4 pages sociology paper in 12 hours.

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Creating an Ecological Society:

Toward a Revolutionary Transformation

By

Fred Magdoff & Chris Williams

(September 18, 2016)

Introduction …3

Part One: Why An Alternative is Essential

1. The social and ecological planetary emergency…11

2. Capitalism and the socio-ecological crisis…31

3. Capitalism vs. the biosphere…61

4. Capitalism’s effects on people …106

Part Two: Is an Ecological Society Possible?

5. Humans as part of nature …148

6. Does “human nature” prevent system change? …161

7. Equality as biological fact …188

Part Three: Learning from Nature

8. The biosphere: cycles of life …201

9. Developing resilient socio-ecological systems …217

10. Ecological approaches to fulfilling human needs …233

Part Four: Toward a New Society

11. Characteristics of an ecological society …263

12. Revolution—Creating an ecological society …285

Introduction

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things;

The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty and despair!"

Nothing beside remains: round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare.

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

—P.B. Shelley

At some time in the future, should archeologists still exist, they may look at the rubble of a large 21st century city or other physical remnants of today’s world and wonder, as Shelley’s traveler surely would, what cataclysm struck that civilization. What caused such utter destruction, as occurred in the land of the “king of kings”? Without sweeping, systemic changes, the ominous trends in the world—ecologically the most momentous being global climate change, but additionally pollution of the seas, fresh water, soils, air and people; soil erosion; biodiversity loss; use of renewable resources faster than replenishment; and the depletion of nonrenewable resources—are unstoppable.

Over the last decade, a multitude of social and ecological events and trends have brought many to the conclusion that there is something fundamentally wrong with the global economic system; people are once again discussing the problems of “capitalism.” Deep social and ecological problems abound: from the continuing growth of extreme inequalities of income and wealth, the persistence of poverty and hunger in a world of plenty, systematic discrimination by race and gender, increased warfare and the alarming evidence of climate change and the ecological crisis: extensive and extended drought across many areas of the world, melting permafrost and glaciers, ocean acidification, coral reef bleaching, prevalence of drought, greater intensity and variability of storms, and rising sea levels. Increasing numbers of people are realizing that business as usual, whereby society is oriented toward profit maximization as the motor driving economic expansion, and predicated on the need for endless growth, takes us on a clear pathway to planetary destruction.

Compounding this grim reality, social and economic trends show relentless movement toward further social deprivation and inequality. One family in the United States, the Waltons (owners of Walmart) have more wealth than the bottom 42 percent of the population.[endnoteRef:1] According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), there is a “long-term trend towards higher inequality” in its thirty-four member countries.[endnoteRef:2] [1: Mark Bittman, "Is It Bad Enough Yet?,” The New York Times (December 13, 2014). ] [2: Federico Cingano, “Trends in Income Inequality and its Impact on Economic Growth”, OECD Social, Employment and Migratin Working Papers, No. 163, OECD Publishing (2014), accessed December 15, 2014 at http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/5jxrjncwxv6j.pdf?expires=1418733800&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=3F0FED609726DDA471660F05968BB5D1. ]

The renewed emphasis on capitalism lying at the root of our ecological and social crises is welcome. Nonetheless, the solutions proposed are limited to a call for reforms within the system: reduce and limit the power of corporations, impose rigorous environmental regulations, reform the criminal justice system, reduce funds for defense departments, raise taxes on the rich and corporations, gradually phase out fossil fuels for electricity generation and many other worthy changes—all of which we favor and need to be fought for as excellent first steps (as opposed to the many false solutions proffered as answers, such as relying on market mechanisms, technology or geoengineering).

Ultimately however, if we are to truly resolve our multifaceted and profound socio-ecological crisis, the entire system needs to be discarded and a new society created. The political power of capital and the governments it controls is immense, and there is no interest among capitalists to even moderately reform the system that so richly rewards them. Were a government to come to power bent on major social and ecological reforms, why not go further? As British economist Joan Robinson wrote in the 1930s, “…any government which had both the power and the will to remedy the major defects of the capitalist system would have the will and the power to abolish it altogether…”[endnoteRef:3] [3: Joan Robinson, “Review of R.F. Harrod, The Trade Cycle,” Economic Journal 46, no. 184:691-93 (December 1936). ]

To chart a different course socially and ecologically, the changes required are so far-reaching as to necessitate a completely new way of relating to each other, to other species, and to the rest of the biosphere. How and on what basis should economic decisions on investment and distribution be made, and how should production be organized and carried out? More fundamentally still what is the purpose of production, what are the goals of society?

A multitude of struggles have arisen around the world, attempting to stop the damage and reverse negative ecological and social trends. However, many of the activists involved in individual important struggles, are often not clear on the need for revolutionary change to end “business as usual”, in fact to ‘end business’. The heart of the issue is not simply to put a brake on capitalism and slow down the train of destruction but to derail it and build a completely new train. Across the globe, we are in the midst of a return to an era of social rebellion, revolt and revolution. Our purpose in this book is to stoke the theoretical fires by setting forth some ideas for understanding the roots of our socio-ecological crisis lie in our economic system; that we have much to learn from history and nature about how to reorganize our economy and society; that there is nothing inherent in humans that prevents us from living in a society free of want, free of competition and war, free of oppression, inequality and in closer harmony with nature.

Underpinning the arguments made here is the assumption that capitalism, by its very nature, is inherently anti-ecological and anti-social. An unplanned economic and social system, propelled by the single over-riding aim of maximizing profits, one which must continually expand in order to function, gives capitalism the attributes of a globally degenerative system. Whenever presented with a choice of short-term profit maximization versus long-term ecological sustainability, the dynamics of the system prevent offsetting profits in exchange for environmental stability. A logical corollary of this is that capitalism is therefore also anti-human and anti-life. Oceans of poverty and human misery surround tiny islands of stupendous wealth. Simultaneously, those tiny islands of wealth accumulation, concentrated in the hands of a small portion of the population, are not only responsible for the surrounding oceans of poverty and inequality, but simultaneously require the relentless exploitation of larger and larger quantities of energy and other resources.

Where do we want to go?

`Cheshire Puss,' she began, rather timidly, as she did not at all know whether it would like the name: however, it only grinned a little wider. `Come, it's pleased so far,' thought Alice, and she went on. `Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'

`That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.

`I don't much care where--' said Alice.

`Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.

—Lewis Carroll (Alice in Wonderland)

A few years ago, Fred was speaking to a professor of environmental studies at a liberal arts college in the Midwestern United States. The professor agreed with Fred’s contention that a whole new system, having new ways of relating to each other and the environment, was needed. But the environmental studies professor went on to explain that he did not talk to his students about it because any such change was so far off that he felt it was more important to talk about what might be done within the system in the near term to make things better. Finding out that systemic change was necessary, the enormity and long-term nature of the project might discourage his students and immobilize them. Fred’s response was that if we don’t begin thinking about what a new society might look like, how it might be organized, how it might work, and how it might be brought into existence—and start talking it over with others, especially young people—it will put off the project to the indefinite future. Any other response is not only politically dishonest and counter-productive but it guarantees delaying precisely the kind of change the professor agreed was vital. If young people don’t fully comprehend the depth of the crisis, its systemic nature and the magnitude of the required changes they will not be in the struggle as a life-long commitment. Knowing the extent of change required can help avoid demoralization, or getting sucked back in to the realities of simply trying to survive in an unjust system.

This is the crux of the issue— if we can’t even imagine a different way of interacting with each other, the economy, and the resources we use and depend upon, then the struggle for a just and ecologically sound world recedes into the realm of utopian fantasy. And without a vision for a plausible, genuine alternative, people understandably set their sights on reforms that will never add up to the immense changes that are needed.

But what could replace capitalism? What might a truly ecologically sound and socially just society look like? Is such a thing even possible? If so, of what would the basic organizational, economic and ethical principles underlying such a society consist? And what are the forms of resistance, practices and approaches needed to replace capitalism and start anew?

Considering the state of the world today, one might wonder how can we even dream of a world based on social justice, allowing the fulfillment of each individual’s human potential, while at the same time stopping and then reversing the scourge of ecological destruction wrought by human activities. Needless to say, it is not a simple question and there can be no simple answer. We view this book as a way to expand upon, extend, and deepen a discussion about permanent, revolutionary solutions.

To bring about social change, we need to think through, discuss and debate how to create a society in which the economy’s entire purpose is to equally satisfy the needs of all people, as well as the biosphere, the stability of which our long-term existence, as well as that of all other species, depends. And most fundamentally, act on that knowledge. A return to the type of social upheaval that has periodically wracked and overturned societies across the globe will be required. Broad fights against various unfair or cruel aspects of human society are sometimes extensive enough to launch speculation about the complete reorganization of society. To take just one example, the social tumult of the 1960s generated by the Civil Rights and anti-war movements in the United States, but feeding off anti-colonial struggles in Africa, India and elsewhere, re-launched a general questioning of society by tens of millions of people around the world. But building a totally new system implies the eradication of the entire old system. And this will require even greater struggles, capable of bringing the continuation of capitalism itself into question.

Humanity’s fight against tyranny, oppression and exploitation, has ebbed and flowed ever since inequality became the organizing principle of social systems based on agriculture, industry, and class stratification approximately 10,000 years ago. At the high points of these struggles, people begin to generalize from a particular fight, to start to question broader societal issues and raise the consciousness of millions of people. One of the many hundreds of possible examples, the struggles and victories of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States is instructive. It was radicalized with the birth of the Black Panthers, propelling people to broaden their activism: to protest the war in Vietnam and the oppression of women, and inspired the birth of the modern Native American, gay rights, and environmental movements. The fire of revolt spread. In 1968, the whole world, including from behind what was known as the Iron Curtain, was aflame. Although significant gains were made, the capitalist system was preserved and the ruling classes in the West and in Eastern Europe, the U.S.S.R., and in China survived. Despite the failure of earlier revolutionary attempts at the complete reconstitution of society on the basis of human equality, fraternity and solidarity, people still yearn for alternatives to the deadening stultification, crass materialism, exploitation, poverty and deprivation side-by-side with fabulous wealth, and environmental damage—including to planetary life support systems.

One thing on which we can depend is the reemergence of widespread resistance, rebellion and revolution. We can already see this reemergence in the struggles of people across the globe, often in conditions of extreme repression, Resistance in Tunisia sparked a revolt in Mubarak’s Egypt that began in January 2011 and spread like wildfire to other countries in the Middle East and North Africa. After decades of U.S.-sponsored repression and dictatorships, the people of Latin America are perhaps at the forefront of reimagining what is possible, and attempting to put some facets of a fairer society into practice. The various struggles in Latin America that have been so internationally inspirational are under attack by internal conservative forces, as well as from abroad. Ongoing struggles in Greece and Spain, as well as the hope generated by hundreds of thousands of people inspired by the Arab Spring, brought people to the streets of the United States under the banner of Occupy Wall Street, and point to further glimmers of hope through social rebellion that constantly appear throughout the world.

As we write this in the second decade of the 21st century, there are a number of indications that many people are beginning to understand that the variety of struggles for social justice: for unions, the minimum wage, Black Lives Matter, equal pay, against gender violence, environmental justice and a host of other issues, as well as ecological sanity: against gas and oil pipelines, tar sands exploitation, fracking, mountain top removal, and the decline and extinction of species, are all part of the same struggle. The September 21, 2014 Peoples Climate Change March in New York, with some 400,000 people in a huge outpouring of hope, had neighborhood groups, unions, indigenous groups and First Nations, a wide variety of environmental groups, and many unaffiliated people completely new to protesting out on the streets of New York. It is no exaggeration to write that social and environmental struggles are exploding across the world, many for the first time more conscious of how the two issues are two sides of the same coin.

There are people in many parts of the world that are exploring—in ways large and small—different approaches to relating to one another, to the economy, and to the natural resources required for the production if things we need to stay alive, such as food and housing. Some are instituting self-directed democratic political and economic relationships at a local level. The building and experimenting with alternative models or ways of behaving toward society, other people, and the economy has a history as long as capitalism but can provide insights into how alternatives might work.

As much as we might be able to see the germs of a new society in some of these experiments and take inspiration from them, the fact that these small islands of worker cooperatives, communes, and communities have always existed amidst the ocean of capitalist social relations indicates that they are not able, in and of themselves, to fundamentally alter society on a larger scale.

What we are proposing is the need to go far beyond small-scale experiments, and reinvent the whole of human society, from the bottom up: a reinvention of society or, more properly defined, a socio-ecological revolution. This type of transformation will require the active participation and involvement of the majority of the population of the planet to bring to fruition. There are hundreds of millions of people who live more traditional lives on the margins of capitalist social relations, with markedly different value systems. Indeed, with about one in seven humans, 1.3 billion people directly dependent on forests for their daily survival, there are many people from whom we can gain ideas about different, non-monetary ways of relating to one another and other species.[endnoteRef:4] [4: Michael Marshall, “1.3 Billion Rely on Forests to Survive,” New Scientist, Issue 2865 (May 15, 2012). ]

A conversation has begun that, until this point, has been difficult to have: if the current system is not sustainable, then what type of system is needed, with what characteristics, principles, social relations and methods of production, and with what values? This question was raised in “The Next System Project: New Political-Economic Possibilities for the 21st Century” written by Gar Alperovitz, Gus Speth, and Joe Guinan.[endnoteRef:5] One of the goals of their project is “…to radically shift the national dialogue … to awareness that what must be changed is the nature of the political-economic system itself.” We wholeheartedly agree and have written this book precisely with that in mind. [5: Gar Alperovitz, Gus Speth and Joe Guinan, The Next System Project: New Political-Economic Possibilities for the 21st Century, NSP Report 1 (March 2105), accessed July 9, 2015 at http://thenextsystem.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/NSPReport1_Digital1.pdf. ]

If we begin from the premise that there is an existential ecological and social crisis, rising to the level of a global calamity that threatens the continuation of much life on earth and the stability of the entire biosphere, the logical questions are:

· What is causing the crisis and what are the short and long-term effects?

· How could we overturn the current destructive system and replace it with an ecologically sound and socially just system?

· What would such a new system look like?

In attempting to answer these questions, we have divided Creating an Ecological Society: Toward a Revolutionary Transformation into four parts.

Part One: The social and ecological planetary emergency (Chapters 1-4) outlines where we are today, the severe social and ecological problems facing humanity, the systemic cause of the crises and the ecological and social consequences. We examine capitalism’s role in creating and exacerbating these crises and the effects on humans and the rest of the environment.

Part Two: Is an Ecological Society Possible? (Chapters 5 to 7), surveys and evaluates supposed obstacles that are commonly said to prevent changing our economic system to an entirely new one—that our relationship to nature has to be one of domination, our inherent “human nature” prohibits transformation to a different economic-social system, and that the supposedly innate differences among groups of people of different ethnic origin, race, class, nationality, or gender make an equitable society impossible.

Part Three: Learning from nature (Chapters 8 to 10) discusses basic ecological concepts, the characteristics of relatively stable and resilient ecosystems and how some aspects of these might apply to human society, and a selection of ecologically sound technical practices for provisioning human needs.

Part Four: Toward a New Society (Chapters 11 to 12) delves into how an ecological society could be organized—basic principles, practices, how it might operate and how we might bring such a society into existence.

It is essential to have a vision, a clear project for the future, to aspire to a higher, more complete, fully democratic and cooperative form of social organization, and to convince people that a genuine alternative exists. As the anti-globalization slogan of the late 1990s put it: Another World is Possible. If we talk about the failings of the current system, then people naturally ask—well, what is the alternative? We need to have an accessible and coherent answer to that question and a compelling, hopeful vision of the future. This book is a contribution to that vision.

Acknowledgements

Our personal and intellectual debts in relation to this work are too vast to acknowledge in full. However, we would like to thank especially Hannah Holleman, Penny Gill, Jan Schultz, Ruth Perry, George Bird, Elise Guyette, Will Fritzmeier, and Phil Gasper who offered feedback on various chapters or the entire manuscript.

We would also like to acknowledge the support of those at Monthly Review and Monthly Review Press, especially Michael Yates and Martin Paddio. Some of our close friends, colleagues, and students have contributed to our understanding of ecological issues in ways that have impacted this book: including John Bellamy Foster, Brian Tokar, and Ian Angus.

Part One: Why An Alternative is Essential

Chapter 1: The social & ecological planetary emergency

Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

—George Orwell[endnoteRef:6] [6: George Orwell, Politics and the English Language, (1946). ]

Climate change is a social justice issue. With the climate crisis, as with the economic crisis, governments have prioritised the interests of those who caused the problem, despite the consequences for ordinary people. We are not “all in it together.” An increased understanding of this has led the climate movement both to grow in size and to adopt more radical slogans.

—Suzanne Jeffrey[endnoteRef:7] [7: Suzanne Jeffrey, Up against the clock: Climate, Social Movements and Marxism, ISJ Issue 148http://isj.org.uk/up-against-the-clock/ ISJ 148 (Winter 2015). ]

We live in a world that is slowly disintegrating: organisms ripped from their ecosystems, ecosystems destabilized, increasingly detached one from another, the nightly news often a maelstrom of malevolent weather events, as global climate is sheared from its stable mooring of the last 12,000 years. On occasion, you can almost hear the death rattle; a deep sigh of pain and exhaustion as another species winks out of existence.

On June 24th 2012, the last surviving member of Chelonoidis nigra abingdoni exhaled for the final time. In the place made famous as the evolutionary laboratory that gave Charles Darwin his insights into the central theoretical premise underlying the entire science of biology, Lonesome George, last survivor of a subspecies of giant tortoise, expired quietly over 600 miles (1000 km) off the coast of Ecuador on the Galápagos Islands. An incredible beast that Chris had the good fortune to see in the flesh many years ago, the giant tortoise weighed in at over 200 pounds and was 5 feet long. The final representative of his sub-species, George was only approximately 100 years old and therefore essentially in the prime of his life: giant tortoises can expect to live well into their second century.

No one knows exactly why George died. Perhaps he just got tired of being the last of his kind. A little before George was born the ramifications of another extinction, one deliberately carried out by the US government via the army facilitating the mass slaughter of bison to undermine the livelihood of Plains tribes and reduce their ability to resist[endnoteRef:8] was expressed in human terms by Hunkpapa (Sioux) resistance leader, Sitting Bull: “A cold wind blew across the prairie when the last buffalo fell—a death-wind for my people.”[endnoteRef:9] As Sitting Bull recognized, so it is becoming more evident today: how intertwined humans are with the natural world—the essential connection between the social and the ecological. As societies across the world become ever more unequal and prone to fracture, so too do the ecological systems we depend on to stay alive. This double-sided crisis is no coincidental accident. [8: David D. Smits “The Frontier Army and the Destruction of the Buffalo: 1865-1883” The Western Historical Quarterly 25(3):312-338 (Autumn, 1994). ] [9: Quoted in Donald L. Fixico, “The Struggle for Our Homes,” In Jace Weaver (ed), Defending Mother Earth: Native American Perspectives on Environmental Justice, Orbis Books, New York, 37 (1996). ]

The symbolism of this particular irrevocable loss goes well beyond the sad little note scrawled on a blackboard on Santa Cruz Island, location of the Darwin Research Station that was home to George, “We have witnessed extinction. Hopefully we will learn from it.”[endnoteRef:10] [10: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/science/death-of-lonesome-george-the-tortoise-gives-extinction-a-face.html ]

It’s analytically critical to locate the history of George and his species within the panoply of human culture and knowledge. What was the human cultural, scientific and biological significance of this species whose population had been greatly reduced by its encounter with rapacious colonialism? In fact, the species contributed directly to scientific discovery and a theory that underpins our understanding of the whole of biology, namely Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

So numerous were the giant tortoises when the Spanish first landed on the islands in the 16th century that they named them after the creatures. The shape of their shell reminded the Spanish of their saddlebacks. The islands thus became known as the Galápagos archipelago, from the Spanish for “saddle.” Three centuries later, in his diary entry of September 15, 1835, Darwin noted what, “seemed to my fancy like some antediluvian animals”, which “of course been greatly reduced.” Darwin went on, “It is said that formerly single vessels have taken away as many as 700”, though giant tortoises were still abundant when he made his visit.[endnoteRef:11] On October 8th, Darwin describes himself and the ship’s crew as living “entirely on tortoise meat” and that “young tortoises make excellent soup”, but he nevertheless found “the meat to my taste is indifferent.”[endnoteRef:12] [11: Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle: Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries visited during the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle Round the World: 334-5, Modern Library, New York (2001). ] [12: Ibid. 336 ]

Almost inevitably, surrounded by these animals in all their diversity and island-to-island variation in form, as the great scientific observer that he was, giant tortoises form part of Darwin’s earliest written musings on natural selection as the process through which organisms change over time:

When I recollect the fact that [from] the form of the body, shape of scales and general size, the Spaniards can at once pronounce from which island any tortoise may have been brought; when I see these islands in sight of each other and possessed of but a scanty stock of animals, tenanted by these birds, but slightly differing in structure and filling the same place in nature; I must suspect they are only varieties. The only fact of a similar kind of which I am aware, is the constant asserted difference between the wolf-like fox of East and West Falkland Islands. If there is the slightest foundation for these remarks, the zoology of archipelagoes will be well worth examining; for such facts would undermine the stability of species.[endnoteRef:13] [13: http://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/Chancellor_Keynes_Galapagos.html ]

The key phrase, “such facts would undermine the stability of species”, written down for the first time in his notebooks of the five-year voyage of the Beagle, point toward a theory that only emerged in print two decades later. But as immediately recognized by the other revolutionary giant of the 19th century, Karl Marx, the importance of Darwin’s Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, could not be overestimated. According to Marx, Darwin’s book was an “epoch-making work” that formed “the basis in natural history for our view”, because it undermined the god-centered view of creation and gave life science a firm theoretical foot on solid materialist ground.[endnoteRef:14] [14: Quoted in Ian Angus, “Readings From the Left” ]

Giant tortoises have existed on earth for 10 million years, yet it took humans less than the lifespan of one to complete the extermination of all of George’s subspecies. In contrast, Homo sapiens have walked the earth for approximately 200,000 years, a mere 2 percent of that time. In the world as it currently exists, the extinction of this subspecies leaves us not with the question, “will we learn?” but rather, “what species will be next?”

