bent solely on production of commodities for the private profit of an owning class. Workers are forced to survive by engaging almost exclusively in external as opposed to internal, and coercive as opposed to voluntary, “one-dimensional” activity.

However, for Marx and Marcuse alike, humans are innately and historically concerned about and involved in many activities that capitalism suppresses in service to the needs of production for profit. Humans are both individual and social beings, but capitalism does not allow the full development of individuality any more than for diverse, social relationships. For Marx and Marcuse, capitalism principally promotes avarice, , and asocial, if not antisocial, behavior.1

Marcuse’s one-dimensional being under capitalism requires socialism for true human liberation in order to reconnect with their real nature. As critical theorist

Douglas Kellner notes, Marcuse was consistent in following the emphasis of the

Frankfurt School “on reconciliation with nature as an important component of human

1 Douglas Kellner, “Commentaries on Marcuse on Ecology,” Capitalism Nature Socialism, September 1992, Vol. 3, No. 3, 43-46. 127 liberation.” Marcuse, consistent with Marx, always called for a socialist society “that made peace, joy, happiness, freedom, and oneness with nature” a central part component of future socialist society. Such a society for Marcuse was one that, Kellner writes, produces “new institutions, social relations, and culture [that] would make possible…the sort of non-alienated labor, erotic [positive] relations, and harmonious community envisaged by Fourier and the utopian socialists.” Marcuse’s idea for building a truly socialist society requires a “radical ecology, then, which relentlessly criticized environmental destruction, as well as the destruction of human beings, and that struggled for a society without violence, destruction, and pollution.”1

Marcuse condemned U.S. intervention in Vietnam as both genocide against its people and “” against its environment. “It is no longer enough to do away with people living now; life must also be denied to those who aren’t even born yet by burning and poisoning the earth, defoliating the forests, blowing up the dikes.” In a trenchant— and prescient—observation, Marcuse continued, “[t]his bloody insanity will not alter the ultimate course of the war but it is a very clear expression of where contemporary capitalism is at: the cruel waste of productive resources in the imperialist homeland goes hand in hand with the cruel waste of destructive forces and consumption of commodities of death manufactured by the war industry.”2

Frankfurt School thinkers Adorno and , who worked closely together for much of their intellectual lives, also contributed to refinements in Marxist

1 Kellner, “Commentaries on Marcuse on Ecology,” 44. 2 , Collected Papers of Herbert Marcuse, Volume Three, The and the 1960s. (New York: Routledge, 2005), 199-200. 128 ecology. In one of the few books that assemble Adorno’s thinking on nature, Deborah Cook’s

Adorno on Nature, Adorno is shown to think that “the gravity and deep-rootedness of the current environmental crisis demands a different way of interacting with nature.” An alternative “to the capitalist domination and destruction of natural environments and animal life” exists “in the critical materialist and socialist response” of Horkheimer and

Adorno, writes Eric S. Nelson, reviewing Cook’s book. Their “critical materialism” prefigures “a thesis of social ecology and eco-feminism” and “reveals the interconnection between the human domination and exploitation of other humans, and the resulting inequalities of resources, opportunities, and possibilities for flourishing, and the instrumentalization and domination of nature.” This view, says Nelson, shows that

“damages done to nature reflect the same processes that produce damaged individual human life.1 Marxist psychoanalyst , also of the Frankfurt School, invoked an even more expansive reverence for nature and revulsion for capitalism in his theory of biophilia. Biophilia is the idea that our evolutionary history produces an innate attraction to nature—something that will never again find full expression until capitalism is abolished and a socialist society established in its place.2

Another group of contributors to the enrichment of Marxist ecology came from the late Soviet Union, after the death of Stalin and the ascendance to power of other bureaucrats less inclined to imprison scientists in gulags—those with a modicum of respect

1 Eric S. Nelson, “Deborah Cook: Adorno on Nature.” Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Feb. 23, 2012; Internet; available at https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/adorno-on-nature/; accessed February 22, 2021. 2 See Sayed Javed Miri, Robert Lake and Tricia M. Kress (Eds.), Reclaiming the Sane Society: Essays on Erich Fromm’s Thought. (Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2014). See also E.O. Wilson, Biophilia. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984). 129 for real science, especially in view of the Soviet Union’s ongoing economic and imperialist

Cold War competition with Western capitalism. Climatologists in the Soviet Union

“discovered and alerted the world to the acceleration of global climate change,” writes John

Bellamy Foster. They also “developed the major early climate change models; demonstrated the extent to which the melting of polar ice could create a positive feedback, speeding up global warming; [and] pioneered paleoclimatic analysis,” he notes. Further, they “constructed a new approach to global ecology as a distinct field based on the analysis of the biosphere; originated the nuclear winter theory;1 and probably did the most early on in exploring the natural-social underlying changes in the earth system.”2

The devastating and widespread environmental degradation that occurred in the Soviet Union was concentrated in the Stalin years and those of the Malenkov,

Khrushchev and Brezhnev regimes that followed. Foster notes in particular the contributions during this time of V.N. Sukachev, who managed to make it through all the

Stalinist purges; E. K. Fedorov, “whose arguments relied directly on Marx’s theory of socio- ecological metabolism” later picked up by Foster and others; and Mikhail Ivanovich Budyko,

“who specialized in the emerging field of energetics, focusing on exchanges of energy and matter in a global context.” Budyko, Foster notes, “developed a method for calculating the various components of the heat balance of the entire earth system.” Foster writes that he

“built his theoretical and empirical analysis on Vernadsky’s biosphere concept and saw

1 Nuclear winter theory estimates that there would be a 10°C reduction in global temperature after a nuclear war, with catastrophic results for life on Earth over a decade. See Sarah Derouin. “Nuclear Winter May Bring a Decade of Destruction;” EOS.org/American Geophysical Union; September 27, 2019; Internet; available at https:// eos.org/articles/nuclear-winter-may-bring-a-decade-of-destruction; accessed April 15, 2021. 2 John Bellamy Foster. “Late Soviet Ecology and the Planetary Crisis.” Monthly Review, June 2015, Vol. 67, No. 2. 130

136Sukachev’s work on…biogeocoenosis as ‘essential in developing modern ideas of interrelations between organisms and the environment.’” These and many other scientists contributed to Marxist ecology during the final years of the Soviet Union and even into the period of Russian that followed.1

Western Trends Since the 1960s

A sketch of the history of Marxist ecology such as the present chapter necessarily must fail to mention dozens of contributors. This is true of all periods under discussion from Marx all the way to contemporary times. With the blossoming of the science of ecology and the spread of the influence of Marxist ecology in response to the growing variety and intensity of capitalism’s many environmental nightmares and ecological catastrophes, the greatest number of omissions unavoidably are from this most recent historical period.

In a 152-page special issue of Monthly Review in 2018, editors John Bellamy

Foster and Brett Clark published “Notes from the Editors,” which outlined three major waves of Marxist ecology they discerned over the past five decades. “The prefigurative moment in the broad tradition of thought known as ecosocialism,” they wrote, “can be traced back to the 1960s and ‘70s, in the work of such thinkers as K. William Kapp, Barry

Commoner, Virginia Brodine, , Shigeto Tsuru, Rudolf Bahro, Raymond

Williams, Paul M. Sweezy, Herbert Marcuse, Howard Parsons, Charles H. Anderson, and

István Mészáros.” Foster and Clark write that, “[t]hese writers saw the relation between

1 Foster, “Late Soviet Ecology and the Planetary Crisis.” Monthly Review, June 2015, Vol. 67, No. 2. See this article for a more detailed discussion of the important contributions made to Marxist ecology by Soviet scientists. 131

Marxism and ecology as relatively unproblematic, and drew directly on Karl Marx,

Frederick Engels, and Marxism in general to develop their ecological critiques of capitalist society.”1

Foster and Clark posit a second wave that occurred in the late 1970s to 1990s—a

“hybrid ‘red-green’ approach to what then came to be known as ‘ecosocialist’ thought.”

This second wave of ecosocialists, they continued, “included such important figures as

Ted Benton, André Gorz, James O’Connor, Joel Kovel, the early Michael Löwy, and the early Ariel Salleh, [who] highlighted what they perceived as the ecological flaws of

Marxism, including those of the classical theories of Marx and Engels.”2 Also writing from this period and into the present is Carolyn Merchant, who brought a deeply materialist and ecofeminist view to bear on the way bourgeois thought established the Scientific

Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, both of which spurred the “formation of a worldview and a science that, by reconceptualizing reality as a machine rather than a living organism, sanctioned the domination of both nature and women.”3 Kevin C.

Armitage, in a review of Merchant’s The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the

Scientific Revolution, writes that “the drive for domination that Horkheimer and Adorno found at the core of western reason contained a gendered dimension.” They considered that the quest of the Enlightenment man “to overcome the primitive forces of nature demanded that he deploy entrepreneurial power over men and patriarchal power over women and

1 John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark, (Eds.), “Notes from the Editors, July-August 2018.” Monthly Review, June 2015, Vol. 70, No. 3. 2 Foster and Clark, (Eds.), “Notes from the Editors, July-August 2018.” 3 Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution. (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1980), xxi. 132 children,” as Armitage puts it. Merchant’s work addresses that gendered dimension.1

Foster and Clark see a third wave of Marxist ecology that began in the late

1990s, arguing that “a new ecological Marxist strand within the ecosocialist tradition arose—partly in response to the earlier hybrid, red-green approach—which returned to the foundations of classical , chiefly inspired by the recovery and renewal of Marx’s theory of metabolic rift”—the theory that capitalism creates a rift in the metabolic relation between nature and society. Among others, Foster and Clark observed, this third wave of Marxist ecological thought “was advanced by such figures

[including Foster and Clark] as Elmar Altvater, Paul Burkett, Fred Magdoff, Richard

York, Chris Williams, Del Weston, Rebecca Clausen, Eamonn Slater, the later Löwy, the later Salleh, Andreas Malm, and Kohei Saito.” Many of these writers, Foster and Clark maintain, “went on to further extend eco-Marxist analysis, using the metabolic rift methodology to analyze a wide range of ecological issues, including climate change, nutrient loading, deforestation, , animal abuse, oceanic crises, and environmental justice.”2

The research of this latter group of scholars—the “rift scholars”—provides a definitive response to any charges of a Promethean or productivist Marx still left standing after more than a century of Marxist ecology. In his Marx and Nature, Paul Burkett laid to rest such charges with an analysis of Marx that showed the deep integration of Marx’s

1 Kevin C. Armitage, “Armitage on Merchant, ‘The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution.’” Humanities and Social Sciences Online, H-Ideas, H-Net Reviews; September 2000; Internet; available at https://networks.h-net.org/node/6873/reviews/7372/armitage-merchant-death-nature-women- ecology-and- scientific-revolution; accessed March 20, 2021. 2 Foster and Clark, (Eds.), “Notes from the Editors, July-August 2018.” 133 ecological view of the world within his economic critique of capitalism. Foster, reviewing

Burkett, writes of his fundamental approach to that analysis. “Primitive accumulation,”

Foster writes, “represents the growth not only of alienated labor, but also of alienated nature—as Marx recognized as early as 1844.” As Foster sees it, “Burkett…takes on what is in many ways the central issue in the criticism of Marx’s political ecology, that is, the question of the ‘free appropriation’ of nature under capitalism—i.e., the fact that nature is seen by capital as lacking in value, since no labor time is utilized in its production.” Foster observes that “[n]umerous thinkers have criticized Marx and the labor theory of value for being blind to nature’s intrinsic value and to the real social costs associated with the degradation of nature.”1

Yet, as Foster notes, “Marx’s ecological value analysis is superior to all others in this respect, because it shows not only that nature’s production is viewed by the system as a

‘free gift of nature’ to capital but also demonstrates, through its treatment of use value, that nature is an essential part of the creation of wealth and…the ultimate source of all wealth.”

For this overarching reason, Foster says, “capitalism (in denying value to nature, which is given a money value based on monopolistic rents, if at all), systematically downgrades nature’s contribution to wealth, generating bigger and bigger ecological problems.”2

Centrally, Foster observes, “[t]he strength of Burkett’s approach is that he recognizes that Marx was not only a proponent of the labor theory of value of but that he was also an opponent, not in the sense that he chose to formulate

1 John Bellamy Foster, “Marx’s Ecological Value Analysis.” Monthly Review, September 2000, Vol. 52, No. 4, 39-47. 2 Foster, “Marx’s Ecological Value Analysis.” Monthly Review. 134 some other theory of the under capitalism, but because he sought to overcome capital’s law of value itself, along with capitalist society.” For Burkett and Foster, Marx shows the “narrow criteria by which the law of value operates…perceiving that this…represents a central contradiction of capitalism itself.”1 Burkett notes that ecological crises under capitalism result from two sources:

(1) crises of capital accumulation, based on imbalances between capital’s material requirements and the natural conditions of raw materials production; and (2) a more general crisis in the quality of human-social development, stemming from the disturbances in the circulation of matter and life forces that are generated by capitalism’s industrial division of town and country.2

Crises arising from the first source reflect capitalism’s profit-motivated predisposition to use increasing amounts of energy and material to increase the production of commodities with little if any regard for natural limits. Not only does this periodically engender supply problems for production, but it also reveals capitalism’s fundamental opposition to ecological considerations, consistent with Blackwater’s critique at the outset of this chapter. Crises that stem from the second source are related to the rift Marx sees as produced by capitalism’s separation of the roles of town and country in human society—a rift in the social metabolism between humans and nature that did not exist before capitalist market relations.

Foster shows that “Burkett emphasizes the dialectical character of Marx’s understanding of ecological crises,” to reveal that an “environmental critique of capitalist production is a recurring theme in the writings of Marx and Engels.”3 Burkett also

1 Foster, “Marx’s Ecological Value Analysis.” Monthly Review. 2 Paul Burkett, foreword by John Bellamy Foster. Marx and Nature: A Red and Green Perspective. (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2014), 107-108. 3 Foster, “Marx’s Ecological Value Analysis.” Monthly Review. 135 perceives that Marx is concerned about ecological factors in future socialist society, including the need for a reasonable metabolism between humans and nature based on, as

Foster notes, “the needs of human freedom and community and principles of sustainability.”

In Marx and Nature Burkett sees Marx’s conception of the struggle for future socialist society as a “struggle for a real of nature.”1 Foster puts it this way: “[t]he development of human production is no longer predetermined by nature as such.” Living with nature therefore requires that “we must master our social organization.” The centrality of what Burkett identifies as Marx’s ecological value analysis, Foster writes, “lies precisely in the fact that it traces capitalism’s fundamental contradiction to the alienation of nature and the alienation of human production, as two sides of a single contradiction—one that can only be overcome by a revolutionary transformation of society itself.” 2

The Metabolic Rift

Both Burkett and Foster began to develop the concept of capitalism’s production of a “metabolic rift” in 1999. Early Soviet ecologist E. K. Fedorov employed the concept of a metabolism between man and nature in his work. Marx in Capital Vol. 3 had written of a

“social metabolism, a metabolism prescribed by the natural laws of life itself,” referring to a concept used by German agricultural chemist Justus von Liebig.3 Foster began his recovery and development of Marx’s concept with research for an article published in 1999 in The American Journal of Sociology, and has since been a wellspring on the subject .4

1 Burkett, Marx and Nature. 214-222. See also John Bellamy Foster. “Marx’s Ecological Value Analysis.” 2 Foster, “Marx’s Ecological Value Analysis.” Monthly Review. 3 Marx, Capital, Vol. 3, 949. 4 John Bellamy Foster, “Marx’s Theory of Metabolic Rift: Classical Foundations for Environmental Sociology.” The American Journal of Sociology. Sept. 1999, Vol. 105, No. 2, 366-405. 136

Swedish human ecologist Andreas Malm, in his book The Progress of This Storm:

Nature and Society in A Warming World, observes that “[s]ince the turn of the millennium, one Marxist line of inquiry into environmental problems has outshone all others in creativity and productivity: the theory of the metabolic rift.” Malm notes its development by Foster, with “colleagues Richard York and Brett Clark,” and contributions from “Paul Burkett, Marina Fischer-Kowalski and many others.” Malm offers a succinct definition of the theory, writing that “[n]ature consists of biophysical processes and cycles” through which humans and society interact. As he notes: “human bodies must engage in metabolic exchanges with nonhuman nature,” something which

“need not be particularly harmful to any of the parties.” However, Malm writes, these metabolic relations between human society and nature can be “fractured and forcibly rearranged, so that they not only harm the people disadvantaged by this change, but also, at the very same time, disturb the processes and cycles of nature.” In short, as Malm notes,

“[a] metabolic rift has opened up.”1

Marx commented in the third volume of Capital on how capitalist property relations “provoke an irreparable rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism, a metabolism prescribed by the natural laws of life itself.” Malm shows that the theory has been “[o]perationalized in a variety of ways,” Malm observes, and “it has elucidated everything from the imbalances in the global nitrogen cycle to climate change.”2

Contemporary utilization of the concept of a metabolic rift is now widespread in

1 Andreas Malm, The Progress of This Storm: Nature and Society in a Warming World. (London: Verso Books, 2018), 124. 2 Malm, The Progress of This Storm, 124. 137 environmental thinking, though “seldom incorporating the full dialectical critique of the capital relation that [Marx’s] own work represented,” Foster writes.1 Since the development of the metabolic rift concept, Foster maintains, “ecological researchers have utilized the theoretical perspective of Marx’s metabolic-rift analysis to analyze…developing capitalist contradictions in a wide array of areas.” Those areas include “planetary boundaries, the carbon metabolism, soil depletion, fertilizer production…ocean metabolism, the exploitation of fisheries, the clearing of forests, forest management, hydrological cycles, mountaintop removal, the management of livestock, agro-fuels, global land grabs, and the contradiction between town and country.”2

Foster’s metabolic rift theory is what he calls “a theory of ecological crisis.” It describes “the disruption of what Marx saw as the everlasting dependence of human society on the conditions of organic existence.” What the metabolic rift theory and Marxist ecology in general definitively show, in short, is that capitalism’s production for private profit is pushing life on Earth beyond its limits. It has produced what he sees as a “great rift in the human relation to nature” resulting from “the crossing of the earth-system boundaries associated with climate change, ocean acidification, ozone depletion, loss of biological diversity (and species extinction), the disruption of the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, loss of fresh water sources, aerosol loading, and chemical pollution.”3

Even this sketch shows that Marxist ecology, over a hundred years in the making, today offers a clear understanding of how integrally the productivist capitalist

1 John Bellamy Foster, “Marx and the Rift in the Universal Metabolism of Nature.” Monthly Review, December 2013, Vol. 65, No. 7, 1-19. 2 Foster, “Marx and the Rift in the Universal Metabolism of Nature.” Monthly Review. 3 Foster, “Marx and the Rift in the Universal Metabolism of Nature.” Monthly Review. 138 system of production for profit underlies environmental destruction. The history of its development also shows that, unlike capitalism, Marx’s ecology is the very opposite of productivist or Promethean. Rather it is deeply concerned with human sustainability in nature, and is the best tool we have to permanently halt the system’s march toward the profit-motivated extinction of life on Earth as we know it. It identifies the root of the crisis: capitalism.

Chapter Four will draw on the writing of Marxists and others regarding the acceleration of the crisis in the last half of the twentieth century, thanks to the economic and political contradictions of capitalism and the neoliberal capitalist philosophy that was used to ratchet up a ruling-class attack on labor and the environment worldwide. This acceleration has brought us to the double emergency humanity now faces: the existential climate and associated crises on the one hand and, on the other hand, a movement toward increasingly authoritarian government in the US and worldwide, reflecting the massively increased concentration of capital in the hands of a tiny ruling class and the vastly increased exploitative power over Earth and humanity that this concentration enables. It seeks to contextualize the accelerating climate crisis within this overall disregard for people and life on Earth, to answer the question: Why has the climate crisis accelerated so rapidly?

139

“I don’t know what word in the language—I can’t find one—that applies to people…who are willing to sacrifice the literal—the existence of organized human life, not in the distant future, so they can put a few more dollars in highly overstuffed pockets. The word ‘evil’ doesn’t begin to approach it.” —Noam Chomsky, on climate change denialists in an interview on Democracy Now!1

CHAPTER IV

FAST AND FURIOUS ACCELERATION

Why has the climate crisis accelerated so rapidly?

Marx showed how capitalist development subjected both nature and humanity to a ruthless process of accumulation in service to the profit interests of the capitalist class over several centuries since it began in the early 1600s. Ongoing concentration of wealth placed an increasing concentration of power in the hands of a relatively ever-smaller ruling class determined to powerfully advance its profit interests in a finite world. It is therefore hardly surprising that capitalist development eventually brought humanity hard up against planetary limits, portending biological and climatological catastrophe and threatening civilization itself.2 By the mid-twentieth century there were clear indications that this process was already well underway. Then the destructive powers of international capital began to greatly magnify, in a dialectical interaction of the rapid development of hegemonic US capitalism’s postwar economy with the rise of one of the most extremely destructive, antidemocratic and elitist ideologies capitalism has so far produced: neoliberalism.

1 Noam Chomsky, Common Dreams.org; July 27, 2018; Internet; available at https://www.commondreams.org/ news/2018/07/27/democracy-now-noam-chomsky-condemns-us-brutal-and-sadistic-refugee-policies-amid; accessed March 30, 2021. 2 See UN science agency reports on the climate and related biological crises at https://www.ipcc.ch and https://ipbes.net.

139 140

Neoliberalism, capitalism’s over much of the last 50 years, accelerated the destructive power of hegemonic US capitalism not only by speeding and globalization. It also significantly aided that aim by stoking the imperial egos of the ruling capitalist class, rendering many as arrogant gods seeking their own enrichment above all else, enforcing austerity on working people and government and speeding destruction of the environment simply to serve profit interests. Their great wealth and ownership of the means of communication made it easy for them to spread a malignant ideology which has for decades threatened society with nihilism and rampant self-centered individualism at a time when working together unselfishly is most needed to solve our growing biological and ecological crises.

From 1945 through 1950 the growth rate of the US Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was negative in four years and positive in two, marking the first five years after the war as relatively stagnant on balance.1 This slow start reflected not only the time needed to get the destroyed economies of the world rebuilt, back into production and paying their workers, but also the complexities of transitioning from a wartime to a peacetime economy at home.

The Marshall Plan that fueled this process was no humanitarian mission, but rather a negotiated effort to establish and enforce what has been called a Pax Americana that decidedly favored the worldwide expansion of US capitalism.2 The process was motivated by the capitalist need to bolster sales of and profits from US products by stimulating overseas

1 Kimberly Amadeo, “US GDP by Year Compared to Recessions and Events: the Strange Ups and Downs of the US Economy Since 1929,” The Balance.com; July 30, 2020; Internet; available at https://www.thebalance.com/ us-gdp-by-year-3305543; accessed April 5, 2021. 2 Thomas Volscho, “The Revenge of the Capitalist Class: Crisis, the Legitimacy of Capitalism and the Restoration of Finance from the 1970s to Present,” Critical Sociology, 2017, Vol. 43(2) 249–266; June 3, 2015; Internet; available at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0896920515589003; accessed April 5, 2021. 141 demand through postwar rebuilding and recovery. As the sole large economy left standing, the US had the power to enforce its dollar as the dominant global currency via the 1944

Bretton Woods agreement.1

Anthropologist and sociologist Thomas Volscho, in an article about neoliberal capitalism titled “The Revenge of the Capitalist Class: Crisis, the Legitimacy of

Capitalism and the Restoration of Finance from the 1970s to Present,” cites four concepts used by contemporary economist Samuel Bowles and others that help to understand the rise of neoliberalism in the postwar period of US capitalism. First, in what Bowles and others call a Pax Americana, “[t]he US government achieved military, economic, financial, and political dominance over the rest of the world and was able to use dollar diplomacy, the CIA, and/or other means to thwart off populist and socialist [Third World nationalist] challengers to capitalism abroad.” This powerful arsenal allowed US corporations to “extract cheap labor and raw materials from various ‘developing’ countries,” among other benefits, writes Volscho.2 Pax Americana fueled a growing US imperialist drive to bolster US capitalist profits through intervention around the world.

Further, Bowles and Volscho assert that a “Capital-Labor Accord” was typical of the period between the final years of the war and 1974. This was ostensibly an “agreement” between workers and capitalists that “[i]n exchange for labor peace, increasing control over the labor process and not challenging the capitalist order…, capitalists would allow workers real rising wages and relative job security.”3 However, given the volatile class antagonisms

1 Volscho, “The Revenge of the Capitalist Class.” 2 Volscho, “The Revenge of the Capitalist Class,” 251. See also Ronald Steel, Pax Americana: The Cold-War Empire—How It Grew and What It Means, (New York: Viking Press, 1967), 3–14. 3 Volscho, “The Revenge of the Capitalist Class,” 251. 142 that pervaded workplaces in this period, such an “accord” is more a myth intended to distract workers from their own agency and to instill trust in the motives of capitalists and the labor bureaucrats who often serve their interests far more effectively those of the workers they ostensibly represent. Written agreements, or “contracts,” remained the province of trade- union bureaucrats more interested in feathering their own nests than in advancing workers’ class interests. Typically they were sellout contracts that exchanged no-strike clauses for small wage or benefit gains, binding workers to the terms of capitalist exploitation.

