Capitalism divides people into capitalists, who own and profit from the means of production, and the rest who work for them in order to survive. Under capitalism, a society is a class society. Class Notes is a column of commentaries by Critique Collective from an unapologetically partisan class perspective. It attempts to analyse topical issues from the point of view of long term interests of the working people of India


Capitalism and Ecological Crises

Critique Collective

The capitalist form of social production, i.e. production determined by the drive for maximisation of private profit through universalised exchange, comes to dominate natural environment and human needs. This makes the system of production and consumption doubly alienated, from the necessities of human life on the one hand, and natural environment on the other.

 

Crises of the environment and climate change are in the air. Like every year, this winter also brought dangerous levels of particulate matter to cities of Northern Indian subcontinent, from Lahore in Pakistan to Patna in Bihar. Pollution in Delhi even caught the eye of country’s Supreme Court, which ordered government to take measures against farmers in Punjab for burning crop stubble. News channels and web portals have started displaying particulate matter index for cities in their news ticker, and PMI has entered everyday discourse.

Environmental crises like the pollution in northern India are regional in nature and often have localised causes and remedies. In parallel, humanity is also facing the global crisis of climate change. There is a real danger that large parts of the Earth will become un-inhabitable due to increase in sea levels and unpredictable and catastrophic weather patterns in coming decades. People at large are becoming critically aware of this crisis too. After Greta Thunberg’s UN address, the latest strand in this discourse is a sort of generational accounting with children shown as demanding action on climate change.

When an issue becomes a public concern to the extent that environmental and climate change crises have, it is expected that the capitalist political economic system, under which we all now live, will develop specific ideological stances and policy thrusts in response. These stances and thrusts are presented as addressing the issue, but are constrained and driven by the overall interests of capitalism. In fact, since everyone is affected by these crises, the articulation of capitalism’s response is hegemonic, i.e., it pushes particular interests of capitalism in the garb general interest. On the other hand, it is incumbent upon the working people of the world to develop an alternative understanding of ecological crises, and put concrete suggestions for overcoming these in the public domain.

 To take the example of environmental pollution in Delhi, the system response has focussed on blaming easy targets like farmers of Punjab, closing a few power plants and industries for a limited duration, some restrictions on private vehicles like the Odd-Even scheme, and campaign against Diwali fire-crackers. On their own, people have started wearing masks. Richer classes have started using air purifiers in their homes and vehicles. All these are directed towards immediately perceived causes of pollution, without identifying and addressing the structural reasons for how the city consumes resources and generates pollution. There is no discussion on how the rich actually cause more pollution, simply because they consume more. The peak demand of electricity in Delhi has doubled in the past ten years. According to an estimate of the Bureau of Energy Efficiency, air conditioners contribute almost 60 percent to Delhi’s peak demand. ACs are devilish devices of positive-feedback. The more they are used to cool enclosed spaces, they produce more heat outside; requiring even more consumption of energy for inside cooling. The number of four wheel private vehicles (mainly cars) in the city increased from 26.7 lakhs in 2014 to 32.5 lakhs in 2018. This is an increase of 22%, and is double the increase in city’s population. Moreover, rich have taken fancy for bigger engine premium cars and diesel SUVs, which spew out more pollution. Buses produce least amount of pollution per passenger. Since they are also the cheapest mode of public transport, most of the working people rely on them. Delhi should have fifteen thousand buses in public transport, but has only four thousand. Instead the city has spent thousands of crores of rupees on building flyovers and elevated corridors for the fast movement of private vehicles. Five hundred decent buses for public transport can be bought in the money spent on one kilometre of an elevated corridor. A very reasonable BRT corridor which reserved the road space for buses was dismantled by the government because of opposition form car owners. There is a clear class context to the generation of city’s pollution. Also, while the rich can wrap themselves in expensive protective devices like ACs and air purifiers, the poor face the brunt of polluted air, water and the stench of waste.