Perhaps it will be another primordial leviathan, this time of the deep. Chris had the further good fortune to spend some time helping to conserve a species listed as “critically endangered”: Leatherback Turtles. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world’s oldest and largest nature conservation organization, which compiles the Red List of Threatened Species, places “critically endangered” one category away from “extinct in the wild.”

Relics of a distant and long-ago past, colossal behemoths of the unfathomable abyss, leatherbacks put to shame by a factor of 10 even giant tortoises, having existed on earth practically unchanged for 100 million years. Next to leatherback longevity, Homo sapiens pale into temporal insignificance. Mature leatherbacks can be over 6 feet long, 4 feet wide and weigh anything up to a ton. They can swim down to depths of 3,600 feet – over three times deeper than a nuclear submarine, change their body temperature to cope with the cold and the pliant leatherback shell they are named for allows them to survive the immense pressures found at such depths.

To sit on a dark tropical beach in the middle of the night, up close to an egg-laying mother, listening to the heaving power of her gargantuan lungs, gazing at such a prehistoric creature of evolutionary perfection, is a deeply affecting moment of natural wonder. How much will humanity lose if in the near future nobody has the opportunity to absorb the power of such an experience?

We don’t precisely know an individual leatherback’s lifespan, but we do know that organisms that make the “critically endangered” list are likely to be extinct within 10 years. We might wipe out this ancient species before we even find out how long they live. Along with thousands of others that are being driven to extinction by the priorities of an economic and social system based on relentless expansion and propelled by profit, the question naturally arises: what is the most effective way to save these magnificent animals and, by extension, humans?

Using leatherback turtles as a lens to illuminate the intertwining of the social and ecological crisis brings these issues into sharp focus. With a population decline of more than 90% since 1980, leatherbacks are threatened with extinction for a number of interlocking reasons all ultimately related to how our economic system operates.

The current biodiversity crisis, whereby species are being driven to extinction at rates up to 1000 times greater than the geological statistical norm, is simply one aspect of a global ecological crisis. Where previous ecological crises were local or regional, humans are now changing the whole biosphere, from the chemical composition of the atmosphere to the acidity of the oceans to the toxic chemicals contaminating soils, water, air, and organisms worldwide, how land is used (by, for example, destruction of vast areas of tropical and boreal forests), to the average temperature of the entire planet. Where before we wiped out individual species, now we threaten vast swathes of biota.

Particularly since the Paris Climate Agreement in December of 2015, many have begun to ask, are we too late? What does science tell us about our current situation and how bad is it likely to get? The 32-page international agreement signed in Paris by government representatives and world leaders from 194 countries, recognizes that human-caused climate change represents “an urgent and potentially irreversible threat to human societies and the planet” and to address that threat, “deep reductions in global emissions will be required.” Nevertheless, the Agreement notes “with serious concern” the:

significant gap between the aggregate effect of Parties’ mitigation pledges in terms of global annual emissions of greenhouse gases by 2020 and aggregate emission pathways consistent with holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.[endnoteRef:15] [15: Adoption of the Paris Agreement, Conference of the Parties Twenty-first session Paris, 30 November to 11 December 2015, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. ]

Unfortunately, despite these fine words and the contradiction within them, and even finer ones stating that “Parties should, when taking action to address climate change, respect, promote and consider their respective obligations on human rights, the right to health, the rights of indigenous peoples, local communities, migrants, children, persons with disabilities and people in vulnerable situations and the right to development, as well as gender equality, empowerment of women and intergenerational equity,”[endnoteRef:16] there is no mechanism in place to achieve these lofty – and urgently necessary – objectives. [16: Ibid. ]

We know with some precision, from temperature records stretching back into the 19th century, the world has already warmed by an average of 1.8 0F (1 0C) and, even if we stopped all production of fossil fuels right now, today, we are already locked in to at least another 1.8 0F (1 0C) of average warming. The amount of warming guaranteed if the Parties to the Paris Agreement do everything they say they’re going to – a big if – the world is on track for a truly catastrophic warming of up to 7.2 0F (4 0C), which will make the planet unrecognizable to any human who has lived on it during the last 10,000 years. For the last 20 years scientists have estimated that the extra energy we have been putting in to the atmosphere through trapping more greenhouse gases, 80 percent of which are a result of producing carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, is equivalent to exploding four atomic bombs every second since 1998—over 2 billion nuclear detonations.[endnoteRef:17] [17: John Cook, “Four Hiroshima Bombs Worth of Heat Per Second,” Skeptical Science (July 1, 2013). ]

Record heat in the first half of 2016 brought the world close to the 1.5 0C maximal limit declared dangerous by world leaders in Paris just six months previously. With land and sea temperatures averaging 1.3 0C higher than the 20th Century average, the UN observed, “Arctic sea ice melted early and fast… June 2016 marked the 14th consecutive month of record heat for land and oceans. It marked the 378th consecutive month with temperatures above the 20th Century average. The last month with temperatures below the 20th Century average was December 1984. [emphasis added]”[endnoteRef:18] July 2016 set a record for the warmest month ever recorded, marking the 15th consecutive month of record heat. Then August 2016 became the 16th consecutive monthly record, and tied July as the hottest month ever recorded. [18: “2016 on pace to be hottest year ever as climate change trends reach ‘new climax’– UN,” (July 21, 2016), UN News Center website, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=54520#.V9cAcTth10t. ]

It is estimated that most of the excess heat generated by global warming is being absorbed in the world’s oceans—some ninety percent.[endnoteRef:19] This is changing habitats, with negative effects on coral as well as other marine plants and animals, while others migrate to cooler waters. It is also believed to be contributing to the extreme rainfall events, with more water evaporated from warmer seas and warmer air able to hold more water vapor. [19: Tim Wallace, "Oceans Are Absorbing Almost All of the Globe’s Excess Heat," The New York Times (September 12, 2016). ]

Increasing temperature in the arctic, greater than increases at mid-latitudes, has, over fifty years, led to sea ice vanishing from an area twice the size of Alaska, with the remaining ice 50% thinner. The last nine years have been the lowest Arctic Ocean sea-ice extents measured, with February 2015 the lowest in 37 years of satellite data. In a classic example of a positive feedback loop, warming Arctic waters lead to more ice melt, which exposes more dark sea, which absorbs more heat, which melts more ice, and so on.

Melting of the gigantic Greenland Ice Sheet is as dramatic as the disappearance of Arctic Ocean sea ice—over fifty percent of the surface was melting during the summer of 2015, contributing to the 36th consecutive year of global glacier loss. Cumulative melting in Greenland through July 2016 was near the amount for 2015.

Warmer ocean waters and melting glaciers are causing sea levels to rise. Saltwater intrusion resulting from rising sea levels has caused damage to low-lying coastal agricultural soils such as in Bangladesh and the Mekong Delta of Vietnam. Damage is also already regularly experienced on parts of the Atlantic Coast of the United States, and not just during storm surges.

Federal scientists have documented a sharp jump in this nuisance flooding—often called “sunny-day flooding”—along both the East Coast and the Gulf Coast in recent years. The sea is now so near the brim in many places that they believe the problem is likely to worsen quickly. Shifts in the Pacific Ocean mean that the West Coast, partly spared over the past two decades, may be hit hard, too.

These tidal floods are often just a foot or two deep, but they can stop traffic, swamp basements, damage cars, kill lawns and forests, and poison wells with salt. Moreover, the high seas interfere with the drainage of storm water.[endnoteRef:20] [20: Justin Gillis, “Flooding of Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has Already Begun,” The New York Times (September 3, 2016). ]

The coastal flooding problem is especially severe in and around Norfolk Virginia (and the entire Chesapeake Bay region) and southern Louisiana, where the land is sinking as sea levels rise.

According to geologists, we have now entered a new epoch in geological time, the Anthropocene, or the Age of Humans. Ways of measuring when a new epoch began and the Holocene, the one we’ve been in since the last ice-age ended, all center around extremely long-term impacts. These impacts include things such as climate change due to elevated levels of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion, plastic pollution, overriding the natural cycles of nitrogen and phosphorus by human production of these plant nutrients for agriculture, irradiation of the atmosphere from nuclear weapons testing, and causing the 6th Great Extinction, potentially wiping out up to 75 percent of currently existing species, as an article in the journal Science makes clear:

Although Earth still retains most of the species that were present at the start of the Holocene, even conservative estimates of extinction rates since 1500 CE are far above mean per-million-year background rates, with a notable increase from the 19th century onward. Current trends of habitat loss and overexploitation, if maintained, would push Earth into the sixth mass extinction event (with ~75% of species extinct) in the next few centuries, a process that is probably already underway.[endnoteRef:21] [21: Colin Walters et al., “The Anthropocene is functionally and stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene” Science 351 (6269):137- (January 8, 2016). ]

As the article goes on to note, the most significant reason for mass extinction is due to land-use changes and the restriction of “wild” nature to smaller and smaller areas, “The terrestrial biosphere has undergone a dramatic modification from 1700 CE, when almost 50% of the global ice-free land area was wild and only ~5% was intensively used by humans, to 2000 CE, when the respective percentages were 25% and 55%.”

As mentioned above, climate change and the breakdown of ecosystems are intimately linked to social degradation, indeed can only be understood in this context. The seemingly disparate worlds of carbon dioxide production, ocean acidification and deforestation are closely connected to forced human displacement, the poisoning of communities, systematic inequality, exploitation and oppression. The unprecedented rapid melting of polar icecaps and glaciers as the world warms threaten untold species adapted to more stable conditions that change, but have done so much more gradually over the last 800,000 years. This process calls into question the stability and continuation of human society. It should surprise no one that as things have become worse for the biosphere, so too has our social situation degraded, one helping to co-determine the other. This is not about future impacts, but what’s going on now.

First, consider pollution and synthetic chemical contamination. Production of plastic, an essentially post-Second World War industry, increased from less than 2 tons in 1950, to over 340 million tons (311 million metric tons) by 2014.[endnoteRef:22] Often after a single use, 95 percent of all plastic is lost to the production process, escaping out into the wider environment: the oceans, buried in landfills or incinerated. Because plastics are a range of synthetic carbon-based polymers that didn’t exist on earth until the last 70 years, no organism has evolved capable of metabolizing them.[endnoteRef:23] One third of all plastic is not recaptured, going directly into the environment, often ending up in the ocean (the second largest percentage goes to landfill). What this means is that today, for every five kilograms of fish in the seas, there is one kilogram of plastic. If things continue as they are, with plastic production set to increase to 1,400 million tons by 2050, by weight 35 years from now there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish.[endnoteRef:24] [22: Plastics Europe, “Plastics – the Facts 2013” and “Plastics – the Facts 2014,” http://www.plasticseurope.org/Document/plastics-the-facts-2013.aspx (2014, 2015). ] [23: Considering so much plastic is produced with no end in sight and so little of it is recycled, the Holy Grail of research has been to try and find organisms that can be genetically modified or reproduced in large quantities to biodegrade plastic. While there have been reports in the early 2000s of plastic-eating bacteria or fungi, they have been hard to reproduce and need very specific conditions. A newly identified bacteria found in recycling center sludge living among high concentrations of plastic may represent the first possibility for wide-scale biodegradation of plastic (as long as it’s collected rather than dispersed into the watercourses of the world). Mark Lorch, “New plastic-munching bacteria could fuel a recycling revolution,” The Conversation (March 10, 2016). ] [24: World Economic Forum, Ellen MacArthur Foundation and McKinsey & Company, The New Plastics Economy – Rethinking the future of plastics (2016, http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/publications) ]

Needless to say, such vast quantities of plastic threaded throughout the watercourses of the world have drastic implications for life of all kinds. For leatherback turtles, the situation is catastrophic. Leatherbacks subsist almost entirely on jellyfish, specifically the largest species, Lions Mane jellyfish. The problem is that large undulating jellyfish floating through the oceans look almost exactly like plastic bags, which if ingested often choke the turtles, causing them to asphyxiate or starve. A study from 2015 estimates that more than half of all turtles and 90 percent of seabirds have ingested plastic.[endnoteRef:25] Though not a new phenomenon, necropsies in January 2016 on 29 beached sperm whales stranded around the North Sea showed the animals had ingested massive quantities of plastic, including a 40 foot (13 meter) long fishing net, causing the environment minister for the state of Schleswig-Holstein, Robert Habeck to comment that the animals were made “to starve with full stomachs.”[endnoteRef:26] Just like those whales, if you eat fish, you’re almost certainly also ingesting chemicals derived from plastic, along with a host of other contaminants. [25: Rachel Feltman, “More than half the world’s sea turtles have eaten plastic, new study claims,” The Washington Post (September 15, 2015). ] [26: Philip Hoare, “Whales are starving—their stomachs full of our plastic waste,” The Guardian (January 29, 2016). ]

Estimates vary, but upwards of 500 billion plastic bags are manufactured every year, requiring 12 million barrels of oil.[endnoteRef:27] For those that think paper bags are a more environmentally friendly option, they take four times as much energy, three times as much water, produces 50 times more water pollution and in general seventy percent more pollution than the manufacture of bags from plastic. Paper bags require cutting down millions of trees that could otherwise be absorbing carbon dioxide, paper is difficult to recycle and takes up more space in landfill.[endnoteRef:28] The real answer is not to manufacture any bag designed for a single use (or almost any other product for that matter). But because industry is so strongly opposed, efforts to ban single use plastic bags have had limited success. [27: Rensselaer County, Plastic Bag Facts. http://www.rensselaercounty.org/enviroment%20management%20council/plastic%20bag%20facts.htm. ] [28: Paper Versus Plastic: Environmental Disadvantages of Each, How Stuff Works. http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/paper-plastic1.htm. ]

Plastic has become so ubiquitous in the environment and will last so long without degrading that it has been proposed as one way to measure the impact of humans in the Anthropocene as indicated in this scientific report on ways to measure the new epoch:

Plastics are now widely enough distributed to characterize such strata over large parts of the world, even in remote environments such as that of the deep sea floor and the polar regions. Especially in marine sediments, microplastics form superficially invisible, but potentially widespread markers, directly akin to microfossils in more conventional palaeontology…Stratigraphically, plastics within sediments comprise a good practical indicator of Anthropocene strata…Their correlation potential, though, now stretches out into space, as they have now been carried across the solar system by spacecraft, and placed in orbit around the Earth and on the surface of the Moon and Mars.[endnoteRef:29] [29: J. Zalasiewicz, et al., The geological cycle of plastics and their use as a stratigraphic indicator of the Anthropocene, Anthropocene (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ancene.2016.01.002 ]

In other words, not only has a single planet been poisoned, contamination of the whole solar system is occurring.

The scourge of air pollution. Solid, liquid and gaseous effluent is just as much a problem for humans as it is for turtles. The severe health implications of air pollution are only now beginning to be fully quantified and it is considered to be the largest environmental problem to directly threaten human health today.

Energy production and use is the largest contributor to air pollution. The smoke emitted by indoor sources for cooking, heating and light (wood, charcoal, kerosene, etc.), used by 2.7 billion people, is estimated to be responsible for 3.5 million annual premature deaths.[endnoteRef:30] [30: World Energy Outlook Team, Energy and Air Pollution, World Energy Outlook Special Report, International Energy Agency (2016). ]

An estimated 166 million people, over half the U.S. population, live under conditions exposing them to high ozone and/or particulate air pollution simply by breathing.[endnoteRef:31] In 2011, air pollution caused by the U.S. energy industry alone caused $131 billion in damage, mostly in health impacts.[endnoteRef:32] According to a slightly earlier study by the National Academy of Sciences, all 137,000 coal miners in the United States could be given tax-free pensions of $50,000/year for only 10% of the cost of the air pollution generated by the production of energy from burning coal.[endnoteRef:33] On a global scale, the economic and health impacts of air pollution are truly staggering. According to the World Health Organization, the cost in Europe alone comes to almost 10 percent of the combined European Union economy, $1.6 trillion: [31: Oliver Milman, "More than half US population lives amid dangerous air pollution, report warns,” The Guardian (April 20, 2016). ] [32: Chelsea Harvey, “Staggering Economic Cost of Air Pollution,” The Orange County Register (January 30, 2016). ] [33: The National Research Council, The Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use, National Academy of Sciences Press. (2010) ]

Over 90% of citizens in the Region are exposed to annual levels of outdoor fine particulate matter that are above WHO's air quality guidelines. This accounted for 482 000 premature deaths in 2012 from heart and respiratory diseases, blood vessel conditions and strokes, and lung cancer. In the same year, indoor air pollution resulted in an additional 117 200 premature deaths, five times more in low- and middle-income countries than in high-income countries.[endnoteRef:34]  [34: “Air pollution costs European economies US$ 1.6 trillion a year in diseases and deaths, new WHO study says,” World Health Organization (April 28, 2015). ]

It’s important to bear in mind that Europe is often held up as a model of environmental probity. Yet in 2016, some areas of London exceeded their annual limit for nitrogen dioxide levels within the first week of January. Despite the much-touted imposition of congestion charging and early adoption of bike-sharing programs, as well as air pollution controls going back to the 1950s, London exhibits nitrogen oxides (NO and NO2 are collectively referred to as NOx) levels on par with Beijing and Shanghai.[endnoteRef:35] [35: Feargus O’Sullivan, “London has already exceeded its pollution limits for 2016,” The Atlantic (January 13, 2016). ]

In its pollution research covering over 2000 cities across the world, María Neira, head of public health at the WHO commented:

We have a public health emergency in many countries from pollution. It’s dramatic, one of the biggest problems we are facing globally, with horrible future costs to society…Air pollution leads to chronic diseases which require hospital space. Before, we knew that pollution was responsible for diseases like pneumonia and asthma. Now we know that it leads to bloodstream, heart and cardiovascular diseases, too – even dementia. We are storing up problems. These are chronic diseases that require hospital beds. The cost will be enormous.[endnoteRef:36] [36: John Vidal & Toby Helm, “Shock figures to reveal deadly toll of global air pollution,” The Guardian (January 16, 2016). ]

Health impacts in less developed countries with little or no pollution controls, such as India and China, are even worse: 4,000 people die every day in China (the equivalent of close to 1.5 million per year) from the health impacts of breathing polluted air. When added together, it is estimated that some 6.5 million people worldwide die prematurely each year because of air pollution, “making this the world’s fourth-largest threat to human health, behind high blood pressure, dietary risks and smoking.”[endnoteRef:37] [37: Op. cit., World Energy Outlook Team, Energy and Air Pollution. ]

The number of cars in the world is set to double in 14 years time to over 2 billion, the vast majority being run on fossil fuels. The effect of this increase will completely wipe out any potential gains in fuel efficiency. As a result, climate change, air pollution and the effects on humans and all other life forms, already severe, can only worsen.[endnoteRef:38] [38: David Jolly, “Despite push for cleaner cars, sheer numbers could work against climate benefits,” New York Times (December 7, 2015). ]

Born in William Blake’s infamous vision of the “satanic mills” of 19th century Britain, with child labor, 16-hour days and unchecked, rampant pollution of air, earth and water and we think of that era as unhealthier than our own. However, an ever-growing capitalist economy that by its nature ignores environmental effects has excelled at making the situation worse and taken it global. A point recognized by María Neira of the WHO, “This is the first generation in human experience exposed to such high levels of pollution. In the 19th century pollution was bad, but it was concentrated in just a few places. Now there are huge numbers of people living with high levels of pollution. Nearly 70% of people in cities are exposed to pollution above recommended levels.”[endnoteRef:39] [39: John Vidal, “A dark cloud of filth poisons the world’s cities,” The Guardian (January 16, 2016). ]