Moreover, any “increasing control over the labor process” implemented in US workplaces made a mockery of the idea of real workplace control over actual working conditions and production decisions. Real median incomes for male US workers increased by

108 percent over the period from 1947–1974, and by about 96 percent for women workers.

These gains for workers, more the result of their own struggles than any benevolence on the part of capitalists, resulted only in relatively small setbacks for the capitalist class thanks to vast productivity increases. As Volscho notes, “in 1947 the top one percent’s share of pre-tax income was 12% and it dropped by about three percentage points to 9% by 1970.” Moreover,

“[t]he wealth share of the top one percent also dropped from about 30.2% to 27.6% over the same time period,” he writes.1

Nonetheless, these relatively small setbacks and worries for top capitalists produced an angry determination among the capitalist class in general to improve their position relative to the working class. Ruling-class motivation to seek what Volscho calls revenge on workers for their small advances was spurred by an additional factor, which

1 Volscho, “The Revenge of the Capitalist Class,” 251. 143

Volscho and others call the “Capital-Citizen Accord.” This “involved the use of Keynesian

[deficit spending] policies to stabilize the economy…which involved a mix of military spending, government subsidies to certain industries, and increasing expenditures on” what is sometimes called the . Among other things, Volscho notes, “[i]n this arrangement, capitalists tolerated social programs such as Aid to Families with

Dependent Children, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Food Stamps, and other anti-poverty programs.”1

However, as Volscho notes, “the expansions of the welfare state in the 1960s were not necessarily out of benevolence.” Research cited by Volscho and others shows that

“mass insurgency compels politicians and government bureaucrats to expand the ‘welfare state’ in order to forestall wider rebellion.”2 Precisely because that is the case, the phrase

“welfare state” has always been a misnomer intended to communicate that the capitalist state and those who run it actually care about the welfare of workers. Any “welfare” from the capitalist state is generally, however, hard won by workers themselves thanks their own struggles in civil rights, women’s, antipoverty, environmental and other movements—all of which are parts of the class struggle.3 Any gains they have been able to win are always at risk as long as the economy is owned and controlled by the capitalist class, with the political rule of that class guaranteed by that economic ownership and control. Even the original New Deal was defended not as an advance for working people but as salvation for capitalism. As President Franklin D. Roosevelt defended it in his address to the 1936

1 Volscho, “The Revenge of the Capitalist Class,” 252. 2 Volscho, “The Revenge of the Capitalist Class,” 252. 3 Volscho, “The Revenge of the Capitalist Class,” 252. 144

Democratic State Convention in New York, “The true conservative seeks to protect the system of private property and free enterprise by correcting such injustices and inequalities as arise from it….Reform if you would preserve.”1

The last factor cited by Volscho in the rise of neoliberalism is what he calls “the moderation of intercapitalist rivalry.” As Volscho observes, “Many large industries at the end of the Second World War were (e.g. [the] big three automakers in the US) where a few large firms controlled most of the market.” Postwar competition initially was sparse and the ability of the oligopolies to collude on higher prices created regulatory pressures. Volscho notes that things vastly changed in the postwar years, by 1966 afflicting the rate of profit in manufacturing that capitalists held so dear. With rising opposition at home and abroad, frightened capitalists organized an aggressive response to what they considered the overarching cause of their troubles—“an excess of democracy” that allowed critics of capitalism too much say, Volscho observed.2 With improved means of communication and transportation available, capitalism globalized, spreading its ruthless development across the face of the planet in pursuit of, as noted earlier, “the lowest paid workers and fewest protections for people and the environment, confident that computerization, roboticization and eventually artificial intelligence would render their exploitation as profitable as had been hundreds of thousands of US workers now left jobless.”3

A confidential memorandum in 1971 from future Supreme Court Justice Lewis F.

1 Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Address at the Democratic State Convention, Syracuse, N.Y.,” September 29, 1936; The American Presidency Project; Internet; available at https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/209137; accessed April 7, 2021. 2 Volscho, “The Revenge of the Capitalist Class,” 252–254. 3 See page 57. 145

Powell to the chairman of the Education Committee of the US Chamber of Commerce made it clear that neoliberal capitalist reverence for the market and denigration of planning would guide the aggressive defense of capitalism they had in mind. As Powell wrote,

“American business [is] ‘plainly in trouble’; the response to the wide range of critics has been ineffective, and has included appeasement: the time has come—indeed, it is long overdue—or the wisdom, ingenuity, and resources of American business to be marshaled against those who would destroy it.”1

The memo proposed a strategy that included a coordinated attack by speakers, advertisements, books, pamphlets, television, radio, on and off campuses, encouraging “a more aggressive attitude” in defense of private profit interests, including going after errant . Many consider this a founding moment for the American conservative movement; it signaled there would be no more appeasement or reform, but now only an accelerated attack on all who opposed the profit interests of the capitalist class. It marked the beginning of the steepest years of the Great Acceleration, which vastly boosted greenhouse gas emissions and, as capitalism’s crowning destructive achievement, created the climate crisis.2

John Bellamy Foster, writing in Monthly Review, traces the history of the now- dominant neoliberal ideology of capitalist rule to Austrian School economist Ludwig von

Mises in the 1920s. Mises “defended unlimited inequality, and argued that consumers exercised ‘democracy’ through their purchases, which were equivalent to ballots,” Foster writes. However, purchases in the market bear no resemblance to ballots in a democracy.

1 Lewis Powell, “The Lewis Powell Memo: A Corporate Blueprint to Dominate Democracy,” Greenpeace.org; August 23, 1971; Internet; available at https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/democracy/the-lewis-powell- memo-a-corporate-blueprint-to-dominate-democracy/; accessed April 7, 2021. 2 Powell, “The Lewis Powell Memo.” 146

How can ballots of any sort be cast on whether something is to be produced or under what conditions it is to be produced when workers have no control over these questions? In the interwar years Mises served as economic advisor to Austrian fascist dictator Engelbert

Dollfuss, then went on to preach neoliberalism in academia, as did his disciple Friedrich

Hayek. Mises “strongly condemned labor legislation, compulsory , trade unions, unemployment insurance, socialization (or ), taxation, and inflation as the enemies of his refurbished ,” according to Foster. Mises, like today’s neoliberals, rejected equality. Foster writes that, “[i]n 1927, in his work Liberalism, Mises himself distinguished between ‘the older liberalism and… neoliberalism’ on the basis of the commitment of the former to equality, in contrast to the rejection of equality (other than so-called equality of opportunity) by the latter.”1

The attitude among capitalists that nothing but profit matters and that only the rich really count in human society has been around longer than the elitist philosophy of Mises and Hayek. Marx made that clear when he cited nineteenth-century British trade unionist T.J.

Dunning in 1867 in his first volume of Capital. Dunning wrote that:

Capital eschews no profit, or very small profit, just as Nature was formerly said to abhor a vacuum. With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 percent will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 percent certain will produce eagerness; 50 percent, positive audacity; 100 percent will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 percent, and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged. If turbulence and strife will bring a profit, it will freely encourage both. Smuggling and the slave- trade have amply proved all that is here stated.2

1 John Bellamy Foster. “Capitalism Has Failed—What Next?” MonthlyReview.org; February 1, 2019. Internet; available at https://monthlyreview.org/2019/02/01/capitalism-has-failed-what-next/; accessed May 7, 2019. 2 T.J.Dunning, cited in Karl Marx, Capital: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production, Vol. 1, (New York: International Publishers, 1967), 760. 147

However, the ideas of Mises and Hayek were long tempered by the dominance of

Enlightenment liberalism. During the Great Depression, the Second World War and into the postwar years the deficit-financing theories of John Maynard Keynes were dominant, and much of the West turned temporarily to social democracy and deficit spending to rebuild and ameliorate postwar poverty and employment crises, leaving Mises and Hayek in relative obscurity. New Deal reforms afforded a period of growth for union membership, until the gains of workers began to threaten capitalist profits in conjunction with rising international competition. The 1960s and 1970s also saw the rise of national liberation movements across the globe that threatened US corporate profits. Moderate gains by the civil rights, antiwar, environment, women’s rights and other movements threatened capitalist control at home. Both stagnation and inflation struck by the mid-1970s, and capitalist development, Volscho and Foster agree, responded by taking its virulent neoliberal turn. This response, as Foster puts it, “was designed to provide the intellectual basis for capitalist-class warfare against not only socialism, but all attempts at social regulation and social democracy: a no-quarter-given attack on the working class.”1

Economist , in an interview published in Jacobin in 2016, argues that neoliberalism is “a political project carried out by the corporate capitalist class as they felt intensely threatened both politically and economically towards the end of the 1960s into the

1970s.” As Harvey put it, “They desperately wanted to launch a political project that would curb the power of labor.”2 The capitalist class was hardly all-knowing, but the Powell

1 Foster, “Capitalism Has Failed…” 2 David Harvey, “Neoliberalism Is a Political Project,” Jacobinmag.com; July 23, 2016; Internet; available at https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/07/david-harvey-neoliberalism-capitalism-labor-crisis-resistance/; accessed May 9, 2020. 148 memorandum shows that they sought a multifaceted approach that brokered no compromise.

Harvey observed that capitalists “recognized that there were a number of fronts on which they had to struggle: the ideological front, the political front, and above all they had to struggle to curb the power of labor by whatever means possible.”1 This is neoliberalism.

Capitalists above all sought to reduce the cost of labor, Harvey wrote. Opening up immigration too much risked creating too much unrest. Therefore, Harvey said, “they chose the other way—to take capital to where the low-wage labor forces were.” With ever more modernized means of communication and transportation developing rapidly, globalization could be profitably implemented. However, for outsourcing, offshoring and globalization to work, tariffs had to be reduced and finance capital had to be empowered,

“because finance capital is the most mobile form of capital.” As Harvey observed, “finance capital and things like floating currencies became critical to curbing labor:” and increased joblessness. In short, Harvey wrote, the neoliberal plan had three components—“unemployment at home and offshoring taking the jobs abroad, and a third component: technological change, [or] deindustrialization through automation and robotization. That was the strategy.” 2

The project went into place piece by piece in a remarkable display of capitalist-class unity. That is where callous neoliberal philosophy came into play. It was the ideological glue that enabled the rapid spread of a capitalist-class economic assault on the working class and the environment and its imperialist assault on the global South. The absurd idea was pushed everywhere that if the wealthy were taken care of first, they would take care of everyone

1 Harvey, “Neoliberalism Is a Political Project.” 2 Harvey, “Neoliberalism Is a Political Project.” 149 else—if the king’s table was stacked higher, then more crumbs could fall off for the rest of humanity. The idea that government was always inefficient and the market was always most efficient became a disturbing mantra worked into the consciousness of many workers.

Neoliberalism acted as an accelerant for capitalism’s fires of exploitation, oppression, and extraction. Capitalists “agreed on a lot of things,” including cutting back government expenditures on social programs as deeply as possible, resisting any new expenditures except on more of the military and police forces that protect and help advance capitalist wealth, and cutting taxes to the bone for the wealthy. They agreed on “the need for a political force to really represent them,” Harvey writes.1 They first targeted the Republican

Party, but also won many allies in the Democratic Party. Moreover,

From the 1970s the Supreme Court made a bunch of decisions that allowed the corporate capitalist class to buy elections more easily than it could in the past. For example, you see reforms of campaign finance that treated contributions to campaigns as a form of free speech. There’s a long tradition in the United States of corporate capitalists buying elections but now it was legalized rather than being under the table as corruption. Overall I think this period was defined by a broad movement across many fronts, ideological and political. And the only way you can explain that broad movement is by recognizing the relatively high degree of solidarity in the corporate capitalist class. Capital reorganized its power in a desperate attempt to recover its economic wealth and its influence, which had been seriously eroded from the end of the 1960s into the 1970s.2

With allies dominating the Republican Party, many in the Democratic Party, and even in other advanced industrialized countries, capitalist-class efforts to bolster its wealth and solidify its power pushed a widespread public campaign for the neoliberal consensus that promoted austere government. Reagan’s 1981 smashing of the Professional Air Traffic

1 Harvey, “Neoliberalism Is a Political Project.” 2 Harvey, “Neoliberalism Is a Political Project.” 150

Controllers union and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s 1984-1985 closure of many British coal mines signaled the intent of the global capitalist class to ruthlessly pursue its neoliberal plan. The economics website TheBalance.com reported the baleful results. “Between 1979 and 2007, after-tax income increased 275% for the wealthiest 1% of households. It rose 65% for the top fifth. The bottom fifth only increased by 18%. That’s true even adding all income from Social Security, welfare, and other government payments.” Moreover, in the same period, “the wealthiest 1% increased their share of total income by 10%. Everyone else saw their share shrink by 1-2%. As a result, economic mobility worsened….The 2008 financial crisis saw the rich get richer. In 2012, the top 10% of earners took home 50% of all income.”1

The 2008 financial crisis was largely recognized as the result of deregulation of the financial markets and Wall Street banks—an indication that neoliberal capitalism was even willing to cut its own feet out from under itself in pursuit of profits, echoing T.J.

Dunning’s nineteenth-century insight. It nearly brought capitalism down, but thanks to government bailouts and no prosecutions, neoliberalism has staggered on in nearly continual crisis. It quickly succeeded in rolling back many post-crisis regulations that were intended to prevent new investment bubbles, which risk the economy in favor of stimulating profits for

US corporations. By 2014 the ultrawealthy were again raking in profits. For workers it was a disaster they had barely begun to recover from when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. As

Ganesh Sitaraman wrote in The New Republic in 2019:

1 Kimberly Amadeo, “Structural Inequality in America: How Structural Inequality Stifles the ,” TheBalance.com; Internet; available at https://www.thebalance.com/structural-inequality-facts- types-causes-solution-4174727; accessed May 11, 2020. 151

In the United States, the wealthiest 1 percent took home about 8.5 percent of the national income in 1976. After a generation of neoliberal policies [and even after the crisis of 2008], in 2014 they captured more than 20 percent of national income. In Britain, the top 1 percent captured more than 14 percent of national income—more than double the amount they took home in the late 1970s. The story is the same in Australia: The top 1 percent took about 5 percent of national income in the 1970s and doubled that to 10 percent by the late 2000s. As the rich get richer, wages have been stagnant for workers since the late 1970s. Between 1979 and 2008, 100 percent of income growth in the U.S. went to the top 10 percent of Americans. The bottom 90 percent actually saw a decline in their income.1

Capitalism’s neoliberal political project clearly fulfilled its intended purpose. “The world’s richest one percent raked in 82 percent of the wealth created” in 2018, reported the nonprofit antipoverty group Oxfam. Wealth equal to that held by the world’s poorest 3.7 billion people is now held by only forty-two billionaires worldwide and wealth equal to that held by the poorest half of the US population is now held by the three richest men in the

United States.2

The economic results of the neoliberal acceleration of capitalist development were devastating to working people all over the world—but differently so in the advanced industrialized countries of the North from the developing countries of the Global South. In the

North, especially in the United States, procapitalist trade unions—which never “represented” more than about a third of the US workforce—proved virtually powerless to slow the assault.

Today they represent barely 10 percent of the workforce., mostly in government jobs.3 Courts

1 Ganesh Sitaraman, “The Collapse of Neoliberalism,” NewRepublic.com, Dec. 23, 2019; Internet; available at https://newrepublic.com/article/155970/collapse-neoliberalism; accessed May 12, 2020. 2 Mary Papenfuss, “Oxfam: 42 Billionaires Hold As Much Wealth As World’s Poorest 3.7 Billion,” HuffPost.com, January 22, 2018. Internet; available at https://www.huffpost.com/entry/billionaires-oxfam- inequality_n_5a657e61e4b0022830041a7a; accessed May 24, 2020. 3 Irina Ivanova, “Union Membership in the US hit Record Low in 2018,” CBSNews.com; Jan. 21, 2019; Internet; available at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/union-membership-declined-in-2018/; accessed May 13, 2020. 152 assaulted the right to organize and to collect dues or spend them to support political candidates. Capitalists historically tolerated unions only while there was reason to ally with such “workers’ organizations” to seek “labor peace” as a means of maintaining labor discipline and boosting profits. Even then, unions were only effective to the extent that workers themselves were willing to militantly engage in the struggle to advance their interests against those of the exploiting capitalists.

With workers and their unions increasingly eviscerated under the capitalist assault, massive numbers of manufacturing jobs were gutted by a combination of rapid automation and robots, or were moved offshore (along with the profits they produced). Many workers replaced their old jobs with lower-paying service industry jobs, some took more than one job to make ends meet, both trends skewing unemployment statistics downward despite the reality that workers were actually worse off than before. Increasing millions of unemployed workers in the North, denied extended unemployment benefits or welfare, were forced to end their work life on the Social Security disability rolls as the “court of last resort” for the unemployed. Vast numbers are falling victim to a deep despair and are endangered by a profit-motivated opioid crisis that in 2017 alone caused more deaths than the Vietnam War.1

However, while the neoliberal assault over the past 50 years in the developed North inflicted a stark and ongoing crisis for workers—and has further destabilized the US capitalist economy itself with an increasingly greater reliance on financial speculation — the result in the Global South was even worse. One of the prime targets of the neoliberal

1 Drug Policy Alliance, “Drug Overdose,” Drugpolicy.org; Internet; available at https://www.drugpolicy.org/ issues/drug-overdose; accessed May 13, 2020. 153 assault in the South was the group of countries known as the Southern Cone that were using a “developmental,” regional approach to —the South

American nations of , , Paraguay, Uruguay, and parts of Brazil.

Developmentalism was anathema to neoliberalism, since it utilized tariffs against Northern goods to protect and build regional industry and involved the state in efforts to balance rates of profit, wages, inflation and exchange. Neoliberal capitalist theory, on the other hand, asserts the ostensible ability of the market to efficiently handle all economic development

(favoring Northern imperialism over Southern development). subverted this laissez-faire mythology with a degree of central planning by the state.1

Chicago School economist Milton Friedman, a founding member of the neoliberal Mont Pelerin Society in 1947 with Hayek, Mises and others, was of particular assistance in the efforts of US imperialism to bring the Global South to heel. His “single- minded message” both at home and abroad, as Naomi Klein wrote in The Shock

Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, was that “everything went wrong” for US capitalism with its adoption of the New Deal. According to Friedman, the implementation of the New Deal marked when many countries “including my own, got off on the wrong track.” The conditions Friedman considered requisite for a country to be on the “right track,” were that “governments must remove all rules and regulations standing in the way of the accumulation of profits,” and “should sell off any assets they own that corporations could be running at a profit.” Further, Klein writes, they “should dramatically cut back funding of

1 See Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira, “The Two Forms of Capitalism: Developmentalism and ,” DOC-Research.org, Feb. 9, 2018; Internet; available at https://doc-research.org/2018/02/the-two-forms-of- capitalism-developmentalism-and-economic-liberalism/; accessed May 14, 2020. 154 social programs.” Friedman’s “three-part formula of deregulation, privatization and cutbacks…had plenty of specifics.” If taxes exist at all, they “should be low, and rich and poor should be taxed at the same flat rate.”1

Klein writes that for Friedman, corporations “should be free to sell their products anywhere in the world, and governments should make no effort to protect local industries or local ownership.” All prices, including the price of labor, should be determined by the market,” without a minimum wage. “In his privatization plan Friedman offered up health care, the post office, education, retirement pensions, even national parks.” In summary, Klein writes, “quite unabashedly, he was calling for the breaking of the New Deal—that uneasy truce between the state, corporations and labor that had prevented popular revolt after the

Great Depression. Whatever protections workers had managed to win, whatever services the state now provided to soften the edges of the market, the Chicago School counterrevolution wanted them back.”2 Friedman’s prescription for a capitalism healthy enough for the obsessions of the neoliberal rich called for the sale of all public assets into private hands.

Moreover, he advocated a kind of “shock treatment” best undertaken rapidly and simultaneously with natural, socioeconomic or political disasters so that working people would be least prepared to block and thereby most likely to accept these changes while the chains quickly forged by neoliberals to favor the rich were securely fastened in place.3

Once implemented, all the forces in the economy would supposedly naturally balance. He was not able to fully implement his ideas anywhere until after Nixon,

1 Klein, Shock Doctrine, 68-69. 2 Klein, Shock Doctrine, 68-69. 3 Klein, Shock Doctrine, 60. 155

Kissinger and the CIA funded, fashioned, and supported the rightwing military coup in

Chile in 1973 that murdered the elected developmentalist socialist president, Salvador

Allende, and replaced him with a military junta. By 1975 the Chilean government was headed by the ruthless dictator Gen. —the result of a coup-within-a- coup.1 The rightwing junta, and then Pinochet, faced an economic meltdown, thanks to years of anti-Allende US efforts. Nixon infamously ordered CIA director Richard Helms at the time to “make the economy scream” in order to undercut Allende.2 Friedman’s neoliberal shock therapy prescribed “privatization, deregulation and cuts to social spending— the free-market trinity,” Klein writes.3 During the first eighteen months of his regime

Pinochet “faithfully followed the Chicago rules: he privatized some, though not all, state- owned companies (including several banks); he allowed cutting-edge new forms of speculative finance; he flung open the borders to foreign imports, tearing down the barriers that had long protected Chilean manufacturers; and he cut government spending by 10 percent—except the military, which received a significant increase,” Klein says. Despite the fact that Chile had for decades regulated the cost of necessities, including cooking oil and bread, Pinochet also suddenly deregulated their price.4

The so-called Chicago Boys held that if Pinochet simultaneously and suddenly stopped government participation in all areas of the economy (how else to achieve the shock they desired?) “the ‘natural’ laws of economics would rediscover their ‘equilibrium,’ and inflation—

1 See Peter Winn in and Gilbert Joseph, eds., A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence during Latin Americas Long Cold War (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 270-271. 2 Klein, Shock Doctrine, 78. 3 Klein, Shock Doctrine, 94. 4 Klein, Shock Doctrine, 96. 156 which they viewed as a kind of economic fever indicating the presence of unhealthy organisms in the market—would magically go down,” writes Klein. However, that is not what happened.

Inflation reached 375 percent in 1974. That was then the highest inflation in the world, and nearly double the highest rate under Allende. The cost of bread skyrocketed. “Chileans were being thrown out of work because Pinochet’s experiment with ‘free trade’ was flooding the country with cheap imports. Local businesses were closing, unable to compete, unemployment hit record levels and hunger became rampant. The Chicago School’s first laboratory was a debacle.”1

Many of the Chicago Boys “stars”—including Mises, Hayek, Friedman, and

Buchanan, who was also part of that group—came running to offer advice to Pinochet, many of them several times during the seventeen years of Pinochet’s terrorist regime. Chilean economists trained at the University of Chicago, nicknamed Los Chicago Boys, “served” in the government. They all wanted to advise the dictator. Intentionally generating a great crisis for the overwhelming majority of working people, these “giant intellects” and ostensibly

“moral men” of both libertarian and neoliberal fame chose to align themselves with the interests of a dictator instead of the people. In so doing they helped bolster Pinochet’s rule and thereby his bloody role in the US-backed “Operation Condor,” a murderous dirty war against any unionists and progressives as well as their spouses, children, relatives and friends, across the borders of all the nations of the Southern Cone, which lasted until 1989 and took up to 60,000 lives.2

1 Klein, Shock Doctrine, 97. 2 Beyond massive repression inside Chile, an estimated 60,000 people across the Southern Cone were murdered and thousands tortured during Operation Condor. See Joan Patrice McSherry, Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012). See also Larry Rohter, “Exposing the Legacy of Operation Condor,” New York Times; Jan. 24, 2014; Internet; available at https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/exposing-the-legacy-of-operation-condor/; accessed May 16, 2020. 157

Pinochet and his second economic minister, Sergio De Castro—of Los Chicago

Boys—doubled down on the neoliberal prescription. They began “stripping away the welfare state to arrive at their pure capitalist utopia,” writes Klein. “In 1975, they cut public spending by 27 percent in one blow—and they kept cutting until, by 1980, it was half of what it had been under Allende.” Education and health services took the heaviest cuts.

“Even , a free-market cheerleader,” Klein writes, “called it ‘an orgy of self- mutilation.’” Pinochet’s regime “privatized almost five hundred state-owned companies and banks, practically giving many of them away, since the point was to get them as quickly as possible into their [so-called] rightful place in the economic order.” Moreover, the regime had “no pity on local companies and removed even more trade barriers; the result was the loss of 177,000 industrial jobs between 1973 and 1983.” Neoliberal “magic” had, by the mid-eighties, reduced “manufacturing as a percentage of the economy…to levels last seen during the Second World War.”1

By 1982, following the path “illuminated” by Chicago School doctrine, “Chile’s economy crashed: its debt exploded, it faced hyperinflation once again and unemployment hit 30 percent—ten times higher than it was under Allende.”2 The outcome was predictable. “By 1988, when the economy had stabilized and was growing rapidly, 45 percent of the population had fallen below the poverty line,” Klein observed. “The richest

10 percent of Chileans, however, had seen their incomes increase by 83 percent. Even in

2007, Chile remained one of the most unequal societies in the world—out of 123 countries

1 Klein, Shock Doctrine, 100. 2 Klein, Shock Doctrine, 104. 158 in which the United Nations tracks inequality, Chile ranked 116th, making it the 8th most unequal country on the list.” As Klein writes, “[i]f that track record qualifies Chile as a miracle for Chicago school economists, perhaps shock treatment was never really about jolting the economy into health. Perhaps it was meant to do exactly what it did—hoover wealth up to the top and shock much of the middle class out of existence.1

Ominously, the neoliberal capitalist assault progressed across the countries of the

Southern Cone in lockstep with Operation Condor, and from there across the Global South.