The rich and powerful in all political economic systems in the past have consumed and polluted more, however capitalism has ushered in a new kind of relationship between production/consumption and the natural environment. All production is appropriation of naturally available materials and processes under socially determined relations and techniques. Under capitalism the social form of production, i.e. the drive for maximisation of private profit through universalised exchange, comes to dominate natural environment and human needs. This makes the system of production and consumption doubly alienated, from the necessities of human life on the one hand, and natural environment on the other. In the calculus of profit, nature is only a source of raw materials and a sink to dump waste. No capitalist can survive unless s/he ploughs back profit into production to become bigger, hence expanded reproduction is genetic to capitalism. Greater extraction of natural resources, and newer technologies are means to expanded reproduction. All production is intervention in nature. Capitalism takes this intervention to new domains, expands their scale, and quickens their pace, so that production now is no longer a localised, short duration intervention in nature, but a global disruptor of natural cycles and processes. Karl Marx was the first social scientist to understand the ecological consequences of capitalism as ’metabolic rift’. Now, after only two centuries of capitalism, the rift between what capitalism is doing to nature, and the ability of Earth’s environment to maintain its current state is so wide that the future is unpredictable.

Growth in capitalism occurs through expansion of markets. Hence, it is not surprising that capitalism sees environmental and climate change crises as an opportunity to create new markets. Water is polluted, go for bottled water! Air is polluted, buy air purifiers, and travel by electric vehicles! The simple fact that every act of production and consumption also produces waste and pollution, or that adivasis of Chhattisgarh live near smoke and ash spewing powerplants supplying electricity to cities like Delhi, have little place in the discourse of such environmentally ‘friendly’ market solutions. Another strand in this discourse advocates the principle of  ‘polluters pay’ and argues for development of global markets for carbon credits where green house gas emissions supposedly saved by ‘green’ enterprises can be bought by polluting industries to adhere to pollution targets. The underlying assumption is that as long the rich can pay for it, they should be allowed to consume and pollute.

In contrast, the working people’s perspective advocates the principle that no one has any right to pollute, much less to buy out their responsibility for it. Overcoming the double alienation of capitalist production and consumption from human needs and nature requires action in three inter-connected domains. Systems of our material production and consumption need to be integrated with nature, in the sense that the growth of ecological resources and consequences are factored at every step, from the input of natural resources to the treatment of waste. This integration requires rational planning, with the scope of this planning expanding spatially all the way from villages and neighbourhoods to the level of the entire biosphere. Any plan of production also needs to be projected into future to identify long duration ecological consequences. The direction of technological development also must be altered.  Capitalism fosters only those technologies from which immediate profits can be made. Information technology is now developed enough to provide a city wide coordinated public transport system for maximum efficiency and convenience. But the thrust of such technology under current capitalism is on personalised taxi services like Uber, and driver less cars.

The second domain in which the working people perspective on ecological crises differs from that of capital deals with social relations and human needs. Private property and markets reduce humans to individual consumers guided by their self-interest. Instead, ecological crises require that we prioritise public good over individual demands. Only after a public debate on the essentials for a decent life, and an audit of what nature can withstand, it can be decided who can consume how much of pollution causing resources. A hospital, or a public place for elderly has a much greater need of an AC, than a shopping mall or a private house. Public transport which takes people around at much less environmental costs than private vehicles should get the top priority, so there cannot be any automatic right to a private vehicle.

The third related domain is the relationship of human subjectivity with nature. Bourgeois ideology valorises material wealth and physical comfort. This way it creates attraction for the life styles of the rich. Even a simple human need like recreation has been turned into ecologically destructive hospitality industry involving five star hotels and cruise ships. On the other hand, productive labour, which is the prime human activity in nature, is done in alienating conditions controlled by capital. The nature is conceived either as an inert source of raw materials and a dump for waste, or as a background to be enjoyed at leisure. An ecologically responsible society will break this dichotomous relation between humans and nature. It will create conditions so that productive labour becomes an engagement with nature, an experience of knowledge, exploration and comfort. Nature will then be conceived as not only providing physical resources necessary for survival, but also the domain of human freedom and creativity.

Environmental and climate change crises are fundamentally different from other crises faced by humanity because these threaten the natural conditions necessary for the existence of human species. The blind thirst of capitalism for private profit has no place for the wisdom necessary to deal with these crises creatively. Even its ‘feel good’ green ideology and solutions are a part of the problem and perpetuate bourgeois hegemony. A working class perspective underlines the class context of these crises. It lays bare the responsibility of capitalism in causing these crises, and critiques and challenges what capitalism offers as solutions. A rational analysis of humanity’s needs, ecologically integrated plans for production and consumption, and reformulation of society’s value system away from market psychology and alienated labour are essential to deal with environmental and climate change crises.