According to a study in the journal Nature, premature deaths from outdoor pollution in Asia amount to 3.3 million people per year, which is more than the combined death toll from Malaria and HIV/AIDS.[endnoteRef:40] The majority of this pollution is from heating homes and cooking using wood and coal as energy sources. Therefore a simple and entirely possible switch to clean, renewable energy sources would immediately have immensely positive health impacts for humans and all other species. These impacts could be further reduced because much of the rest of accumulated air pollution comes from fossil fuel based private transportation in cars and trucks, which would be radically reduced through the reorganization of cities and provision of public transportation using electricity. Because of the way ammonia reacts with fumes from cars, industry and the burning of rubbish, ammonia production from industrialized agriculture and elsewhere is another large—and largely unnecessary—source of air pollution. As mentioned above, the environmental violence of poverty results in 3.5 million people dying annually in the Global South due to indoor air pollution from using kerosene or the fuel of the very poor for cooking—biomass such as wood or dry animal dung. [40: J. Lelieveld, J. Evans M. Fnais D. Giannadaki and A. Pozzer, “The contribution of outdoor air pollution sources to premature mortality on a global scale,” Nature 525:367-371 (September 17, 2015). ]

A new dimension of air pollution effects on humans was reported in 2016 research indicating that some pollutants in the air actually reach the brain. Scientists found very small particles of the iron-containing mineral magnetite “that match precisely the high-temperature magnetite nanospheres formed by combustion and/or friction-derived heating which are prolific in urban air borne particulate matter…”[endnoteRef:41] Accumulations of metals such as iron (as magnetite) have been shown to be “a key feature of Alzheimer’s disease.”[endnoteRef:42] Although no causal relation between metal accumulation and dementia has been established, such chemicals reaching the brain are probably causing harm, perhaps significantly so. [41: Barbara A. Maher, et al., "Magnetite pollution nanoparticles in the human brain,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, published ahead of print www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1605941113 (September 6, 2016). ] [42: Germán Plascencia-Villa, et al., “High-resolution analytical imaging and electron holography of magnetite particles in amyloid cores of Alzheimer’s disease,” Scientific Reports 6, article number: 24873, doi:10.1038/srep24873 (April 28, 2016). ]

Race, class, and the environment. Coal is the most polluting fossil fuel, responsible for giant quantities of nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide production, in addition to highly toxic heavy metals such as mercury. But the extent of exposure to those pollutants varies with income and race. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s report Coal Blooded documents the average per capita income for people living within three miles of a coal plant is $18,400, significantly less than the national average of $21,587 and the people who live there are from a population made up disproportionately of people of color.[endnoteRef:43] People of color and the poor are much more likely to live next to toxic waste sites out of all proportion to their percentage in the local population.[endnoteRef:44] A study by the University of Minnesota found that in the United States people of color breath air that is 38 percent more polluted than whites. The study’s lead researcher, Julian Marshall commented: [43: Adrian Wilson, Jacqui Patterson, Kimberly Wasserman, Amanda Starbuck, Annie Sartor, Judy Hatcher, John Fleming, and Katie Fink, Coal Blooded: Putting Profits Before People, NAACP, http://www.naacp.org/page/-/Climate/CoalBlooded.pdf (2012). ] [44: Toxic Wastes & Race at Twenty: Grassroots Struggles to Dismantle Environmental Racism in the United States, A Report Prepared for the United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries, http://www.ejnet.org/ej/twart-light.pdf (March 2007). ]

We were quite surprised to find such a large disparity between whites and nonwhites related to air pollution…Especially the fact that this difference is throughout the U.S., even in cities and states in the Midwest…The health impacts from the difference in levels between whites and nonwhites found in the study are substantial…For example, researchers estimate that if nonwhites breathed the lower NO2 levels experienced by whites, it would prevent 7,000 deaths from heart disease alone among nonwhites each year.[endnoteRef:45] [45: Scott Kaufman, “Study: People of color breathe air that is 38 percent more polluted than white people’s,” The Raw Story (April 17, 2014); LP Clark, DB Millet, JD Marshall, "National patterns in environmental injustice and inequality: outdoor NO2 air pollution in the United States," PLOS One, 9(4), e94431, (2014). ]

It is not only an issue of foisting pollution on poorer communities within a country. Since colonial times European countries have devastated the environments of their colonies through the mechanism of ecological imperialism. Continuing to this day, the reason that the richer countries have been able to make limited efforts to clean up their local environments of the most egregious and obvious pollutants is as a direct result of out-sourcing pollution to less developed countries. This is not simply a phenomenon of offshoring and relocating the most polluting industries to countries in the Global South, but a systematic program of resource extraction and ecological imperialism.[endnoteRef:46] [46: For more on the origins of European expansion via ecological imperialism see Richard Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism 1600-1860, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. (1995). The huge expansion of biofuels in Europe such as palm oil, sourced from developing countries and leading to deforestation, displacement, extinctions and wildfires, is just one example of the contemporary nature of ecological imperialism. ]

As one example of many, examining just the situation of forests, about 3.9 million square miles (10 million square kilometers) have been cut down since the last ice age, a full half of which have disappeared since 1945. Yet in the latter period, Europe and the United States have gained forest cover, indicating that virtually all of the deforestation in the last 70 years, five million square kilometers, or more than 20 times the area of Great Britain, has come from deforestation in the Global South, mostly to serve markets for industry and agriculture in the North. Soil chemist Justus Liebig made exactly this point as long ago as 1840, when the leading global colonial power was Great Britain, which “seizes from other countries their conditions of their own fertility…Vampire-like, it clings to the throat of Europe, one could even say the whole world, sucking its best blood.”[endnoteRef:47] [47: Christophe Bonneuiel & Jean-Baptsiste Fressoz, The Shock of the Anthropocene: 187, Verso Books, London, (2016) ]

Over 90 percent of those dying or displaced due to climate related disasters are people from the Global South. And when climate disasters hit a wealthy country, such as the damage to New Orleans and surrounding areas in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina, it is the poor that suffer the worst effects. And the poor of New Orleans were overwhelming African Americans.

The contamination of the citizens of Flint, Michigan by lead in their drinking water, as a result of state appointed officials trying to save money, came into the open in 2015 (see Chapter 4 for more details). Considering that the city of Flint sits only 70 miles from the Great Lakes, the single largest store of fresh water on the continent and President Obama once boasted of building enough oil and gas pipeline to “circle the earth and then some”, the scandal brings into stark relief the priorities of our current social system: transport oil, make profits; pollute water, poison people. President Obama, not unlike those in power before him, would rather facilitate building tens of thousands of miles of pipeline to carry fossil fuels for corporations – and brag about it – than ensure far fewer miles of pipeline was laid to carry safe drinking water for people.

As Obama said in 2012,

There are politicians who say that if we just drilled more, then gas prices would come down right away. What they don’t say is that we have been drilling more. Under my administration, America is producing more oil than at any time in the last eight years. We’ve opened up new areas for exploration. We've quadrupled the number of operating rigs to a record high. We've added enough new oil and gas pipeline to circle the Earth and then some.[endnoteRef:48] [48: Molly Moorhead, “Obama says new miles of pipeline could stretch around the earth,” Politifact, April 23, 2012. ]

Even as the United States was supposedly part of saving the world during the Paris climate talks in December of 2015, Obama signed a bill a few days beforehand backed by Exxon and oil billionaires the Koch brothers to expedite pipeline permits to speed up even more construction.[endnoteRef:49] The Obama Administration similarly approved over 1500 offshore fracking permits in the Gulf of Mexico, some even during the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010.[endnoteRef:50] [49: Steve Horn, “During Paris Climate Summit, Obama Signed Exxon-, Koch-Backed Bill Expediting Pipeline Permits,” DeSmogBlog, December 31, 2015. ] [50: Mike Ludwig, “Obama Administration approved gulf fracking during Deepwater Horizon spill,” Truthout (June 24, 2016). ]

The routine immorality of many corporations (discussed in Chapter 7) is topped only by Exxon, which knew from its own research as far back as the 1980s that its products were the primary cause of climate change. In 1977, senior company scientist James F. Black reported to Exxon’s management committee at its corporate headquarters, "In 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," which spurred Exxon to set up a scientific research program to investigate the potential for up to 18 degrees Fahrenheit (10 degrees Celsius) of warming through the burning of its products.[endnoteRef:51] Despite Exxon’s research findings verifying that possibility, in the later 1980s it curtailed the research and hid its findings. Meanwhile, the corporation poured tens of millions of dollars into the coffers of think tanks and the bank accounts of scientists and politicians who deny the reality of human-induced climate change, essentially denying the company’s own research findings and helping to delay political action against climate change by decades. But the early scientific knowledge of fossil fuel burning producing climate change was not limited to Exxon, as an investigation by Inside Climate News reveals that from internal documents and interviews, [51: Neela Banerjee, Lisa Song and David Hasemyer, “Exxon’s own research confirmed fossil fuel’s role in climate change decades ago,” Inside Climate News (September 15, 2015). ]

The American Petroleum Institute together with the nation's largest oil companies ran a task force to monitor and share climate research between 1979 and 1983, indicating that the oil industry, not just Exxon alone, was aware of its possible impact on the world's climate far earlier than previously known.

The group's members included senior scientists and engineers from nearly every major U.S. and multinational oil and gas company.[endnoteRef:52] [52: Neela Banerjee, “Exxon's oil industry peers knew about climate dangers in the 1970s, too,” Inside Climate News (December 22, 2015). ]

Contrary to regularly made claims that President Obama is engaged in a ‘war on fossil fuels’, according to Bloomberg Business news, his administration could barely have been more friendly to their increased production:

U.S. oil production has surged 82 percent to near-record levels in the past seven years and natural gas is up by nearly one-quarter. Instead of shutting down the hydraulic fracturing process that has unlocked natural gas from dense rock formations, Obama has promoted the fuel as a stepping stone to a greener, renewable future.

The administration has also permitted drilling in the Arctic Ocean over the objections of environmentalists and opened the door to a new generation of oil and gas drilling in Atlantic waters hugging the East Coast. He also signed, with reservations, a measure to lift a 40-year-old ban on the export of most U.S. crude.[endnoteRef:53] [53: Jennifer A Dlouhy, “Despite Protests, Oil Industry Thrives Under Obama Agenda,” Bloomberg (January 5, 2016). ]

Then there are the international trade deals on the horizon, which completely subvert any hope that governments are serious about addressing the climate crisis. On the international front, the Obama administration has been just as busy in promoting corporate interests. In the final year of his presidency Obama hopes to sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) international trade deals. Modeled on the environmentally and socially disastrous 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed into law by another Democrat, Bill Clinton, both deals incorporate language designed to protect against “loss of future profits.” Which means that any corporation, “under either trade pact, if a new air rule, for instance, creates disincentive for an international energy company to build a coal plant, it can sue the government for investment losses if the company can prove the policy was adopted after initial plans for the plant were made.”[endnoteRef:54] International trade deals such as NAFTA have been as much about undermining workers ability to organize and fight for better conditions in the North and the South, as they have about destabilizing climate and weakening environmental regulations, both of which facilitate corporate profit-taking. [54: Brian Bienkowski, “Will trade trump climate pact?,” The Daily Climate, (January 7, 2016). ]

The dysfunction and contradiction between expanding “free” trade and protecting the environment, whereby corporate interests always trump environmental protections, doesn’t end with corporations being able to sue governments, but includes limitations on how any environmental issue will be addressed. As reported by the journal Nature: Climate Change, “a number of unproven approaches to environmental policies underpin free trade agreements. Among them is the market-based approach to carbon pricing, such as an emissions trading scheme, often considered to be a dysfunctional alternative to stringent industrial standards or carbon taxes. Less direct than a carbon tax, market-based carbon pricing can also be easier to manipulate, as shown by previous experience in Europe.”[endnoteRef:55] [55: Elisabeth Jeffries, “Freeing Fossil Fuels,” Nature Climate Change 6:125–126 (2016). ]

The International Monetary Fund estimates subsidies for the production of fossil fuels, taking into account the healthcare costs caused by pollution, at $5.3 trillion in 2015, or 6.5 percent of global GDP.[endnoteRef:56] Contrast that with aid to developing countries, which the United Nations has spent decades trying to convince developed countries to push their contributions up to a mere 0.7 percent of their GDP, only to be continually rebuffed. In 2015, the United States donated $32 billion in overseas aid (much of it tied to the purchase of US products or as loans rather than actual gifts of money), a sorry amount coming to a miserly 0.19 percent of GDP.[endnoteRef:57] [56: “Counting the cost of energy subsidies,” International Monetary Fund Survey, July 17, 2015. ] [57: Naomi Larsson, “Foreign aid: which countries are the most generous?,” The Guardian (September 9, 2015). ]

The combined activities of businesses aided by governments to enhance profits, disregards people and the planet. This is pushing the earth system into a new, more hostile and less predictable state, as highlighted by the idea of that we have entered a new geologic epoch—the Anthropocene. Research indicates that of nine planetary boundaries that reflect critical circuits of stability—such as climate change, biosphere integrity, land-system change, ocean acidification and pollution—we have already crossed four of them and entered very dangerous new territory. As lead researcher on the planetary boundaries study published in the journal Science, Will Steffen notes,

Transgressing a boundary increases the risk that human activities could inadvertently drive the Earth System into a much less hospitable state, damaging efforts to reduce poverty and leading to a deterioration of human wellbeing in many parts of the world, including wealthy countries.[endnoteRef:58] [58: Planetary Boundaries 2.0, Stockholm Resilence Center, (January 15, 2015). Steffen et al., “Planetary Boundaries: Guiding human development on a changing planet,” Science 347(6223):736 (February 13, 2105), for full text see dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1259855 . ]

As part of that stability and ecosystem integrity, the significance of turtles to humans and the ecosystem they’re an essential part of goes beyond even their critical contribution to human culture and how they are simultaneously threatened by that very culture. Jellyfish populations are increasing everywhere; they are prolific and reproduce extremely rapidly. Their populations are held in check by their natural predator—sea turtles. As drift animals, jellyfish are swept to every ocean and leatherbacks migrate over truly vast oceanic distances to chase their prey. Such a gigantic creature sustaining itself on something that is almost all water and lacking in protein means that leatherbacks can daily eat up to twice their own mass in jellyfish. One systematic scientific study reported leatherbacks ate 73 percent of their body mass in jellyfish per day, an amount that equates to several hundred Lions Mane jellyfish per turtle daily.[endnoteRef:59] This is important because jellyfish themselves subsist by eating huge quantities of fish eggs and fry, so undermining the base of oceanic ecosystems and depriving all other species of sustenance. [59: Heaslip SG, Iverson SJ, Bowen WD, James MC (2012) Jellyfish Support High Energy Intake of Leatherback Sea Turtles (Dermochelys coriacea): Video Evidence from Animal-Borne Cameras. PLoS ONE 7(3): e33259. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0033259 ]

But, leatherbacks are also threatened by other social processes dictated by the profit motive, notably industrialized fishing methods, such as gillnet, trawl and long-line fishing that trap the turtles as unwanted “by-catch.” One study on Pacific Ocean turtles estimates that more than 200,000 loggerheads and 50,000 leatherbacks are killed each year through entanglement solely from long-line fishing.[endnoteRef:60] [60: Lewison, R. L., Freeman, S. A. and Crowder, L. B., Quantifying the effects of fisheries on threatened species: the impact of pelagic longlines on loggerhead and leatherback sea turtles. Ecology Letters, 7: 221–231 (2004) ]

Just as turtles have become rare, with rapid declines in population of up to 90 percent, so the system responds and sets in train further declines. Growth in world trade and the money that can be made from turtle eggs, an activity that had previously been sustainable—local consumption of turtles and their eggs—has dramatically expanded into a highly profitable multi-national poaching business and black market. While a turtle egg might sell for $1 in Costa Rica (a not insignificant sum considering a single nest can hold more than 50 of the perfectly round, pearly white eggs), international consumption and smuggling associated with the drug trade means the price can reach as high as $100 to $300 per egg in international markets.[endnoteRef:61] [61: “Poaching of Costa Rica Sea Turtle Eggs,” Tico Times (October 5, 2010). ]

As turtles return to the same beach they were born on, largely unchecked coastal economic growth for tourism or real estate development is a further threat. Electric lighting on previously dark beaches confuses the turtle’s navigation systems, resulting in less female turtles making it on to land to lay their eggs.

However, the human-induced threat that may well spell the end for leatherbacks, and numerous other nesting reptiles, such as crocodiles, that bury their eggs in sand, is climate change, a fact recognized as early as 1953. In her paper The Edge of the Sea, Rachel Carson wrote about the importance of a stable temperature to the oceans:

…life in the aggregate is lived within a relatively narrow range of temperature. The fact that our planet Earth has a fairly stable temperature helps make it hospitable to life. In the sea, especially, temperature changes are gradual and moderate and many animals are so delicately adjusted that they cannot tolerate an abrupt or extensive change in temperature of the surrounding water. If such occurs they must migrate or die…Now our climate is changing and we are moving into a warm cycle of unknown duration.[endnoteRef:62] [62: Linda Lear (Ed) Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson, Beacon Press, Massachusetts:135 (1998). ]

Turtles lack sex chromosomes. Their genes do not directly determine whether a baby turtle is male or female. Instead, buried eggs take their gender cue from the ambient temperature of the sand. For leatherbacks, temperatures below 85 degrees F (29.4 degrees C) produce a clutch that is mostly male; above that, it's mostly female. With a relatively tiny 3.6 degrees F (2 degrees C) increase, a nest will produce all females, something that is already beginning to happen.[endnoteRef:63] A few degrees higher yet, and the "boiled" eggs don't hatch at all. [63: “Bachelor's paradise: FSU researcher finds female turtles outnumbering males: Climate change posing long-term stability challenges for turtles,” Florida State University Press Release (February 4, 2016). ]

We are currently on track for nearly 6.5 degrees F (3.6 degrees Celsius) of warming. Therefore, even if fishing is better regulated to reduce by-catch, if plastic bags are no longer produced in their billions, if international smuggling and poaching is dealt with, if real estate development is better controlled, unless we do something about limiting climate change to less than two degrees Celsius, this majestic creature, from a 100 million year old species, with all of the associated ecosystem knock-on effects, will be driven to extinction because they will only produce a single gender, well before they produce none.

The Social Crises.

All of the drivers of leatherback extinction are the flip side of the impact on people—outcomes of an economic system that has no internal mechanisms to do anything else but produce profits. Effects of air pollution and lead contamination of water, discussed earlier, are only one aspect of how people are contaminated with a wide variety of chemicals known to cause millions of deaths worldwide, life-threatening and chronic diseases and disruption of hormone activity leading to an array of mental and physical disorders and disabilities.

As for food, approximately one billion people are either routinely hungry or malnourished; over one billion people across the world, mostly in rural areas, are forced to openly defecate due to a lack of provision of any sanitation or toilets. Aside from the problems of human health and loss of dignity, a lack of toilets is particularly dangerous for women, subject to attack in secluded areas sought for relieving themselves. Globally, some 2.5 billion people—about one-third of the earth’s human population—suffer poor or no sanitation.[endnoteRef:64] Close to 700 million have no access to “improved” drinking water. Two billion people live on less than $2/day. Even in developed countries, tens of millions of people do not have adequate access to good quality health care and, because of lack of affordability billions of people do not have access to needed medicines or regular healthcare. Similarly, hundreds of millions of people in Asia and Africa have no access to electricity. Conversely, the charity Oxfam reported that in 2015 as few as 62 billionaires had accumulated more wealth than almost half of the world’s poorest people combined—3.5 billion people.[endnoteRef:65] [64: Sam Jones, “Lack of toilets blights the lives of 2.5 billion people, UN chief warns,” The Guardian (August 28, 2014). ] [65: Simon Kennedy, "Richest 1% Now Wealthier Than the Rest of the World, Oxfam Says,” Bloomberg Business (January 17, 2016). ]

The extent of hunger and malnourishment make it appear as if there isn’t enough food to go around, and the media constantly tells us that we are running short, or about to run short. However, we already grow enough food to feed 10 billion people, almost 50% more people than currently exist. As Eric Holt-Gimenez, Executive Director of Food First and the Institute for Food & Development Policy argues,

Hunger is caused by poverty and inequality, not scarcity. For the past two decades, the rate of global food production has increased faster than the rate of global population growth. The world already produces more than 1 ½ times enough food to feed everyone on the planet. That's enough to feed 10 billion people, the population peak we expect by 2050. But the people making less than $2 a day -- most of whom are resource-poor farmers cultivating unviably small plots of land -- can't afford to buy this food.[endnoteRef:66]. [66: Eric Holt-Gimenez, “We already grow enough food for 10 billion people – and we still can’t end hunger,” Huffington Post (December 18, 2015). ]

Total wealth is on the order of 100s of trillions of dollars. A 2016 Oxfam report estimates that just the money stashed away in offshore tax havens by super-rich individuals is around $7.6 trillion, that’s 7,600,000,000,000 dollars. Hiding that amount from government tax collection annually deprives the public of an extra $190 billion that could have been spent on health care, education, or other urgently needed public services.[endnoteRef:67] According to the Oxfam report, [67: “An Economy for the 1%: How privilege and power in the economy drive extreme inequality and how this can be stopped,” 210 Oxfam Briefing Paper (January 18, 2016). ]

As much as 30 percent of all African financial wealth is estimated to be held offshore, costing an estimated $14 billion in lost tax revenues every year. This is enough money to pay for healthcare for mothers and children that could save 4 million children's lives a year and employ enough teachers to get every African child into school.[endnoteRef:68] [68: Ibid. ]

In the same way that we are told that there aren’t enough resources to feed everyone or to lift people out of poverty, on the energy front, we are constantly told that efficient renewable energy technologies don’t exist, or they would be too expensive in economic or resource terms to build, or wind and solar power are unreliable. However, a 2016 study by the US government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows otherwise. For the United States (responsible for twenty-five percent of all greenhouse gas emissions), “Our research shows a transition to a reliable, low-carbon, electrical generation and transmission system can be accomplished with commercially available technology and within 15 years.”[endnoteRef:69] [69: “Rapid, affordable energy transformation possible,” NOAA News (January 25, 2016). http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2016/012516-rapid-affordable-energy-transformation-possible.html ]

Which would mean an almost 80 percent drop in carbon emissions from 1990 levels by the electricity generating sector by 2030 via a new electrical and transmission system that doesn’t even require storage because it would be regionally integrated. This is exactly the kind of change required for staying within 3.6 0F (2 0C) of average global warming and could be done at lower cost than continuing with fossil fuels (though this sector only accounts for two fifths of greenhouse gas emissions for the United States, and so would require other changes to transportation, industry and agriculture.)