Klein’s description of the result is a grim one. “Chicago School rule was offering a glimpse of the future of the global economy,” she said. It was a process she saw “repeat again and again, from Russia to South Africa to Argentina.” Each occurrence had “an urban bubble of frenetic speculation and dubious accounting fueling and frantic , ringed by the ghostly factories and rotting infrastructure of a development past.” In most countries where this neoliberal bomb exploded, there was “roughly half the population excluded from the economy altogether; out-of-control corruption and cronyism; decimation of nationally owned small and medium-sized businesses; a huge transfer of wealth from public to private hands, followed by a huge transfer of private into public hands.”2 Klein writes that, “[i]n Chile, if you were outside the wealth bubble, the miracle looked like the Great Depression, but inside its airtight cocoon the profits flowed so free and fast that the easy wealth made possible by shock therapy-style ‘reforms’ have (sic) been the crack cocaine of financial markets ever since.”3

1 Klein, Shock Doctrine, 105. 2 Klein, Shock Doctrine, 106. 3 Klein, Shock Doctrine, 106. 159

Immanuel Ness, in his 2016 book, Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global

Working Class, writes that superexploitation of workers was normalized across the South under the neoliberal assault, starting from conditions already more oppressive than those workers faced in the North:

From the 1980s, the economies that dominated the world in the post-Second World War era entered a period of far-reaching transition away from state participation to private-sector dominance. The conversion process was not uniform: in some cases the shift to market control occurred gradually through the withdrawal of state subsidies for social welfare, and in other instances a radical shift away from public welfare was imposed all at once, in what came to be known as shock therapy. In the South, where most states had limited social welfare nets, economic converged on privatization of state production and market integration into the global capitalist economy. While 20th-century industrialization in…the North typically took place in the context of social welfare states, in the South, massive industrialization was carried out without provision for health care, adequate food, child care, housing, education, unemployment insurance, and old age pensions for workers and their families.1

Much of the “development” in the Global South takes place in “Special Enterprise

Zones” (SEZs) or similarly named areas where Northern imperial capitalists are allowed a no-holds-barred environment of extreme exploitation. As Ness puts it, “In the early 21st century industrial workers in the Global South frequently live in dormitories managed by contractors or regional commissions established to deliver basic services to migrant laborers.” Most arrive in the zones as newcomers. “[M]ost laborers have few social bonds with long-term residents, and more often are reliant on fellow workers from rural areas and family members who have accompanied them.” Moreover, “SEZs are typically isolated from the political and social arena, and provide workers with few social contacts

1 Immanuel Ness. Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class (London: Pluto Press, 2016), 179-180. 160 outside the workplaces and living quarters.”1

Ness notes that, while there are those who naïvely believe that the relative quiescence of the class struggle in the North is indicative of the nonexistence of class struggle as such, his long-term study of the international working class and especially of working-class responses to extreme exploitation in China, India and South Africa shows that the class struggle is merely shifting locations and changing focus. As Ness puts it, “the industrial working class has not disappeared but has been relocated and reconstituted in the South in larger numbers than ever before in history.”2 He writes that “[f]inancialization and speculation are responsible for the closure of factories and the reduction in the number of middle-income jobs in mature economies of the Global North, while accelerating the expansion of a low- wage and insecure work force in the newly industrialized South.” Ness observes that, “This contemporary system of neoliberal capitalist global accumulation distorts economies through investment in finance, , derivatives, and other financial instruments, and has threatened the to the point of disruption through speculative investments, increasing inequality worldwide as well as between North and South.”3

Neoliberal acceleration of capitalist accumulation did much more than accelerate the exploitation of working people across the globe in pursuit of increased profits for the capitalist class. It also accelerated the concentration of power in the hands of a relatively smaller and smaller class of capitalist overlords. Moreover, with accelerated private accumulation and increasing concentration of power also came extreme environmental

1 Ness, Southern Insurgency, 183. 2 Ness, Southern Insurgency, 2. 3 Ness. Southern Insurgency, 2. 161 destruction, accelerating and widespread use of toxic pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers and other chemicals, many of them untested by the government agencies ostensibly set up to protect public health.1 Reckless use of soil for profit depleted the store of arable soil to a supply our best science today estimates at sufficient for “little more than a century.2

Efforts to keep government spending limited as much as possible to the military and police, in keeping with neoliberal ideology, emptied the coffers of government agencies intended to deal with disasters of all kinds, leaving human society more unprotected from biological threats like pandemics and climatological threats like the climate crisis and the natural and biological disasters it increasingly fuels. It also placed increasing millions under the authority of militarized police forces that constantly work to protect the interests of capitalists over working people, grimly shaping human society in the spirit of neoliberal capitalism. The human forces at work have been geologic in scale, with emissions of greenhouse gases vastly accelerating, bringing on the destruction or degradation of land, sea, air and the cryosphere of which the UN’s emergency announcements of 2018–2019 warned. Yet these are not the only egregious effects of neoliberal capitalism. Another integral aspect of the crisis for humanity represented by capitalism in its neoliberal phase can be seen in its tremendous political damage to democracy and human society.

The Withered ‘Soul’ of Neoliberal Capitalism

Any discussion of the effects of neoliberalism must include human factors beyond

1 See Ted Steinberg. Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). 2 David R. Montgomery. Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), xii. 162 jobs, hunger and poverty, and ecological destruction. It must include neoliberalism’s destructive moral and social outlook as well. The role that neoliberal philosophy itself plays in capitalism’s debasement of humanity and nature is important to examine for those seeking a way out of the problems neoliberal capitalism has created. A good place to begin is the history of neoliberalism’s moral outlook traced by author and environmentalist Bill McKibben in his book, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Out?1

In Falter McKibben sees neoliberalism as a kind of philosophical leverage designed by capitalists and the politicians who serve them to use against other elements in society— workers, unions, the poor, minorities, women or any other segment of the overwhelming majority whose democratic decisions they oppose. For McKibben neoliberalism is a false logic promoted by politicians, the media and educational institutions, especially in economics departments, that argues society’s wealthiest are its most important members, that they and only they create wealth, and that government should therefore primarily serve their interests—not the interests of the majority. He traces the roots of this soulless thinking to, among others, libertarian Ayn Rand, author of , The Virtue of Selfishness, and other works.2

Many of her ruling-class aficionados think the late novelist “the most important philosopher of all time,” and Rand, notes McKibben, “would have agreed: she once told a reporter that she was ‘the most creative thinker alive’”—an assessment McKibben characterizes as nonsense. For McKibben, “Rand might as well have written with a crayon;

1 Bill McKibben, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? (New York: Henry Holt, 2019) 2 McKibben, Falter, 14–16. 163 her ideas about the world are simple-minded, one-dimensional, and poisonous.” Just as one need not be intelligent to be rich, he notes that “you don’t need to be right to be influential.”

He writes that, “[h]er books animated many of the people who dominated American politics at crucial moments.” Rand argued for the centrality of the superman. “When the

United States was occupying the role of superpower, charting the course for a planet, she was occupying the hearts and minds of many of its most powerful people.”1

Onetime Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, British Prime Minister

Margaret Thatcher, President Ronald Reagan, former Republican Speaker of the House Paul

Ryan, former Exxon chairman and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State Mike

Pompeo, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas—they and countless others in US capitalism’s ruling-class circle have been or are still part of a cult of Ayn Rand among the rich and powerful. McKibben writes that “ has called The Fountainhead

(another Rand novel) his favorite book. “It relates to business and beauty and life and inner emotions,” Trump told USA Today. “That book relates to…everything.”2 That the anti- intellectual Trump counts himself part of this circle of admirers attests to the quality of

Rand’s “philosophy.” However, the ostensible brilliance of ruling-class intellectual prowess has long been noted; great wealth often comes unaccompanied by great intellect. As Karl

Marx observed of in his day: “On the level plain, simple mounds look like hills; and the imbecile flatness of the present bourgeoisie is to be measured by the altitude of its great intellects.”3

1 McKibben, Falter, 90. 2 Kirsten Powers, “Donald Trump’s Kinder, Gentler Version,” USA Today, April 11, 2016, cited in McKibben, Falter, 93. 3 Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, 696. 164

While it may be difficult for working people who actually care about the rest of society to find it believable, this cult of Rand is completely opposed to the interests of the rest of humanity, as McKibben sees it. For Rand and her cohorts there is no other worthy group but the wealthy class of capitalists and those who serve it. Altruism is often recognized as one of the most salient human traits, but the word “was perhaps the dirtiest word in Rand’s lexicon,” McKibben notes. According to a hero in The Fountainhead, it is a “weapon of exploitation,” one that “reverses the base of mankind’s moral principles.”1 The “emotional core” of Rand’s pitch for this dark side of human consciousness, McKibben notes, “is simple:

Government is bad. Selfishness is good….Solidarity is a trap. Taxes are theft.”2

McKibben writes of a speech by Rand’s hero in Atlas Shrugged, John Galt, that embodies this libertarian attitude as the “moral basis” of neoliberalism. Galt calls for a strike of industrialists, capitalist “intellectuals,” and others who follow his call to withhold their

“genius” from society, and form a new, “moral” system guided by Galt’s conception of capitalist selfishness and contempt for working people. As McKibben observes, “[t]here is a long, tendentious speech…over a radio network that the industrialists have hacked in order to broadcast a seventy-page exultation of the 1 percent.” Rand’s toxic view of humanity spews from Galt as he “explains to a supposedly fascinated nation, ‘the man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payments, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time.’” Moreover, he contemptuously asserts of working people, the “man

1 McKibben, Falter, 97. 2 McKibben, Falter, 91. 165 at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him but receives the bonus of all their brains…. Such is the pattern of exploitation for which you have damned the strong.’”1

This is completely opposite the sociologically accepted understanding of exploitation from the point of view of the overwhelming majority of working people.2

Whether or not one agrees with the process of exploitation as technically explained by

Marx, the contemporary world-historical analysis of Immanuel Wallerstein, and many others, wealth in capitalist society is clearly socially produced by great masses of workers. Without workers there could be no billionaires or millionaires. Their capital multiplies faster as the number of workers they employ increases—the very reason why big capitalists are wealthier than small capitalists.

1 McKibben, Falter, 98. 2 “By far the most influential theory of exploitation ever set forth is that of Karl Marx, who held that workers in a capitalist society are exploited insofar as they are forced to sell their labor power to capitalists for less than the full value of the commodities they produce with their labor….” See Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Exploitation, 1.2: Marx’s Theory of Exploitation,” Internet; available at https://plato.stanford.edu/ entries/exploitation/#MarxTheoExpl; accessed May 4, 2020. Marx’s view is that under capitalism everything, labor power included, is reduced to the status of a commodity. Profits come from the surplus value that capitalists are able to realize from the sale of the commodities that workers produce. Marx calls it the expropriation of surplus value through the process of exploitation. Marxists use this term, exploitation, to describe the expropriation of surplus value regardless of whether wages are low or “high.” The ramifications of this process are extremely consequential for all society. Capitalists realize extra value, above and beyond their costs of production, from labor power because of the unique nature of the commodity called labor power. Among all other commodities included in the process of producing another commodity, only one, labor power, actually adds value beyond its price. In the case of workers that price is their wage or salary, which covers, if they are lucky, the cost of food, clothing, housing, education and so on, moderated by the effects of supply and demand and by certain changing historical standards like wage levels and unionization. Exploitation means that workers are not paid the full value of their product. That in turn means that they cannot buy back all that they produce, and even the lavish spending of the relative handful of capitalists cannot make up the difference when commodities are produced by the thousands or millions. There is tremendous pressure to export surplus commodities that cannot be sold on the domestic market. That pressure leads to trade wars, militarism, actual wars and other acts of imperialism as the capitalists of competing countries bump heads on the international market. The buildup of unsold commodities periodically becomes so great that, along with competition and the anarchy or unplanned nature of capitalist production, prices are depressed and production is shut down, boosting unemployment and causing economic recession or depression. That often leads to the insane destruction of unsold commodities in a world filled with need—just to prop up prices, and thereby profits, for capitalists. 166

Thus exploitation is the source of capitalists’ great wealth. The nature of any “labor” capitalists may perform defies common conceptions of labor—it more closely resembles the

“work” of a debt collector or gambler. As the American Marxist contended in an 1898 speech to a group of striking textile workers in New Bedford, Mass., “‘Directors,’ and the capitalist class in general, may perform some ‘work’… but that ‘work’ is not of a sort that directly or indirectly aids production—no more than the intense mental strain and activity of the ‘work’ done by the pick-pocket is directly or indirectly productive.”1

Nonetheless, Rand’s philosophy of blatant selfishness has many ruling-class backers who, thanks to their “great intellects” and self-serving egos, enthusiastically found its hackneyed constructs believable. When panned Atlas Shrugged upon its publication in 1957, future five-term chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal

Reserve System, Alan Greenspan, wrote a revealing letter to the editor in its defense: “Atlas

Shrugged is the celebration of life and happiness,” he wrote. “Justice is unrelenting,” he said, parroting the class war attitude of John Galt. “Creative individuals and the undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment, and “Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.”2 (Italics added.) In short, no quarter can be expected from the great god Greenspan for any among the majority of poor workers who cannot find an opportunity under capitalism for “purpose” or “reason” in their lives—or a capitalist master to exploit them.

Nature fares no better than working people under the Randian zeitgeist of neoliberalism. Roarke, Rand’s hero in The Fountainhead, perfectly expressed the neoliberal

1 Daniel De Leon, What Means This Strike? (New York: New York Labor News, 1972), 9. 2 McKibben, Falter, 91. 167 attitude toward nature in a soliloquy, of sorts. He reveals a consciousness deeply reified as a result of capitalism’s commodification of everything: Nature has no value in itself or in the process of production other than as raw material free for the taking. “Consider Roarke’s inner thoughts,” McKibben writes, “during a visit to a rock quarry.” Roarke looks at the granite in the quarry: “[t]o be cut, he thought, and made into walls.” His thoughts continuously betray his anti-nature, procapitalist attitudes. “He looked at a tree. To be split and made into rafters. He looked at a streak of rust on the stone and thought of iron ore under the ground. To be melted and to emerge as girders against the sky. These rocks, he thought, are here for me: waiting for the drill, the dynamite, and my voice; waiting to be split, ripped, pounded, reborn; waiting for the shape my hands will give them.”1

Rand appears to have missed an opportunity here to applaud the wealthy and demean working people, for surely the “great man” Roarke would never have used his own hands for such work. He would have used his “genius” and hired a working person whose labor time at these tasks, for wages amounting to less than the full value of their product, would have rendered him a profit on the sale of the products that resulted.

Another contributor to the antisocial ethos of neoliberal capitalism was libertarian

US economist James McGill Buchanan—a onetime Nobel Prize winner in bourgeois economics. McKibben as well as Duke University historian Nancy MacLean, author of

Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America,2 make it plain that Buchanan was not only just as malevolent as Rand, but perhaps

1 McKibben, Falter, 97. 2 Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America (New York: Viking, 2017). 168 contributed as much to the spread of neoliberal thinking among the US capitalist class.

Buchanan asked, “‘Why must the rich be made be made to suffer’ as a result of ‘simple majority voting?’ A citizen ‘who finds that he must, on fear of punishment, pay taxes for public goods in excess of the amount that he might voluntarily contribute’ is no different from someone mugged by a ‘thug who takes his wallet in Central Park.’”1

Buchanan’s main economic thesis came to be called “public choice theory,” which contended that “allocating resources by majority decision-making invited voters to group together as ‘special interests’ or ‘pressure groups’ in collective pursuit of ‘profits’ from government programs.”2 In short, democratic decision-making is bad, since it raises the possibility that the wealthy capitalist class might have to contribute to the care of all those their system of personal enrichment at the expense of society exploits, disciplines and objectifies as workers and consumers of commodities—all those who are impoverished because capitalism’s limited opportunities fail to reach them.

As a 2018 article by economist Lynn Parramore put it, historian Nancy “MacLean contends that [Buchanan’s] philosophy is so stark that even young libertarian acolytes are only introduced to it after they have accepted the relatively sunny perspective of Ayn Rand.

(Yes, you read that correctly.)” Buchanan was “deeply suspicious of any form of state action that channels resources to the public.” For him taxes were theft.3 His ideas were also used by the school privatization movement in the South to try to circumvent the school

1 McKibben, Falter, 108. 2 McKibben, Falter, 106. 3 Lynn Parramore, “Meet the Economist Behind the One Percent’s Stealth Takeover of America,” Institute for New Economic Thinking; May 30, 2018; Internet; available at https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/ meet-the-economist-behind-the-one-percents-stealth-takeover-of-america; accessed May 7, 2020. 169 desegregation ordered as a result of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision. Moreover, they can be seen behind the curtain in virtually every state or federal attempt to cut education funding since Buchanan’s original efforts set afoot the voucher movement for private charter schools.1

MacLean, in Democracy in Chains, details Buchanan’s efforts from the 1950s forward, revealing the extensive support received from the billionaire Koch family of fossil- fuel industry notoriety—as well as from “Shell Oil, Exxon, Ford, IBM, Chase Manhattan

Bank, and General Motors” and others—to fund a network of libertarian think tanks and training centers.2 MacLean situates this decades-long effort as the ideological origin of what she calls “the single most powerful and least understood threat to democracy today: the attempt by the billionaire-backed radical right to undo democratic governance.” As she writes, “what becomes clear as the story moves forward decade by decade is that a quest that began as a quiet attempt to prevent the state of Virginia from having to meet national democratic standards of fair treatment and equal protection under the law would, some sixty years later, become the veritable opposite of itself: a stealth bid to reverse-engineer all of America, at both the state and the national levels, back to the political economy and oligarchic governance of midcentury Virginia, minus the segregation.”3

The Koch family—father Fred Sr. and his four sons—were fervent anticommunists, though Fred Sr.’s original fortune was made by building oil refineries for Stalin (later also for Hitler). They were fans not only of Buchanan, but of the Austrian economists Ludwig

1 MacLean, Democracy in Chains, xix. 2 Parramore, “Meet the Economist….” 3 MacLean, Democracy in Chains, xv. 170 von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Mises and Hayek were both later of the University of

Chicago School of Economics, which served as a US hub for the training of neoliberal economists and the spread of their baneful thinking.1 In 1958, father Fred was a founding member of the John Birch Society. It was a radical right organization cast at the time even by the US conservative movement as part of the lunatic fringe, but whose thinking has today infected much of that same “conservative” movement. McKibben notes that in 1957,

“One of the figures in that orbit, Robert Lefevre”—a guru of second son Charles Koch— opened a “Freedom School” in Colorado Springs. He preached “not just the Birchers’ anticommunism but also an adamant opposition to America’s government.” Lefevre considered government “a disease masquerading as its own cure.”2

It was a message that, thanks to its preferential treatment of the rich and powerful, gained rapid ascendance in the capitalist world. This was despite, or perhaps because of, growing global problems—in energy, water supplies, food production, poverty, the environment, education and so on, that required the vast resources of governments to address—for which the wealthy in capitalist society did not want to have to tap their offshore accounts to pay. The neoliberal agenda was soon famously promoted by Ronald

Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. McKibben notes the antisocial, because deeply antigovernmental, nature of neoliberal thought when he writes of Reagan and Thatcher:

Reagan’s most famous line was “The government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Thatcher at her most strident sounded

1 McKibben, Falter, 105-106. McKibben observes that Charles Koch “celebrated the work of” Mises and Hayek “and, through them the world of a more orthodox (and less melodramatic) than Rand’s. Many of the disciples of that so-called Mont Pelerin movement (named for the Swiss resort where the libertarian luminaries first gathered in 1947) would go on to high office, constructing the basic neoliberal economic framework we’ve lived under since Reagan. 2 McKibben, Falter, 105. 171

as if she were John Galt [Atlas Shrugged]. “You know,” she once said, as if it were the most obvious thing on Earth, “there’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families.”… Those radical anti-government ideas carried the day. Soon they seemed less radical, and eventually, they were mere conventional wisdom. They came with harsh attacks on labor unions and “entitlements” and anything else that reeked of human solidarity. At the moment of greatest leverage, they shaped America’s choices when it was the most important country on the planet.1

Political and Social Effects

Call neoliberal capitalism what you will—capitalism on steroids, the revenge of the capitalist class, or some other appropriate moniker—it is above all capitalism, a system based upon the economic exploitation of the overwhelming working-class majority class by a tiny minority class, relatively speaking, that rules overs an economy built entirely by working people. Rights in bourgeois democracy may be nominally guaranteed, but are virtually nonexistent in the workplace. The seeds of despotism capitalism contains have over the grim lifetime of capitalism “flowered” many times into full-fledged despotism and genocide, resulting in the death of hundreds of millions from slavery to world wars to imperialist destruction. Neoliberal expansion over the last fifty years is once again moving human society in that direction.

Wendy Brown, in her book In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of

Antidemocratic Politics in the West, theorizes “how neoliberal rationality prepared the ground for the mobilization and legitimacy of ferocious antidemocratic forces in the second decade of the twenty-first century.”2 She sees neoliberalism not as a direct cause

1 McKibben, Falter, 100. 2 Wendy Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism: The Rise of Antidemocratic Politics in the West (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019), 7. 172 of the racism, nihilism, fatalism and resentment of the rightwing political movement that brought the antidemocratic Trump administration to power, but as thinking which produced a Frankenstein monster without necessarily so intending. “Forged in the crucible of European fascism,” she writes, “neoliberalism aimed at permanent inoculation of market liberal orders against the regrowth of fascistic sentiments and totalitarian powers. Eager to separate politics from markets, the original neoliberals would have loathed both the crony capitalism and international oligarchical power spawned by finance that yanks the chains of states today.” Brown writes that,

Seeking to get politics out of markets and concentrated economic interests out of policy making, they would have deplored the manipulation of by major industries and capital sectors and would have hated, too, the politicization of enterprise. Above all, they dreaded political mobilizations of an ignorant, aroused citizenry and looked to market and moral discipline and a severely leashed democracy to pacify and contain it. They would be horrified by the contemporary phenomenon of leaders at once authoritarian and reckless riding to power on this tide.1

Brown’s analysis here seems all too forgiving of the consistent elitist attacks of a majority of neoliberals from the very beginning on democracy, democratic institutions and the very idea of society. Even giving neoliberals the benefit of the doubt as to original intent, their nearly unanimous support for Chilean dictator Pinochet—and by extension, the bloody transnational extermination of tens of thousands under Operation Condor that he,

Kissinger and the CIA carried out in the Southern Cone—reveals the withered and inhuman

“soul” of neoliberalism.2 Above all else, they were concerned about protecting the economic system of capitalism, as supposedly the best guarantor of individual freedom, and their

1 Brown, In the Ruins of Neoliberalism, 9. 2 Rohter, “Exposing the Legacy of Operation Condor.” 173 philosophy was imbued with adoration for the “” system that ostensibly

“naturally” brought capitalists their wealth and the traditional morality intended to justify it.

Incredibly, what most neoliberals wanted was to undermine and replace along with the very idea of society and the social. They wanted to permanently establish a new kind of uncivil order that made economic sense to their own bourgeois consciousness, and crude conceptions of “,” even if it meant increased exploitation and oppression for the majority and the murders of tens of thousands in Operation Condor and Pinochet’s domestic terrorism.

For Hayek, the central kernel of neoliberal philosophy was to abolish political democracy since perfect legislators and electorates did not exist, in an ostensible attempt to protect society from fascism and . Hayek’s was an incredibly elitist position.

“Today the only holders of power unbridled by any law which binds them and who are driven by the political necessities of a self-willed machine are the so-called legislators,” wrote

Hayek. “But this prevailing form of democracy is ultimately self-destructive, because it imposes upon governments tasks on which an agreed opinion of the majority does not and cannot exist. It is therefore necessary to restrain these powers in order to protect democracy against itself.”1 Neoliberal restraint, however, has turned out to look a lot like force.

