Book reviews

The Social Metabolism: A Socio-Ecological Theory of Historical Change

By Manuel González de Molina and Víctor M. Toledo Environmental History Series Vol. 3, Springer, 2014 ISBN: 978-3-319-06357-7 Hardcover, $129, 355 pp.

Reviewed by Lorne Tepperman Department of Sociology, University of Toronto

I confess I came to this book with certain incorrect expectations. I had just published a book called Flows: A Network Approach to Social Inequality, and thought that this book by Molina and Toledo, like mine, would be about population, migration, and renewal processes. From this standpoint, read- ing it seemed like a natural next step. The book arrived, and to my surprise, the book seemed densely written and full of unfamiliar scholarship. Moreover, the book isn’t (mainly) about population, migration, or renewal processes; it is about environmental sustainability, as viewed from a historical and theoretical perspective. Said another way, the book sets out to create a history-based theory of ecological sustainability, linking this theory to earlier theories about society, most notably to theories of and Marxian- influenced writers. Taken aback, I started doing research on the topic. I looked at other papers by Professor Molina and his colleagues, and found that they were straightforward, unlike this book. Then I researched the notion of “social metabolism” and found a burgeoning literature on this concept, again tracing back to Marx (in Das Kapital). Gradually, I came to realize that I already knew something about this topic, but viewed in a different conceptual framework. So I started translating. The notion of “social metabolism” here refers to a set of exchanges between the natural and hu- man environments and, further, within the natural and environments, as well. In other words, metabolism is concerned with natural and human systems, their functioning, and their interdepend- ence and interaction. Moreover, the notion of ecological “sustainability” comes down to the old no- tion of “equilibrium.” Thus, the authors are theorizing about the of ecosystem sustainability in relation to human behaviour, particularly under conditions of capitalist industrialization. It turns out that Marx (in Das Kapital and the Grundrisse) expressed views on this matter: for ex- ample, in Das Kapital Marx talks about the tendency of cities and towns to exploit the surrounding countryside. This process of exploitation—notably, a large-scale extraction of food—eventually de- pletes the soil and requires the development of new fertilizers. Even human excrement is insufficient for the task, since it is not transported from city to countryside for this purpose.

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Leaving aside this and other important observations about the material nature of human life, I am reminded of my old teacher, Talcott Parsons. No one was more persuaded than Parsons of the value of studying social systems and their exchanges with other social systems. He was also interested in the study of social subsystems and their exchange with one another—for example, how the adaptive subsystem organizes relations between society and its natural environment, largely through the econ- omy; how the goal attainment or political subsystem sets goals for the adaptive subsystem and, under ideal conditions, ensures a balance between nature and humanity; how the integrative or legal subsystem imposes limits on the goal attainment subsystem, ensuring that societal rules, and not merely political interests, govern our behaviour; and finally, how the (awkwardly named)pattern maintenance subsystem regulates all of the other systems, by calling them to account in terms of underlying social values, via processes of socialization and ritual affirmation. Parsons is wrongly thought to have believed that equilibrium was guaranteed, or that everyone would behave as they should—but he did not think these foolish things. He was not astonished at the human failure to achieve a balance with Nature, but he did not feel compelled to delve into Das Kapital for theoretical supports. In fact, Parsons based his study of social systems largely on systemic thinking about the human body by Cannon: how the different organs relate to one another and achieve a functioning equilibrium under constantly changing external conditions. No stranger to material existence, Parsons might also have referred back to Malthus, and would have found the later system modelling by Meadows et al. (in ) to be completely persuasive. Since the publication of Malthus’s Essay on Population in 1798, people have been noting the imbalance between human reproductive capacities and the natural capacities to feed all these people. And at least for the last fifty years, they have been debating whether this problem is caused by, or merely exacerbated by, capitalism and the attendant consumerist ethic. So far, there is a standoff on this question, since theorists have been unable to agree on whether any societies have ever industrialized under conditions other than capitalism. Many claim that China and the USSR never actually tested Communist theory, that they were rather examples of state cap- italism, not true Communism; others might make a similar claim about fascist Germany, Italy, or Japan. In short, industrialization has always led to an imbalance between human and natural systems, with often using their technology recklessly in order to wring the greatest comfort and prof- itability out of Mother Nature. This continues to happen at breakneck speed all over the world today, in societies with a variety of social, cultural, and political regimes. It is not to say that we do not need a good theory of the interaction between human and natural systems if we are to attain “sustainability” (that is, equilibrium in our current abuses of the environ- ment, or even a reduction). And a historical materialist approach would likely be useful, as compared with Parsons’ value-based, idea-driven theory. However, this question about equilibrium, and this system approach to it, is not new, and it does not derive from Marx wholly, or even mainly. Why mention Parsons, or even Malthus, then? Simply for the reason that theories of human sys- tems—like those associated with Parsons and Malthus—have been good at understanding stability and equilibrium, but not good at understanding change, or the reasons why equilibrium-seeking sys- tems change from within. For example, Malthus famously failed to foresee the Demographic Transi- tion (e.g., voluntary fertility decline in the face of new opportunities and declining mortality rates) that largely invalidated his theory. Parsons, on the other hand, looking for an internal mechanism to explain social change, had to resort to an evolutionary approach that rested on the assumption of ex- pansionary value systems (like capitalism and this-worldly Protestantism). Otherwise, Parsons—like

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Malthus—was obliged to view systemic change in terms of unforeseeable and uncontrollable chan- ges intruding from outside the system, e.g., wars, famines, epidemics, new technological discoveries, and the often unexplainable “breakdown” of values, norms, or mechanisms for dispute resolution. So, a test of the theory in this ambitious, magisterial book by Molina and Toledo—to the extent that it provides a theory and not merely what another teacher, George Homans, used to call “ori- enting statements”—is whether it can account for change in the key relationship between human- ity and nature. For his part, like Malthus and Parsons, Marx was also notoriously bad at predicting change; and if the Molina-Toledo theory of social metabolism is based on Marxist insights, it will be no better at predicting change than earlier system-based theories. What can we agree on, then? First, this book is about an important problem on which rests the survival of humanity; that itself is enough reason to read the book. Second, in seeking answers, this book is right to examine the troubled relationship between human and natural systems. Third, a search for answers must rely on historical data about material—and not merely ideational—variables. People, unlike ideas, die in more than a metaphorical sense. Fourth, in order to be useful, this book must do more than urge us to embrace the problem, castigate capitalism, or call for a frugal pattern of consumption. Such exhortations, time has shown, will ultimately be insufficient. As Molina and Toledo rightly point out, the problem of a faulty social metabolism will fall un- equally on different subpopulations of humanity, at least in the short term. The poorest and most vulnerable will suffer soonest and worst; but they will push back. Indeed, as the authors note, we already see an abundance of political protest movements forming around issues of food shortage, water shortage, deforestation, and soil degradation. People are starving, and they are fighting back. In many instances, wars erupt between haves and have-nots, and between tribal groups that are dif- ferentially blessed by advantage. More dramatically, the have-nots are fleeing war zones, and the world is awash in refugees. Here, then, is a system-produced source of system change! Currently, some in the privileged West are debating whether these desperate migrants are truly refugees or merely “economic opportunists”—conventional immigrants looking for better jobs, housing, and social services, and jumping the queue to gain opportunities in the West. This is an ugly debate, and perhaps one to which there is no right answer. If the world’s social metabolism breaks down, we will all be in danger, and soon we would all be refugees. As the authors point out, these problems are not merely local, nor merely regional; they are global, and they will not be solved through market pricing mechanisms. Read this book.

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