In a world heading rapidly toward irreversible and devastating climate change, not only are renewable sources of electricity the best option, they are the only option if we want reliable electricity. That’s because thermoelectric power plants (whether nuclear, fossil, hydroelectric or biomass based), which currently supply 98 percent of global electricity supply, need massive quantities of water to generate steam, for cooling and to pump power for dams, yet are all threatened by the very effect they’re causing. One study estimates that because of lower river levels and warmer temperatures in the rivers, generating capacity could be reduced “by as much as 86% in thermo-electric- and 74% in hydro plants.”[endnoteRef:70] [70: Alex Pashley, “Climate change could dry up power production,” Climate Change News (January 4, 2016). ]

Once seen as an ultra-reliable source of “green” power for developing countries, hydroelectricity is showing itself to be anything but. Brazil, a country that produces 75% of its electricity from hydropower (for South America as a whole its 63%), already suffered from extensive blackouts in 2014 due to an increasingly severe, four decade long drought.[endnoteRef:71] Despite that, the shortsighted, profit-driven priorities of capital mean that Brazil is still building more new mega dams which will bury rainforest and indigenous cultures beneath newly created giant lakes, the lake beds of which will be made of rotting vegetation that contribute massive quantities of the climate-warming gas methane to the atmosphere. The government hopes to complete the ecologically and socially devastating Belo Monte dam in 2016 as the third biggest dam in the world, despite massive and ongoing protests by workers, farmers and indigenous groups. [71: US Energy Information Agency, “Hydropower supplies more than three-quarters of Brazil’s electricity” (June 17, 2014). ]

Indeed, according to researchers, the most vulnerable areas for shortfalls in electricity due to water reductions and warmer water are, “In particular the United States, southern South America, southern Africa, central and southern Europe, Southeast Asia and southern Australia…because declines in mean annual stream flow are projected combined with strong increases in water temperature under changing climate. This reduces the potential for both hydropower and thermoelectric power generation in these regions.”[endnoteRef:72] [72: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, “Worldwide electricity production vulnerable to climate and water resource change,” Science News (January 4, 2016). ]

But cutting down rainforest for pasture land, other forms of “development”, or simply burying it under thousands of tons of water, is not the only vital ecosystem linkage that is being broken when people find their homes underwater or are thrown off their land. Tropical forests store 40 percent of all terrestrial carbon and deforestation is a significant contributor (15 percent) to carbon emissions. Hardwood trees, with their thick trunks, giant size and long lives, are the most significant contributors to that carbon storage mechanism.

One recent study from São Paolo State University in Brazil, which analyzed the interactions between 800 animals and 2,000 species of trees, showed that the massive decline in large animals due to human predation and land-use changes was itself a major driver of deforestation and changes to the tree diversity of the remaining rainforest. That’s because 95 percent of rainforest trees depend on animals for seed dispersal and only large animals, which are the ones in the greatest decline, such as tapirs, large fruit-eating monkeys and large birds like toucans, can eat the bigger seeds of hardwood trees that require animal defecation and dispersal to germinate. This means that even where rainforests survive, they are gradually losing their giant hardwood trees, including important food sources like Brazil nuts, cacao and acai trees.

One member of the team of researchers, Prof Carlos Peres, at the University of East Anglia, UK, noted, “Policies to reduce carbon emissions from tropical countries have primarily focused on deforestation…But our research shows that a decline in large animal populations poses a serious risk for the maintenance of tropical forest carbon storage.”[endnoteRef:73] [73: Damien Carrington, “Loss of monkeys and birds in tropical forests driving up carbon emissions,” The Guardian (December 18, 2015). ]

This example, and the examination of the quite desperate situation of leatherback turtles facing multi-faceted threats to their existence, the decline of which then negatively act back on a wide array of issues directly and indirectly affecting humans, underline the inter-connected nature of the biosphere. Furthermore, demonstrate why only revolutionary systemic change, which will enable each of the problems to be tackled simultaneously without political constraint can hope to revoke the damage. Taken together, our ecological and social crises provide a damning indictment of our economic-political-social system and the way it operates.

Conversely, with the exception of extinction events, these crises are eminently reversible – as long as we remove the root cause. As we will see in the next chapter, our interlocked socio-ecological crisis is a result of the normal operation of the economic system of capitalism, not an aberration of neoliberalism or some other distortion. The critically important good news is that as these effects are created by human society, they can therefore be undone by a different human society.

If this perspective is correct, then the question to which we must now turn is this: in what specific ways and through what mechanism does capitalism, of necessity, operate to create our global socio-ecological crisis?

Chapter 2. Capitalism and the socio-ecological crisis

Large-scale industry and large-scale mechanised agriculture work together. If originally distinguished by the fact that the former lays waste and destroys principally labour-power, hence the natural force of human beings, whereas the latter more directly exhausts the natural vitality of the soil, they join hands in the further course of development in that the industrial system in the countryside also enervates the labourers, and industry and commerce on their part supply agriculture with the means for exhausting the soil.

Karl Marx[endnoteRef:74] [74: Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. 3., International Publishers, New York: 812-13 (1967). ]

Why is the capitalist economic system, with its economic, political and social methods of operation, the center and cause of the global crisis? After all, aside from those with a vested interest in maintaining the system, many thoughtful people and organizations down the years have put forward other explanations. Let’s briefly examine some of the conventional explanations for today’s social and ecological problems.

One of the most common arguments is the “population problem”: there are just too many people in the world, they are using too many of the earth’s resources and it is this that is the cause of the great extent the pollution. It is true that the human population has increased greatly over the last few hundred years and that higher populations tend to create more stress in particular locations. Some countries do not have the land base to allow agriculture to feed everyone. But many nations with inadequate land have sufficient financial resources (for example, Saudi Arabia, the Netherlands, Singapore, Great Britain) and are able to purchase food abroad. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have gone so far as to obtain land in Africa and elsewhere to grow food for their home markets. On the other hand, there are other countries such as Egypt and the 27 other countries that saw food riots in 2008 that struggle to purchase the extra needed food when world market prices escalate unexpectedly.

Further undermining the over-population argument is the fact that the wealthiest ten percent of the global population use about sixty percent of the earth’s resources and is responsible for about the same portion of global pollution. The so-called “population problem” is in reality a problem of too much consumption by wealthy people, the gigantic waste built into the system and a wildly skewed and unequal social system.[endnoteRef:75] In the United States, where ordinary people are constantly blamed for consuming too much, thirty-eight percent of all consumption in 2012 was by the richest five percent.[endnoteRef:76] [75: For example, see World Bank, 2008 World Development Index, http://data.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/wdi08.pdf.) and the Oxfam report, “Extreme Carbon Inequality,” (December 2, 2015), accessed December 5, 2015 at www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/mb-extreme-carbon-inequality-021215-en.pdf. ] [76: Nelson Schwartz, “The Middle class is steadily eroding. Just as the business world,” The New York Times (February 2, 2014). ]

Another common explanation is that ecological havoc is a result of human nature—our greedy and destructive instincts cause us try to dominate nature regardless of the consequences. Some point to the instances in which humans caused significant, mostly local or regional harm in past civilizations. Historically, different societies have been better or worse in their interactions with the rest of the natural world, including interactions between people. Some have “trod lightly” on the earth, and have survived and flourished in ways that permitted the areas in which they created disturbances to regenerate, or they developed relatively low-disturbance agricultural systems, while others have caused lasting local ecological harm. Undermining the idea that humans are uniquely and solely destructive of nature, in some locations the practices of humans in some locations actively contributed to the generation and maintenance of a more biologically diverse local ecosystem than would have been the case otherwise. Two of many examples of this are the activities of some Native-American tribes that practiced different forms of controlled burns to enhance the edge effects of forested areas, and the pastoral nomadic lifestyles of societies in eastern Africa and other regions. As historian Neil Roberts asserts:

It is easy to fall into the trap of describing human impact on the natural world solely in terms of ‘degradation’ and ‘impoverishment’, especially when considering issues such as soil erosion or deforestation. In fact, agriculture—at least in its pre-modern form—has generally been an agent of ecological diversification. It caused the relative homogeneity of primeval forest ecosystems to be replaced by a mosaic of … ecosystems, created and maintained by human action, and their fates came to be intimately associated with particular modes of agricultural production. The English chalk downlands, for example, were maintained as a grassland ecosystem only because of a longstanding system of sheep grazing. Once this traditional form of land use no longer operated, the natural processes of plant succession began to allow annual grasses to be replaced by scrub and eventually to revert to secondary woodland.[endnoteRef:77] [77: Neil Roberts, The Holocene: An Environmental History, Wiley, Chichester, UK: 261 (2014). ]

The ecological damage done by ancient peoples occurred because of class dynamics, low levels of technology, and less knowledge of long-term impacts, not any ingrained tendency to destroy. But once such damage occurred, many ancient agricultural societies adapted to the changes they had caused or moved elsewhere. In the Mediterranean region they modified their landscapes, building terraces to reduce runoff and erosion or, instead of planting wheat on sloping soils, they raised perennial crops such as olive trees and vineyards. Wheat, which requires annual soil plowing, was then grown on the more level fields or purchased by selling olive products and wine. Human societies have generally been able to adapt and modify practices as mistakes were made or in face of environmental change over which they had no control, such as multi-year or multi-decade droughts.[endnoteRef:78] [78: Patricia McAnany and Norman Yoffee, "Why We Question Collapse and Study Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire,” pp. 1-17 In Patricia McAnany and Norman Yoffee (eds.), Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire, Cambridge University Press (2010). ]

Indeed, historical knowledge and concern with environmental harm began early and by the 19th century, demonstrated by books on subjects such as soil degradation and deforestation. For example, in 1864 George Perkins Marsh, in Man and Nature: Or Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action, could already write:

The earth is fast becoming an unfit home for its noblest inhabitant, and another era of equal human crime and human improvidence…would reduce it to such a condition of impoverished productiveness, of shattered surface, of climatic excess, as to threaten the deprivation, barbarism, and perhaps even the extinction of the species.[endnoteRef:79] [79: Quoted in Ramachandra Guha, Environmentalism: A Global History, Addison Wesley Longman:32 (2000). ]

Today, ignorance is no excuse: neither is a lack of technological know-how or resources. We learn more about nature every day, but continue to use practices and techniques that are known to cause harm. We already know much more environmentally benign ways to grow food, construct furniture and buildings, produce energy, transport people, utilize human and farm animal wastes, regenerate landscapes, and construct an entire society along genuinely sustainable lines. But the solutions will not be implemented if they are not compatible with the functioning of capitalism or the perceived needs of those who exert economic and political power.

Another common idea common among people concerned with the ever-expanding nature of the economy is that environmental problems are a result of a society that has a “growth paradigm” or “growth philosophy,” or the economists and the media focusing too much attention on the growth of Gross National Product (GDP), a measure of all goods and services produced in a country. Some propose that we somehow change to a zero growth economy. But, as we shall see below, the very essence of capitalism is to try to grow as rapidly as possible. Thinking that a new paradigm or philosophy will make things better, represents a misunderstanding of why things are the way they are by reversing cause and effect. The paradigms and philosophies are products of the system, rather than controlling how the system operates with respect to ecological balance and the welfare of the majority of the global population. As if economists were only to focus on something else—like Gross National Happiness (an index that supposedly reflects the quality of life)—the basic nature of how the economy works would miraculously change. Simply altering what is measured or how something is described will not change the trajectory of an economy.

There are also other “explanations” for the ecological crisis, for example, that it’s inevitable in an industrial society (and we should, therefore, deindustrialize and go back to hunting and gathering, presumably with fewer people) and people aren’t purchasing the right products (everything would be honky dory if we just all bought “green” stuff). There are some who get a little closer to the real issue but think that the problem is un- and under-regulated businesses that are allowed to pollute almost at will (thus their solution is more and better regulations).

These supposed explanations for the environmental and social problems we face focus on a variety of symptoms while completely ignoring the root cause of the crises. The people expounding such ideas are beating around the bush without getting to the bush itself—the capitalist economic system. More insidiously, each of these explanations: over-population, individual over-consumption, human nature or value judgments, have something in common. The famous Walt Kelly cartoon, drawn as an anti-pollution poster for Earth Day in 1970, exemplifies this thinking: Pogo (an anthropomorphic opossum) says “We have met the enemy and it is us.” Therefore, everyone is to blame for the problem. This completely absolves the workings of the economic system, including the overconsumption of the rich, from any blame.

What is capitalism?

The short answer is that it is a competitive economic system in which private individuals or corporations hire workers to make goods and provide services for the purpose of selling in markets as a means to make profits. It operates with a mass of workers who have no alternative to selling their labor power in order to make a living because they have been previously and forcibly separated from the land and means of their own sustenance.

The vast majority of workers in capitalist economies do not own the tools or technologies (the “means of production”) needed to make a living because they have all been privatized. As a result, in order to live we must work for capitalists and business managers who exploit us to make a profit. Major classes in capitalist societies include the elite or ruling class[footnoteRef:1] (the 1%—i.e. the capitalists who own so much of the economy and greatly influence state and national governments, laws and regulations)[endnoteRef:80], and the working class who work in business and institutions of various sorts and form the majority of society. Approximately eighty percent of those working in private U.S. businesses are classified as “production and nonsupervisory employees.”[endnoteRef:81] Many employees of local, state, and national governments—teachers, firefighters, office workers, civil servants, maintenance workers, etc.—are also part of the working class. [1: Some readers may be surprised, perhaps even disturbed, by the use of the term “ruling class.” Even the existence of classes is rarely acknowledged in the United States. But when a relatively small group of individuals controls so much of the political and economic aspects of society there are only a few expressions that capture the concept—elite, power elite, plutocracy, and ruling class.] [80: For a discussion of the ruling class in the U.S. see Angelo Codevilla, "America’s Ruling Class——And the Perils of Revolution,” The American Spectator, http://spectator.org/39326_americas-ruling-class-and-perils-revolution/ (July 16, 2010); Joseph Stiglitz, “Of the1%, by the 1%, for the 1%,” Vanity Fair, http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105 (March 31, 2011). ] [81: Calculated from the “FRED” Economic Database at the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank website, Production and Nonsupervisory Employees: Total Private (series CES0500000006) and All Employees: Total Private Industries (series USPRIV). ]

Business profits originate from workers. Machines cannot be made to turn a profit on their own, without workers. (And gambling on the stock exchange doesn’t produce new money, nor can “buying low to sell high”: these function to redistribute existing money.[footnoteRef:2]) Because workers are not paid for the full value that their labor power contributes to the products they make as they convert machinery and raw materials into goods and services, the excess work for which they are not paid (their “surplus labor”) becomes the profit of the capitalist who employs them. Most people must work—under threat of hunger and poverty—and in the process, a part of their labor is converted into profit for the boss. [2: However, new money is created as people and companies take on debt from banks that loan out more funds than they have in their reserves. ]

There are also small businesses with few employees and independent tradespeople such as plumbers and electricians who own the tools of their trades and work for themselves but form a small percentage of the total economy, which is dominated by giant corporations. While senior managers and high-level supervisors are employees of companies, making them in some sense part of the working class, their actual interests and identification are with the owners of capital.

Why Perpetual Growth is Endemic

The purpose of production under capitalism is to make profits by outcompeting other businesses and selling the products (commodities) for more than it cost to make them. Karl Marx’s simple formula, M-C-M’ captures this perfectly, where M refers to the capital which is used to purchase raw materials, machinery, and labor in order to produce a commodity (C), which is then sold for a price (M’) that includes a profit above and beyond all costs.

Markets are needed for capitalism to function, because owners of capital have to sell their goods to make a profit. Production and sale processes go through cycle after cycle, with M’ turning into a larger sum, M’’, and then the even larger M’’’, and so on: ever escalating, ad infinitum. This is very different from the circulation of goods and services in prior economic systems that had markets, which were characterized as cycles of C-M-C. In this system, money is only an intermediary to exchange the goods you make for those that you need. The cycle here begins and ends with a thing that has a use of its own, not to make more money to plough back into new investment. This aspect of the way capitalism functions explains why the system ends up permanently—aside from periods of recessions and depressions—growing in size: each cycle of production is larger than the one before. It’s imperative to grasp the essential function of production under capitalism is to produce more capital: goods and services are only a temporary transition to that end.[footnoteRef:3] [3: Marx wrote in Capital that each capitalist is “fanatically bent” on making value expand itself and so: “he ruthlessly forces the human race to produce for production’s sake. In this way he spurs on the development of societies productive forces…Only as personified capital is the capitalist respectable. As such, he shares with the miser an absolute drive for self-enrichment. But what appears in the miser as the mania of an individual, is, in the capitalist, the effect of the social mechanism in which he is merely a cog. Moreover, the development of capitalist production makes it necessary constantly to keep increasing the amount of capital laid out in a given industrial undertaking, and competition subordinates every individual capitalist to the immanent laws of capitalist production, as external and coercive laws. It compels him to keep constantly extending his capital, so as to preserve it, but he can only extend it by means of progressive accumulation.” (Karl Marx; Capital: A Critique of Political Economy Vol. 1, Penguin Books, London:739 (1976).]

The perpetual growth of capitalist economies is simply how the system functions, a result of the continual drive to accumulate capital. Individual businesses are in competition with one another to maximize profits by doing so by striving to increase sales and market-share in order to produce ever-larger amounts of capital. Local, state and national governments try to stimulate growth as well, through tax incentives as well as low interest rates and deficit spending on such infrastructure as highways when growth is sluggish. Constant enlargement of the economy is the inevitable result. Should a company not expand its sales and market share, profits suffer and it will eventually be taken over or go bankrupt. There is no end point in capitalism as a system, no such thing as enough capital or enough growth. The idea of a “steady state” capitalism as proposed by some ecological economists is a contradiction in terms.

Business cycles of ups and downs (booms and busts) are a feature of all capitalist economies.[footnoteRef:4] And when growth falters and turns an expansion into a recession, suffering increases: higher unemployment, hunger, cuts to social programs and lasting psychological damage to workers under stress. When the economy is slack, governments lower interest rates to induce investment and purchases to stimulate growth. People are told to go out and shop, as with the cover of the November 28, 2010 New York Times Magazine, which exhorted the Chinese to take up the slack in the global economy with the banner headline Shop, China, SHOP![endnoteRef:82] Spending money becomes the public’s duty to help resurrect growth, which is pushed as in everyone’s common interest. [4: There is a common pattern during the boom-bust cycle of capitalism; once an expansion begins, investments are made in order to take advantage of the increased activity and potential for profit. The building up of inventories in anticipation of increasing sales also helps to stimulate the economy during an expansion. And encouraged by lower interest rates on borrowing, household and commercial spending increases. But, not knowing when to stop, or where real expansion turns into speculation and financial bubbles, overproduction of goods and machinery occurs. When overproduction becomes evident, businesses stop investing, struggle to pay bills, begin to layoff workers, and sometimes go bankrupt. ] [82: New York Times Magazine, November 28, 2010. If the title wasn’t explicit enough, the subheading stated, “For the sake of the world economy and their own, the Chinese need to start spending more like Americans.” ]

Growth is therefore the reality of the system’s core operation, which then drives the ideology of growth, not the other way around. The purpose of production is not to provide people with goods and services. Rather, its core purpose is to make money, to pile up ever-greater quantities of capital. As biologist Richard Levins explained, under capitalism “Agriculture is not about producing food but about profit. Food is a side effect…Health service is a commodity, health a by-product”[endnoteRef:83] [83: Richard Levins, “Why Programs Fail,” Monthly Review 61, no. 10 (March 2010). ]

In a capitalist system, the same can be said about the production of any commodity or the provision of any service, including the commodity of humans selling their labor power on the market. A June 2014 article in The Wall Street Journal, titled “Do Drug Companies Make Drugs, or Money?” explains how Valeant Pharmaceuticals International nurtures profit by cutting its research and development budget. According to its Chief Executive Mike Peterson, “There have been lots and lots of reports, independent reports, talking about how R. & D. on average is no longer productive. I think most people accept that. So it is begging for a new model, and that is hopefully what we have come up with.”