Making sense of how the present insurrectionary Trumpist movement grew from neoliberal roots into its fully reactionary bloom today requires, for Brown, that we “register the forces overdetermining the radically antidemocratic form of the rebellion.” High among Brown’s list of such forces is that the very idea of society and of the social, as

1 Fredrich Hayek, “The Dethronement of Politics,” quoted in Brown, In the Ruins, 55. 174 well as of the political, are “demonized” in neoliberal thinking. Its “valorization of traditional morality and markets” contributes as well. She recognizes that anything that contributes to the “disintegration of society and the discrediting of the public good” cultivates the soil “for the so-called ‘tribalisms’ emerging as identities and political forces in recent years.” Moreover, she observes that “the attack on equality, combined with mobilization of traditional values,” boosts “long-simmering from colonial and slave legacies” along with male supremacy. The growing nihilism resulting from its many-sided attacks “challenges truth and transforms traditional morality into weapons of political battle.” She notes that “assaults on constitutional democracy, on racial, gender, and sexual equality, on public education, and on a civil, nonviolent public sphere have all been carried out in the name of both freedom and morality.” Not least among these forces is the way “neoliberal rationality… fashioned an ordinary discourse in which is at once trivialized and monsterized as ‘political correctness.’”1

Brown’s argument, in short, is that very little is “untouched by a neoliberal mode of reason and valuation and…neoliberalism’s attack on democracy has everywhere inflected law, political culture and subject production, not only the economic conditions and enduring racisms that spawned it.” Accordingly this “means appreciating the rise of white nationalist authoritarian political formations as animated by the mobilized anger of the economically abandoned and racially resentful, but [also] as contoured by more than three decades of neoliberal assaults on democracy, equality, and society.” The “economic suffering and racialized rancor of the white working-class and middle-class” cannot be separated from such

1 Brown, In the Ruins, 7. 175 attacks, but, rather, “acquire voice and shape from them.” Brown writes that “[t]hese assaults also fuel (though they do not by themselves cause) the Christian nationalist ambition to

(re)conquer the West. They also intermix with an intensifying nihilism manifesting as broken faith in truth, facticity, and foundational values.”1

Neoliberal criticism “of society and social justice in the name of freedom and traditional moral norms has become the common sense of a robust neoliberal culture today,” writes Brown. In this bubble of neoliberal common sense, something very dangerous for any society has happened, ripping the social fabric and increasing the risk of actual disintegration. The social becomes the enemy of freedom, and those who advocate for social justice to address the many structural failings of capitalism to treat everyone fairly and equally become “libtards” and “the enemies of a free people.”2 Perhaps most importantly,

Brown observes that “[t]he attack on the social—its existence and its appropriateness as a provenance of justice—also disinhibits the freedom identified with neoliberalism, converting it from mere moral libertarianism to an aggressive attack on democracy.”3

That attack “licenses freedom’s exercise without concern for social context or consequences, without care for society, civility, or social bonds, and above all without concern for the political cultivation of a . Thus, the claim that ‘there is no such thing as society’ does far more than challenge social democracy and welfare states as forms of market interference that create “dependency” and wrongful ‘entitlement.’” The claim “does more than propagate the notion that taxes are theft, rather than the material by which common life and

1 Brown, In the Ruins, 8. 2 Brown, In the Ruins, 44. 3 Brown, In the Ruins, 44. 176 public things are sustained. It does more than blame the poor for their condition or the

‘nature’ of minorities and women of all races for their tiny numbers in elite professions and positions. Freedom without society destroys the lexicon by which freedom is made democratic, paired with social consciousness, and nested in political equality. Freedom without society is a pure instrument of power, shorn of concern for others, the world, or the future.”1 This is something that French revolutionary Louis Blanqui reflected an instinctive awareness of in 1869 when, in criticizing the call during the for Liberté,

Egalité and Fraternité, he declared that we all know that the freedom or liberty called for by the capitalist class is merely “the freedom to enslave, the freedom to exploit at will, the freedom of the great and the good…with the multitude as their stepping stone. This form of freedom is something that the people call oppression and crime. They no longer want to nourish it with their flesh and blood.”2

Brown notes that there is “an obviousness to the claim that the neoliberal attack on political life contributed to today’s antidemocratic rebellions.” After all, she writes,

“[n]eoliberal policy aims to loosen political control over economic actors and markets, replacing regulation and redistribution with market freedom and uncompromised ownership rights.”3 Incredibly, Hayek asserted the market under capitalism to be the only mechanism needed to provide order, and traditional morality passed on spontaneously as the only morality worthy of humanity. Anything more was coercion and an assault on freedom and liberty—notwithstanding the fact that on average every decade since the

1 Brown, In the Ruins, 44. 2 Doug Enaa Greene. Communist Insurgent: Blanqui’s Politics of Revolution (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017), 1. 3 Brown, In the Ruins, 58. 177 beginning of capitalism the system conducts war on itself via the irrationality of economic meltdowns or depressions, caused by its own economic laws of motion. In these frenzied periodic crises capitalism nearly shakes itself to the ground, tearing down much of what has been built, and wasting resources produced by the blood, sweat and tears of the overwhelming majority in society in order to rebuild what has been destroyed. Thanks to the inherent anarchy of its system of unplanned production and its market-driven tendency to overproduce, these periodic crises arise and not only cause great suffering for the majority; they deny the ability to realize profits to the very capitalist class whose interests

Hayek sought to prioritize and protect.1 Moreover, Hayek’s claims about traditional morality fly in the face of history, which abounds with examples that the traditional morality spontaneously passed from the past has often promoted the worst in humanity— slavery and antisemitism being but two of these offensive “moralities.”

The bourgeois state is largely responsible for holding capitalism together during these crises. Nonetheless, Hayek’s economic inanities were deeply attractive to capitalism’s ruling elite, under assault by declining rates of profit, rising domestic protests and threats to its imperialist interests from national liberation movements in the Global South. “The

Reagan-Thatcher years,” Brown notes, “were shaped by the refrain that ‘government is the problem, not the solution’ to economic as well as social problems, a refrain that became the pretext for tax cuts, dismantling the welfare state, and unchaining capital from every kind of restriction, including that imposed by union bargaining power.” Trump’s onetime chief

1 See Michael Perelman, The Natural Instability of Markets: Expectations, Increasing Returns, and the Collapse of Capitalism (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999). 178 advisor, Steve Bannon, went so far as to assert that his objective was to “deconstruct the administrative state.” As Brown writes, “[t]he challenge to political control went further, however.” Its objective was “to dedemocratize the political culture and the subjects within it.”1 In so doing, its effects brought together strange bedfellows:

Neoliberal demonization of “” also provided grounds for otherwise unlikely alliances between economic libertarians, plutocrats, armed right-wing anarchists, Klan vigilantes, zealous pro-lifers, and homeschoolers. In short, as the principle of “getting government off our backs” morphed into a generalized animosity toward the political, it animated a movement affirming authoritarian liberalism in some domains and authoritarian moralism in others.2

Workers and Neoliberalism

On the other hand, these are contradictory forces within neoliberal capitalism that seem destined to eventually separate some among these bedfellows, if they do not tear society apart first. “[N]eoliberal effects such as growing inequality and insecurity,” Brown writes,

“generated angry rightwing populisms and political demagogues in power that do not comport with neoliberal dreams of pacified, orderly citizenries, denationalized economies, lean, strong states, and international institutions focused on facilitating capital accumulation and stabilizing competition.”3 It is an open question how long capitalism, whose profit motive now necessitates globalization, can coexist with a reactionary generating a significant part of the electorate that increasingly rails against the effects of capitalist globalization.

Certainly, the neoliberal political project of capitalism is generating gigantic

1 Brown, In the Ruins, 59. 2 Brown, In the Ruins, 59. 3 Brown, In the Ruins, 58. 179 centripetal forces it cannot account for, did not intend, and is struggling to control, forces which threaten the social fabric and the stability of capitalism. That is of little concern to those in that project, an element that is, after all, completely against the social as well as democracy and therefore largely blind to the mounting perils of not only the climate crisis and the growing threat of pandemics, but any threat to society. Billionaires and millionaires

—capitalists—are the only “voting members” of this now dominant antipolitical neoliberalism who actually count, by virtue of their monopoly control in the market, and they believe that, barring a completely uninhabitable Earth, their wealth will continue to guarantee them relative safety and comfort in positions of privilege and power regardless of social chaos and environmental cataclysms. It is working people themselves, attempting to escape the nightmare of neoliberal capitalism and the climate and many other crises to which it has condemned us, who must ultimately deal with the threat of Trumpism, whose main common feature is a reactionary rage. That rage at present shows few signs of significantly abating, but the plentiful fissures neoliberalism has produced leave capitalism open to a variety of assaults by workers in their ecosocialist efforts to abolish capitalism and build a sustainable socialist society.

While the majority of US working people do not appear to be caught up in one or another of these reactionary centripetal forces,1 they are nonetheless affected by the ideology

1 See Eugene Scott, “Data About the Capitol Rioters Serves Another Blow to the White, Working-Class, Trump- Supporter Narrative,” WashingtonPost.com; April 12, 2021; Internet; available at https:// www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/12/data-about-capitol-rioters-serves-another-blow-white-working-class- trump-supporter-narrative/; accessed April 12, 2021. A study of data from the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol—an attempt to stop the Electoral College vote disfavoring Trump—shows that those who assaulted the Capitol, “were mainly middle-class to upper-middle-class whites who were fearful that as culture continued to change, so would their status in society.” The article reported that “20 researchers systematically and thoroughly scrubbed media sources to discover the occupation data of those arrested.” 180 and rationality of capitalism in many ways that pose problems for the development of their own emancipatory efforts. The US Marxist economist Paul A. Baran, in his 1960 essay

“Marxism and Psychoanalysis,” observed the way that capitalism’s daily operation insinuates its rationality, or partial rationality, into the minds of all who live within it, workers no less than capitalists. He argued that the gargantuan expansion of the productive resources of society, much ballyhooed by the defenders of capitalism, has actually limited, even damaged, human consciousness in distinctive ways. “Based on a spectacular intensification of the subjugation of nature (including human nature) by [capitalist] society,” wrote Baran, “this growth of productivity has promoted (and has been promoted by) a tremendous increase of rationality in the productive process as well as in the mental habits of men.”1 However, Baran noted, this “has been primarily an advance of partial rationality and has remained essentially confined to segments of the social fabric, to its particular units and aspects,” which can be seen in the cost, price and profit calculations in capitalist industry and agriculture, “as well as [in] their efforts to manipulate the market.” An increase in total rationality, “of rationality in the overall organization and functioning of society” has not occurred; in fact, “the disparity between partial and total rationality has been growing increasingly pronounced.” As Baran put it,

This can be fully realized if one thinks of the contrast between the automated, electronically controlled factory and the economy as a whole with its millions of unemployed and other millions of uselessly employed people; if one considers the efficiency with which redundant chrome and fins are being applied to unfunctional automobiles; or if one contemplates the palatial office towers, planned and equipped according to the last word of science, in which highly skilled employees devise the most effective methods for the promotion of a new soap, standing next to squalid slums in which families of five vegetate in one dilapidated filthy room.2

1 Paul A. Baran, Marxism and Psychoanalysis (New York: Monthly Review, 1960), 10–11. 2 Baran, Marxism and Psychoanalysis, 11. 181

In fact, Baran wrote, the dichotomy between what capitalist partial rationality makes possible and what capitalist society serves up for the working-class majority comes into focus when “breathtaking productive power” is juxtaposed with the “death, the misery, the human degradation, that mark the existence of the great majority of mankind subsisting in the underdeveloped countries.” Further, he considered that what passes for an

“increase in rationality is frequently nothing but the amplification and propagation of business ‘know how,’ of the rationality of the capitalist market” which “takes market relations for granted” and is “exclusively directed towards manipulation in the interest of corporate enterprise.” Baran makes the point that at no previous time in human history has the dominance of such a relative few over the means of life, over the relations of production,

“been to such an extent power over the life and death of millions of men, women, and children,” that so completely fixates “the productive apparatus as a power outside and above the individual, a power dominating his existence but entirely inaccessible to his control.”1

For Baran, human rationality is hobbled under such conditions, with “[i]mportant parts of physics and chemistry…pressed into the service of war and destruction; much mathematical and statistical ingenuity…turned into an auxiliary of monopolistic market control and profit maximization; psychology …a prostitute of ‘motivation research’ and personnel management; biology…made into a handmaiden of pharmaceutical rackets; and art, language, color, and sound…degraded into instrumentalities of advertising.” In short, capitalism pushes its partial rationality “into a direction that bears no relation to the

1 Baran, Marxism and Psychoanalysis, 12–13. 182 prerequisites for, and the needs of, human health, happiness, and development.”1 His understanding of the partial rationality of capitalism, written a decade and a half before the mid-1970s advent of neoliberalism’s capitalist revenge, shows that the contours of its rationality could already be seen by some. His understanding largely coincides with Wendy

Brown’s understanding of neoliberal rationality and its effects on workers. He sees this rationality, first, as solidifying itself into a:

system of rules, procedures, and habits of thought that not only does not further the satisfaction of human needs but becomes a formidable obstacle to human development and, indeed, survival. As bourgeois rationality tums increasingly into the rationality of domination, exploitation, and war, the ordinary man revolts against this obstruction to his aspirations for peace, happiness, and freedom.2

With humanity “afflicted with ‘common sense’ that is studiously nurtured by all the agencies of bourgeois culture and the principal injunction of which is to take capitalist rationality for granted, [workers] can hardly avoid identifying the rationality of buying, selling, and profit-making with reason itself.” As Baran puts it, the “revolt against capitalist rationality, against the rationality of markets and profits, thus becomes a revolt against reason itself, turns into anti-intellectualism, and promotes aggressiveness toward those who manage to capitalize on the rules of the capitalist game to their advantage and advancement. It renders him an easy prey of irrationality.” Baran posits that

“[i]rrationality and aggressiveness in our time are, therefore, not emanations of some unalterable human instincts. Nor do they express simply the supposedly ‘natural’ rejection of reason. Irrationality and aggressiveness in our time reflect primarily the refusal to accept

1 Baran, Marxism and Psychoanalysis, 13. 2 Baran, Marxism and Psychoanalysis, 14. 183 as sacrosanct the rationality of capitalism.”1

Secondly, Baran posits that the result of capitalism’s “tremendous intensification of human domination over nature” was not only “a momentous rise in the output of goods, services, health, and literacy—combined with a spectacular lightening of the burden of human toil” (at least in the advanced capitalist countries of the North, and for the white majority). It was an advance, as Baran points out, “achieved not merely by the expansion of human control over the objects and energies of the outside world; it was based on a perhaps even more radical subjugation of the nature of man himself.” In precapitalist times, “sheer violence and elaborate systems of political enforcement always played a major role in the extraction of the requisite resources” coveted by ruling classes. As the history of capitalism shows, both sheer violence and elaborate systems of political enforcement also played a major role in the rise of capitalism. “Yet neither would have been able to fulfill this task had it not been for the development and propagation of religious, legal, moral—in one word: ideological—notions,” wrote Baran. Such notions “sanctified the ruling classes' claims to their appropriations and…were turned in the course of centuries into a comprehensive network of internalized thoughts, beliefs, fears, and hopes, compelling the people to recognize the rights and to heed the demands of their rulers.”2

The alienation of humankind from their humanity is spurred by “market-oriented deliberateness” and “market-induced suppression of spontaneity,” Baran posits. It is surprising that even more working people are not disfigured and set against each other in this

1 Baran, Marxism and Psychoanalysis, 14. 2 Baran, Marxism and Psychoanalysis, 15. 184 capitalist environment, since “[t]his alienation of man from himself—the maiming of the individual, the subjugation of his nature to the needs of dog-eat-dog capitalist enterprise, the mortal wounding of his spontaneity, and the molding of his personality into a self-seeking, deliberate, calculating, and circumspect participant in (and object of) the capitalist process— represents the basic framework within which the psychic condition of men evolves in today’s capitalist society.”1

British writer and philosopher Mark Fisher, in conceptualizing how capitalism creates—in the Manifesto’s words—“a world after its own image,”2 used an alternative term similar in meaning to Wendy Brown’s neoliberal mode of reason and valuation, or neoliberal rationality, and Paul Baran’s partial rationality of capitalism. Fisher called it capitalist realism—the concept that neoliberal capitalism produced a mode of thought in which, following Margaret Thatcher’s line of neoliberal thinking (“there is no alternative to capitalism”), life under contemporary capitalism circumscribes rationality and stunts the human imagination to the extent that “it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism.”3 It is a perfect philosophy for a capitalism that has brought us to the civilizational climate crisis. Neoliberalism necessarily is capitalist realist, but capitalist realism need not always be neoliberal, in that other lines of thought can lead to the same philosophical dead-end—e.g., the liberal democracy of Fukuyama’s mythical bourgeois democratic “end of history.”4

1 Baran, Marxism and Psychoanalysis, 17. 2 Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 7. 3 Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2009) The phrase “it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism” is attributed to Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek. 4 US political scientist and professor Francis Fukuyama infamously celebrated the “end of history” in the development of bourgeois liberal democracy, which was already largely dead under the assault of neoliberalism, in his critically panned book, the End of History and the Last Man, published in 1992 after the fall of the Soviet Union. 185

Fisher showed that neoliberalism, which fancied itself an end to bureaucratic regulation under capitalism in favor of higher profits, instead reared a new authoritarian post-

Fordist management1 regime so oppressive he calls it “market Stalinism.” Fisher observed that “[t]he idealized market was supposed to deliver ‘friction free’ exchanges, in which the desires of consumers would be met directly, without the need for intervention or mediation by regulatory agencies. Yet the drive to assess the performance of workers and to measure forms of labor especially in a largely post-industrial society like the United States—forms which, by their nature, are resistant to quantification—has inevitably required additional layers of management and bureaucracy.”2 This new “team” form of bureaucracy “takes the form not of a specific, delimited function performed by particular workers but invades all areas of work, with the result that—as Kafka prophesied—workers become their own auditors, forced to assess their own performance.”3 Neoliberal market Stalinism, often made even more efficient by software that logs keystrokes and by continually exhorting workers to

“work smarter,” is similar in effect to what Foucault describes in his book Discipline and

Punish, where the “place of surveillance” need not be constantly occupied.4 “The effect of not knowing whether you will be observed or not produces an introjection of the surveillance apparatus. You constantly act as if you are always about to be observed,” Fisher wrote. It is,

Fisher asserted, “a kind of postmodern capitalist version of Maoist confessionalism, in which workers are required to engage in constant symbolic self-denigration.”5

1 Fordist management was the capitalist division of labor during much of the twentieth century, with the advent of such management in Ford’s automobile production line. 2 Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 46–47. 3 Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 55. 4 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: , 1995) 249–250. 5 Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 56. 186

Fisher argues for the creation of a socialist worldview in which human society “is not reducible to an aggregation of individuals and their interests,” as the neoliberal worldview asserts. “The symptoms of the failures of this worldview are everywhere—in a disintegrated social sphere in which teenagers shooting each other has become commonplace, in which hospitals incubate aggressive superbugs.” He believes that “[n]ew forms of industrial action need to be instituted,” along with “a new struggle over work and who controls it; an assertion of worker autonomy (as opposed to control by management).”1 In fact, Fisher sees that:

The long, dark night of the end of history has to be grasped as an enormous opportunity. The very oppressive pervasiveness of capitalist realism means that even glimmers of alternative political and economic possibilities can have a disproportionately great effect. The tiniest event can tear a hole in the grey curtain of reaction which has marked the horizons of possibility under capitalist realism. From a situation in which nothing can happen, suddenly anything is possible again.2

This chapter asked the question, Why has the crisis accelerated so rapidly? The short answer—perhaps all that is needed in concluding the chapter—is that the US capitalist class made a ruthless choice. It is certainly not the first ruling class to make such a ruthless choice, but it may be the last, thanks to its rapidly worsening climate crisis—whether as a result of human extinction or human advancement to a sustainable ecosocialist society.

The capitalist class feared losing its wealth and its positions of power and privilege as a result of falling rates of profit and increasing social anarchy. Its inhuman solution, the one proposed by the likes of Rand, Hayek, Mises, Friedman and other neoliberals, vastly turned up the pressure on workers, nature and human society itself to ensure that its positions of wealth,

1 Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 81–83. 2 Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 84–85. 187 power and privilege were maintained. Its attacks were economic and political, ecological and ideological, as this chapter has shown. As production accelerated, so did the exponential spread of its smokestacks, emissions and philosophical and cultural consequences.

When science discovered what was happening, its warnings were ignored and the capitalist class pushed on, pumping more and more accelerant into its fossil-fuel driven economy and trapping more and more heat in the atmosphere. The result was the upturned

Hockey Stick graph showing the rapid increase in greenhouse gases—a horizontal shaft representing emissions since the 1890 advent of the Industrial Revolution, and the tip of the blade pointed toward the heavens, beginning in the postwar period but exponentially accelerating with no end in sight in the mid-1970s, an ever more vertical line until no one is left to record it. Capitalism has delivered us to its brave new world with—for a very short time given its climate crisis—much more to eat and many more mouths to feed, cell phones, modern appliances and plenty of mindless entertainment in a world for which it proudly but profanely expects thanks from humanity, a world that is rapidly approaching the point at which bourgeois democratic society itself may be unsustainable and life itself unlivable.

Chapter Five asks the question: Are there any countervailing forces capable of resolving the crisis? It first deals with ways of thinking and acting that can lead to an escape from neoliberal rationality and capitalist realism, contrasting several writers who have worked over the past century to identify forces they believe are capable of pulling the emergency brake on the runaway train of profit-driven capitalism, positing the possibility that humanity may yet regain control of its life and health and prevent the destruction of all life on the planet. It then sketches some of the pathways for building a truly sustainable, democratic ecosocialist society.

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“As Badiou has forcefully insisted, an effective anticapitalism must be a rival to Capital, not a reaction to it; there can be no return to pre-capitalist territorialities. Anti-capitalism must oppose Capital's globalism with its own, authentic, universality.” —Mark Fisher, in Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?1

CHAPTER V

REVOLUTIONARY OPPORTUNITIES FROM NATURE’S REVENGE

Are there any countervailing forces capable of resolving the crisis?

Fisher’s admonition, following Badiou, suggests that the ecosocialist movement we seek to build as a tool to abolish capitalism, survive its climate crisis and build a sustainable of socialism must not only rival capital in its global proportions, but in its universality as well. A far more massive global force than capitalism already exists, and ecosocialist thought can help to mobilize it. It also provides a far more universalizing philosophy than the minority neoliberal philosophy of capitalism because serves the majority class and its international solidarity. That force is the global working class, the “grave diggers” of capitalism of which Marx and Engels presciently but too optimistically wrote in 1848 in the Communist Manifesto.2 Capitalism has proven capable of preventing a lasting for over 150 years. But further

1 Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 82. 2 Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 12–13. “The essential condition for the existence, and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labor. Wage-labor rests exclusively on competition between the laborers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the laborers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of modern industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave diggers. (Italics added.) Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.” While in 1848 this assessment was a rhetorical one, today the potential exists for it to finally play out.

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189 prevention seems unlikely to remain possible as the climate crisis batters the system and exposes its vulnerabilities.

Many no doubt remain unconvinced of this, perhaps understandably so, given the passage of time and the lack of working-. Yet there are reasons for hope, though optimism is neither warranted nor useful. This chapter will show that not only is the working class still the only force capable of ending capitalism and the climate crisis, it also has a potent ally: Call it nature’s revenge. It is the climate crisis itself, the mighty force of nature. Nature’s assistance, however, does not assure victory in this struggle, for victory will depend upon our own revolutionary efforts. That assistance is, dialectically, embodied in the very revenge nature will propagate over the coming years as a result of capitalism’s climate crisis. Each and every emergency nature produces in response to capitalism’s destructive assault will provide new opportunities for working people to move forward in an effort to rid the Earth of capitalism.

In his book, Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American

Scene, US political scientist, professor and author Adolph Reed, Jr., shows that the basis of organizing a movement for socialism must be class, notwithstanding the crucial importance of race and sex, among other central issues, in the capitalist United States. “The goal of building a mass movement…requires proceeding from those identities that unite as much of the society as possible around a vision and program that most directly challenge the current power relations,” he writes. The centrality of class, even at a time when many workers fail to see themselves as members of the working class, is crucial for Reed not merely because that is the basis upon which Marx and Engels urged workers to organize a 190 century and a half ago, but because under capitalism class relations remain essentially unchanged. In their time, propertyless workers were forced upon pain of starvation to find a capitalist master to exploit them; in our time their situation is only different in degree. “For the vast majority of people in this country–of all racial classifications or identities, all genders and sexual orientations–the common frame of reference is the employment relation, the fact of working, or being expected to work, a job.”1 This shared frame of reference is what makes organizing around class so central to our struggle:

[T]he concerns and aspirations that are most widely shared are those that are rooted in the common experience of everyday life shaped and constrained by political economy–for example, finding, keeping or advancing in a job with a living wage, keeping or attaining access to decent healthcare, securing decent, affordable housing, pursuing education for oneself and intimates, being able to seek or keep the protection of a union, having time for quality-of-life, being able to care adequately for children and elders, having access to good quality public services and social infrastructure.2

The nature of the climate crisis as a series of ongoing, related and worsening catastrophes—including coastal collapse from rising sea levels, hurricanes, floods, droughts, famines, wildfires, and mass extinctions of flora and fauna—will devastate humanity, often locally or regionally as the global crisis worsens. Much of this devastation cannot be prevented at this late date. Its interference with the economic security of workers, historically the biggest driver of labor unrest, will be calamitous. It has advanced too far under a neoliberal capitalist regime that chooses to do as little as possible to prepare for the vast human emergency that will result, let alone make all the changes needed to end the crisis,

1 Adolph L. Reed, Jr. Class Notes: Posing as Politics and Other Thoughts on the American Scene (New York: , 2000), xxvii. 2 Reed, Class Notes, xxvii. 191 notwithstanding the very small steps in the right direction proposed by the Biden administration.

Each local or regional crisis, despite the vast human misery they will create, will nonetheless also help build a terrain that affords opportunities to the working class to educate, agitate and organize for an end to the capitalist cause of the crisis. While neoliberal capitalist economists, “,” and politicians discovered that shock therapy was an effective tactic to advance capitalist interests in Pinochet’s Chile and elsewhere, shock therapy can be turned against them by the working-class majority. The deadly response of nature to capitalist rapacity will afford plentiful opportunities for workers to conduct their own attacks on capitalism and against the efforts, sure to come, of neoliberal shock troops seeking to take advantage of the same opportunities to further their profit-motivated destruction.

Naomi Klein argues something similar in No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s

Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need. For Klein, Trump’s reactionary movement represents what she calls “racial capitalism,” after Cedric Robinson.1 She advocates that a movement must be built following the prescriptions of her Canadian “Leap

Manifesto: A Call for a Canada Based on Caring for the Earth and One Another.”2 She argues for a reformist response to Trumpism that opposes austerity and promotes the rights of the indigenous and other peoples as well as the environment. She makes an impassioned plea for a “reverse shock” or a “people’s shock” to make “an evolutionary leap” beyond or over the neoliberal shock doctrine wielded by Trump and others like him.3 Klein wishes for a kinder, gentler capitalism. In her book, On Fire: The (Burning) Case for ,

1 Naomi Klein. No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017), 95. 2 Klein, No Is Not Enough, 267. 3 Klein, No Is Not Enough, 234, 266. 192 she makes an urgent and cogent case for a Green New Deal as a means of addressing climate change, job shortages, and social justice issues—a case that deserves widespread coverage and acknowledgment despite its reform orientation.1 Some form of Green New Deal must begin soon, as our best science shows us we must cut fossil fuel emissions rapidly if life on

Earth is to survive the immense warming already in progress and the catastrophic effects it is already and increasingly unleashing on us all. 2 However, a movement to end the crisis cannot stop at mere reforms, which will always be subject to the political dominance of the capitalist class. We must target the capitalist-owned economy that is daily occupied by the vast working majority, with the goal of building a movement capable of taking, holding, and operating it in the interests of that majority.

Bill McKibben shares a reformist view similar to that of Klein. Toward the end of his book Falter, McKibben sums up how he sees our present dire circumstances when he writes,

The antigovernment impulse currently runs our world. It’s expressed by all those cabinet officials who keep The Fountainhead on the bedside table, all those billionaires who gather with the Koch brothers to figure out the course of our politics, all those Silicon Valley moguls who want nothing standing in the way of their next . These are people who, at some level, hate the idea of society, who organize campaigns against public transit, who try to dismantle public schools and national parks, who instinctively head for the gated enclave.… [T]hey currently possess a savage leverage, perhaps power enough to end the human game…. The endless efforts to gerrymander districts, suppress voting, race-bait, gin up cynicism in our politics, confuse us about issues such as climate change—these are nothing more than efforts to weaken society so it can’t exert power over its most dominant individuals.3

However, he cannot bring himself to seek a fundamental, socialist change.

McKibben argues that the problem is the “kind” of capitalism we have in the United

1 Klein, On Fire, 280-291. 2 and others have proposed similar plans for a Green New Deal. See BernieSanders.com; Internet; available at https://berniesanders.com/issues/green-new-deal/, accessed April 17, 2021; see UN science agency recommendations on the climate crisis at https://www.ipcc.ch and https://ipbes.net. 3 McKibben, Falter, 243-244. 193

States. “The kind of capitalism turning America into a creepy jungle is very different,” he writes. “Call it laissez-faire, or neoliberalism, or ‘getting government out of the way,’ or being

‘corporate-friendly.’ Whatever you call it, it’s a particularly rapacious variant that’s causing our current problem.”1 Ahistorically, he sees a slightly less rapacious, somewhat more regulated capitalism in some countries of Europe, and wishes our capitalism could be more like theirs, apparently unaware that Europe, too, is already largely in thrall to the austerity politics of neoliberalism,2 and trending further and further that direction, as both national and international capitalist groups press for less regulation by the relevant political states.

For writers like Foster and other ecosocialists, the demands of a Green New Deal should, however, be immediate demands within an overall revolutionary effort. Andreas

Malm makes that suggestion in a 2018 article on revolutionary strategy for the movement. He advocates something like the Communist Manifesto’s approach in 1848, with a list of immediate demands and a revolutionary goal. Malm suggests a list of 10 demands, good enough to start with, but better determined democratically by a revolutionary organization.3

1 McKibben, Falter, 89. 2 Simon Nixon, “The European Union’s Neoliberal Dilemma,” WallStreetJournal.com; October 14, 2017; Internet; available at https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-european-unions-neoliberal-dilemma-1507147154; accessed April 17, 2021. See also Bill Mitchell, “The EU Is Neoliberal to Its Core and Captured by Corporate Interests,” BilboEconomicOutlook.net; February 18, 2019; Internet; available at http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=41571; accessed April 17, 2021. 3 Andreas Malm, “Revolutionary Strategy in a Warming World,” ClimateAndCapitalism.com; March 17, 2018; Internet; available at https://climateandcapitalism.com/2018/03/17/malm-revolutionary-strategy/; accessed April 18, 2021. Reprinted from Andreas Malm, “Revolution in a Warming World,” Socialist Register 2017 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2016). His original list of demands: 1. Enforce a complete moratorium on all new facilities for extracting coal, oil or natural gas; 2. Close down all power-plants running on such fuels; 3. Draw 100 per cent of electricity from non-fossil sources, primarily wind and solar; 4. Terminate the expansion of air, sea and road travel; convert road and sea travel to electricity and wind; ration remaining air travel to ensure a fair distribution until it can be completely replaced with other means of transport; 5. Expand mass transit systems on all scales, from subways to intercontinental high-speed trains; 6. Limit the shipping and flying of food and systematically promote local supplies; 7. End the burning of tropical forests and initiate massive programs for ; 8. Refurbish old buildings with insulation and require all new ones to generate their own zero-carbon power; 9. Dismantle the and move human protein requirements towards sources; 10. Pour public investment into the development and diffusion of the most efficient and sustainable renewable energy technologies, as well as technologies for . 194

Foster, in an article in Monthly Review, rejects the idea of a return to the past, to some previous kind of capitalism. That idea represents “the hope that the pendulum will swing back again, leading to a more affirmative-style liberalism or social democracy.” Foster writes that this mistakenly “sustains the belief that the failures of unregulated capitalism can be countered by a return to regulated capitalism, a new Keynesian age—as if history had stood still,”1 and as though the massive capitalist pressure for continued neoliberal policies, however inhibited, did not exist.

Such a hope, and the belief it sustains, are based on magical thinking, he maintains.

Social in Europe have been tending toward neoliberalism at least since the fall of the Soviet Union, which threatened capitalism since 1917 with the idea that a better society was possible, though it never achieved socialism. For lack of developed material conditions and the authoritarian tendencies that result from a vanguardist view of socialism,

Stalinists, Maoists and other vanguardists implemented not socialism but a new form of class rule—bureaucratic state despotism. Nonetheless, faced with the threat of socialism, and by unionized working classes in much of Europe pressing for it, capitalists in some

European countries were willing to compromise—the birth of social democracy. Moreover, social democracies arose at a time when the imperialist power of the major capitalist nations was boosting their wealth, allowing a few extra crumbs for workers to be brushed from the

“king’s table” without significantly diminishing the king’s wealth. Today there are no noncapitalist societies opposed to capitalism. In short, material conditions have changed.

“Neoliberalism today,” writes Foster, “is ingrained in capitalism itself, in the phase of

1 Foster, “Capitalism Has Failed…” 195 monopoly-financial capital.” As he puts it, “The earlier age of industrial-capital dominance, on which was based, is now gone.” Foster contends that historical material conditions are now vastly different. “[T]he liberal-democratic state and the dominance of a purportedly enlightened industrial-capitalist class willing to engage in a social accord with labor is largely a relic of the past, with its structural bases having all but disappeared.”1

Certainly political organization alone cannot significantly reform neoliberal capitalism nor bring it down and establish a sane society—not when the roots of capitalist power lie in its private ownership and dictatorial control of the economy. A multifaceted movement must be created that includes both political and economic forms of organization that together credibly create a genuine threat to the rule of capital itself—not merely the neoliberal way in which that rule is manifested.

That threat—the threat to take, hold and operate the economy for the benefit of the overwhelming majority—is crucial whether the goal is an immediate demand for Green

New Deal reform or for a thoroughgoing revolution that permanently denies capitalists the

“liberty” to exploit others for material gain and establishes instead of the economy and democratic administration to serve the needs and wants of all. Without the credible threat of revolutionary economic and political force, hope for either reform or revolution will be smashed.

There are many already working to support and build facets of that movement, and neoliberal capitalism has enough cracks in its armor to allow such efforts breathing

1 Foster, “Capitalism Has Failed…” 196 space to grow, though the task is a daunting one, for capitalism must be attacked on many fronts to produce a real threat to capitalist rule. Moreover, as it continues to cut the ground from beneath its own feet to the extent that it targets even the idea of society itself, new opportunities will arise for the overwhelming majority to redefine and reshape society for the benefit of all, up to and including the possibilities for complete collapse as a result of environmental, economic, political or other factors.

Some observers of the working-class response to the fury of capitalism’s neoliberal assault see not only that workers are increasingly fighting back even in the North, but that they are doing so with an energy that can be channeled into “sustained organizational and political power over the coming years,” as Eric Blanc writes in Red-State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike

Wave and Working-Class Politics.1 In the case of teachers’ strikes in West Virginia, Arizona and Oklahoma in 2018, wildcat actions were not only in response to decades of cutbacks in education, but were determined enough to override the objections of procapitalist union bureaucrats and threats from the political state and its repressive police apparatus.

Blanc quotes one West Virginia teacher who describes the moment when teachers rejected a bad deal and refused to return to work, spontaneously defying both their state union officials and the governor:

‘It was my favorite moment of the whole strike. I was watching everyone around me and my jaw dropped. I saw that people, my co-workers who had felt powerless for so long, now after four days of striking felt their collective power. When they yelled, ‘We are the union bosses!’ They really meant it. It was so beautiful to witness that realization.”2

1 Eric Blanc, Red-State Revolt: The Teachers’ Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics (London: Verso, 2019), 210. 2 Blanc, Red-State Revolt, 93. 197

An Arizona teacher commented that “[t]he movement and the walkout really increased people’s political awareness and our level of grassroots organization.... People now have the courage to fight.”1 An Oklahoma middle-school teacher observed that she and her fellow teachers received as a result of their struggle “a crash course in politics and government and will never be able to unsee what they have seen.”2 A page devoted to one strike grew to 20,000 members from 1,260 within a month.3

While none of these struggles explicitly advanced a socialist goal, they do show how rapidly consciousness can change in the class struggle. Class consciousness will certainly be a part of the struggle to end capitalism, and while the growth of class consciousness may not have prominently figured into these struggles yet, the rapid change in their thinking does show the organic way in which struggle itself plays a role in building revolutionary consciousness. In her 1906 pamphlet The Mass Strike, Polish-German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg wrote of the same phenomenon:

…this awakening of class feeling expressed itself forthwith in the circumstance that the proletarian mass…quite suddenly and sharply came to realize how intolerable was that social and economic existence which they had patiently endured for decades in the chains of capitalism. Thereupon there began a spontaneous general shaking of and tugging at these chains. All the innumerable sufferings of the [present] reminded them of the old bleeding wounds.4

Luxemburg observed that participation in the class struggle’s back-and-forth battles itself quickly teaches consciousness of one’s class position and enemies. It is this process of class struggle that makes possible rapid social gains and national transformation.

1 Blanc, Red-State Revolt, 8. 2 Blanc, Red-State Revolt, 4. 3 Blanc, Red-State Revolt, 114, 115. 4 Rosa Luxemburg, The Mass Strike, the and the , in Paul Buhle, Reform or Revolution and Other Writings, by Rosa Luxemburg (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2006), Kindle Edition, 117. 198

Her thinking is not unlike that of evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould, who in

Punctuated Equilibrium saw a similar natural process at work in evolution. His then revolutionary but now predominant view is that stasis is common among species until rapid environmental change causes rapid evolutionary changes in response.1 As we humans are but another animal species, it cannot be surprising if the climate crisis, nature’s revenge, stimulates social evolution for us as well. As Andreas Malm writes, “It doesn’t take much imagination to associate climate change with revolution. If the planetary order upon which all societies are built starts breaking down, how can they possibly remain stable?”2

A recent article about the spread of strikes during the COVID-19 pandemic in The

Guardian, among many other sources, reveals how even a workforce once thought docile and clueless to any concept of itself as a class can explode when conditions are right. As

The Guardian put it, “Wildcat strikes, walkouts and protests over working conditions have erupted across the US throughout the coronavirus pandemic as ‘essential’ workers have demanded better pay and safer working conditions.”3 Workers at General Electric plants in Massachusetts, Virginia, Texas, and New York threatened strikes in April if the company did not switch production to ventilators to aid recovery of the victims of the virus.4

Such struggles are the crucible in which class consciousness is built, contrary to the

1 See Stephen J. Gould, Punctuated Equilibrium (Cambridge: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2007) 2 Malm, “Revolutionary Strategy in a Warming World.” 3 Michael Sainato, “Strikes Erupt as US Essential Workers Demand Protection Amid Pandemic,” TheGuardian.com, May 19, 2020; Internet; available at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/19/strikes-erupt-us-essential- workers-demand-better-protection-amid-pandemic?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1; accessed May 20, 2020. 4 Katie Ferrari, “GE Workers Protest, Demand to Make Ventilators,” LaborNotes.org, April 13, 2020; Internet; available at https://www.labornotes.org/blogs/2020/04/ge-workers-protest-demand-make-ventilators; accessed May 20, 2020. 199 prognostications of some on the right that it is a fiction. To the contrary, class struggle has been the primary driver of human history. Class consciousness is never far below the surface among the exploited and oppressed, precisely because of their shared experiences.

Moreover, as the climate crisis worsens, increasingly more catastrophically, working people will be forced to confront both the profit-motivated causal role of capitalism in the crisis and the denialist, obstructionist lies perpetrated for decades by a capitalist class still blatantly contemptuous of working people and human society. American Marxist Daniel

De Leon made a similar observation in 1898:

Between the working class and the capitalist class, there is an irrepressible conflict, a class struggle for life. No glib-tongued politician can vault over it, no capitalist professor or official statistician can argue it away; no capitalist parson can veil it; no labor faker can straddle it; no “reform” architect can bridge it over. It crops up in all manner of ways, like in this strike, in ways that disconcert all the plans and all the schemes of those who would deny or ignore it. It is a struggle that will not down, and must be ended, only by either the total subjugation of the working class, or the abolition of the capitalist class.1

Moreover, Immanuel Ness, in Southern Insurgency, sees the crucible of class struggle as massively enlarged by “the rapid industrialization that has occurred in the

Global South over the past four decades,” which “now dominates global working patterns.”

He maintains that “the ascendancy of production workers in these new production centers today substantially overshadows the historical size of the working class of mass production in the Global North during its heyday in the 20th century.”2 Ness notes increasingly militant and largely spontaneous struggle across the South among groups of workers with little doubt about their class identification or the class struggle—despite being comprised of

1 Daniel De Leon, “What Means This Strike?,” Marxists.org, Feb. 11, 1898; Internet; available at https:// www.marxists.org/archive/deleon/works/1898/980211.htm; accessed May 20, 2020. 2 Ness, Southern Insurgency, 1-2. 200 mostly impoverished migrant workers with few rights. That is not the typical segment of the working class that engaged in struggle in the North—but that was an earlier time with less access to worldwide news and information to affect militancy.

Ness also notes that as the industrial working class developed in the South, “in a growing range of industries, many worker protests in the South over the past two decades over wages and conditions could only be suppressed by armed state repression and violence.” While the labor movement in the North has struggled to stay alive—thanks no doubt to the procapitalist orientation rendering most unions near-useless against incessant capitalist-class attacks—Ness argues that, “more than 40 years after the onslaught of the economic, political, and intellectual offensive against organized labor throughout the world (neoliberalism), the working class has a heartbeat and is stronger than ever before despite the dramatic decline in organized labor.” Such an assessment, he writes,

“is rooted in an empirical examination of workers’ movements over the last decade which can no longer be contained by the state and international monopoly capital.” Further, Ness argues, the defeat of Northern business unions actually helped workers in the Global South by marginalizing “their existing supine and bureaucratic order” in the South and regenerating

“a fierce workers’ movement in the early 21st century.” 1 For Ness:

Workers can no longer rely on bureaucratic union leaders to defend them. Authentic worker struggles proceed from industrial workers themselves, who are both building independent unions and, where the workers’ organizations they build are not officially unrecognized, challenging existing labor unions to represent their interests. It is the development of worker radicalism that will shape the form and survival of decaying traditional unions. In the absence of recognized unions the results of these rank-and-file struggles are mixed, but the evidence in this book demonstrates that these movements are gaining traction, and achieving real wage gains and improvement in conditions.2

1 Ness, Southern Insurgency, 1-3. 2 Ness, Southern Insurgency, 189. 201

Ness ends his account by saying that in each of his case studies “organizational representation is subordinate to the workers’ movements themselves.” However, he observes,

“to build on these struggles workers will need a disciplined and strong class-based organization

….Eventually the worker mobilization that is taking place both inside and outside established structures will cohere into disciplined organizations.” Ness’s overview of the class struggle in the Global South “demonstrates that the time when workers can be taken for granted or ignored is over.” He asserts that his research shows that “[w]orkers’ movements are emerging, and will expand to contest the legitimacy of capital, the state, and existing unions.”1As they do, it will be crucial for them to remember why the unions of the North failed. History shows that many of the original unions of the North were initially socialist oriented, and as soon as they compromised on that focus, they became weak collaborationist tools of the owning class, fit only as an impotent rear guard for a retreating army, dependent upon the capitalist state for legislative supports that neoliberalism has now withdrawn. New legislative possibilities under the Biden administration will not substantially change that scenario, even if those legislative efforts are passed, as labor laws have historically served more to cement in place a largely useless labor bureaucracy than to advance the interests of workers as a class.2

Opposing Capital’s Globalism

Among the central conclusions of a growing number of writers and activists seeking solutions to the capitalist crisis of neoliberalism is that capitalism must be opposed by the

1 Ness, Southern Insurgency, 190. 2 Socialist Labor Party Statement, “What’s Wrong with the Labor Unions?” SLP.org; 1998; Internet; available at http://www.slp.org/res_state_htm/wrongunions.html; accessed April 18, 2021. 202 most inclusive movement yet seen, as suggested by the epigraph that opens this chapter.

Neoliberal capitalism is global in scope, so any effective working-class opposition must be internationalist. Neoliberalism is the long-standing ideology of capitalism, so its opposition must be fully socialist. Neoliberal capitalism is both anti-nature and anti-human; its opposition must be ecosocialist and humanist. Neoliberal capitalism is antidemocratic, so its opposition must be democratic. Neoliberalism is elitist, so the movement against it must be anti- vanguardist. Neoliberalism divides workers by race, ethnicity, sex, and religion, so its opposition must be antiracist, antisexist, inclusive and unifying. Neoliberalism is reactionary, and its opposition must be revolutionary.

Egyptian-French Marxist economist and historian Samir Amin (1931-2018), one of the most respected writers to argue for these tenets in the movement against neoliberal capitalism, makes an elegant call for such a movement in his book The World We Wish to

See: Revolutionary Objectives in the Twenty-First Century.1 Amin had a long career as an internationalist and Marxist activist. He was instrumental in setting on foot the so-called

Non-Aligned Movement at a conference in Bandung, Indonesia, in 1955—one of the original opponents of hegemonic US neoliberal imperialism in the postwar period. Bandung was “the first large-scale Afro-Asian conference held to oppose both sides in the Cold War, oppose any form of or neo-colonialism, and promote economic development of the African and Asian countries.”2

For its advocacy of developmentalism in the Global South, the Non-Aligned

1 See Samir Amin. The World We Wish to See (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2008). 2 Amin, The World We Wish to See, 135. 203

Movement became a target of the global neoliberal assault in the 1970s. Amin worked throughout his life to formulate and set afoot an international revolutionary socialist response to neoliberal capitalism, including a formative role in many organizations like the

1966 Tricontinental Conference in , Cuba, which aimed to support Third World liberation struggles; the 2001 founding in Brazil of the World Social Forum, which champions counter-hegemonic globalization; and in the 2006 Bamako Appeal issued at the

2006 Polycentric World Social Forum in Bamako, Mali. The Bamako Appeal “is an invitation to all the organizations of struggle representative of the vast majorities that comprise the working classes of the globe, to all those excluded from the neoliberal capitalist system, and to all people and political forces who support these principles—to work together in order to put into effect the new collective conscience, as an alternative to the present system of inequality and destruction.”1 In short, Amin has paved the way in working for just the kind of movement needed to fight neoliberalism and build a socialist internationalist alternative.

Amin saw unequivocally that any movement seeking to end the neoliberal assault on nature and humanity must target capitalism itself. As he wrote in The World We Wish to

See, “It is time to understand that the savage neoliberal offensive only reveals the true face of capitalism and imperialism.”2 His call to continue building the movement required to abolish capitalism is two-pronged.

First, he advocates the construction of “convergence in diversity,” by which he

1 John Bellamy Foster, “The Bamako Appeal,” MROnline.org, Jan. 17, 2006; Internet; available at https://mronline.org/2006/01/17/the-bamako-appeal/; accessed May 21, 2020. 2 Amin, The World We Wish to See, 35. 204 means a united front of popular organizations encompassing the tenets above.1 For Amin this meant joining the forces of all who are harmed by capitalism and are struggling against the injustice and oppression they experience: environmental groups, women’s groups, human rights groups, antipoverty groups, antiracist groups, prisoners’ groups, and so on. In this movement, consonant with Adolph Reed Jr., traditional class-based organizations must play a central role, for they still have positions in society that allow them the best access to seize, control and democratically operate the means of production in the interests of all:

Worker’s struggles for employment, wages, and job security, and peasant struggles for remunerative prices, access to the land and means to cultivate it properly, and agrarian reforms will continue to form the central axis of struggles likely to change the social balance of power. Unions and peasant organizations, consequently, are essential organizations for the movement. That is not always accepted because the middle classes often occupy the forefront in movement meetings. Unquestionably, the classic organizations through which the dominated classes express themselves and act are far from being appropriate to the new challenges. Transformations in the organization of labor and the management of economic life produced by the evolution of capitalism call for forms of organization and struggle by workers’ and peasants’ movements...2

Amin does not see the formation of a convergence in diversity as something which comes naturally to the multitude of groups pursuing their separate struggles against the effects of capitalism; he sees it as necessary, and something that will require constant work. Its membership will be comprised of those organizations who see that they can be stronger together than apart; those committed to the goal of widening the social sphere and making it strong by building democracy. He regards such work as “a contribution to the fundamental political debate of our time: how to construct a convergence in diversity that will make it

1 Amin, The World We Wish to See, 38. 2 Amin, The World We Wish to See, 36-37. 205 possible for dominated and oppressed classes in peoples to advance.”1 Reform is not sought for the sake of reform; his is not a reformist agenda, though every advance will be welcomed.

Ultimately, he says, “The principal threat confronting the movement is the risk of naïvely believing that it is possible to ‘change the world without taking power.’”2

The second dynamic of the required movement is the nurturing of an internationalist perspective. To aid this objective, Amin calls for, at a minimum, the action and strategy proposals of the Bamako Appeal. While the detailed appeal is too lengthy to be included here, it expresses its commitment to construct an internationalism that joins the working peoples of the South and North who are ravaged by the dictatorship of financial markets and the uncontrolled global expansion of transnational corporations; to construct the solidarity of the peoples of Asia, Africa , Europe, and the Americas confronted with the challenges of development in the twenty-first century; and to construct a political, economic and cultural consensus that is an alternative to neoliberal and militarized globalization and the hegemony of the United States and its allies.3

Beyond that, in The World We Wish to See, Amin also calls for the establishment of a working people’s association, an updated version of the First

International Workingmen’s Association of Marx’s time (1864-1876), whose purpose would be to strengthen “the internationalism of peoples.” It would work to “create favorable conditions in three directions that, combined closely together and not taken separately, build the alternative: social progress, the deepening of democracy, and the consolidation of

1 Amin, The World We Wish to See, 38. 2 Amin, The World We Wish to See, 37. 3 Amin. The World We Wish to See, 108. 206 national autonomy with a negotiated globalization.”1Amin repeated his call for a Fifth

International just before his death in 2018.2

Amin’s convergence in diversity concept is consonant with the “movement of movements” urged by Lawrence Cox and Alf Gunvald Nilson in We Make Our Own History:

Marxism and Social Movements in the Twilight of Neoliberalism. Their message begins on the same note of hope that drives Amin. “We make our own history. Social movements know this: it is why we struggle, sometimes against seemingly overwhelming odds, to make a different world.” This reality is sometimes “hard to recognize in the present, which is one reason activists often read movement history and the biographies of earlier generations of organizers: looking back, it is far clearer just how much movements have shaped the world we live in.”3 Their research shows that:

The end of monarchies and , freedoms of assembly and expression, wage raises and weekends, the development of welfare states, the end of fascism and apartheid, equal rights legislation, the legalization of homosexuality, the fall of dictatorships, defeats of environmentally destructive projects, and so on: with all their geographical restrictions, practical limitations and disappointments, all the backlash and vitriol, social movements from below have shaped the modern world. They have not done so alone, but in conflict with massively powerful movements from above: successive forms of capitalist accumulation, new types of state and hegemony, racist mobilizations and patriarchal movements, new forms of ‘common sense’ and brute force which have all attempted, often effectively, to reinforce existing structures of power, exploitation and sociocultural hierarchies.4

With hope but not optimism, Cox and Nilson argue that “at this point in its

1 Amin, The World We Wish to See, 79. 2 Heikki Patomäki, “The Rational Kernel Within Samir Amin’s Mythological Shell: the Idea of a Democratic and Pluralist World Political Party,” Globalizations, Vol. 16, 2019, #7; Internet; available at https:// www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14747731.2019.1651529; accessed May 22, 2020. 3 Laurence Cox and Alf Gunvald Nilsen, We Make Our Own History: Marxism and Social Movements in the Twilight of Neoliberalism (London: Pluto Press, 2014), vi. 4 Cox and Nilsen, We Make Our Own History, vi. 207 complex history, neoliberalism—a social movement from above that sought to restore profitability through market-oriented economic reforms pursued both against the popular gains that were institutionalized in state-centered forms of capitalist accumulation after

1945 in the global North and South, and against the movements of 1968 and after—is facing ever-deeper crisis.” They note that “With declining popular support, geopolitical reach and economic effectiveness, the neoliberal project is confronted with a growing wave of movements from below in much of the world.”1

Their critical realist approach is a dialectical one based on their activist work in

Ireland and India and the theoretical analysis they developed from it. “In our movements,” they write, “we regularly experienced defeats or unexpected breakthroughs which could not be explained in surface terms, whether those of the play of discourses or organizational gaming, but had to be referred to underlying power structures, social and economic relationships, or cultural assumptions.” They observe that “[a] critical realist theory of society combines this recognition of underlying realities with a critical approach — one that does not reaffirm the necessity of how things currently are, but acknowledges its constructed character and hence the possibility of challenging and changing structures.”2

For Cox and Nilson, it is clear that “the ability of neoliberal institutions to weather financial crisis, continue delivering the goods for their core supporters, maintain internal and international alliances and (literally) turn back the tide is increasingly feeble.” No alternative strategies for capitalism are within sight, and “neoliberal actors are increasingly adopting

1 Cox and Nilson, We Make Our Own History, vi. 2 Cox and Nilson, We Make Our Own History, ix. 208 a siege mentality, marked by a narrowing of public debate, the tightening of the screws of austerity and a quicker resort to repression.”1 It is unclear for them how collapsing neoliberal capitalism might continue to serve the capitalist class whose positions of power and privilege are at stake. A more accurate facsimile of the WWII-era corporatist fascism that inspires the racist, sexist Trumpist movement seems possible, but the weakness of the state under an unsteady administration led by any of the “leaders” that movement has so far produced may block such a development.