Instead of trying to discover and bring new drugs to market, the company profits by purchasing other companies, lowering production costs and raising drug prices. It has changed the location of its formal headquarters and made other changes for tax advantages. As Peterson put it: “… we were able to get a corporate tax structure which took our effective tax rate from 36 percent over all to what was actually 3.1 percent, which we hope to continue to work on and move lower.”[endnoteRef:84] Perhaps if they work the political angle a little harder they may be able to get it to zero. [84: Andrew Ross Sorkin, “Do Drug Companies Make Drugs, or Money?,” The Wall Street Journal (June 3, 2014). ]

Other than during periods of major wars, full employment rarely occurs in capitalist economies and is problematic for business, with workers able to exert too much power to demand improved wages and working conditions. The smooth functioning of the system depends on having workers available as a “reserve army” and being able to fire workers easily when they’re no longer needed. As noted by Albert Einstein, in capitalist economies

production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always have a job; an “army of unemployed” almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job...Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals...[endnoteRef:85] [85: Albert Einstein, “Why Socialism,” Monthly Review 1(1) (May 1949). ]

There is a reason that workers and unions generally support new industries, expansions, and new construction of all kinds. A steady supply of new jobs is needed, and it is economic growth that creates them. With constantly improving technologies that make workers more efficient, fewer workers are needed even though more production occurs. Workers are, therefore, continually being displaced from jobs and new ones are needed in order to absorb labor displaced by automation/robotization (as well as when companies downside or fail outright). Since the end of the Great Recession in 2009, layoffs and discharges from private sector jobs have amounted to about nineteen to twenty million workers per year.[endnoteRef:86] While many workers are able to find new jobs quickly, one of the implications of a slowdown in growth is that it becomes harder to find jobs to replace those that are lost through the normal functioning of the economic system. [86: U.S. Government Bureau of Labor Statistics, data series JTS10000000LDL. ]

Theoretically, a national government could function as the “employer of last resort,” providing jobs to those unable to find employment.[footnoteRef:5] The reason that this doesn’t happen is that it would go against the powerful interest of capital to maintain a flexible and available labor force and would cost the government money to pay them, so raising the need for increases in taxes. Having a “reserve army of labor” is useful to capital by providing a damper on wages by disciplining labor with the threat of replacement.[endnoteRef:87] [5: Under pressure from unions and growing social unrest, during the massive unemployment of the Great Depression of the 1930s the U.S. government created a number of jobs programs, the largest being the Works Progress Administration (WPA), employing millions of people. The economist John Maynard Keynes is best remembered for articulating the need for public spending to alleviate shortfalls in employment and reinvigorate the economy, a response that held sway among western governments of all political stripes until the 1970s.] [87: For a discussion of the reserve army see Fred Magdoff and Harry Magdoff, “Disposable Workers: Today’s Reserve Army of Labor,” Monthly Review 55(11):18-35 (April 2005). ]

Overcapacity is common

But even when “more growth” is the mantra capitalists won’t employ more workers or ramp up production at idle factories unless a profit can be made. As economist Richard Wolff made clear in 2013, when 20 million workers in the United States were either unemployed or under-employed and a full 20 percent of manufacturing capacity sat idle and unused:

Capitalists make the decisions to not hire those millions of workers and to not buy, lease, or use all that industrial capacity…Capitalists make those decisions based on what is privately profitable for them, not on what is lost to society. And that loss is huge…We as a nation forego about 15 percent of extra output of goods and services because of unemployed people and idled tools, equipment, etc. That comes to roughly $2 trillion per year. Yes, you read that correctly. We could produce an annual extra output far greater than the government's budget deficit ever was. We could use that extra to reduce global poverty by more than what has been done by all advanced industrial nations for decades. In short, we have taken staggering losses for our planet from being entrapped within an economic system that permits employment decisions to be held hostage to capitalists' profit calculations.[endnoteRef:88] [88: Richard Wolff, “Capitalism and Unemployment,” Truthout.org (November 15, 2013). ]

With monopolies and oligopolies (when few firms control a large portion of the production) making record profits even at a time of relatively subdued growth, corporations frequently don’t want to use their accumulating capital to expand. At the end of 2015, corporations worldwide had approximately $15 trillion dollars in cash and cash equivalents in their coffers.[endnoteRef:89] They were not about to invest those funds in building up their businesses because of slow growth in the world economy and excess production capacity in many sectors. Some funds have been used to finance the takeover of other business and stock buybacks but neither of those practices produces new commodities. There is no shortage of capital, but rather a tsunami of money sloshing around the world seeking profitable outlets. Over-accumulation of capital is occurring at the same time as overcapacity to produce goods—more evidence of stagnation and the irrational nature of the system. [89: The Editorial Board, “Putting Corporate Cash to Work, The New York Times (March 8, 2013); Jack Rasmus, “Global Corporate Cash Piles Exceed $15 Trillion,” Telesurtv, accessed at http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Global-Corporate-Cash-Piles-Exceed-15-Trillion-20150921-0028.html (September 21, 2015); and Philippe Bacchetta, Kenza Benhima, Céline Poilly, “The surge in corporate cash and the nature of financial shocks,” from VOX CEPR's Policy Portalaccessed at http://www.voxeu.org/article/corporate-cash-piles-and-financial-shocks (February 19, 2015). ]

Good times propel investment in more capacity as businesses assume that increased sales of their products will continue forever, stimulating a buildup of excess capacity. At the beginning of the Great Recession, in December 2007, approximately one-third of the capacity to build automobiles—in the U.S. and worldwide—was not being used, partially explaining the severe effect on the industry. In June 2016, seven years following the official end of the Great Recession, about seventy-five percent of U.S. industrial capacity was being used[endnoteRef:90] and the world was awash in idle factories and excess production capacity for many products. [90: St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, FRED database, Table G.17 Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization, https://research.stlouisfed.org/. ]

Corporations constantly enlarge as they eat up smaller businesses during recessions and invest in more capacity during expansions. Mining companies constructed huge new operations have been faced with low prices for minerals in 2015/2016. “The big mines cost so much to build and extract minerals so efficiently that mothballing them is unthinkable—running them generates cash to pay down debts, and huge mines are expensive to simply maintain while idle. But as a result, their scale means they are helping miners dig themselves even deeper into the price trough by adding to a glut.”[endnoteRef:91] [91: John Miller, "Supermines Add to Supply Glut of Metals,” The Wall Street Journal (January 4, 2016). ]

Overcapacity also occurs in the retail sector with older malls needing repurposing as businesses leave. While the malls serving the wealthy are still doing well, those serving the rest of the population are struggling. Between 2010 and 2015, about two-dozen “dead malls” closed in the U.S., while another 60 or so are on the brink of failure, with many more in serious trouble.[endnoteRef:92] At times, there are so many stores of the same type or brand that they are probably in competition with themselves. The struggling electronics retailer RadioShack, after closing two stores near Sacramento, California at the end of 2014 still had twenty-three stores within a twenty-five mile radius. And after closing stores near Brooklawn, New Jersey, there were still six stores in a five-mile radius.[endnoteRef:93] In April of 2015, RadioShack, then in bankruptcy, was purchased by Standard General. The hedge fund retained the RadioShack name and leased space in over 1400 stores to Sprint, which was struggling for more exposure to consumers.[endnoteRef:94] [92: Nelson Schwartz, "The Economics (and Nostalgia) of Dead Malls," The New York Times (December 4, 2015). ] [93: Drew Fitzgerald, “RadioShack’s Problem: So Many Stores, So Few Shoppers,” The Wall Street Journal (December 26, 2014). ] [94: Associated Press, “Why the RadioShack brand will live on after bankruptcy,” CBS News, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-the-radioshack-brand-will-live-on-after-bankruptcy/ (July 1, 2015). ]

The implication of such overbuilding of capacity for waste of resources is discussed in Chapter 3.

Does capitalism = democracy?

Notwithstanding propaganda to the contrary, capitalism does not require either freedom or democracy and has existed quite happily under dictatorships such as Franco’s Spain, Pinochet’s Chile, the military juntas of Brazil and Argentina, and contemporary Saudi Arabia and China. On the other hand, it does require a state to set rules and facilitate business success and to protect its national business interests when they operate in foreign countries.

In every country, the desires and perceived needs of capitalists are by far the largest influence on what happens at various governmental levels. However, there is no permanent monolithic “executive committee” of capitalists, as not all capitalists have the same economic interests on all issues. And those holding the heights of economic power don’t always get their way—countervailing forces such as strikes by workers and opposition from social movements are sometimes strong enough to stop preferred legislation or cause passage of legislation they don’t like. But an analysis of data on this subject by Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University

… indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism. [endnoteRef:95] [95: Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens,” Perspectives on Politics 12(3):564-581 (September 2014). ]

That is the exercise of power by the elite.

Despite formal political democracy and the ability to vote, there is not even the pretense of economic democracy in any capitalist country: capitalists and their agents who govern the state overwhelmingly decide on investment decisions with regards to factories, locations, infrastructure, schools and so on. With essentially a plutocracy operating in the U.S., the “needs” and interests of the tiny minority of the very wealthy systematically control government and its regulatory system. At the same time, the needs and wishes of the vast majority are largely irrelevant to the operation of the individual states as well as the national government.

The fact that the United States is a democracy in name only—that what occurs at the national level is overwhelming influenced by powerful commercial interests—should come as little surprise because so many people have become aware of the massive amounts of money in politics, the notorious “revolving door” between government and business, the cozy relationships between commercial interests and government agencies tasked with regulating them, tax cuts for the rich and big business, and with the common occurrence of business lobbyists like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Chamber of Commerce actually writing legislation and having considerable input on regulations.

Monopoly capitalism

The trend within capitalism toward the centralization and concentration of capital into larger and larger units, has reached a point where a few giant transnational corporations dominate many sectors. A handful of corporations—Monsanto, Dow/DuPont, Syngenta, BASF, and Bayer—control over seventy-five percent of the global commercial seed markets.[endnoteRef:96] In 2007, in approximately forty percent of industries, the four largest companies sold more than half of the goods. The four largest supermarket companies in the U.S. went from garnering 18 percent of sales in 1992 to 32 percent in 2007. This goes on for industry after industry and sector after sector. By 2014 the revenue of the 200 largest non-financial corporations in the U.S. was over one-third of the total revenue of all such corporations.[endnoteRef:97] [96: Pat Mooney and Kathy Jo Wetter, "Fast Food: Supporting Farming Innovation in a Changing Climate,” In Bill Tracy and Michael Sligh (eds.), Proceedings of 2014 Summit on Seeds and Breeds for the 21st Century Agriculture, Pittsboro, North Carolina: Rural Advancement Foundation International RAFI-USA, p.177-189 (2014). ] [97: COMPUSTAT, “Fundamentals Annual: North America,” Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS). ]

As Paul Krugman wrote,

…it’s obvious to the naked eye that our economy consists much more of monopolies and oligopolists than it does of the atomistic, price-taking competitors economists often envision… There’s also statistical evidence for a rising role of monopoly power. Recent work by Jason Furman, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, and Peter Orszag, former head of the Office of Management and Budget, shows a rising number of firms earning “super-normal” returns—that is, they have persistently high profit rates that don’t seem to be diminished by competition.[endnoteRef:98] [98: Paul Krugman, “Challenging the Oligarchy” (review of Robert Reich’s Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few),” New York Review of Books 62(20), (December 15, 2005). ]

Monopolies and oligopolies, instead of competing by cutting prices, compete primarily through the sales effort. The result is higher profits than would occur in a competitive free market with many sellers and buyers. These are “profits that don’t represent returns on investment, but instead reflect the value of market dominance.”[endnoteRef:99] Put in slightly different words by Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist for the World Bank: “Today’s markets are characterized by the persistence of high monopoly profits.”[endnoteRef:100] In a desire first noted by Adam Smith and contrary to popular myth, capitalists far prefer no competition at all, which guarantees higher profits and no disturbing surprise competitors. As someone who should know, Stiglitz explains that, “The real key to capitalist success is to make sure there won’t ever be competition – or at least there won’t be competition for a long enough time that one can make a monopoly killing in the meanwhile.”[endnoteRef:101] [99: Paul Krugman, “Profits Without Production,” The New York Times (June 20, 2013). ] [100: Joseph Stiglitz, “Monopoly’s New Era,” Project Syndicate, https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/high-monopoly-profits-persist-in-markets-by-joseph-e--stiglitz-2016-05 (May 13, 2016). ] [101: Joseph Stiglitz, The price of inequality: how today’s divided society endangers our future, Norton, New York:43 (2013). ]

The sales effort & modern capitalism

The problem of how to sell the avalanche of goods that are continuously churned out by ever-more productive factories and workers is one of the system’s central problems. This creates the need for never-ending, ever-increasing consumption: there can be no profits without sales. So, how does such a system of commodity production—always making new items and more of the old ones—sell all its products at a high enough price to make profits? With so many different goods, and at such great quantities pouring into markets, it doesn’t happen automatically.

One way to deal with this predicament, once the national market is saturated, is to sell the products to people in other countries and expand markets, creating a constant hunt for new markets abroad. The other solution, which goes on simultaneously, is a gigantic and multi-faceted sales effort designed to convince people to see their self-satisfaction through the buying of commodities. And part of the effort is not only to sell a particular product but also to have people come to see greater consumption as a way of life and the path to personal happiness and to overcome feelings of emptiness, loneliness and dissatisfaction generated by capitalism. This same advertising industry functions to make everyone feel inadequate in his or her own bodies, with their lifestyle and fashion sense. The “consumer age” didn’t happen by accident, or due to human failings, but arose rather as a systemic necessity, carefully cultivated as an ideology supportive of business interests.

As far back as the 1950s Victor Lebow recognized the problem of over-production and proposed a solution to it, in a 1950s article in the Journal of Retailing: “Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego satisfactions, in consumption.”[endnoteRef:102] And the economy and sales effort continually operates in ways that increase people’s “wants” for new products, appearing as needs because of a multifaceted sales effort. As Philip Kotler, the marking guru and author of Marketing Management (now in its 15th edition), among many other books, commented: [102: Op. Cit., Victor Lebow, “Price Competition in 1955,” Journal of Retailing 31/1 (Spring 1955). ]

If there are no more needs—by which I mean, everything we think of, there's someone supplying it—then we have to invent new needs… Now, I know that's been criticised. People say: 'why are you doing that to us? Why don't you leave us alone?' But part of capitalism is, it's a system where we've got to motivate people to want things so they'll work for these things. If there's no more things they want, they won't work as hard: they'll want 35-hour weeks, 30-hour weeks and so on. Yes, marketing does drive us to new wants.[endnoteRef:103] [103: Richard Tomkins, “Kotler's feast of ideas,” The Financial Times (May 29, 2003). ]

And “new needs” are produced regularly, with between thirty and forty thousand new products coming onto the U.S. marketplace annually from 2004 to 2015.[endnoteRef:104] What Kotler doesn’t say is that the “problem” of running out of new things to purchase isn’t that people would work fewer hours and have all that extra time for leisure activities. Rather it is that they would then buy fewer new products, companies would suffer and the economy, one in which more and more stuff has to be sold, would falter. [104: Christopher Mims, “Why There Are More Consumer Goods Than Ever,” Wall Street Journal (April 25, 2016). ]

An increase in advertising is not simply related to the productive capacity of capitalism but the other trend mentioned above, namely toward monopoly and oligopoly. A less competitive environment requires a greater amount of advertising, which itself then generates an even greater need as the process expands into every sphere of life advertising executives can dream up. As Robert McChesney writes,

Modern persuasion advertising blossomed as a function of less competitive markets where a handful of firms dominate output or sales. Advertising emerges front and center as a major way to increase or protect market share without engaging in destructive profit-damaging price competition.[endnoteRef:105] [105: Robert McChesney, Digital Disconnect: How capitalism is turning the internet against democracy, The New Press, New York:44 (2013). ]

The more similar the product, the more firms must spend on advertising to shape their brand image to emphasize the supposed differences based on what the packaging looks like, which demographic it will appeal to and the feelings and emotions it will generate in the consumer’s life. Of course, the more advertising there is, the more corporations have to advertise to cut through the advertising that already exists and make a potential consumer pay attention to their product alone.

A new phenomenon regarding the sales effort has emerged out of the era of gathering personal information via the internet. This has lead to the commodification of a person’s identity, for sale to advertisers so they can manipulate messages targeted to specific individuals, based on knowledge of their interests and shopping habits. The purpose is to influence your taste, perceived needs, and desires in order to better able to move more products and do it faster.

But where do people who can afford it put all the stuff they buy? Living in larger houses helps, but the purpose of one class of structures that has grown significantly is to provide space for people to store their things. The Wall Street Journal describes one such company, “…Public Storage, the self-storage giant that on the surface appears boring but in reality has created a fantastic business housing all of the junk that Americans refuse to part with.”[endnoteRef:106] [106: Ken Brown, "REIT Surprise: How Real Estate Crushed the Stock Pickers,” The Wall Street Journal (June 8, 2016). ]

Just as Lebow suggested was necessary, people have come to see their most important interactions not as a set of relationships between people, but as their relationships to things. Those things, the commodities that workers produce, dominate people’s reality and navigating this reality becomes the purpose of life. As workers produce more through increases in productivity, the more ensnared and subservient they become to the commodity form. As Marx characterized the phenomenon:

… it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world. In that world the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men’s hands.[endnoteRef:107] [107: Karl Marx, Capital vol. 1, “Chapter One: Commodities, Section 4: The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof,” http://web.stanford.edu/~davies/Symbsys100-Spring0708/Marx-Commodity-Fetishism.pdf ]

This is the essence of Marx’s evocative phrase, “commodity fetishism.” It is not that humans have an obsession with buying commodities, or even that we worship them—but rather that we see commodities “as independent beings endowed with life [through relative prices], and entering into relation both with one another and the human race.”[endnoteRef:108] [108: Ibid. ]

The nation state and the rise of industrial capitalism

How did industrial capitalism get started and begin to grow? Where did sufficient capital come from to get investment rolling? And what was the origin of the mass of workers who had to sell their labor to industrial capitalists?

The original accumulation of capital was based on theft in Britain, with the Enclosures creating agricultural estates and at the same time generating a large mass of former peasants that were forced to sell their labor. Simultaneously, in Africa and the New World, colonial plunder based on slavery, was similarly critical in creating the masses of wealth that allowed capitalism to develop. Huge numbers of natives in the Americas were either enslaved or held in near slave conditions—along with disease contributing to a rapid decline in population. At the same time, the stolen land was opened to European settlers, as a “free gift” of resources that, along with the importation of slave labor from Africa, was instrumental in the development of the United States and global capitalism. The state was the organizing instrument that promoted, planned and carried out the thefts, or gave permission and made resources available to do so. For example, government-backed bonds and the gift of government land (stolen from Native Americans, of course) on10 miles on either side of the tracks were instrumental in financing the building of the transcontinental railroad.

Slavery and capitalism

The invention of the cotton gin to clean raw cotton at the end of the 18th century allowed an astounding increase in worker productivity in this aspect of the process—with the cleaning of cotton by one person increasing from five or six pounds a day to around one thousand pounds a day. However, as historian Sven Beckert makes clear in Empire of Cotton, what really created industrial capitalism was not better technology but the social relations unique to capitalism:

This recasting of cotton did not at first derive from technical advances, nor from organizational advantages, but instead from a far simpler source: the ability and willingness to project capital and power across vast oceans…The muscle of armed trade enabled the creation of a complex, Eurocentric maritime trade web; the forging of a military-fiscal state allowed for the projection of power into far-flung corners of the world; the invention of financial instruments…allowed for the transfer of capital and goods…the expropriation of land and deportation of Africans created flourishing plantations.[endnoteRef:109] [109: Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History, Random House, New York:30(2014). ]

While the labor of enslaved Africans was helping develop the plantations so integral to British and U.S. capitalist development, we need to keep in mind that the trade in human beings and later European colonial takeovers changed the economic and social trajectory Africa and other colonized and exploited colonies. Walter Rodney put it directly in the title of his book—How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Residual effects are felt to this day around the world.