Of greater concern for workers is the question asked by Cox and Nilson: how can a movement for socialism advance within the crisis of crumbling neoliberal capitalism? They, similar to Amin, posit a “Marxist Theory of Social Movements.” They write that, “A movement capable of remaking the world needs to develop a substantial degree of (counter-) hegemony,” as if also echoing Fisher and Badieau in this chapter’s epigraph. Such a movement “needs to form long-term, strategic alliances (in which, Gramsci tells us, the leading group distinguishes itself both by its capacity to understand and include the perspectives of its internal opponents and by its ability to make concessions in terms of its own…self-interest) around a different way of organizing the social world, grounded in the life-activity of subaltern social groups.”2

A movement of movements:

will need to have a complex engagement with movements representing a range of class interests, gender positions and ethnic or racial identities – and show a genuine ability to engage with new expressions of the exploited, oppressed and stigmatized as they come to articulation – even if the decisive moment in terms of conflict is likely to arise before all such issues can be resolved. Similarly, it will need…a real presence if not in all global regions, then at least in a number of strategic ones, including those which at present operate as the core and from which power is exercised.3

1 Cox and Nilson, We Make Our Own History, 2-3. 2 Cox and Nilson, We Make Our Own History, 195. 3 Cox and Nilson, We Make Our Own History, 195. 209

An understanding of history shows that it is conceivable that the movement Cox and

Nilson seek to build could help extend the scope of the opposition beyond neoliberalism, to target its capitalist basis and its racial, patriarchal, global order. Their hopes involve large changes, but nothing that has not been historically subject to change. “[C]lass societies too,” they write, “come and go, as do forms of patriarchy and racism.”1 They see that “social relations shaped around internationalism and the encounter between different ways of being are far from unusual, even while they struggle against racism and nationalist stupidity. So too are practices of childrearing, relationship and family which point far beyond patriarchy—and…find themselves in conflict with ethno-religious ideologies and broader social power structures.” Cox and Nilson wish to articulate a different world that “takes these local rationalities seriously and names their opponents.” A movement for such a world “need not be overwhelming—or doomed to failure. It is also, as humanist Marxism underlines, a process of experiencing ourselves as we can be, engaged to the fullest with the other people we share our world with, remaking ourselves and our world.”2

The making of a “movement of movements” or Samir Amin’s “convergence in diversity” may be the best way to prevent further neoliberal capitalist acceleration of the climate crisis presently threatening Earth’s ecology with collapse. Though Cox and Nilson do not answer that question directly, they clearly regard any other approach as unworthy of humanity at this crossroads. In closing, they show a full understanding of the extent of the task ahead when they write:

1 Cox and Nilson, We Make Our Own History, 208. 2 Cox and Nilson, We Make Our Own History, 209. 210

[M]ovements from below have helped to create much of what makes our everyday lives worth living. Overcoming alienation is also this: recognizing both the successes and the limitations of our movements’ past efforts, and the ways in which we ourselves are formed by this history, able to draw on the “good sense” of previous movements, including their fossilized academic expressions, to articulate today’s needs and struggles against the hegemony of “common sense” shaped from above. As we become political subjects on our own behalf, recognize ourselves in each other and see the connections between our different movements, we come closer to being able not only to articulate the hope of “another world,” but also to bring it about.1

Seeking a new way forward as well, Joel Wainwright and Geoff Mann, in their book Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future,2 posit a theory of the political consequences of climate change—the climate crisis into which environmental destruction under neoliberal capitalism has already deeply thrust us. They argue, in essence, that we are so far into that crisis that to debate ways of avoiding it misses the crux of the issue: We will not avoid it. We are not working to defend the Earth we have today, but to salvage what is to come. Unavoidably, as international scientific consensus now shows, the

Earth we have today is already damaged and due for more massive change, as its once protective atmosphere continues to warm—the result of still accelerating greenhouse gas emissions from the continued burning of fossil fuels. That does not mean that worsening of these effects should not be opposed. However, it does mean that an economic system must be built to pick up the pieces once the fetters of capitalist production for private profit have been shattered—one that can effectively construct a sustainable future for humanity on something less than a dead Earth. With the crisis already here, what matters now is how we choose to

1 Cox and Nilson, We Make Our Own History, 209. 2 Joel Wainwright and Geoff Mann. Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future (London: Verso, 2020). The authors use Leviathan, by seventeenth-century English thinker Thomas Hobbes, as a foil for their thoughts on state and nature. 211 deal with its ongoing and increasingly deadly effects.

Wainwright and Mann wish to an understanding of our possible futures that avoids forecasts, but which acknowledges that “under pressure from climate change, the intensification of existing challenges to the extant global order will push existing forms of sovereignty toward one we call ‘planetary.’”1 They posit four competing scenarios regarding planetary sovereignty to deal with all the worsening aspects of the climate crisis—such as the slow-motion collapse of densely populated riparian, delta and coastal areas as a result of repeated flooding from rapid sea-level rise; more frequent and intense rains, hurricanes and other storms; more frequent, longer and more intense droughts; accelerated extinction of animal and plant life; more viruses and other biological hazards; rising problems for food production, including mounting water shortages; and the possibility of dreaded feedback loops and tipping points that, once set in motion or passed, can exponentially accelerate such effects and much more rapidly render Earth uninhabitable. Climate Leviathan sees a future where the forces pushing its four scenarios increasingly vie for supremacy.

The possible future they call Leviathan is a bourgeois liberal capitalism that aspires to a planetary “regulatory authority armed with democratic legitimacy, binding technical authority on scientific issues, and panopticon-like capacity to monitor the vital granular elements of our emerging world: fresh water, carbon emissions, climate refugees, and so on.”2 In a flight of fantasy, Climate Leviathan posits that this “US-led, liberal capitalist bloc will collaborate with China to create a planetary regime that, in light of political and

1 Wainwright and Mann, Climate Leviathan, X. 2 Wainwright and Mann, Climate Leviathan, 30. 212 ecological crisis, will brook no opposition in defense of a human future for which it volunteers itself as the first and last line of defense.” Leviathan seems the most likely scenario for

Wainwright and Mann since, they postulate, it may be the only way to salvage US hegemony for the capitalist elite. A second imaginary, Climate Mao, is a noncapitalist, state-planned Leviathan led by China—a similar flight of fancy with similar environmental prerogatives, but led by China.1

A third political future they call Behemoth is not seen as aspiring to planetary sovereignty. It is an extension of contemporary neoliberal capitalism, with its anti-sovereign hollowing-out of government coffers to boost the profits of the tiny capitalist class. It will be unwilling to address the massive costs that will arise as the crisis worsens, coastlines shift, cities flood and must be rebuilt farther inland, and climate refugees seek every available safe space. It is an extrapolation of the repressive, militarized, and racialized, hegemonic Trumpist capitalist order into an even more hegemonic role that stingily resists planetary sovereignty as not its responsibility. Civilizational collapse is most likely in Behemoth.

Climate X, on the other hand, is a fourth political future that has defeated the emergent

Leviathan and its compulsion toward planetary sovereignty, while also transcending capitalism and any neoliberal hopes for a Behemoth. It is “ethically and politically superior”2 to the other three options, and is the end result of a socialist movement based on three principles, as Climate

Leviathan puts it:

The first is equality. Sometime in the twentieth century the fundamental claim to the equality of all humans (not just members of the white, male, Euro- American “community of the free”), an old proposition on the Left, was

1 Wainwright and Mann, Climate Leviathan, 32. 2 Wainwright and Mann, Climate Leviathan, 30. 213

hijacked by liberalism; the ransom note says we can have it back, but only if we drop our opposition to capitalism. This we cannot do. Capitalism is a founded on the essential inequality that defines the capital-labor relation, and constantly produces social inequality and the unfreedom of poverty. But this is not the only reason the claim to human equality is necessarily a critique of capital. The planetary ecological crisis illuminates another: if we truly are equal, then we share the Earth. No one can own it.1

The second principle of a socialist movement for Climate X is “the inclusion and dignity of all,” the authors say. “This is a critique of capitalist sovereignty and the thin form of democracy upon which it has come to rely,” write Wainwright and Mann. “Democracy is not majority rule and has little to do with the vote,” they note. “Rather, democracy exists in a society to the extent that anyone and everyone could rule, could shape collective answers to collective questions. No nation-state today meets this criterion.” Real democracy “demands a struggle for inclusion and dignity that can enhance our capacity to transform the politics of rule, a great collective attempt to create conditions for the realization of our self-determination.”2

The third principle asserted by Wainwright and Mann for Climate X “is solidarity in composing a world of many worlds.” Rather than planetary sovereignty, “we need a planetary vision without sovereignty, an affirmation of both our common cause and our multiplicity.” 3

Climate X rejects the understanding of Leviathan that “many ways of life and communities will be lost in the effort to save life on Earth; that is the sacrifice ‘we’ must make.” For

Wainwright and Mann, “Climate X must reject both the assertion that ‘planetary’ concerns must dominate those of the many communities and peoples who inhabit the planet and the global sovereign that presumes the right to determine those concerns.”4 The strength of this

1 Wainwright and Mann, Climate Leviathan, 175. 2 Wainwright and Mann, Climate Leviathan, 176. 3 Wainwright and Mann, Climate Leviathan, 176. 4 Wainwright and Mann, Climate Leviathan, 177. 214 view ultimately rests in its commitment to leave no one behind to face the climate crisis alone.

Climate Leviathan, in advancing the “world of many worlds” of Climate X, argues for something much like Samir Amin’s “convergence in diversity,” or Cox and Nilsen’s

“movement of movements.” All are in agreement with Marxist ecology and the ecosocialist movement, which show us that we can only permanently end the existential crisis into which capitalism has thrust us by building a movement to end that nightmare system of dictatorial economic control. Building a mass movement for Keynesian or social democratic changes in the hope that a Leviathan can somehow be forced to use them to discipline capital and “save the world” is naïve at best and collaborationist at worst—it places unwarranted faith in the historically disproven, because historically transient, possibility of maintaining democratic political control of the capitalist class without abolishing the economic basis of their political power. Likewise for Climate Mao, whose

Chinese state capitalist masters have surely no less demonstrated the weakness of political reform in the face of capitalist or bureaucratic control of the economy. On an

Earth already deep in environmental crisis thanks to capitalism there is no reason to further solidify and extend the sovereignty and property rights of the same class that has led us to the brink of extinction.

As long as the economic basis of capitalist political power exists, neither humanity nor the environment are safe. That economic power must be erased by the uncompensated expropriation of productive property and placing of the means of life firmly under collective ownership and democratic control of the majority. There should be no continuing reward, regulated or otherwise, for the capitalist class having brought us to the 215 brink of extinction. It is what the cynical egos and arrogant Randian personalities of the capitalist class deserve: a complete end to their freedom to exploit humanity and nature, with a requirement that they join the rest of us in undertaking the responsibilities and duties of all humans in a caring, sharing world—the only future worthy of long-suffering nature and humanity.

Pulling the Emergency Brake

Political plans for a Green New Deal advocate much of what UN climate science says is needed to address the climate crisis: rapid conversion to alternative energy production and electric cars and trucks, the complete cessation of fossil fuel emissions and an end to the extraction of fossil fuels and other means of travel including development of electrified mass transportation systems, job retraining for displaced workers, increased unemployment benefits and some sort of guaranteed income during the transition.1 But little progress has been made toward the massive mobilization of governmental resources for which UN science advocates and a Green New Deal requires.

Despite a few small steps by the Biden administration, the reality is a continuing nearly complete failure of any political action to make significant progress against the combined economic and political might the capitalist class has wielded against a Green New Deal.

The organized economic might of the working class is the missing element needed to get humanity on track to permanent sustainability, first perhaps with an immediate demand like a Green New Deal, but simultaneously with the building of a

1 Alyssa Battistoni and Thea Riofrancos, “Bernie Sanders’s Green New Deal Is a Climate Plan for the Many, Not the Few.” JacobinMag.com; August 23, 2019; available at https://jacobinmag.com/2019/08/bernie- sanders-climate-green-new-deal; accessed February 21, 2021. 216 revolutionary ecosocialist movement. Yet that giant of the working class has barely begun to awake. The process of becoming classconscious is one that will require overcoming neoliberal rationality, capitalist irrationality, capitalist realism, or as Marx originally called it, alienation.1 An ecosocialist revolution will require a mammoth conscious effort—even with the aid of the plentiful opportunities served us as nature’s catastrophic revenge mounts against the capitalist system. The process will not be in any way automatic or predestined, however, because of nature’s aid.

Walter Benjamin’s amplification of historical materialism helps conceive the movement we need at this critical time in human history, fleshing out our understanding of history, the class struggle, and the ways in which we should think of the movement we need to build. Among other things, Benjamin, faced with the Nazi juggernaut at the beginning of

World War II, criticized the kind of historical thinking that encouraged both German social democrats and defenders of Stalinist bureaucratic state despotism alike to think that social progress, much less the liberating society of socialism, could be an automatic result of history. A similar theory of history-as-progress has long been promoted by the defenders of capitalism as well. That nonsensical assertion of progress, together with fossil-fuel- industry-funded denialism, has long disarmed workers seeking change on any front. For

Benjamin, this fraudulent version of historical materialism led to the political capitulation of

1 See Armando, “Marx’s Conception of Alienation,” Demoskratis.org; November 10, 2017; Internet; available at https://demoskratia.org/marxs-conception-of-alienation-7e9d47b78220; accessed April 20, 2021. “There are four aspects of alienation that Marx wrote about as corresponding to the capitalist mode of production, those being: the alienation of the worker from the products of their labor, the alienation experienced in the production or labor process, alienation from our species-essence or human essence, and finally the alienation of man from man or from society. They might be viewed as being nested together with one leading to the other, however they are just aspects of one reality: alienated labor.” 217 social democracy to the German right that allowed the rise of the Nazi movement, and similarly led to the Stalinist capitulation to Hitler in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact which promised nonaggression between Germany and the Soviet Union and the carving up of

Poland (until Hitler violated the pact and war began).1

Marx’s historical materialism was not determinist, as an essay by activist Phil Gasper points out. In it Gasper contends “that Marx’s theory of history…doesn’t claim that socialism is inevitable.” For Gasper, countless passages in the writings of Marx and Engels which suggest something like the Communist Manifesto does in proclaiming “What the bourgeoisie … produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers… its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable,” are little more than rhetorical flourishes “aimed at spurring on the Manifesto’s readers.” A few pages before, Gasper notes, “Marx and Engels had…pointed out that the class struggle has no predetermined result, and can end

‘either in the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.’”2 In his book Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the

Avant-gardes, literary critic and philosopher Martin Puchner makes a point similar to

Gasper’s characterization. Puchner writes that Marx “invented a poetry of the future revolution, a form that would help revolutionary to know itself, to arrive at itself, to make and to manifest itself, namely, the Communist Manifesto.”3

1 Michael Lowy, Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin's 'On the Concept of History' (Brooklyn: Verso Books, 2016), Introduction. 2 Phil Gasper, “Critical Thinking: Is Marxism Deterministic?” International Socialist Review, Issue 58; March-April 2008; Internet; available at http://www.isreview.org/issues/58/gasper-determinism.shtml; accessed February 21, 2021. 3 Martin Puchner, Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-Gardes. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 1. 218

Human agency in revolutionary situations was, in fact, always stressed by Marx.

“Men make their own history,” he wrote, “but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”1 Engels, in Anti-Dühring, makes a similar point about the role of human agency. “It is because both the productive forces created by the modern capitalist mode of production and also the system of distribution of goods established by it have come into crying contradiction with that mode of production itself, and in fact to such a degree that, if the whole of modern society is not to perish, a revolution of the mode of production and distribution must take place, a revolution which will put an end to all class distinctions.”2

Walter Benjamin’s Revolutionary Romanticism

In his posthumously published fragments entitled Theses ‘On the Concept of

History’—a mere twenty numbered, cryptic paragraphs long—Walter Benjamin makes clear that for a historical materialism which is both conscious of the history of the class struggle and also informs it in the present, history is not linear, but rather full of the suffering of the oppressed and exploited of the past struggling to be heard in the present, a present that is always a state of emergency against which the inhabitants of the present must struggle for survival. His theses attest to a powerful motive force for working-class action. In

Thesis VIII, Benjamin wrote:

The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule. We must attain to a conception of history that accords with this insight. Then we will clearly see that it is our task to bring about a real state of emergency, and this will improve our position in the struggle against Fascism. One reason Fascism has a chance is that, in the

1 Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. (New York: New York Labor News, 1897), 1. 2 Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring: Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science. (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1935), 183. 219

name of progress, its opponents treat it as a historical norm. The current amazement that the things we are experiencing are ‘still’ possible in the twentieth century is not philosophical. This amazement is not the beginning of knowledge – unless it is the knowledge that the view of history which gives rise to it is untenable.1

Michael Löwy, in his celebrated close textual analysis of Benjamin’s theses in Fire

Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin’s ‘On the Concept of History,’ an analysis upon which much of the remainder of this chapter draws heavily, writes that “Benjamin is here contrasting two conceptions of history, with clear political implications for the present.”

Benjamin first states “the cozy progressive doctrine, for which historical progress, the development of societies towards more democracy, freedom or peace is the norm.” Then he gives “the one for which he himself argues, which takes as its standpoint the tradition of the oppressed for whom the norm or rule of history is the oppression, barbarism and violence of the victors.”2 Neither Fascism in Benjamin’s time nor, one might expect him to say, the rise of fascistic tendencies in the present are, in his historical materialist view, surprising in a capitalist world where increasing class oppression, exploitation, ecological and environmental degradation and fierce competition for jobs, housing and other opportunities constantly stoke racism, sexism, poverty, religious intolerance, hunger, nationalism, xenophobia, chauvinism, militarism and war. In a world like this it would rather be surprising not to find the ugly perversions of fascistic thinking. Moreover, fascism is always inherent in the economic dictatorship of capitalist-class rule.

Benjamin, in his Thesis IX, makes clear that for him a reformulated historical

1 Lowy, Fire Alarm, 57. 2 Lowy, Fire Alarm, 57. 220 materialism goes well beyond absence of faith in progress to a kind of pessimism intended to foster a revolutionary rage in remembrance of past oppression, against nature and humanity. In a metaphor about the angel of history—as depicted by Swiss-German artist

Paul Klee in his Angelus Novus—Benjamin observed that the angel’s face is turned towards the past:

Where a chain of events appears before us, he sees one single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it at its feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise and has got caught in his wings; it is so strong that the angel can no longer close them. This storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows towards the sky. What we call progress is this storm.1

Here the history of class society is one long catastrophe, punctuated by extreme catastrophes —a history in which fascism, neoliberalism, the climate crisis or something like them really should be expected at any time as products of class rule. Löwy’s analysis points out that Benjamin’s “storm blowing from Paradise doubtless evokes the Fall and expulsion from the Garden of Eden.” The lost paradise is, as Löwy puts it, “primitive ,” those “profoundly democratic and egalitarian” societies, “ancient matriarchal communities,” which Benjamin described in another essay as “communistic society at the dawn of history.”2

In Thesis II, Benjamin related his concept of redemption, which puts a demand on the present:

… the idea of redemption… applies to the idea of the past, which is the concern of history. The past carries with it a secret index by which it is referred to redemption…there is a secret agreement between past generations and the

1 Lowy, Fire Alarm, 60. 2 Lowy, Fire Alarm, 60. 221

present one. Then our coming was expected on earth. Then, like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak messianic power, a power on which the past has a claim. Such a claim cannot be settled cheaply. The historical materialist is aware of this.1

Löwy observes that, “neither the remembrance and contemplation in consciousness of past injustices nor historical research are sufficient in Benjamin’s eyes.” There is a demand coming from the past that must be addressed. “There will be no redemption for the present generation if it makes light of this claim” by the victims of history. “Redemption is a weak power,” Löwy says, because “the expression …has a present political signification: the melancholy conclusion Benjamin draws from the past and present failures of the struggle for emancipation.” It is weak because “[r]edemption is anything but assured; it is merely a slim possibility, which one has to know how to grasp.” The possibility for it always exists. “Our coming was expected on Earth,” Benjamin asserts in Thesis II, but further, our coming was expected, as Löwy puts it, not only “to rescue the defeated from oblivion, but also to continue and, if possible, complete their struggle for emancipation.” Our coming reflects “a demand for a salvation that is not mere restitution of the past, but also active transformation of the present.”2

In Thesis III, Benjamin asserted the additional need to integrate into our thinking a different aspect, the inversion of Thesis II. As he wrote:

The chronicler who narrates events without distinguishing between major and minor ones acts in accord with the following truth: nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost to history. Of course, only a redeemed mankind is granted the fullness of its past—which is to say, only for a redeemed mankind has its past become citable in all its moments. Each moment it has lived becomes a citation à l’ordre du jour. And that day is Judgement Day.3

1 Lowy, Fire Alarm, 29. 2 Lowy, Fire Alarm, 30-31. 3 Lowy, Fire Alarm, 34. 222

This thesis is, Löwy explains, “a symmetrical and complementary inversion” of

Thesis II. “The past awaits its redemption from us…only a saved humanity can ‘fully assume’ the past.” This means “once again, remembrance is at the heart of the theological relation to the past.” In fact, “[r]edemption requires the integral remembrance of the past, without distinguishing between ‘major’ and ‘minor’ events or individuals.” There can be no deliverance for anyone “so long as the sufferings of a single human being are forgotten.”

This apokatastasis means “the return of all things to their original state …the reestablishment of Paradise by the Messiah.” For Benjamin, the Messiah is socialist revolution, Paradise is ancient communism.1

Today, we can forget neither past ruling-class oppression against working people, nor the vast ecological destruction produced by capitalist production for profit. Millions slaughtered in capitalist wars and genocides, together with environmental devastation, must be remembered as a source of revolutionary anger. We can attempt repair once production for profit is gone, but we cannot clone back into existence all the humans and other species it has destroyed, all the mountaintops it has removed, the rivers, lakes and oceans it has polluted, nor refresh the poisoned aquifers that take thousands of years to replenish—and certainly all the toxic, nuclear and other waste and byproducts of capitalist production already in the environment will cause continual and perhaps catastrophic ecological problems for thousands of years, even if we survive the climate crisis.