Cotton became the first mass produced and mass consumed global commodity. Because of the significance of cotton and its critical role in the rise of the industrial revolution, and the role enslaved labor played in producing cotton and sugar, the importance of slavery to the economic development of the U.S. and Britain cannot be overemphasized. As Walter Johnson has written,

In the years before the Civil War, there was no capitalism without slavery. The two were, in many ways, one and the same…It is not simply that the labor of enslaved people underwrote 19th-century capitalism. Enslaved people were the capital: four million people worth at least $3 billion in 1860, which was more than all the capital invested in railroads and factories in the United States combined. Seen in this light, the conventional distinction between slavery and capitalism fades into meaninglessness…[endnoteRef:110] [110: Walter Johnson, “King Cotton’s Long Shadow,” The New York Times, Opinionator blog, March 30, 2013, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com. ]

Cotton growing became so integral to the economy of the south and the world economy that it was known as “King Cotton,” and during the relatively short period from the 1830s to the U.S. Civil War, “…Indian land, African-American labor, Atlantic finance and British industry [were] synthesized into racial domination, profit and economic development on a national and a global scale.”[endnoteRef:111] [111: Ibid. ]

Slaves were not only sources of labor and wealth, they were commodities to be bought and sold, rented out, and used as collateral for loans. It should not be a surprise that racism justified by “science” and eugenics—aimed at buttressing and justifying an intensely profitable business, in a country where cotton production was responsible for 30% of the economy—developed most extensively in one of the last countries to end slavery: the United States of America.

Aside from cotton, slavery helped many important institutions to prosper, such as Harvard and Brown Universities. According to its President, writing in 2016, “Harvard was directly complicit in America’s system of racial bondage from the College’s earliest days in the 17th century until slavery in Massachusetts ended in 1783, and Harvard continued to be indirectly involved through extensive financial and other ties to the slave South up to the time of emancipation.”[endnoteRef:112] Two hundred and seventy-two men, women, and children owned by the Jesuit priests that started and ran Georgetown University were sold in 1838 for the equivalent of $500,000 in today’s money, in order to save the University from financial ruin.[endnoteRef:113] [112: Drew Faust, “Recognizing Slavery at Harvard,” The Harvard Crimson (March 30, 2016). ] [113: Rachel Swarns, “Intent on a Reckoning With Georgetown’s Slavery-Stained Past,” The New York Times (July 10, 2016). ]

The rapacious drive for profit through super-exploitation to the extent of dehumanizing enslaved Africans also produced a distorted spiritual wellbeing or Eurocentric ethos of “naturalized” European superiority and dominion over the planet, casting it its wake for centuries to come racial and civilizational conflicts across the globe.

A global system from the very beginning

The need for capitalists to trade with other countries, source raw materials, and sell finished products, was spelled out by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in the Communist Manifesto more than 160 years ago in a passage which has a remarkably contemporary ring:

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere…The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country…All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations.[endnoteRef:114] [114: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, accessed December 21, 2015 at https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf (February 1848). ]

Nation states continue to provide direct support to companies (as with the railroads in the 19th century) as well as the national and international legal framework of laws, regulations, set currency and interest rates and other societal rules. A framework to ensure private property rights and to enforce agreements is essential to the smooth operation of the system, as are methods of enforcement through the police, courts, and when necessary, armed forces. Furthermore, the state is needed to plan, organize and build all the infrastructure required for capitalism to flourish but which individual capitalists refuse to pay for: the roads, docks, satellites, water pipelines, dams, land clearance, communication systems, sewage treatment and the lease of public land to extractive industries so they can sink their drills and mines.

Governments prioritize their own national businesses in their dealings with foreign states, which along with the need for constant expansion, leads directly to inter-imperial conflict and struggles for geopolitical power.

Imperialism, a project of leading capitalist states

As with slavery, colonialism and imperialism were essential components in the development and success of capitalism. Branko Milanovic, writing during the period when he was the lead economist in the World Bank's research department, described these developments using the term “globalization,” which is commonly used to describe only relatively recent events:

Globalization was brought to the many at the ‘‘point of a gun,’’ and many were ‘‘globalized’’ literally kicking and screaming, from Commodore’s [sic] Perry ultimatum which opened Japan, to British and French gunboat diplomacy in Tunisia, Egypt and Zanzibar, to the Opium wars and gunboats that patrolled Chinese internal waterways. Worst of all, for many millions who were sold in slavery, or who toiled 16 h a day on plantations from Malaya to Brazil that too was globalization. Globalization was not merely accompanied by the worst excesses of colonialism; colonialism was not an accident. On the contrary, globalization was colonialism because it is through being colonies that most of the non-European countries were brought to the global world.[endnoteRef:115] [115: Branko Milanovic, “The Two Faces of Globalization: Against Globalization as We Know It,” World Development 31(4):667-683 (2003). ]

Europe—in order to plunder countries of their wealth, corner markets, provide outlets for those dispossessed through enclosures, or ensure access to raw materials—forcibly took control over countries in the Americas, Africa, and Asia in the greatest land grab in history. The sweeping expanse of this takeover is far from common knowledge: “in 1914… the colonial powers, their colonies, and their former colonies extended over approximately 85 percent of the earth's surface.”[endnoteRef:116] [116: Harry Magdoff, Imperialism: From the Colonial Age to the Present, Monthly Review Press:35 (1978). ]

Regions were occupied by European countries for the purpose of exploiting the resources and people, while using a relatively small number of colonial administrators and armed forces to do so. With a few important exceptions, outright colonialism is mostly in the past, but imperialism without colonies is very much an essential feature of 21st century capitalism. National governments utilize political, military, and economic means to force open and expand markets for goods and services, permit investment and the repatriation of profits, utilize low-cost production facilities, control resource exploitation on favorable terms, and pursue geopolitical interests—everything possible to enhance the profit potential and flexibility of capital and the power of the leading states. In the process, alliances were formed with local/national capital—some essentially became agents (compradors) of foreign interests while others had budding national capitalist interests of their own not always aligned with the goals of foreign capital.

And imperialism remains a way of life for the mature capitalist countries to this day. Following the Second World War, the U.S.—with its huge economy unscathed while other leading capitalist economies were in ruins—took the mantel of the world’s leading imperial power from Britain. This allowed the U.S. to have paramount influence on world political and economic events. The U.S. was instrumental in the overthrow of democratically elected governments and active military intervention in dozens of countries. In the 1960s, the U.S. took over the war against Vietnamese independence from France and, in the process of losing the war and causing the death of millions in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, the war wreaked untold long-term ecological and social destruction by spraying vast areas of jungle with the defoliant Agent Orange.

More recently, part of the reaction to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the twin towers in New York City and the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq that followed, was that proponents of those invasions embraced a more muscular and aggressive foreign policy as a “new imperialism.” The enthusiastic backers of this “new” imperialism—as if the “old” imperialism had ever gone away—included Max Boot (in The Savage Wars of Peace) and Niall Ferguson (in Imperialism). In a Wall Street Journal article, Alan Murray, the CNBC’s Washington Bureau Chief (and now editor of Fortune) quoted two Brookings institute authors as saying that “[t]he real debate is not whether to have an empire, but what kind." He then went on to explain, “We are all, it seems, imperialists now.”[endnoteRef:117] And as the Iraq insurgency against U.S. intervention exploded in 2003, BBCs defense correspondent referred to Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem, The White Man’s Burden, which begins as follows: [117: Alan Murray, "Manifesto Warns of Dangers Associated With an Empire,” The Wall Street Journal (July 15, 2003). ]

Take up the White Man's burden, Send forth the best ye breed

  Go bind your sons to exile, to serve your captives' need;

To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild—

  Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half-devil and half-child.

The correspondent, trying to stiffen the U.S. government’s spine, just as Kipling had tried to do with his poem, reminded Washington:

It should be remembered that more than 100 years ago, the British poet Rudyard Kipling wrote his famous poem about what he styled as ‘the white man's burden’—a warning about the responsibilities of empire that was directed not at London but at Washington and its new-found imperial responsibilities in the Philippines… It is not clear if President George W Bush is a reader of poetry or of Kipling. But Kipling's sentiments are as relevant today as they were when the poem was written in the aftermath of the Spanish-American war.[endnoteRef:118] [118: Jonathan Marcus, "US faces up to guerrilla war,” BBC (July 17, 2003). ]

In the words of Harry Magdoff, writing in The Age of Imperialism, “Imperialism is not a matter of choice for a capitalist society; it is the way of life of such a society.”[endnoteRef:119] [119: Harry Magdoff, The Age of Imperialism: The Economics of U.S. Foreign Policy, Monthly Review Press (1969). See also Harry Magdoff, Imperialism: From the Colonial Age to the Present, Monthly Review Press (1977). ]

The United States is the leading power of today’s capitalist world, with the European Union and Japan playing junior supporting roles and new states emerging as potential challengers, most prominently China and India. The United States straddles the globe with military might, maintaining “nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad—from giant “Little Americas” to small radar facilities. Britain, France and Russia, by contrast, have about 30 foreign bases combined.”[endnoteRef:120] [120: David Vine, “Where in the world is the U.S. military?,” Politico Magazine (July/August, 2015), accessed December 14, 2015 at http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/us-military-bases-around-the-world-119321. ]

New York Times columnist Thomas Freidman, a strong supporter of U.S. imperial adventures abroad, commented succinctly and accurately in the late 1990s when he wrote “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist—McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”[endnoteRef:121] [121: Thomas Friedman, “A Manifesto for the Fast World,” The New York Times (April 25, 1999). ]

In addition to overt and covert imperial interventions, state power is reinforced and extended through trade agreements that favor the Great Powers, and through western controlled international financial institutions such as the World Bank, and the economic enforcement agency protecting the interests of imperial governments and private banks, the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Trends in today’s capitalism

Capitalism has the same essential features today as since it began centuries ago—workers need to sell their labor power to stay alive, the driving force and purpose of production is to reap profits and accumulate more capital, the reserve army of labor still exists, growth is an essential characteristic, consumerism reigns supreme, privatization of the commons continues and has accelerated once more, and corporations keep getting larger with a handful controlling large portions of the market. Imperialism is still very much a necessary feature of the system. Naturally however, as the system ages and nation states rise and fall, changes occur.

Much of the growth of the economy in the developed countries during the last forty years was accomplished through one feature of the bloated financial system—debt expansion—allowing people and companies to spend much more than they actually have: total debt in the U.S. (government, household, and business) expanded to around 150 percent of the GDP in the mid 1980s and reached a peak of over 360 percent of GDP in during the Great Recession (2007-2009). As real wages for most workers have declined or stagnated over the recent decades, there has been the need to supplement people’s income through an expansion of credit and loans. This has led to an explosion in access to easy credit—for automobiles, home mortgages, college education, and credit cards that can buy anything—greatly expanding consumption, and thereby stimulating the economy.[endnoteRef:122] The shear magnitude of speculation, accumulated debt, and the size of the housing bubble that occurred leading up to the Great Recession were gigantic.[endnoteRef:123] And while there has been a retreat in total debt in the U.S. relative to GDP (standing at about 330 percent at the end of March 2016, where it had been at the beginning of the recession), total debt of the major economies as a whole continued to grow after the Great Recession. According to a 2016 article in The Financial Times: "Since 2008, total public and private debt in major economies has increased by over $60tn to more than $200tn, about 300 per cent of global gross domestic product (“GDP”), an increase of more than 20 percentage points.”[endnoteRef:124] [122: John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff, The Great Financial Crisis: causes and consequences, Monthly Review Press (2009). ] [123: Fred Magdoff, “The explosion of debt and speculation,” Monthly Review 58(6):1-23 (November 2006). ] [124: Satyajit Das, "QE-forever cycle will have an unhappy ending,” The Financial Times (August 1, 2016). ]

China, which had been growing rapidly for years, entered a period of even faster growth in the early 2000s, its GDP growing at over 10 percent a year starting in 2003, reaching 14 percent growth in 2007. Much of this growth occurred as a result of privatizing public companies, investment from abroad, and drawing in millions of low-paid workers from the countryside, allowing the country to become an export powerhouse. But the economy was greatly stimulated by massive government spending, increased debt, speculation but nevertheless recovered quickly from the effects of the Great Recession.

While still very high by today’s international standards, China’s economic growth rate has declined and was approximately seven percent in 2015. Its extremely rapid growth in the ‘00s and early ‘10s—much of it based on debt—generated what appeared to be an insatiable need for raw materials, from metal ores and oil to agricultural products that stimulated increases in the prices of many raw materials. World prices for these goods began increasing around 2004-2005, which led to some labeling the phenomenon a “commodity supercycle.” In turn, the growth in Chinese imports of raw materials stimulated economies of resource exporting countries such as Brazil, Australia, and South Africa. But with lower growth in China and sluggish growth in Europe, Japan, and the U.S., just like similar bouts of capitalist euphoria about escaping the business cycle, the “supercycle” has ended, threatening to take many economies down and a return to economic and political instability.

In 2016, economic stagnation has taken over much of the world, especially in Japan, Europe, and the United States, with growth occurring at rates far below what is possible. But with few outlets for profitable investments—aside from in the financial sector—investment in new productive capacity has decline, threatening future growth. International corporations are sitting on literally trillions of dollars that they don’t know what to do with. As the chairman of a manufacturer of power accessories in eastern China said, “I don’t know what to invest. It worries me a lot…A lot of industries that we used to put money in have seen tremendous drop in returns. I dare not invest anymore.”[endnoteRef:125] This is precisely the problem that so many corporations face, as they use their profits for stock buybacks, to buyout other companies, or to payout more dividends—instead of investing in future production capabilities. [125: Benchmark, “Chinese Companies are Turning Japanese,” Bloomberg News (July 21, 2016). ]

Class war from above

The situation in the early decades of the 21st century are the result of a conscious political effort of capitalists and their ideologues to find ways to make the system more profitable and ensure its stability. The relative social power of the various sectors of society, and how that power is exercised determines much of what happens in a country. Over the last forty years the relative power of different sectors of society, first in the United States and UK and then spreading to other countries has been consciously shifted in favor of the wealthy in the interests of the ruling class.

Naturally, capitalists and nation states want to control their system, what happens within their own countries and between countries. When unions, progressive social movements or social democratic parties are relatively strong workers are able to make major gains in wages and working conditions. With the presence of an example of an alternative to capitalism—especially the Soviet Union, even though it was not in any way the socialist country it purported to be—capitalists of Europe and the U.S. were more compelled to make concessions to working people. The labor struggles of the 1930s created significant union strength in the U.S. and elsewhere. But capitalists never accepted détente: social democratic reforms, better provision of social welfare and the increased power of labor were never accepted as final. Accommodation was the preferred tactical means, for being able to re-take the initiative later. What ever was done, they felt, could be undone.

Under pressure from changes to the world economy in the 1970s, including a slowing of U.S. economic growth, representatives of capital instituted an assault—essentially a class war from above, to reverse the gains of prior labor and social struggles. In 1971, then chair of the Education Committee of the Chamber of Commerce and future Supreme Court justice Lewis Powell, wrote a memorandum to members of the Chamber that only came to light after his appointment as Supreme Court justice, which began, “No thoughtful person can question that the American economic system is under attack.”[endnoteRef:126] [126: Lewis Powell, “Confidential Memorandum: Attack on the Free Enterprise System,” August 23, 1971]

As Powell goes on, corporations securing profits was no longer enough, “If our system is to survive, top management must be equally concerned with protecting and preserving the system itself.” Whereby he proposed a plan to coordinate the activities of big business with the state to reverse the anti-capitalist climate he laid at the door of leftist propaganda and activism because, “independent and uncoordinated activity by individual corporations, as important as that is, will not be sufficient. Strength lies in organization, in careful long-range planning and implementation, in consistency of action of an indefinite period of years, in the scale of financing available only through joint effort, and in the political power available only through united action and national organizations.” Only a concerted attack on all areas of civil life and the insertion of every opportunity for right-wing ideas to be propagated in the name of “balance” on campuses, in labor unions, the academy and by monitoring of the media could there be any hope of saving what has been various called: the “free enterprise system,” “capitalism” and the “profit system.” Powell warned, “Business must learn the lesson, long ago learned by Labor and other self-interest groups. This is the lesson that political power is necessary; that such power must be assiduously cultivated; and that when necessary, it must be aggressively used and with determination – without embarrassment and without… reluctance.”[endnoteRef:127] [127: ]

The memo’s effects were as dramatic as Powell had hoped, it

galvanized business and the wealthy, leading to what Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson in Winner-Take-All Politics described as a “domestic version of Shock and Awe.” It inspired the establishment of the powerful Business Roundtable (which has only CEOs as members), the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and Citizens for a Sound Economy (the forerunner of Americans for Prosperity). Within a decade the number of firms with lobbyists expanded by almost fifteen-fold. Corporate PACs quadrupled in number between 1976 and the mid–1980s.[endnoteRef:128] [128: Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster, “The Plight of the U.S. Working Class,” Monthly Review 65(8):1-22 (January 2014). ]

The attacks, beginning especially on well-organized union labor in Great Britain and the United States, gained steam in the 1980s. The strategy of blaming unemployment and economic crises on supposedly highly compensated workers—and then making them pay for it through a concerted employer offensive on wages, benefits and rights—was ideologically justified by the supposed need for increased “flexibility” in the marketplace. Kimberly Phillips-Fein, the author of Invisible Hands: The Businessmen's Crusade Against the New Deal, has described the problems of labor organizing in the United States:

History has shaped the landscape for any workers who might want to organize unions today. Because of the intensity of employer opposition, workers who seek to unionize risk polarizing their communities. They may be blamed for taking actions that could lead to their towns losing the company altogether; they may even be fired themselves in retaliation. Is it any wonder that many conclude unionization is not worth the effort? Is it surprising that, despite unionized workers earning higher wages than nonunion workers and enjoying a measure of protection on the job, many consider it easier to find some way to make do and get by rather than take a leap of faith and organize?

When employers have been able to wield such political power, and when there are so many examples of collective defeat, it can seem as though acting alone is the only real way to improve your life. Over time, this comes to appear as a culture of individualism. But it might be more precisely described as a culture of fear.[endnoteRef:129] [129: Kimberly Phillips-Fein, "How employers broke unions by creating a culture of fear,” The Washington Post (August 2, 2016). ]

The attack on organized labor, resulting in declining union membership from about a third of all workers a half century ago to around ten percent today, went hand in hand with an ideological and political offensive to roll back the social gains made by African-Americans, women, and environmentalists through the various social struggles of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Neoliberalism

It is during this same period during which labor was under attack that the package of economic policies now known as neoliberalism evolved: privatization of public services and facilities, reduced regulations and their lack of enforcement against industry, reductions in corporate tax rates and the wealthy, cuts to social spending by governments, today labeled “austerity”, and the dismantling of “barriers to free trade” to facilitate the free movement of capital by the creation of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, as well as other bi- and multi-lateral trade agreements. All of these changes were accomplished with the active involvement of businesses and their political allies in both major U.S. political parties, trying to make the world safer and more profitable for investment. Neoliberal “reforms” were also encouraged or mandated by international financial institutions such as the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the World Bank.

These changes on the international scene opened new markets for exports and have allowed capital to flow in and out of countries to take advantage of differences in labor costs and environmental regulations, currency values, and privatization of government owned services, resources, and businesses.

Although growing international trade and cross-country investment had been a feature of capitalism from the start—between 1800 and 2007 world trade grew at an average rate of 4.2 percent per year[endnoteRef:130]—it dropped during the Great Depression, but rapid growth renewed after the Second World War. From 1980 through 2007, during the time that the term “globalization” came into popular usage, world trade grew at an average rate of nearly 5.9 percent a year.[endnoteRef:131] Foreign investment in other countries grew significantly in the 1990s and then even more rapidly in the 2000s. [130: Giovanni Federico and Antonio Tena-Junguito, "World trade, 1800-2015” Voxeu article, http://www.voxeu.org/article/world-trade-1800-2015 (February 7, 2016). ] [131: Ibid. ]

But there are new aspects to this upsurge in international trade and investment. It extends

…far beyond manufacturing and the extraction of raw materials. To an ever larger extent foreign capital spread to such fields as finance, real estate, insurance, advertising, and the media… In the periphery, foreign capital has penetrated more widely and deeply than ever before. In the core, the change of direction has helped produce in the world's key money markets an extraordinary spiralling of credit creation, international flows of money capital, and speculation.[endnoteRef:132] [132: Harry Magdoff, “Globalization—to What End?,” The Socialist Register (1992). ]

Increased foreign investment and trade helped the development of unprecedented exploitative relations of production across local and national economies, peoples, and cultures—chains of production in which components for assembling an individual commodity might be produced in a number of countries. This went hand-in-hand with labor arbitrage, moving production to low wage countries with few environmental and labor protections.

.

These neoliberal “reforms” have relied on the watchword of “free trade,” which is in actuality the freeing of capitalists to do what they want. That these changes are but a renewed effort on the part of capital is made clear by Marx and Engels, who wrote in 1848 in the Communist Manifesto that capitalism “…has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom -- Free Trade.”[endnoteRef:133] [133: Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf. ]

Apologists for capitalism justify the neoliberal agenda by asserting that “free markets” work better with less interference and that a “rising tide lifts all boats.” Fewer regulations and more money at the disposal of the wealthy will, according to this ideology, stimulate economic growth. But this is a proposition unencumbered of any actual evidence. Nevertheless, the rationale behind these changes is a lot clearer and straightforward. According to Richard Fink, the closest political advisor to the billionaire Koch brothers, the real reason for one of the tenets of neoliberalism is quite different: “We want to decrease regulations. Why? It’s because we can make more profit, O.K.? Yeah, and cut government spending so we don’t have to pay so much taxes. There’s truth in that.”[endnoteRef:134] [134: Jane Mayer "New Koch: The billionaire brothers are championing criminal-justice reform. Has their formula changed?," The New Yorker (January 25, 2016). ]

The intensive and coordinated effort of capitalists and the state to undo conditions favorable to labor, ordinary people and the environment so as to operate with fewer constraints and greater profits, is the explanation for the growth of inequality.

A richer but more unequal world

Inequality of income and wealth has been present since class society began and pre-dates capitalism by several thousand years. However, neoliberal economic and political policies and the reassertion of ruling class priorities since the late ‘70s has dramatically increased inequality and social deprivation. Total global wealth is 250 trillion dollars; over three times the total global GDP of 78 trillion dollars (2014).[endnoteRef:135] But eighty-seven percent of that wealth is owned by the wealthiest ten percent of the population (Figure 1) and half is owned by the richest 1% of the population. Conversely, at the other end of the wealth spectrum, seventy percent of the population own less than three percent of global wealth. [135: Gross domestic product 2014, downloaded from http://data.worldbank.org/data-catalog/GDP-ranking-table; Markus Stierli, “Global Wealth Report 2015,” CREDIT SUISSE AG, Research institute (October 2014). ]

Figure 1. Percent of total global wealth ownership by decile (ten percent portions of the population). Source: Credit Swiss Global Wealth Databook 2015.

Income distribution, while very unequal, tends to be less so than wealth ownership. And income inequality was lessened during the Great Depression and the 1950s and ‘60s, when workers organized stronger unions to obtain larger wage increases. Nevertheless, by the mid-2010s the top ten percent in the U.S. had increased their share of income from about 35 percent in the early 1980s to around half of all income—a share last seen in the “roaring ‘20s.” At the same time the top 1% increased their income share from around ten percent to over twenty percent of all income.[endnoteRef:136] [136: Emmanuel Saez,  "Striking it Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States, (Updated with 2015 preliminary estimates),” http://eml.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2015.pdf  ]

However, grouping everyone together masks additional inequality by race. When looking at home ownership and other sources of wealth and breaking down the figures on inequality by race, we see the following:

As of October 2015, the homeownership rate for white Americans stands at 71.9 percent. By contrast, only 42.4 percent of African-Americans own their own homes and only 46.1 percent of Latinos. Ownership of corporate stocks, a valuable store and generator of wealth over time, appears even more skewed, with 55 percent of white households owning at least some stocks, but only 28 percent of African-Americans and 17 percent of Latinos… African-Americans overall make up 13.2 percent of the U.S. population, but have only 2.5 percent of the nation’s total wealth. Latinos make up 17 percent of the U.S. population and hold 2.9 percent of total private wealth.[endnoteRef:137][footnoteRef:6] [137: Chuck Collins and Josh Hoxie, "Billionaire Bonanza: The Forbes 400 and the Rest of Us,” Institute for Policy Studies (December 1, 2015). ] [6: The portion of families that owned their homes dropped from a high of sixty-seven percent in 2006 to sixty-three percent at the middle of 2016—the lowest in over fifty years. The home ownership disparity between whites and African Americans remained as it was in 2015.]

To which we can add, when considering gender, women earn only 78 cents for every dollar earned by a man in a similar job and suffer a host of other problems in a society organized to perpetuate systematic gender inequality.

The vast inequalities and the especially difficult conditions of large portions of the world’s people is not a result of fate or something determined by the impersonal forces of technological change and automation or population growth, lack of education or any of the other dispassionate and random factors usually trotted out as causes of income inequality or unemployment. Rather it is actively built into a system in which incredible amounts of wealth flow to a relatively small portion of the population while continually depriving the poor and near poor from obtaining the resources needed to live full lives. It occurs because the wealthy have the economic and political power to secure their ability to accumulate ever-higher levels of wealth. Economist Joseph Stigliz explained how the recent rapid growth of inequality happened in the U.S.:

Beginning in the 1970s, a wave of deliberate ideological, institutional, and legal changes began to reconfigure the marketplace. At the vanguard was deregulation, which, according to adherents, would loosen the constraints on the economy and free it to thrive. Next were much lower tax rates on top incomes so that money could flow to private savings and investment instead of the government. Third were cuts in spending on social welfare, to spur people to work.[endnoteRef:138] [138: Joseph Stiglitz, Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: an agenda for growth and shared prosperity, The Roosevelt Institute (2015). ]

A huge burgeoning of the financial system, out of all proportion to the underlying “real” economy, especially in the United States and Western Europe—with its creation of mountains of debt and massive speculative bubbles—and a return to the laissez-faire world of the “roaring ‘20s” has, despite the official ideology of non-interference, required massive government interventions to revive economies after bubbles burst.

The result of such a system for the capitalist class has been a fabulous increase in wealth as they have appropriated what Marx called the source of all wealth: nature and labor. With regard to working people, the effects have been devastating: decades of stagnant or falling wages, increased pressure on the job to do more with less, and more contingent, insecure labor, and part time work.[endnoteRef:139] Environmentally, we see the dislocation and degradation all around us. And yet, working people, with no one reaching them with an alternative program, have seen their destinies as tied to the success of the capitalist elites. It is only recently, with the Great Recession and its aftereffects, the social movements such as Occupy, Environmental Justice, and Black Lives Matter, and the discussions around the 2016 U.S. presidential election, that large numbers of people have come to see that their needs and desires do not align with those of capital. [139: Ibid., John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff, The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences, Monthly Review Press (2009). ]

In this chapter and the previous one we have presented an overview of the significant ecological and social problems that confront the world and why they are best understood as the outcome of the normal functioning of capitalism. In the following two chapters we focus on the details of the range and depth of ecological and social rifts, disruptions, and degradations that capitalism creates, extends and deepens.

Chapter 3. Capitalism vs. the biosphere

As individual capitalists are engaged in production and exchange for the sake of the immediate profit, only the nearest, most immediate results must first be taken into account. As long as the individual manufacturer or merchant sells a manufactured or purchased commodity with the usual coveted profit, he is satisfied and does not concern himself with what afterwards becomes of the commodity and its purchasers. The same thing applies to the natural effects of the same actions.

—F. Engels[endnoteRef:140] [140: Op. cit., Frederick Engels, “The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man.” ]

Give the People What They Want,

What they want, what they want:

Clean air and no pollution.

—Jimmy Cliff

Over the last 500 years, capitalism developed and expanded over much of the earth; its cumulative effects an overwhelming fact of life—with ecosystem simplification, destabilization, and degradation at local, regional, and global levels. The unrelenting pursuit of profits results in extreme exploitation of natural resources with little to no regard for the long-term consequences, creating planetary rifts in natural cycles and processes. This chapter examines the increasing severity of these impacts and consequences.

With the development of industrial capitalism in Britain from the late 18th century onwards, new ecological and health problems spread—polluted air and water as well as the degradation of the soil. These were widely recognized in literary works, by politicians, political economists, scientists, activists and ordinary people, as well as in the pages of the popular press. But what was causing these problems? The behavior of greedy and unscrupulous capitalists who could be tamed through regulation? Was there a lack of scientific knowledge to predict negative outcomes? Or was there something systematic about the laws of motion of capitalism that were innately anti-ecological?

Marx and Engels followed the debates, collected evidence and read the scientific and political literature to formulate a cohesive understanding of capitalism’s relationship to nature. What emerged from their studies was an analytical framework for understanding the reason and method by which why capitalism caused systematic and expanding ecological crises, what has come to be called the Metabolic Rift. As sociologist Rebecca Clausen has defined the concept of the metabolic rift it, “describes how the logic of accumulation severs basic processes of natural reproduction leading to the deterioration of ecological sustainability"[endnoteRef:141] [141: Rebecca Clausen, “Healing the Rift”, in Leslie King, Deborah McCarthy (ed), Environmental Sociology: From Analysis to Action, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., Oxford:426 (2009). ]

Why Marx saw the ecological analysis of capitalism as so critically important to grasp how the system operates, was explained by John Bellamy Foster:

To understand this more fully we need to look at the actual ecological dimensions of Marx’s thought. Marx’s use of the metabolism concept in his work was not simply (or even mainly) an attempt to solve a philosophical problem but rather an endeavor to ground his critique of political economy materialistically in an understanding of human-nature relations emanating from the natural science of his day. It was central to his analysis of both the production of use-values and the labor process. It was out of this framework that Marx was to develop his major ecological critique, that of metabolic rift, or, as he put it, the “irreparable rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism, a metabolism prescribed by the natural laws of life itself.”[endnoteRef:142] [142: John Bellamy Foster, “Marx and the Rift in the Universal Metabolism of Nature,” Monthly Review 65(7):1-19 (December 2013). ]

The negative side effects of a competitive, profit-driven economic system are not intended, but are nevertheless logical outcomes of an economic system predicated on prioritizing profit maximization, as Engels makes clear:

What cared the Spanish planters in Cuba, who burned down forests on the slopes of the mountains and obtained from the ashes sufficient fertiliser for one generation of very highly profitable coffee trees – what cared they 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 mode of production is predominantly concerned only about the immediate, the most tangible result; and then surprise is expressed that the more remote effects of actions directed to this end turn out to be quite different, are mostly quite the opposite in character…[endnoteRef:143] [143: Op. cit., Frederick Engels, “The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man.” ]

Businesses use resources with ecological abandon. While environmental resources (and profits derived from them) are mostly privatized, environmental externalities—pollution of air, water, soil, and life itself—are socialized, affecting human wellbeing and the stability of the entire biosphere.

How does the metabolic rift work? A basic assumption of capitalist economies is that there is an unlimited quantity and availability of natural resources and unlimited “sinks” to absorb the pollution associated with production, distribution, use, and disposal of products. New tools and technologies developed to maximize profits—increases in the scale and scope of productive techniques—has meant the damage can be done much more rapidly, in greater quantity, and with much longer term impacts. But the heart of the matter is the pursuit of profits as the overwhelming factor when capitalists make investment and production decisions. Thus individual capitalists (and the system as a whole) are unable to rationally manage the human interaction with the rest of the natural world in ways that preserve the integrity, well being, and healthy functioning of the ecosystem. It is this reality that leads to severe ecological disturbances, including rifts, in the natural cycles on which we and so many other species depend.

The great acceleration

The economies of the advanced capitalist countries boomed following the Second Word War in the United States and with the rebuilding of Western Europe and Japan from the destruction of war. During the exceptional growth experienced in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s, the economy (the real GPD, corrected for inflation) more than doubled in size. So did the economy of Britain from 1955 to 1975. And the real GPD of Japan more than doubled in size just during the decade of the 1960s.

The dramatic expansion of the world system during this period re-arranged social relations, reorienting the much of the world toward generalized commodity production of all manner of goods and materials. Global trade increased exponentially, as did energy use, world population, and the global economy as a whole—this period has been called “the great acceleration” (Figure 2). And production of new materials took off—with global production of synthetic pesticides going from about one tenth of a ton in 1945 to about 3 million tons in 1980 and plastics from around 2 million tons in 1950 to 52 million tons in 1976 to 109 million tons in 1989 (and to over 300 million tons in 2015).[endnoteRef:144] The Working Group on the Anthropocene has dated the start of the proposed new geological Epoch to this post Second World War period of accelerated changes. [144: World Health Organization (WHO). Public Health Impacts of Pesticides Used in Agriculture, WHO in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme, Geneva (1990); Op. cit., Plastics – the Facts 2013 http://www.plasticseurope.org/Document/plastics-the-facts-2013.aspx (2014); Gaelle Gourmelon, “Global Plastic Production Rises, Recycling Lags,” Worldwatch Institute Vital Signs (January 27, 2015, http://vitalsigns.worldwatch.org/sites/default/files/vital_signs_trend_plastic_full_pdf.pdf ]

Figure 2. Social-economic and ecological trends and the “great acceleration.”[endnoteRef:145] (NOTE TO EDITOR: THESE NEED TO be larger and PROBABLY GO ON TWO PAGES TO MAKE THEM LEGIBLE TO READERS) [145: Graphs created by R. Jamil Jonna based on data in Steffen et al. “Trajectory of the Anthropocene” 81–98. ]

In the U.S. and Europe, in response to the growth and spread of other social movements for change and the increasingly pervasive effects of unregulated pollution, the late ‘60s and early ‘70s saw the rise of the modern environmental movement. As protests grew in size and organizing efforts and resistance by the people most affected intensified. The developed capitalist countries, regulations were enacted to lessen the negative health and environmental side effects of the system. But because political power goes hand-in-hand with economic power, it is impossible to stop even a substantial portion of the externalities from occurring. If businesses were forced to pay for all of their social and environmental externalities, corporations and the whole economy would collapse. When one of the externalized social costs becomes so great as to be politically difficult to ignore, a reactive approach, instead of planned prevention, is generally the only route available to such an unplanned and competitive system. But after-the-fact attempts to overcome the consequences, frequently go on to cause their own unforeseen (but often predictable) negative effects and cause the accumulation of larger and larger problems. Because the root cause of the original problem—the pursuit of profit—cannot be interfered with, the ecological rift widens yet further, is displaced spatially or temporally, or converted into different problems, by the actions meant to ameliorate it.

Making it especially difficult to fully grasp and combat the extent of environmental degradation is that critical economic decisions are often made far removed from where the primary effects will be felt and certainly not with input of those who will be directly affected. Fund manager and “sustainable investment analyst” Mark Campanale illustrates this when describing a meeting

typical of those which happen every day in the city of London. A group of Indonesian businessmen organized a lunch to raise £300 million to finance the clearing of a rainforest and the construction of a pulp paper plant. What struck me was how financial rationalism often overcomes common sense; that profit itself is a good thing whatever the activity, whenever the occasion. What happened to the Indonesian rainforest was dependent upon financial decisions made over lunch that day. The financial benefits would come to the institutions in London, Paris, or New York. Very little, if any, would go to the local people …The rainforest may be geographically located in the Far East, but financially it might as well be located in London’s Square Mile.[endnoteRef:146] [146: Fund Manager and “sustainable investment analyst” Mark Campanale quoted in Herbert Girardet, Cities, People, Planet, Wiley-Academy: 117 (2004). ]

Ecological Rifts

Changes in the metabolism between our economic system and the biosphere: increased rates of flow of nutrients, water, gases, organic materials, and other physical dislocations and degradations have created a global environmental crisis.

Nutrient Cycles

In many relatively undisturbed systems such as forests and grasslands, the flow of matter and energy tends to remain in a dynamic, but relatively stable, equilibrium. Essential nutrients such as phosphorus and calcium cycle through the ecosystem with very small amounts lost. The nutrients, though removed from the soil by plants, are maintained within the local ecosystem by the return nutrients as animals die and plants shed their leaves in a dry or cold season or die and decompose. In addition, a variety of microorganisms can fix nitrogen, making it potentially available to plants, and assist the chemical action on rocks in the sub-soil that releases nutrients into forms plants can use. In the humid tropics, such as the Amazon, soil fertility is often poor and most of the nutrients are held in the biomass itself and the decomposing organic materials on the forest floor, which explains why deforestation in the Amazon quickly leads to a degraded ecosystem:

Luxuriant forests are able to persist in the Amazon only because of efficient biotic recycling mechanisms that keep vital nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrogen circulating within the biomass. In such forests, less than half of the available pool of nutrients is in the soil, as compared with more than 90 percent in European or eastern North American forests…The thin tropical soils lack organic and biotic holding mechanisms, so any nutrients left in them [after deforestation] are quickly drained away.[endnoteRef:147] [147: Eugene P. Odum, “Ecology: A Bridge Between Science and Society,” Sinauer Associates, Inv. Sunderland, Massachusetts:140 (1997). ]

Humans in their hunting and gathering societies had relatively small effects on the cycling of nutrients, not that different from those of other hominid species, though they augmented them by the use of fire. But as populations increased after agriculture was invented in several locations beginning around 10,000 years ago and spread out from a number of points of origin, it was frequently accompanied by the growth of larger population centers based on farming as more food became available and class stratified societies arose. A perennial problem for agricultural societies since the inception of human agriculture is how to maintain soil fertility over time. In slash and burn farming (also called swidden-fallow), if the fallow is sufficient to allow strong regrowth of forests, nutrients are naturally accumulated in the vegetation they are slowly released from the minerals. At the same time, wild legume plants and free-living microorganisms in the soil helped to replenish depleted nitrogen. In the civilizations such as those in Mesopotamia and Egypt, with agriculture based on the inundation of soils near rivers by annual flooding, sufficient nutrients were added with the sediments that arrived with the water to replenish the soil.

Centuries later, with the growth of industrial capitalism, more people were forced to move to cities in order to find work A larger proportion of the population was therefore removed from the land on which food was grown, leading to a growing rift in nutrient cycling: nutrients from the soil, transported to cities in the form of foodstuffs, were not returned to the fields in the necessary quantities. As Henry Wallace wrote in 1938, when he was the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, society was pouring “fertility year after year into the cities, which in turn pour what they do not use into rivers and the ocean.”[endnoteRef:148] This was the first large-scale nutrient cycle rift, developing in the rural-urban dichotomy of early capitalism—a manifestation of other nutrient rifts to come. [148: Henry A. Wallace, “Foreword,” Soils & Men, The 1938 Yearbook of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture. ]

A second rift in the cycling of nutrients developed in the mid to late 20th century with farm animals increasingly produced on large industrial farms far removed from the land that produced their feed. Farm products for human consumption and animal feed, containing large quantities of nutrients removed from soils, are often transported long distances from croplands to cities and factory farms (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Nutrient and energy flows during different eras.[endnoteRef:149] [149: Modified from Fred Magdoff. Les Lanyon and Bill Liebhardt, "Nutrient Cycling, Transformation and Flows: Implications for a More Sustainable Agriculture," Advances in Agronomy 60:1-73 (1997). ]

As long ago as the middle of the 19th century, Karl Marx described the consequences of such a rift in nutrient cycling:

Capitalist production, by collecting the population in great centers, and causing an ever increasing preponderance of town population . . . disturbs the circulation of matter between man and the soil, i.e., prevents the return to the soil of its elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; it therefore violates the conditions necessary to lasting fertility of the soil.

These rifts in the cycling of nutrients have led to the impoverishment of soils, while at the same time huge quantities of nutrients accumulate in cities as waste and sewage and on factory farms as manure. Simultaneously, the replacement of those nutrients through the extensive use of synthetic fertilizers has led to leaching into groundwater and runoff into lakes and rivers, resulting in algal blooms (eutrophication) that create giant low oxygen (anoxic) zones where rivers enter the ocean.

The shift to raising beef cows in large feedlots was based on feeding them diets high in corn and soy to fatten them more quickly, shortening the time needed to get them to marketable weight—to increase profits. But this means that less land is devoted to growing perennial crops for pasture or hay, once the near exclusive diet of domestic ruminant farm animals; less growing legumes and grass-legume forage crops. For a year or two following a productive legume or grass-legume hay crop, all the nitrogen that grains or vegetables need can come from nitrogen stored in soil. Without legume forage crops in a rotation, high rates of nitrogen fertilizers must be applied annually to supply that key nutrient to grow grains. Less of the land covered in perennial crops leads to an increase in other problems such as accelerated runoff of rainfall and soil erosion.

The development and extensive use of artificial fertilizers was a rational capitalist attempt to work around one of the problems arising from the first nutrient rift’s massive loss of nutrients from agricultural soils. Most of the human waste in the cities of the developed world is chemically and biologically treated in sewage treatment plants, ensuring that relatively clean water is discharged back in to rivers and oceans. It is estimated that half of the treated sewage solids (now referred to as “biosolids”) in the U.S. is trucked back to farmland, with the remainder consigned to landfills. Farm fields are the logical destination for the nutrients in human sludge. However, farmland application of sludge is a questionable practice until stringent actions are taken to reduce the potential toxic metal and organic chemical contamination before it is applied to soils.

Little has been done to try to overcome the excess manure from factory farm animal facilities. While most is spread on nearby farmland, normally in excess of the fertility needs, some farms are composting the manure and transporting it to other farms further away.

The “solution,” developed in the context of capitalist logic, to the rupture of nutrient cycling caused by export of nutrients from soils, results in its own problems. The large quantity of fertilizer needed to replace the exported nutrients requires a lot of energy to manufacture and damage to land occurs as phosphorus is mined and refined. The need to continually apply phosphate to crop soils may not be indefinitely possible. It is estimated that the easily accessible phosphorus deposits that contain high concentrations may be depleted by the end of the century.[endnoteRef:150] [150: David Vaccari, “Phosphorus Famine: The Threat to Our Food Supply, ”Scientific American (2009). ]

Use of inadequate rotations—either no rotation for a number of years or alternating between corn and soybeans—results in lower yields than would have occurred if the crops had been grown as part of a more complex rotation needed when farm animals and crops are raised on the same farm. Around 50 percent of the applied nitrogen fertilizer is actually used by corn plants. A lot of excess fertilizer, therefore, remains in the soil at the end of the season, and much of it can leach out, causing stream and river pollution with nitrate (NO3-).