In preparatory notes for his Theses ‘On the Concept of History,’ Benjamin wrote that “Marx says that revolutions are the locomotive of .” However, he

1 Lowy, Fire Alarm, 34. 223 continued, “perhaps it is quite otherwise.” Benjamin suggested instead that, “[p]erhaps revolutions are an attempt by the passengers on this train—namely, the human race—to activate the emergency brake.” Without their pulling the emergency brake, the train could run right off the cliff and into the abyss.1

Löwy mentions an “earlier historical premonition of the threats posed” by so-called progress in Benjamin’s One-Way Street, written between 1923 and 1926, under the heading

“Fire Alarm.” Thinking of the destruction during and after World War I by both poison- gas warfare and inflation, he believed that, as Löwy asserts, “if the overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat ‘is not completed by an almost calculable moment in economic and technical development, all is lost.’” Benjamin posited that “[b]efore the spark reaches the dynamite the lighted fuse must be cut.” Benjamin didn’t live to see the total of 70 million to 100 million deaths from the Second World War or the development and use of nuclear weapons, so he never realized that the lighted fuse of capitalist technology in the hands of Fascists and imperialists actually came close to realizing “all is lost” for humanity. The metaphor is not that different from the IPCC’s emergency warning in 2018 that we must halve fossil-fuel emissions by 2030 and end them completely by

2050 if we are to avoid ecological and civilizational collapse.2

Another thesis in Benjamin’s “On the Concept of History” project central to building an ecosocialist movement is his Thesis IV:

Class struggle, which for a historian schooled in Marx is always in evidence, is a fight for the crude and material things without which no refined and spiritual things could exist. But these latter things, which are present in class

1 Lowy, Fire Alarm, 66. 2 Lowy, Fire Alarm, 9. 224

struggle, are not present as a vision of spoils that fall to the victor. They are alive in this struggle as confidence, courage, humor, cunning and fortitude, and have effects that reach far back into the past. They constantly call into question every victory, past and present, of the rulers. As flowers turn towards the sun, what has been strives to turn—by dint of a secret heliotropism—towards that sun which is rising in the sky of history. The historical materialist must be aware of this most inconspicuous of all transformations.1

Benjamin is saying that “the most essential concept of historical materialism is not abstract philosophical materialism,” as Löwy writes. “[I]t is class struggle…that ‘is constantly present to the historian schooled by the thought of Karl Marx’…. And it is that struggle too which enables us to understand the present, past and future, as well as the secret bond between them. It is the place where theory and praxis coincide—and we know it is that coincidence which initially drew Benjamin to Marxism when he read

Georg Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness in 1924.”2

Benjamin intensifies and concentrates these concepts, forcefully honing them into weapons workers can use in the class struggle. “Though almost all Marxists make reference to the class struggle,” notes Löwy, “few devote such passionate, intense and exclusive attention to it as Walter Benjamin.” Benjamin’s interest in the past is not in

“the development of the productive forces, the contradiction between the forces and relations of production, forms of property or state forms or the development of modes of production—essential themes of Marx’s work—but the life and death struggle between oppressors and oppressed, exploiters and exploited, dominators and dominated.”3

For Benjamin, Löwy notes, “The power of a ruling class is not the mere product of

1 Lowy, Fire Alarm, 38. 2 Lowy, Fire Alarm, 38. 3 Lowy, Fire Alarm, 39. 225 its economic and political force, or of the distribution of property, or of the transformations of the productive system: it always implies a historic triumph in the battle against the subordinate classes.” Benjamin sees history “from below, from the standpoint of the defeated, as a series of victories of the ruling classes” as Löwy puts it, rather than “the evolutionary view of history as an accumulation of ‘gains,’ as ‘progress’ towards ever more freedom, rationality or civilization.”1

Every new battle in the present calls into question “the historical victories of the oppressors because they undermine the legitimacy of the power of the ruling classes, past and present,” explains Löwy. This is “an eminently dialectical process,” he says, in which “the present illumines the past and the illumined past becomes a force in the present.” As Löwy observes, “Old battles are turned ‘toward the rising sun,’ but they fuel the class consciousness of those who are rising up today, once they are touched by its rays.” In Benjamin’s vision the sun is not, as Löwy explains, “in the tradition of the

‘progressive’ Left, the symbol of the necessary, inevitable and ‘natural’ advent of a new world, but a symbol of the struggle itself and the utopian vision it inspires.”2

In our quest to build a powerful movement to end capitalist-class rule and avoid the ecological cliff over which capitalism is determined to steer us, Benjamin’s Thesis VI is also relevant. The struggle does not play out according to the “rather mechanistic model of infrastructure and superstructure,” says Löwy,3 but rather, dialectically, as Benjamin writes:

Articulating the past historically does not mean recognizing it ‘the way it really was’. It means appropriating a memory as it flashes up in a moment of danger. Historical

1 Lowy, Fire Alarm, 39. 2 Lowy, Fire Alarm, 39. 3 Lowy, Fire Alarm, 37. 226

materialism wishes to hold fast that image of the past which unexpectedly appears to the historical subject in a moment of danger. The danger threatens both the content of the tradition and those who inherit it. For both, it is one and the same thing: the danger of becoming a tool of the ruling classes. Every age must strive anew to wrest tradition away from the conformism that is working to overpower it. The Messiah comes not only as the redeemer; he comes as the victor over the Antichrist. The only historian capable of fanning the spark of hope in the past is the one who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he is victorious. And this enemy has never ceased to be victorious.1

Benjamin here makes the point that “[a] danger is inherent in the present as it constantly threatens to drown the call from the past,” as Nikolai Krejberg Knudsen, writing in the journal Crisis & Critique, puts it. “Historical materialism wishes to retain that image of the past which unexpectedly appears to the historical subject singled out by history at a moment of danger,” he asserts. “The danger affects both the content of the tradition and its receivers. The same threat hangs over both: that of becoming a tool of the ruling classes,” he writes. “In every era,” Knudsen says, “the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it.”2

To avoid their transformation into tools at the service of the ruling class, Löwy writes, both “the history of the past—the tradition of the oppressed—and the current historical subject—the dominated classes, ‘new heirs’ to that tradition”—must be wrested from the “conformism that is seeking to overpower” tradition by restoring to it the subversive dimension of the past which official historians seek to diminish. “It is only in this way,”

Löwy writes, “that the historical materialist can ‘fan the spark of hope in the past’ —a spark which can ignite the powder keg today.” Benjamin substitutes a revolutionary working class

1 Lowy, Fire Alarm, 42. 2 Nikolai Krejberg Knudsen, “Redemptive Revolutions: The Political Hermeneutics of Walter Benjamin,” Crisis & Critique, Issue No. 1, 2014, 182-183; Internet; available at http://crisiscritique.org/wp-content/uploads/ 2014/01/Knudsen_Benjamin.pdf; accessed April 21, 2021. 227 as Messiah and the ruling class—specifically Hitler and his Nazis, in Benjamin’s time—as the Antichrist.1 As Knudsen contends, “historical materialism must awaken the historical subject, the proletariat, in order to ‘subdue’ the ruling classes and ‘redeem’ the past…to redeem the past is, simultaneously, to awaken the proletariat from its traditional slumber.”2

Thesis XII sums up much of what Benjamin was trying to say in support of a revolutionary rage—a rage that can help power a movement today in response to the civilizational climate crisis:

The subject of historical knowledge is the struggling, oppressed class itself. Marx presents it as the last enslaved class— the avenger that completes the task of liberation in the name of generations of the downtrodden….The Social Democrats preferred to cast the working class in the role of a redeemer of future generations, in this way cutting the sinews of its greatest strength. This indoctrination made the working class forget both its hatred and its spirit of sacrifice, for both are nourished by the image of enslaved ancestors rather than by the ideal of liberated grandchildren.3

Marx characterized the proletariat as the last enslaved class that must struggle against oppression, since under capitalism it comprises the overwhelming majority.

Overcoming capitalism, it would have no other class left above, but rather would control its own destiny, the destiny of all humanity. He charged it with the task of liberating all humanity from class rule. However, the proletariat cannot accomplish that task if it forgets the martyrs of the past, including our damaged Earth and atmosphere. For Benjamin, as

Löwy writes, “there can be no struggle for the future without a memory of the past,” no

“redemption of the victims of history” without that memory—which provides the workers’

1 Lowy, Fire Alarm, 43. 2 Knudsen, “Redemptive Revolutions,” 183. 3 Lowy, Fire Alarm, 73. 228 movement, as Benjamin wrote, “the sinews of its greatest strength.”1 Above all, Benjamin wants to power the contemporary class struggle with anger for past oppression and exploitation as fuel for revolutionary energy in the present. As Löwy observes:

For Benjamin the emotions of the oppressed, far from being the expression of an envious ressentiment or an impotent rancour, are a source of action, of active revolt, of revolutionary praxis. The concept of ‘hatred’ refers above all to indignation at past and present suffering, and to unyielding hostility to oppression—particularly in its [then] latest and most terrifying manifestation: Fascism.… Like Marx in Capital, Benjamin is not preaching hatred of individuals, but of a system. As for avenging past victims, this can only mean the reparation of the wrong they suffered and the moral condemnation of those who inflicted it.2

Benjamin’s Marxism is one of “unpredictability,” Löwy writes. “If history is open,” he says, “if ‘the new’ is possible, this is because the future is not known in advance.” As Löwy puts it, “the future is not the ineluctable result of a given historical evolution, the necessary and predictable outcome of the ‘natural’ laws of social transformation, the inevitable fruit of economic, technical or scientific progress—or, worse still, the continuation, in ever more perfected forms, of the same, of what already exists, of actually existing modernity, of the current economic and social structures.”3 The future can contain not only the abyss of the climate crisis toward which capitalism’s fossil-fuel-fired train of exploitation of nature and human labor is presently barreling; it can also consist of its resolution with the abolition of capitalism and the building of an ecosocialist society.

Reification, Praxis and Organization

Development of the necessary class consciousness and revolutionary rage will be

1 Lowy, Fire Alarm, 74. 2 Lowy, Fire Alarm, 74. 3 Lowy, Fire Alarm, 74-75. 229 accomplished among the US working class only with their ongoing involvement in the class struggle, of which the climate crisis is now an integral part. Nature’s revenge will help develop that rage, but the element most essential to the development of effective tactics and strategy in the class struggle is class consciousness—the consciousness that one has class interests shared with all other working people that are diametrically opposed to the class interests of those who privately own the means of life and operate them dictatorially in their own material interest.

For that reason, strategy and tactics may not be fully worked out until this consciousness has spread far more. Class consciousness has been contained in many ways, as shown earlier in this thesis. It was retarded thanks to the massive wealth extracted from the resources and labor of the countries of the Global South. Capitalist development has produced vast inequality and reduced millions to poverty despite this wealth.

Nonetheless, our historical standard of living has benefited from the wealth of the rest of the world extracted by economic and military force, or the threat of it, under the hegemony of US imperialism. If US resource use were extrapolated to the rest of the world, humanity would require four-and-a-half Earths to sustain itself, according to the Global Footprint Network.1

But workers have not only been bought off with imperialist loot. Marxists have long written about the effect of the culture industry. As mentioned earlier, that industry includes radio and television; cable, streaming media and the internet; newspapers, magazines and other print media; the ; religion; advertising everywhere and the proselytizing of

1 Global Footprint Network. “Media Backgrounder,” FootprintNetwork.org; Internet; available at https:// www.footprintnetwork.org/content/images/uploads/Media_Backgrounder_GFN.pdf ; accessed May 14, 2019. 230 the major political parties and procapitalist union leaders, among other things, all owned and controlled by capitalists or their supporters. As Marx and Engels wrote in The German

Ideology, “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.”1

This domination is a material fact in our world, yet it is not complete. Workers still sometimes rupture these bonds and go on strike; they rebel and strike back at their oppressors.

Earlier in this thesis, the thinking of writers like Nancy Brown, Paul Baran and

Mark Fisher was examined to help explain why aspects of capitalist society affected the thinking of workers, especially those caught up in the rightwing Trumpist movement. Georg

Lukács, in History and Class Consciousness,2 earlier mentioned as the likely fount of Walter

Benjamin’s Marxism, helps us understand specifically how the effects of capitalist thinking might be escaped and class consciousness might be developed. Chris Nineham is a contemporary British writer who has, like Löwy vis-à-vis Benjamin, extensively studied the thinking of Lukács, a Hungarian Marxist who wrote in the time of the Russian

Revolution and before. As Nineham writes, “Lukács’ great achievement…was to develop the most coherent account to date of how revolutionary consciousness can emerge under capitalism. To do this, he had to do the opposite; that is, explain how capitalism survives most of the time, despite the misery it creates.”3

Lukács, in his conception of reification—akin to Fisher’s capitalist realism—was

1 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology in Marx/Engels Collected Works, Vol. 5. (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), 59. 2 Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1971). 3 Chris Nineham, “Capitalism and Class Consciousness: The Ideas of Georg Lukács,” Counterfire.org, August 24, 2010; Internet; available at https://www.counterfire.org/theory/37-theory/6368-capitalism-and- class-consciousness-the-ideas-of-georg-lukacs; accessed April 21, 2021. 231 building on the work of Marx. In Capital, Marx wrote of the “fetishism” of commodities as a magical quality taken on by commodities produced by human labor and sold in the market at a profit for their owner, whereby they seem as a result of this exchange no longer to be products produced by human labor under given social relations between humans, but rather mere things having no connection to the process of social production. They seem, rather, to be related to each other merely as things. As Marx put it:

A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. So far as it is a value in use, there is nothing mysterious about it, whether we consider it from the point of view that by its properties it is capable of satisfying human wants, or from the point that those properties are the product of human labor…. But, so soon as it steps forth as a commodity, it is changed into something transcendent…

A commodity is…mysterious…because in it the social character of men’s labor appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labor; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labor is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labor.1

Social relations under the capitalist system of commodity production affect the consciousness of those who live within them. The experience is different for capitalists and workers. Capitalists who own and control the means of life “can live with the contradiction, on the one hand, of thinking that reality emanates from [their] own actions, and on the other, worshiping the forces of the market. It may result in an incoherent view of the world, but at least it is one that fits [their] class interests.” However, Nineham writes, “[t]he experience of the worker is different.” Similar to Mark Fisher’s theorization of capitalist realism almost a century later, reification for workers means that they experience “the

1 Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, 71-72. 232 reality of capitalism as a given, an external unchanging reality; the illusion of having any influence over events is much less powerful than for the boss,” Nineham explains.1 Lukács writes that:

In every aspect of daily life in which the individual worker imagines himself to be the subject of his own life he finds this to be an illusion that is destroyed by the immediacy of his existence…. by selling [labor power], his only commodity, he integrates it (and himself: for his commodity is inseparable from his physical existence) into a specialized process that has been rationalized and mechanized, a process that he discovers already existing, complete and able to function without him and in which he is no more than a cipher reduced to an abstract quantity, a mechanized and rationalized tool.2

“The full impact of this process of reification,” Nineham says, happens “when we realize that the transformation of labor itself into a commodity is the essential condition of a society based on commodification.” Since the value of all commodities is determined by the amount of socially necessary labor power embodied in them, “labor power must be fully integrated into this rational, universally quantified system. The worker must sell her labor power like any other commodity on the market.”3 For workers, Lukács makes clear:

Neither objectively nor in his relation to his work does man appear as the authentic master of the process; on the contrary, he is a mechanical part incorporated into a mechanical system. He finds it already preexisting and self-sufficient, it functions independently of him and he has to conform to its laws whether he likes it or not.4

Neoliberal capitalism’s “colossal commodification of everything on Earth”— referred to in this paper’s introduction—during the postwar consolidation of big capital

1 Nineham, “Capitalism and Class Consciousness,” 16–17. 2 Georg Lukács, History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1971), 165-166. 3 Nineham, “Capitalism and Class Consciousness,” 22. 4 Lukács. History and Class Consciousness, 89. 233 worldwide has only increased the power of reification’s “three reinforcing effects on consciousness,” as Nineham identifies them. It more powerfully “hides the real, human relations of capitalism; it makes the system appear as if it is driven by an inhuman, preordained logic; and it makes workers feel powerless to do anything about it.”1

Lukács sees understanding the totality of social relations under capitalism—the way its economics, politics and cultural production interact to shape, to reify, the whole of existence—as a crucial step in the revolutionary process, as did Mark Fisher, in the next century. That necessity makes reification even more potent and insidious in our lives—its deleterious effects on human ability to think clearly build up over time and affect most profoundly those it poisons in childhood, much like the unseen lead poisoning in the water of Flint, Michigan (and elsewhere).

Fortunately for workers and their children, capitalism is riddled with contradictions, some of them fatal flaws. It is a system erected by humanity—not one granted by god or emerging from nature —and can therefore be transformed by humanity. Ironically, it is the class struggle itself which many more workers must recognize in order to build an effective movement for a new society, that is our fundamental ally in a truly dialectical process that can assist in the building of that movement.

The class struggle is an objective reality inherited from the past, attested to—as

Benjamin makes so eloquently and repeatedly clear—by the voices of millions who died in that struggle, whose deaths demand redemption. Under capitalism, competition and the profit motive drive capitalists, on pain of extinction, to lower wages and cut corners on working

1 Nineham, “Capitalism and Class Consciousness,” 17-18. 234

and safety conditions, or to deny wage and benefit increases to keep up with inflation,

which amounts to the same thing. As Nineham writes, “it is in the struggle over labor time,

and the reward for labor, that commodification itself can find a limit in the consciousness of

conflicting interest.” Moreover, he says, “When workers fight for better conditions, better pay

or shorter hours, the basic antagonism between bosses and workers starts to become clear.”

This struggle has society-wide repercussions that can and periodically do produce

outbursts of resistance during which workers advance their knowledge of the

antagonism between the working class and the owning class, as Rosa Luxemburg has

also passionately observed in her works. Benjamin recognizes that emotion; it attests to the

forcefulness of a demand from the past for redemption. Lukács too was fully aware of the

consciousness-raising role of revolutionary crises. As Nineham wrote of Lukács’s thinking on

that score, “when class struggle erupts on a large scale, it tends to lead to sudden shifts in

consciousness.” When capitalism’s recurring economic, political, military and environmental

crises erupt and threaten their lives, and more and more workers begin to “become

conscious of their position as commodities in society, it can change the way they act and

understand the world.” The real nature of capitalism comes into focus as an exploitative

and destructive system, both of humanity and the natural world of which it is a part.”1

Luxemburg observed that participation in the class struggle’s back-and-forth

battles itself rapidly teaches consciousness of one’s class position and enemies. Her

accent was on this process of revolution making possible rapid social gains and social

transformation. However, the revolutionary theory of Lukács and that of Luxemburg

1 Nineham, “Capitalism and Class Consciousness,” 25. 235 diverge on the extent played in such revolutionary crises by spontaneity versus organization. Luxemburg emphasizes the extraordinary value of revolutionary praxis, the practice of revolution during a revolutionary crisis, but also recognizes the crucial need for political organization, of an exceptionally democratic nature. Lukács recognized the value of praxis but favored the role of a revolutionary political organization in providing a vanguard to lead the revolution. This divergence was a fundamental but subtle one, worthy of reference as we begin organizing to end the climate crisis and the capitalist system that lies at its root.

Lukács was a defender of Leninism and the vanguardist concepts that produced, in dialectical interaction with Russian material conditions at the time, the Stalinist bureaucracy.

Instead of rejecting Stalinism, he went on to betray the revolution by working within the

Stalinist bureaucracy for decades. Though his writing on reification at a time when he was completely committed to Marxism rather than Stalinism gives us another weapon to use in our struggle, his betrayal of Marxist thought after 1926 seems entirely in keeping with his obliviousness to the dangers of vanguardism.

Nineham, following Lukács and Luxemburg, writes that “socialist theory is nothing other than the condensed understanding of the history of class struggle.” As he observes,

“Revolutionary consciousness can only be developed through a constant dialectical interaction between the lived experience of struggle and…hard-won theoretical understanding.” This interaction must “involve not only using theory to guide practice but reassessing theory in the light of new experiences…holding this dynamic interaction of practice and theory in motion raises the question of independent, working-class organization.”1 The lessons of praxis will

1 Nineham, “Capitalism and Class Consciousness,” 37. 236 mount the more we develop our democratic, revolutionary ecosocialist political and economic organizations.

The Revolutionary Agenda

The first item on the agenda is building a non-vanguardist revolutionary working- class political organization that can guide, but not dictate, the parameters of the movement—a movement that can take advantage of the spontaneous opportunities that will spring from capitalism’s many crises ahead, including the revenge of nature, and build toward a permanent solution. The development of an independent working-class political organization is crucial, embodying the highest standards of internal party democracy—a

Luxemburgian path using Benjaminic revolutionary rage to move past the power of capitalist cultural production and its reification of human consciousness. The main US parties of capitalism, the Republicans and the Democrats, have both trod a neoliberal path differing only in degree for decades. No permanent solution to the crisis will be advocated by any party standing for the capitalist system of destruction for private profit, because the only permanent solution is one in which capitalism itself no longer exists.

To be sure, progressive elements among the Democratic party are now calling for a so-called Green New Deal, under which millions of jobs could be created in a massive World

War II-type mobilization to build the needed infrastructure for a rapid transition to alternative energy and electric transportation. That immediate demand should be supported even by a revolutionary working-class party—as one demand on the path to a full-fledged transformation to a democratic ecosocialist society. Time is too short to do otherwise. In fact, a viable revolutionary movement might actually help initial passage of a Green New 237

Deal—much as the US civil rights movement was aided by the existence of competition from a Soviet Union that pretended it did a better job than capitalism on human rights.1 It also should be supported because fossil-fuel capitalists deserve to be forced to spend as much of their expropriated loot as possible on a solution to the for-profit mess they have created—a measure of redemption for their past exploitation of people and the environment.

Capitalism probably could have resolved this single crisis it has created—in terms, at least, of having the resources to get the job done. However, its whole history, and that of the climate crisis, suggest that fully weaning its economy from plastics, fossil fuels, toxic chemicals, industrial agriculture, fossil-fuel-powered transportation and shipping systems, and other factors involved bringing the climate crisis to an end, is something that capitalism will never do. Further, most of the socially produced wealth that could be used to address the crisis is stashed in the offshore accounts of billionaires and millionaires. Half-measures are all that can be expected—but they are already too late.

Moreover, any “solution” we implement short of the abolition of capitalism—including any

Green New Deal—will immediately face an intense capitalist counterattack that will likely, in the present neoliberal circumstances, make the sustained, decades-long attack on the first New

Deal look inconsequential in comparison. A sustainable Earth is simply not consistent with nor will it be allowed by the capitalist class presently at the helm of our train ride toward the civilizational cliff of the climate crisis. A peaceful revolution is what we should foster in our democratic political and economic movements, but neoliberal capitalists can be counted on to

1 Rebecca Onion, “How the Soviets Used Our Civil Rights Conflicts Against Us,” Slate.com; July 9, 2013; Internet; available at https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/07/civil-rights-coverage-how-the-soviets-used- evidence-of-racial-strife-against-us-in-the-world-press.html; accessed on April 28, 2021. 238 react violently the closer we get to the complete collapse of either capitalism or nature—or both. In fact, that violent response of the capitalist class to our democratic efforts will no doubt help further precipitate a revolutionary response to break our societal inertia, build an ecosocialist movement—and pull the emergency brake! 239

O vulnerable humans, why do you engineer sea walls? Do you not see how the already floods the streets of the cities around you? —From “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Glacier (after Wallace Stevens)” By Craig Santos Perez1

EPILOGUE

THE ERA OF TIPPING POINTS & REVOLUTIONARY RAGE

As world leaders gathered virtually for US President Joe Biden’s “Leaders

Summit on Climate” on Earth Day, April 22, 2021,2 the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, only partly tamed in the US, still assails many advanced capitalist countries, and remains on the rampage in much of the rest of the world, risking a renewed pandemic crisis everywhere. India’s health ministry that day reported both a new daily record of 312,000 new infections3 and that the country’s weak, for-profit health care system had collapsed, out of both beds and oxygen, with bodies stacking up in morgues.4 Researchers in Texas also reported a new COVID-19 variant that is more contagious, causes more severe illness, may cause longer and stronger infections in young people, and “appears to be

1 Craig Santos Perez, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Glacier (after Wallace Stevens),” Poets.org; 2016; Internet; available at https://poets.org/poem/thirteen-ways-looking-glacier-after-wallace-stevens; accessed April 22, 2021. 2 The White House, “President Biden Invites 40 World Leaders to Leaders Summit on Climate,” WhiteHouse.gov; March 26, 2021; Internet; available at https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/ statements-releases/2021/03/26/president-biden-invites-40-world-leaders-to-leaders-summit-on-climate/; accessed April 22, 2021. 3 The Coronavirus Outbreak, “Covid-19:With Over 312,000 Cases in 24 Hours, India Sets a Record,” NYTimes.com; April 22, 2021; Internet; available at https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/04/21/world/ covid-vaccine-coronavirus-cases; accessed April 22, 2021. 4 Hannah Ellis-Petersen, “‘The System Has Collapsed’: India’s Descent into Covid Hell,” TheGuardian.com; April 21, 2021; Internet; available at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/21/system-has- collapsed-india-descent-into-covid-hell; accessed April 22, 2021. 239 240 resistant to antibodies.”1 In short, the pandemic continues relatively unabated, while capitalism’s continuing destruction of nature virtually guarantees another at some future date, likely sooner than later.2

Recent news on the climate crisis is worse. Small island nations with a population totaling millions, including the Maldives, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Vanatu, the Marshall Islands—in fact, most Pacific Island nations —whose extremely low elevation places them at risk of being inundated by sea level rise—fought hard in past climate negotiations for a promise by the big nations most responsible for emissions to limit warming to under 1.5°C.3 Nonbinding commitments so far show that nations attending Biden’s climate summit still publicly hope to limit warming to 1.5°C.4 That is only a realistic possibility with the rapid, massive changes recommended by the IPCC and mentioned or alluded to repeatedly in this thesis: a rapid transition to 100 percent alternative energy production, a 100 percent reduction in emissions from fossil fuels by 2050, electrification of all transportation and shipping, a vast conversion from industrial to regenerative agriculture, and massive carbon removal using direct air capture, liquefication and injection into basaltic rock formations. Without those rapid changes, ongoing emissions (still accelerating above those of earlier years) when

1 Rich Mendez, “New Covid Variant Detected at Texas A&M Lab Shows Signs of Antibody Resistance and More Severe Illness in Young People,” CNBC.com; April 22, 2021; Internet; available at https:// www.cnbc.com/2021/04/22/new-covid-variant-detected-at-texas-am-lab-shows-signs-of-antibody-resistance- and-more-severe-illness-in-young-people.html; accessed April 22, 2021. 2 Kashmira Gander, “Fauci Warns of More Viruses Lurking, Says There Is No Doubt We'll Have Future Outbreaks,” Newsweek.com; August 7, 2020; Internet; available at https://www.newsweek.com/fauci-virus- lurking-coronavirus-outbreaks-future-1523503; accessed April 22, 2021. 3 Justin Worland, “These Tiny Island Nations Are Leading the Fight Against Climate Change,” Time.com; December 18, 2018; Internet; available at https://time.com/5478446/climate-change-vulnerable-countries/; accessed April 22, 2021. 4 Valerie Volcovici and Jeff Mason, “US, Other Countries Deepen Climate Goals at Earth Day Summit,” Reuters.com; April 22, 2021; available at https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/us-pledges-halve-its-emissions-by- 2030-renewed-climate-fight-2021-04-22/; accessed April 22, 2021. 241

added to legacy CO2, methane and other greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere, will almost certainly move us beyond a 1.5°C limit on warming.1

The 2°C nonbinding limit agreed to in the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, on the other hand, “is a target that is beyond reckless,” as Naomi Klein puts it in On Fire. “When it was unveiled in Copenhagen in 2009, many African delegates called it ‘a death sentence.’ The slogan of several low-lying island nations is ‘1.5 to Stay Alive.’ At the last minute, a clause was added to the Paris Agreement that says countries will pursue ‘efforts to limit the temperature increase to l.5°C.’”2 In fact, however, the crisis is worsening rapidly, with global temperature increases of from 2.7°C to 3.1°C now routinely expected by 2100—or higher, depending upon how many tipping points are passed on the way, according to

Grist.org, an environmental journalism website.3

Many recent reports accordingly attest that we are already well into the era of positive feedback loops, or climate tipping points. Until recently science considered the

Amazon rainforest to be a , soaking up vast amounts of CO2 in the battle against rising greenhouse gas emissions. Its importance as a carbon sink depends on its size and the dryness of the land from which it grows, in a dialectical process that decreases its ability to store CO2 as global temperatures increase and more of it is deforested for huge monoculture soy farms to grow cattle feed—mostly to produce more US hamburgers. A report in March

1 David Roberts, “The Sad Truth About Our Boldest Climate Target,” Vox.com; January 3, 2020; Internet; available at https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/1/3/21045263/climate-change-1-5-degrees-celsius- target-ipcc; accessed April 22, 2021. 2 Klein, On Fire, 165. 3 Alexandra Herr, et al., “Points of No Return,” Grist.com; Internet; available at https://grist.org/climate-tipping- points-amazon-greenland-boreal-forest/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=daily; accessed April 24, 2021. 242

2021 after the first ever scientific study of greenhouse gases in the Amazon shows that “[t]he

Amazon rainforest is most likely now a net contributor to warming of the planet,” something that will worsen as temperatures continue to rise and deforestation proceeds, according to

National Geographic.1

The planet’s boreal forests, covering 1.5 billion acres mostly in northern Canada and

Russia, are also at risk of flipping their role from carbon sinks to carbon emitters. They store

85 percent of the CO2 they sequester in the damp, cold soils from which they sprout (the other 15 percent is in foliage above ground), which amounts to 30 to 40 percent of all carbon sequestered on land. Wildfires are now burning millions of acres of boreal forest every year. “As wildfires accelerate, researchers fear that carbon emissions from the fires could threaten the region’s ability to store more carbon than it emits—and eventually, flip it to a source of carbon emissions,” although the mostly deciduous trees that grow back after wildfires might slow this process even over the relatively short time we have left, since they store more CO2 than the largely coniferous forests that are now burning.2

Similarly “vast stores of permafrost in the northern Arctic regions of Alaska, Siberia,

Canada, and Greenland have [historically] contributed to the Earth’s carbon sink, taking in more carbon than they emit every year, thanks to the growth of carbon-eating lichens and mosses on the surface.” However, in 2019, NOAA’s “Arctic Report Card” showed that “the permafrost region has already started to lose more carbon than it captures—causing a net 300 to 600 million metric tons of carbon to be released into the atmosphere each year….more

1 Craig Welch, “First Study of all Amazon Greenhouse Gases Suggests the Damaged Forest Is Now Worsening Climate Change,” NationalGeographic.com; March 11, 2021; Internet; available at https://www.nationalgeographic.com/ environment/article/amazon-rainforest-now-appears-to-be-contributing-to-climate-change; accessed April 24, 2021. 2 Herr, et al., “Points of No Return,” Grist.com. 243 than five times the emissions generates in a year.” Ominously, there are

1440–1600 gigatons of stored greenhouse gases that can still be released as temperatures continue to rise, exponentially fueling even more extreme temperature increases.1

Tipping points that could produce extremely rapid sea level rise are also being passed. A recent report on research conducted by a submarine team under Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica, called the “Doomsday Glacier” for its catastrophic potential for sea level rise, found that the glacier is being assaulted by warm (above freezing) water on all four sides, imperiling the “pinning points” attaching the front of the glacier to the continent itself. If they break, which the research shows is possible at almost any time, its added floating ice mass would raise sea levels “by 1.5 to 3 feet” and accelerate the breakoff of enough nearby glacial ice, including the Pine Island glacier, to collectively raise sea levels by up to 10 feet.2 Another recent report from the University of Reading estimates that by 2100, at warming of 4°C—only halfway to the over 8°C of warming above preindustrial levels suggested by many models if we fail to cut emissions 100 percent by 2050—over a third of the Antarctic ice shelf could collapse, raising sea levels far more catastrophically.3

Glacial ice is melting increasingly faster across the world, including Greenland.

CarbonBrief.org, a website that publishes up-to-date information on the climate crisis, recently wrote that “[e]ven if warming in the coming decades is kept to low levels, melting

1 Herr, et al., “Points of No Return,” Grist.com. 2 Dharna Noor, “First-Ever Observations From Under Antarctica’s ‘Doomsday Glacier’ Are Bad News,” Earther.Gizmodo.com; April 9, 2021; Internet; available at https://earther.gizmodo.com/first-ever-observations- from-under-antarctica-s-doomsd-1846650385; accessed April 25, 2021. 3 Chelsea Gohd, “Over a Third of Antarctic Ice Shelf Could Collapse as Climate Change Warms the Earth,” Space.com; April 11, 2021; available at https://www.space.com/antarctic-ice-shelf-collapse-as-earth-warms, accessed on April 25, 2021. 244 from the Greenland is expected to reach unprecedented rates in the coming decades, contributing significantly to global sea level rise.” It holds “enough water to raise global seas levels by 7.2 meters”—almost 24 feet.1 Elsewhere the diminishing glacial freshwater stores doom millions to increasing drought and decreasing drinking water supplies.2 All that cool, fresh water melting from the Greenland ice sheet is also diluting, cooling and slowing the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), which includes the Gulf Stream that brings warm water from the Gulf of up the eastern US coast and into the North Atlantic—potentially slowing and even collapsing the current. That has happened several times in Earth’s history, causing “plummeting temperatures in the northern hemisphere, an extra foot and a half of sea level rise along the East Coast … and more ferocious winter storms over Europe,” according to Grist.org.3

Coral reefs are being overwhelmed by warming oceans and increasing acidity from higher CO2 concentrations, which is bad news for more than just the reefs. The complex environments of coral reefs “house around a quarter of the planet’s marine species,” and “provide food, income and storm protection for approximately 500 million people,” writes Grist.org.4 Oceans and reefs are being severely overfished by commercial fishing operations as well.5 Bottom trawling wreaks havoc with the seafloor, emitting “as much

1 Ayesha Tandon, “New Climate Models Suggest Faster Melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet,” CarbonBrief.org; December 15, 2020; Internet; available at https://www.carbonbrief.org/new-climate-models-suggest-faster-melting- of-the-greenland-ice-sheet; accessed on April 25, 2021. 2 Henry Fountain and Ben C. Solomon, “Glaciers Are Retreating. Millions Rely on Their Water,” NewYorkTimes.com; January 16, 2019; Internet; available at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/17/climate/melting-glaciers- globally.html; accessed on April 25, 2021. 3 Herr, et al., “Points of No Return,” Grist.com. 4 Herr, et al., “Points of No Return,” Grist.com. 5 NOAA, “How Does Threaten Coral Reefs?” Oceanservice.NOAA.gov; February 26, 2021; Internet; available at https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coral-overfishing.html; accessed on April 25, 2021. 245

carbon dioxide annually as the aviation industry” and continuing massive releases of CO2 for decades after initial trawling operations, as an article at Vox.com observed.1 Moreover, since millions of animals in the oceans from giant to tiny both absorb CO2 and help mix it into the water, overfishing also diminishes the CO2 storage capacity of the oceans.2 That capacity will be significantly diminished as ocean ecosystems collapse, which is expected as soon as 20503 if state-provided industrial fishing subsidies are not ended, limits and set-asides where no fishing is allowed are not established and enforced, and temperature rises abated.4

Moreover, research now shows with greater clarity the speed with which extinction will occur for the “[m]ore than a million plant and animal species [that] are at risk of extinction because of the myriad ways humans are changing the earth by farming, fishing, logging, mining, and burning fossil fuels,” reports the New York Times.

“More than 30,000 species on land and water” were studied “to predict how soon climate change would affect population levels and whether those levels would change gradually or suddenly.” Researchers “were surprised that sudden collapses appeared across almost all species—fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals—and across almost all regions.” Simulations modeled in the research showed that it always happened, no matter

1 Lili Pike, “The Surprise Catch of Seafood Trawling: Massive Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” Vox.com; March 18, 2021; Internet; available at https://www.vox.com/22335364/climate-change-ocean-fishing-trawling-shrimp- carbon-footprint; accessed on April 25, 2021. 2 Heidi Pearson, “Sea creatures store carbon in the ocean– could protecting them help slow climate change?” GreenBiz.com; April 24, 2019; Internet; available at https://www.greenbiz.com/article/sea-creatures-store-carbon- ocean-could-protecting-them-help-slow-climate-change; accessed on April 26, 2021. 3 John Roach, “Seafood May Be Gone by 2048,” National Geographic.com; November 2, 2006; Internet; available at https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/seafood-biodiversity; accessed April 26, 2021. 4 Todd Woody, The Sea Is Running Out of Fish, Despite Nations’ Pledges to Stop It,” National Geographic.com; October 8, 2019; Internet; available at https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/sea-running-out-of- fish-despite-nations-pledges-to-stop; accessed on April 26, 2021. 246 where the area under study was located. Limiting warming to 2°C could greatly diminish the losses, but millions of humans live in areas that would still be significantly affected. “If greenhouse gas emissions remain on current trajectories, the research showed that abrupt collapses in tropical oceans could begin in the next decade,” wrote the Times. “Coral bleaching events over the last several years suggest that these losses have already started, the scientists said. Collapse in tropical forests, home to some of the most diverse ecosystems on earth, could follow by the 2040s.”1

Hope, But Not Optimism

These and other recent reports—the latest news to date on the climate crisis— clearly show that the capitalist class has pushed the fate of life on Earth too long and too hard with its determination to continue its profit-motivated business as usual and, in large part, to lie or participate in lies about the climate crisis. The late Columbia University climate scientist Wally Broecker was reportedly fond of saying, “[t]he climate system is an angry beast, and we are poking it with sticks.”2 Yet as a writer for The Atlantic put it, “the beast has only just begun to snarl.”3 Nonetheless, fossil fuel capitalists want still more profits—damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. Politicians still parrot the most inane untruths, half-truths and outright lies to advance the interests of their true constituents, the corporate and capitalist elements that paid the most to get them elected. Swedish activist Greta Thunberg put into

1 Catrin Einhorn, “Wildlife Collapse from Climate Change Is Predicted to Hit Suddenly and Sooner: Scientists found a ‘cliff edge’ instead of the slippery slope they expected,” NewYorkTimes.com; April 15, 2021; Internet; available at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/climate/wildlife-population-collapse-climate-change.html; accessed on April 26, 2021. 2 Peter Brannen, “The Terrifying Warning Lurking in the Earth’s Ancient Rock Record,” TheAtlantic.com; February 3, 2021; Internet; available at https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/03/extreme-climate- change-history/617793/; accessed on April 26, 2021. 3 Brannen, “The Terrifying Warning…,” TheAtlantic.com 247 perspective the efforts of all the ostensibly earnest leaders who attended Biden’s Climate

Summit in an open letter published in Vogue on the day of the summit. “You may call us naïve for believing change is possible, and that’s fine,” she wrote. “But at least we’re not so naïve that we believe that things will be solved by countries and companies making vague, distant, insufficient targets without any real pressure from the media and the general public.” Continuing, Thunberg wrote:

Of course, we welcome all efforts to safeguard future and present living conditions. And these targets could be a great start if it wasn’t for the tiny fact that they are full of gaps and loopholes. Such as leaving out emissions from imported goods, international aviation and shipping, as well as the burning of biomass, manipulating baseline data, excluding most feedback loops and tipping points, ignoring the crucial global aspect of equity and historic emissions, and making these targets completely reliant on fantasy or barely existing carbon-capturing technologies…. The gap between the urgency needed and the current level of awareness and attention is becoming more and more absurd. And the gap between our so-called climate targets and the overall, current best-available science should no longer be possible to ignore.1

In fact, the very concept of sustainability under capitalism is increasingly coming under suspicion,2 since to speak of it at a time when positive feedback loops are ramping up exponentially catastrophic boosts in so many climate venues seems almost preposterous. A recent article in Climate & Capitalism makes it plain that even the idea of “net zero” is coming under suspicion. “This idea is central to the world’s current plan to avoid catastrophe,” its authors write. “In fact, there are many suggestions as to how to actually do this, from mass tree planting, to high tech direct air capture devices that suck out carbon

1 Common Dreams Staff, “Greta Thunberg Says Humanity Must Not be Fooled by ‘Bullshit’ Climate Targets,” CommonDreams.org; April 22, 2021; Internet; available at https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/04/22/greta- thunberg-says-humanity-must-not-be-fooled-bullsht-climate-targets-world; accessed April 26, 2021. 2 See the popular documentaries, and Seaspiracy, in which the claims are made and reasonably supported that, given the state of the planet, talk of sustainable commercial fishing and sustainable meat production is no longer rational. 248 dioxide from the air.”1 They write that, “[t]he current consensus is that if we deploy these and other so-called ‘carbon dioxide removal’ techniques at the same time as reducing our burning of fossil fuels, we can more rapidly halt global warming. Hopefully around the middle of this century we will achieve “net zero.’ This is the point at which any residual emissions of greenhouse gases are balanced by technologies removing them from the atmosphere.”2

The problem they see is that this thinking “helps perpetuate a belief in technological salvation and diminishes the sense of urgency surrounding the need to curb emissions now.” In essence, it licenses “a recklessly cavalier ‘burn now, pay later’ approach which has seen carbon emissions continue to soar. It has also hastened the destruction of the natural world by increasing deforestation today, and greatly increases the risk of further devastation in the future.” In short, with the “net-zero” approach, “humanity has gambled its civilization on no more than promises of future solutions.”3

Certainly, every serious demand to diminish the crisis must be supported—like the

Green New Deal,4 Andreas Malm’s 10-point list of immediate demands for a new

Ecosocialist Manifesto,5 Christian Parenti’s “four leverage points,” or other sensible proposals. Parenti believes some inroads against the human and environmental effects of the climate crisis can be made by demanding green, electric government procurement; green

1 James Dyke, et al., “Climate Scientists: ‘Net Zero Is a Dangerous Trap,” ClimateAndCapitalism.org; April 22, 2021; Internet; available at https://climateandcapitalism.com/2021/04/22/climate-scientists-net-zero-is-a-dangerous- trap/; accessed on April 26, 2021. 2 Dyke, et al., “Climate Scientists: ‘Net Zero Is a Dangerous Trap,” ClimateAndCapitalism.org. 3 Dyke, et al., “Climate Scientists: ‘Net Zero Is a Dangerous Trap,” ClimateAndCapitalism.org. 4 Klein, On Fire, 280-291. 5 Malm, “Revolutionary Strategy in a Warming World,” ClimateAndCapitalism.com. See also Andreas Malm, How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire (London: Verso, 2021). 249

FEMA and flood insurance funding that rebuilds victims’ homes away from danger; government sponsored cleanup or removal of toxic infrastructure that holds toxic animal, chemical or nuclear waste; and state funding of the building of direct air carbon capture devices.1 Proposals must be rejected for the ridiculously risky billionaire-sponsored geoengineering projects that plan to use more air and ocean pollution as a means of

“solving the problem.”

However, supporting such demands cannot deny us the energy and time needed to build a movement to permanently solve the climate crisis. The requirements of being truly human in the epoch of the climate crisis—the Anthropocene, or Capitalocene—demand that we do both, and do so consciously and simultaneously, without the occasional possible satisfaction of an immediate demand robbing us of the revolutionary rage called for by the state of life on Earth under capitalism and the oppression and exploitation of our working- class ancestors. As rapidly as possible, we must change the paradigm upon which human society is presently organized. It is clearly capitalist production for profit which lies at the root of the nexus of crises we face today: the climate crisis, the toxic chemical and plastic proliferation crisis, recurring economic crises, recurring militarism and war, recurring sexism and racism, continual destruction of nature, and continual reproduction of a ruling class that has no interest in society nor in the natural world in which it has been built by the working people who make up the bulk of society.

Four centuries of capitalism have produced an extremely damaged planet—not the

1 Vincent Emanuele, “Christian Parenti on Climate Change, Militarism and the State,” Truthout.org; May 12, 2015; Internet; available at https://truthout.org/articles/christian-parenti-on-climate-change-militarism-neoliberalism- and-the-state/; accessed on April 26, 2021. Also remarks at California State University as Earth Day Keynote Speaker, April 22, 2021. 250 one we wished to inherit from capitalism, nor the one Marx thought we would, but still one worth saving. The lessons of the pandemic and the climate crisis show we must regenerate an Earth worthy of our noblest aims by removing capitalist-class decision-making from the control of society. As long as that control exists, neither humanity nor the rest of nature are safe. It must be replaced by an economic democracy under which all the crucial decisions about our lives are at long last made democratically by those who actually perform all the useful work and who will collectively own an economy in which the metabolic rifts between humanity and nature erected by capitalism have been forever ended.

The most crucial job of classconscious workers is to develop a more conscious struggle for an independent, ecosocialist party of the working class, and for a revolutionary ecosocialist union movement. Such a political organization can help clear the way for industrywide revolutionary ecosocialist unions and assist their efforts to educate, agitate and organize among the working class. Using the ballot as a means to keep the struggle on as peaceful and civilized a basis as possible, it can work towards the expression of a revolutionary mandate at the polls. Meanwhile, the building of the civilized industrial force required to wrest control of society from the hands of the antisocial capitalist class must proceed apace. Radical democratization of the existing unions consistent with the work of writers like Kim Moody, Michael D. Yates, Lawrence Cox, Alf Gunvald Nilson and others can help transform them from the bureaucratic servants of capitalism that they now are into the class-struggle weapons they can be.1 The idea of revolutionary socialist industrial

1 See Kim Moody, On New Terrain: How Capital Is Reshaping the Battleground of Class War (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017), 71–87. See also Michael D. Yates, Can the Working Class Change the World? (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2018). See also this thesis, 164–167 for information on Cox and Nilson’s views. 251 unionism must comprise the dominant, strategic form of our revolutionary ecosocialist unions today since it represents an inherently stronger form of unionism that rejects business unionism completely, openly proclaims the goal of socialism and establishes itself across whole industries rather than mere shops that can be maneuvered into competing with other shops by capitalist owners. Moreover, it provides a training ground for democratic practices while workers build it, and the skeletal structure of a new form of economic democracy for the future. No one need learn to be a soldier to accomplish the revolution, only to have to unlearn those autocratic military practices and then learn new democratic ones after the revolution.1

Revolutionary unionism hearkens to the work of Daniel De Leon and the Socialist

Labor Party of America more than century ago. Together they first established the Socialist

Trade and Labor Alliance in the years 1895–1905, then folded the ST&LA into the

Industrial Workers of the World at its founding convention in 1905. For three years, from

1905–1908, the two-pronged program of both political and economic organization ruled the IWW before anarchist elements seized it, locked out the SLP and turned the IWW into an impotent advocate of direct action, making it increasingly subject to police actions by the capitalist state. Revolutionary socialist industrial unionism, wrote De Leon,

bends its efforts to unite the working class upon the political as well as the industrial field—on the industrial field because without the integrally organized union of the working class the revolutionary act is impossible; on the political field, because on none other can be proclaimed the revolutionary purpose, without consciousness of which the union is a rope of sand. Industrial unionism is the Socialist Republic in the making; and, the goal once reached, the industrial union is the Socialist Republic in operation. Accordingly, the industrial union is,

1 See Socialist Labor Party, After the Revolution: Who Rules? A Socialist Critique of the ‘Marxist-Leninist’ Left; SLP.org, March 2007; Internet; available at http://www.slp.org/pdf/others/after_rev.pdf; accessed April 27, 2021. 252

at once, the battering ram with which to pound down the fortress of capitalism, and the successor of the capitalist social structure itself.1

Class-struggle ecosocialism, with a strategy for workers to take collective ownership of the industries and services, will establish the democratic administration of a fossil-fuel-free economy. That economy will use alternative energy, electric vehicles and mass transit, with immediate mass implementation of technology to remove capitalism’s greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, together with regenerative agriculture, and the setting aside of massive areas of the oceans where commercial fishing is outlawed— among many other ecological improvements—to create a sustainable Earth for generations to come.

Ecosocialism seeks to build a democratic economic administration of things rather than any form of political rule—an administration under which classes and the political state that historically serves ruling-class interests have disappeared—consistent with Marx’s humanist thought. It also specifically seeks to build an economy that produces the highest respect and concern for human rights, for all life on planet Earth, and for nature and Earth itself.2 In short, to the precise extent that ecosocialism targets capitalist rule, rejects all forms of bureaucratic state despotism, embraces primacy for ecology and human rights, to the extent that it seeks to take decision-making out of the hands of a tiny despotic class of any kind, to that extent ecosocialism holds the only hope for a sustainable future.

1 Daniel De Leon, Industrial Unionism: Selected Editorials (New York: New York Labor News, 1920), 39-40. From the editorial “Industrial Unionism,” originally published in the Daily People, Vol. XIII, No. 204. Monday, January 20, 1913. 2 See Paul Burkett and John Bellamy Foster, Marx and Nature: A Red and Green Perspective (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2014). 253

The process by which this movement will be built will no doubt come as labor movements have historically developed—in rapid growth “in the midst of explosive and usually unpredictable strike ‘waves’ or ‘leaps’ as Hobsbawm, Ernest Mandel, John Kelly,

Leopold Haimson and , and Beverly Silver, among others, have argued,” Kim

Moody observes in his book, On New Terrain.1 That is completely consistent with Rosa

Luxemburg’s observations on the class struggle in Germany and Russia.2 Even the often- cited complacency of the US working class is not likely to survive the historic economic causes of labor militancy that will be triggered as nature repeatedly and powerfully wreaks revenge on capitalism in the coming years.

There is no need to wait. The time to act is now. Nature and the praxis of class struggle are on our side, providing reason for hope, but not optimism. The next decade will see us build this movement, fueled by a revolutionary rage demanded by the past suffering of the working class, by ravaged and exploited nature, and by contemporary insults to past and present humanity emanating from an increasingly authoritarian ruling class. Or it will see us fail, the tiny capitalist ruling class having enforced profit-motivated barbarism and extinction rather than giving way to the working-class majority’s efforts to build the democratic, sustainable ecosocialist society we might have had.

Historian summarized this revolutionary juncture when he wrote in the last volume of his four-volume history of capitalism, The Age of Extremes: 1914-1991:

We live in a world uprooted and transformed by the titanic economic and the techno-scientific process of the development of capitalism, which has

1 Kim Moody, On New Terrain: How Capital Is Reshaping the Battleground of Class War (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017), 71. 2 See this thesis, 157–158, 187. 254

dominated the past two or three centuries. We know, or at least it is reasonable to suppose, that it cannot go on ad infinitum. The future cannot be a continuation of the past, and there are signs, both externally, and, as it were, internally, that we have reached a point of historic crisis. The forces generated by the techno-scientific economy are now great enough to destroy the environment, that is to say, the material foundations of human life. The structures of human societies themselves, including even some of the social foundations of the capitalist economy, are on the point of being destroyed by the erosion of what we have inherited from the human past. Our world risks both explosion and implosion. It must change….If humanity is to have a recognizable future, it cannot be by prolonging the past or the present. If we try to build the third millennium on that basis, we shall fail. And the price of failure, that is to say, the alternative to a changed society, is darkness.1

1 Eric Hobsbawm. The Age of Extremes: 1914-1991 (London: Abacus, 1995), 584-585. 255

BIBLIOGRAPHY 256

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