According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) many of the streams and rivers of the United States are degraded. “Forty percent of the nation’s river and stream length has high levels of phosphorus and 28% has high levels of nitrogen. Poor biological condition (for macroinvertebrates) is 50% more likely in rivers and streams with high levels of phosphorus and 40% more likely in rivers and streams with high levels of nitrogen.”[endnoteRef:151] Although agricultural sources of nutrients are a large portion of the problem, urban sewage systems and storm runoff also make significant contributions. Excess use of nitrogen fertilizer releases large amounts of nitrous oxide (N2O) into the atmosphere—increasing global warming with this powerful greenhouse gas, as well as now being the leading cause of depletion for stratospheric ozone levels.[endnoteRef:152] [151: United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). National Rivers and Streams Assessment 2008–2009: A collaborative survey. EPA 841-D-13-001. USEPA Office of Wetlands, Oceans and Watersheds, Office of Research and Development, Washington, DC. (2013). ] [152: NOAA, “NOAA study shows nitrous oxide now top ozone-depleting emission,” (August 27, 2009). ]

The magnitude of nitrate losses from cropland in the Midwest is truly staggering. The U.S. Geological Survey’s Van Meter continuous monitoring station in the Raccoon River just upriver from Des Moines, Iowa samples river flow and nitrate concentrations at fifteen-minute intervals around the clock. Over the span of a year, from April 1, 2015 to March 31, 2016, approximately 100 million pounds of nitrogen (as nitrate and nitrite) flowed down the river on its way to the Mississippi River and the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico.[endnoteRef:153] [153: Calculated from U.S. Geological Survey data downloaded from http://nwis.waterdata.usgs.gov/ia/nwis/uv?cb_00060=on&cb_99133=on&format=gif_default&site_no=05484500&period=&begin_date=2015-04-01&end_date=2016-03-31. ]

High rates of nitrogen fertilizer application have also had an evolutionary effect on soil bacteria. Researchers found that the strains of the nitrogen-fixing rhizobia became less efficient when high levels of nitrogen fertilizer inputs. “Plants inoculated with rhizobium strains isolated from N-fertilized treatments produced 17–30% less biomass and had reduced chlorophyll content compared to plants inoculated with strains from unfertilized control plots.”[endnoteRef:154] [154: Dylan Weese, Katy Heath, Bryn Dentinger, and Jennifer Lau, “Long-term nitrogen addition causes the evolution of less-cooperative mutualists,” Evolution 69(3):631-42 (March 2015). ]

A third rift in nutrient cycling occurred with the killing off, or drastic reduction in population, of sea birds and large land and sea animals. Migratory herbivores once moved huge amounts of nutrients long distances on grasslands, sea birds and anadromous fish from sea to land and whales from the deep ocean to surface waters. Abiotic factors, such as wind and ocean currents and rivers also move vast quantities of nutrients over long distances and were previously thought by ecologists to be the dominant factor in the nature of an ecosystem. But it has now been realized that they were likely studying already degraded ecosystems from which previously large populations of certain animals had been significantly reduced. Living systems are much more connected to one another and their local environment than was presumed:

Large carnivores can transform both the populations and the behaviour of large herbivores. In turn this can change the nature and structure of the plant community, which in turn affects processes such as soil erosion, river movements and carbon storage. The availability of nutrients, the physical geography of the land, even the composition of the atmosphere: all now turn out to be affected by animals. Living systems exert far more powerful impacts on the planet and its processes than we suspected.[endnoteRef:155] [155: George Monbiot, “Why whale poo matters,” The Guardian, (December 12, 2014). ]

While extinctions of mega-fauna happened in pre-capitalist times, much of the damage to populations of remaining large animals occurred much more recently under the pressures of capitalist resource extraction and use. Researchers estimate that

the capacity of animals to move nutrients away from concentration patches has decreased to about 8% of the preextinction value on land and about 5% of historic values in oceans. For phosphorus (P), a key nutrient, upward movement in the ocean by marine mammals is about 23% of its former capacity (previously about 340 million kg of P per year). Movements by seabirds and anadromous fish provide important transfer of nutrients from the sea to land, totalling ∼150 million kg of P per year globally in the past, a transfer that has declined to less than 4% of this value as a result of the decimation of seabird colonies and anadromous fish populations.[endnoteRef:156] [156: Christopher Doughty, Joe Roman, Søren Faurby, Adam Wolf, Alifa Haque, Elisabeth Bakker, Yadvinder Malhi, John Dunning Jr., and Jens-Christian Svenning, “Global nutrient transport in a world of giants,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences113 (23):6388-6396 (January 26, 2016). ]

Carbon Cycle

In very simplified form, the pre-industrial terrestrial carbon cycle consisted of atmospheric CO2 used by plants with the energy of sunlight and the photosynthetic process, to create carbon rich organic compounds. Respiration of organisms feeding on plants or other organisms, returns CO2 to the atmosphere. Oceans also absorb huge quantities of CO2, which is then incorporated into photosynthesizing organisms such as phytoplankton. Dissolved CO2 combined with calcium by shell-forming animals to produce calcium carbonate (CaCO3), which they take to the ocean bottom when they die, so safely sequestering the carbon.

Humans burned wood and later crop residues, manure, and peat for heating, cooking and light, returning more CO2 captured by plants to the atmosphere than by food consumption and bodily respiration.

The dramatic changes to the carbon cycle brought about by human activity—accelerating during the period following the Second World War—have been caused by both land use changes (about twenty-five percent of the increase in greenhouse gas release) and use of fossil fuels (about seventy-five percent of the increased emissions). This has resulted in the average concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere climbing to 399.4 parts per million (ppm)—a level most likely last reached some 23 million years ago[endnoteRef:157]—from a pre-industrial baseline of 280 ppm. The longest continuous monitoring of atmospheric CO2 is from an observatory in Hawaii, and its results show the rapid increase from 1960 to 2015 (monitoring only started in 1958) (Figure 4). [157: David Biello"CO2 Levels for February Eclipsed Prehistoric Highs," Scientific American website, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/co2-levels-for-february-eclipsed-prehistoric-highs/ (March 5, 2015). ]

Figure 4. Atmospheric CO2 concentration at Mauna Loa, Observatory, Hawaii.[endnoteRef:158] [158: R. F. Keeling, S. J. Walker, S. C. Piper and A. F. Bollenbacher, Scripps CO2 Program (http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu), Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) University of California, La Jolla, California USA 92093-0244. ]

While approximately seventy percent of the excess carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere and contributes to global warming, the remaining thirty percent dissolves into the oceans, causing them to gradually acidify. Hotter, more acidic seawater leads to coral bleaching and make it more difficult for shell-forming animals to form their calcium carbonate shells.

Land use changes and the carbon cycle. The changes in land use that humans are staggering:

To produce plant and animal products for human consumption and to house our growing population, we have transformed ecosystems and landscapes on approximately 83% of Earth’s ice-free land area. We have replaced forests and other native ecosystems with agricultural crops, pastures, forestry plantations, buildings, and pavement, pre-empting about 40% of terrestrial NPP [net primary productivity, the amount of energy produced by plants above their own needs for respiration] and reducing the standing stock of living biomass on the planet by an estimated 45%.[endnoteRef:159] [159: John R. Schramskia, David Gattiea, and James Brown, "Human domination of the biosphere: Rapid discharge of the earth-space battery foretells the future of humankind,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, approved June 8, 2015, downloaded from PNAS Early Edition (July 19, 2015). ]

Carbon incorporated into plants and animals is not only stored aboveground: the world’s soils contain enormous stores of carbon as organic matter, comprised of animal and plant residue in different stages of decomposition as well as living organisms. All together, soils contain about five times more carbon than is found in the earth’s atmosphere.[endnoteRef:160] In fact, for every one percent organic matter in a soil—and temperate region agricultural soils normally have between one and six percent organic matter by weight—the amount of carbon in the top six inches (15 cm) of a field’s soil is approximately equivalent to all the CO2 in the atmosphere above the field.[endnoteRef:161] [160: Johannes Lehmann and Markus Kleber, "The contentious nature of soil organic matter,” Nature 528:60-68 (December 3, 2015). ] [161: Calculated by the authors as follows: A) The amount of carbon per acre to six inch depth for one percent organic matter: 6 inches weighs 2 million lbs 1 percent of 2 million lbs = 20,000 lbs of organic matter per acre (per percent organic matter). Organic matter is estimated to be 0.5882 percent carbon Therefore the weight of carbon in the top 6 inches of soil = 11,764 lbs of C per percent organic matter B) The amount of carbon in atmosphere per acre of earth surface area: The surface of the earth is equivalent to 126 billion acres (surface area of earth in acres) The mass of carbon dioxide in atmosphere=3x1015 kg = 6.6x1015 lbs of CO2 (seehttp://igss.wikidot.com/co2mass)    C) Carbon makes up 25 percent of CO2 by weight (12/48), thus there are 1.65x1015 lbs (25 percent of 6.6x1015) of carbon as CO2 in the atmosphere. D) Now divide 1.65x1015 lbs of C in the atmosphere by 126 billion acres (1.26x1011 acres) = 1.3x104 lbs = 13,095 lbs of C as CO2 in the atmosphere above each acre of earth compared with 11,764 lbs of C per percent organic matter. ]

When land use changes—for example, as forests or grasslands are converted to farms or a new system is used to till (or not till) the soil—there are major consequences for the carbon cycle. With the shift to agriculture, soil disturbance such as tree removal, plowing, and harrowing result in soil organisms having greater access to organic matter and they decompose it at an accelerated rate. Thus, converting forests or savannas to agriculture results in a large release of CO2 into the atmosphere and a simultaneous loss of a significant portion of the soil’s organic matter, perhaps as much as half, as organisms use increasing amounts of organic matter for energy. For a prolonged period following conversion, soils become a net source of atmospheric CO2, though this can be reversed with suitable agroecological techniques. After being used for farming for a long time, it is the way soils are managed, the type of plants grown, and the site’s previous history that determine whether soils are a source of greenhouse gas as they release carbon as CO2 into the atmosphere, a sink for atmospheric carbon by accumulating organic matter, or whether they are in equilibrium.

Loss of organic matter, and evolution of CO2 from soils converted to agriculture was a feature of some pre-capitalist agricultural societies. However, methods were developed to help maintain soil fertility, such as Mesoamericans who developed the chinampa system of the Valley of Mexico. Planting beds were built using sediments rich in organic matter from shallow lakes. Some types of agriculture, such as the plow-based system used in Greece caused erosion, which had negative effects for long-term food production, but most likely released little CO2 to the atmosphere. On the other hand, some current peasant agriculture has depleted soil organic matter by not returning sufficient residue.

One might logically maintain that, given the large increase in the global human population, large areas of land would be needed to produce food—regardless of the economic system in place. Population growth has been huge—projected to double twice (from 2 billion to 8 billion) over the 100 years period of 1927-2026, most of which has already happened. But the huge population increase occurred under the influence of capitalist relations: much of it due to a) people trying to deal with the insecurities of a system that is not organized to meet peoples’ needs (more children are, therefore needed, to help ensure a secure living and old age) and b) the subservient position of women with little to no family planning choices and little access to education and health care.

From the very beginning of capitalism, land conversion accelerated because of the drive to produce profits. There was cotton to grow in the U.S. Southeast to feed the mills of England. There was sugar cane to grow in the Caribbean islands. There were widespread disturbances of grassland and forest ecosystems to grow crops (frequently without good crop rotations), monoculture forests, and plantations—all practices that contributed to the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. The push to grow more soybeans for export to an expanding Asian market was one of the driving forces for the conversion of Amazon forest to pastureland and then to cropland in the first fifteen years of the 21st century. In addition to the accelerated soil organic matter decomposition mentioned just above, the common practice of burning to clear land, pumps CO2 directly into the atmosphere.

The situation of today’s rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia is especially problematic because many of its forest soil are composed of peat. It is estimated that the losses of organic materials following drainage and conversion to oil palm plantations—mainly due to the accelerated decomposition of the high organic matter soil by microorganisms—cause the release of about 3,000 tons of CO2 per hectare over 50 years.[endnoteRef:162] Although palm oil is used for foods and cosmetics, the drive to grow increasing amounts is mainly to provide a feedstock to produce biodiesel so that Europeans can have “green” biodiesel to substitute for fossil fuel derived diesel. It is estimated that it will take over 400 years of growing oil palm, and using it for biodiesel to substitute for petrochemical diesel, to make up for the CO2 generated by rainforest destruction and the associated burning and loss of carbon from soils through accelerated decomposition due to disturbance.[endnoteRef:163] [162: Joseph Fargione, Jason Hill, David Tilman, Stephen Polasky, and Peter Hawthorne, “Clearing and the Biofuel Carbon Debt,” Science 319: 1235-1238 (2008). ] [163: Op. cit., Joseph Fargione et al. ]

In 2015, with dry conditions resulting from the weather phenomenon known as El Niño, fires set to burn the felled trees from forest clearing for conversion to oil palm plantations got out of control. Beginning in August, the fires were so extensive that thick smoke settled over a region that included Singapore and Malaysia, parts of the Philippines, and Thailand. The fires sickened hundreds of thousands of people and took a severe toll on wildlife, including our Orangutan “cousins.” The New York Times reported about the fires:

Luhut B. Pandjaitan, Indonesia’s coordinating minister for political, legal and security affairs… said the country’s “one mistake” was in approving palm oil concessions on 14.8 million acres of peatlands during the past decade, which when drained and burned to clear land for agriculture emit high levels of carbon dioxide into the air.[endnoteRef:164] [164: Joe Cochrane, “Rain in Indonesia Dampens Forest Fires That Spread Toxic Haze,” The New York Times (October 29, 2015). ]

Calling policies that caused such ecological and human tragedy a “mistake” is quite an understatement, particularly as it was all so predictable. The Indonesian fires were the most costly natural disaster of 2015, causing an estimated fourteen billion dollars damage. One estimate puts the number of people who will die due to smoke inhalation at ten thousand.[endnoteRef:165] The 2015 fires released about as much CO2 than was emitted by the U.K. and the 1997 Indonesian fires, also a result of dry El Niño conditions, were estimated to have caused between thirteen and forty percent of the world’s CO2 emissions for that year.[endnoteRef:166] [165: Jeff Masters, "Earth's Top Ten Weather/Climate Events of 2015,” Weather Underground blog, http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/earths-top-ten-weatherclimate-events-of-2015 (January 5, 2016). ] [166: Damian Carrington, "Indonesian forest fires on track to emit more CO2 than UK,” The Guardian (October 7, 2015). ]

Energy use and the carbon cycle. Energy flows are an integral part of the global carbon cycle. And soil organic matter is a form of stored solar energy, as is a tree or animal. However, for much of the earth’s recent history, photosynthesis supplied more energy than was used and released by organisms. Organic matter—mainly as residue from plant stems, leaves, and roots—accumulated deep into grassland soils and on forest floors and upper soil layers. The sun’s energy captured by plants during photosynthesis provides the energy needed by almost all other terrestrial and aquatic organisms. In addition to using plants for food, wood and charcoal were widely used for the early smelting of ores[footnoteRef:7], causing one of the first resource crises of early capitalism. But something new was added over the last three hundred years—large-scale burning of fossil fuels to provide power and heat. Coal and then oil and natural gas were used in ever increasing amounts. The energy concentrated in fossil fuels was a key ingredient, along with capitalist social relations, necessary for the manner and rate with which the Industrial Revolution took off.[endnoteRef:167] [7: Extraction of metals using wood and charcoal to melt ores predates capitalism. But during the early capitalist period the working of metal expanded rapidly. Other factors also helped to deplete forest trees, such as harvesting wood to build ships and using wood for home heating and cooking.] [167: As Marxist historian Andreas Malm has convincingly argued, the primary reason for the turn to coal and steam power that are always given as the causal foundation of the Industrial Revolution was social, not resource-based or technological. The manner and rate of the transition in Britain and then the rest of the world to a fossil economy can only be understood and explained by a focus on social relations: “No piece of coal or drop of oil has yet turned itself into a fuel, and no humans have yet engaged in systematic large-scale extraction of either to satisfy subsistence needs: fossil fuels necessitate waged or forced labour – the power to direct the labour of others – as conditions of their existence…That is the point of contact between humans and the rest of nature, where biophysical resources pass into the circuits of social metabolism…That is the sphere where the fossil economy must have originated.” Andreas Malm, Fossil Capital: The rise of steam power and the roots of global warming, Verso, London:19 (2016). ]

The system has grown to the point that today the burning of fossil fuels accomplishes the work-equivalent of an estimated 25 billion people working 10 hours a day, 365 days a year.[endnoteRef:168] As Tom Wessels put it in The Myth of Progress: “For the first time in earth’s history, a single species is responsible for the entropic degradation of the biosphere by releasing more energy through transformation than is being replaced by global photosynthesis.”[endnoteRef:169] [168: Tim Crews, “Will becoming local here get us there?,” Land Report no. 108: 5-11 (Spring 2014). ] [169: Tom Wessels, The Myth of Progress. Toward a sustainable future. University Press of New England (2006), pp 41-42. ]

Climate change, frozen soils, and the carbon cycle. As the earth warms, soils that have been permanently frozen for millennia—permafrost, comprising almost a quarter of the land of the Northern Hemisphere—are beginning to melt. They hold a huge amount of carbon, stored as both organic matter and, in some of these soils, as a form of methane (CH4). As these soils warm and thaw, they release large quantities of greenhouse gases, providing a feedback loop in which global warming causes changes that lead to even more global warming.

Attempts to counteract or reduce human-induced alterations to the carbon cycle and resulting climate change have all proven to be inadequate. These “solutions” either don’t disturb corporate profits or offer new possibility to profit through market-based approaches. Reflecting the failure, a number of more desperate and even more destabilizing proposals have been made for large-scale geoengineering, such as shooting sulfate particles into the atmosphere to reflect some of the incoming light from the sun, thereby lessening warming of the earth.

Biofuels are erroneously regarded as a significant part of the solution, but any further expansion will lead not only to increased deforestation but also increased food prices, as there is competition between food and fuel uses of crops. Some scientists, most notably former National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) scientist James Hansen, advocate the expansion of nuclear power as the only way to effectively reduce emissions of carbon dioxide on the scale required. Yet aside from myriad other safety problems with the operation of nuclear plants, the completely uneconomic costs of electricity generation and the connection to nuclear weapons, safe ways to dispose of nuclear waste that remains radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years are not yet known.

The use of one of the proposed technology, carbon capture and storage (CCS)—essentially capturing and permanently burying carbon dioxide below ground—is untried and untested at anything like the scale needed to make a difference. Its advocacy amounts to irresponsibility and simply promotes the idea that we can carry on burning fossil fuels because at some point we’ll be able to store the gaseous waste product. In fact, CO2 captured in the pilot CCS projects is mostly pumped underground in order to pump out more oil![endnoteRef:170] [170: David Biello, “The Carbon Capture Fallacy,” Scientific American 314(1):59-65 (January 2016). ]

Even more fraudulently, individuals are encouraged to compensate the world for the carbon used in commercial airplane flights and other activities by purchasing so-called “offset” credits.[endnoteRef:171] There are a number of problems inherent in these schemes, especially a lack of accountability or oversight that encourages cheating and gaming of the system. A report by the Oakland Institute concluded that “…there is mounting evidence that these corporate land acquisitions for climate change mitigation—including forestry plantations—severely compromise not only local ecologies but also the livelihoods of some of the world’s most vulnerable people living at subsistence level in rural areas in developing countries.”[endnoteRef:172] [171: Though limiting its resource-using activities would dwarf any individual efforts, whenever ordinary people are exhorted to change their lifestyles one organization remains unmentioned, even by some environmentalists: “According to one estimate, the U.S. military at the end of the Cold War accounted directly for 2 to 3 percent of total U.S. energy demand and 3 to 4 percent of oil demand, including almost 27 percent of the nation’s total consumption of jet fuel. These figures do not include the energy used in manufacturing the weapons. Moreover, the military’s share of total U.S nonfuel minerals ranged from 5 to 15 percent, and mining operations to extract these minerals often caused significant environmental [and social] damage.” Charles E. Closmann, “War and the Environment: Military Destruction in the Modern Age,” A & M University Press: 24 (2009). ] [172: Kristen Lyons, Carol Richards and Peter Westoby, The Darker Side of Green: Plantation Forestry and Carbon Violence in Uganda, The Oakland Institute, oaklandinstitute.org (2014). ]

Organic matter flows and soil health

The organic matter cycle is an integral and key part of the carbon cycle—after all, the material of life is built out of chains and rings of carbon atoms, all assembled originally by the photosynthetic activity of green plants. But because organic matter in the soil has such profound effects on agriculture and the environment, it needs attention as a separate issue. The energy and nutrients contained in terrestrial and aquatic plants provide the food supply for all other organisms. Through the normal workings of many terrestrial ecosystems, there are routine additions to soils of a range of energy- and nutrient-rich organic materials from dead plants and animal wastes, which act to maintain a thriving and diverse community of soil organisms. Plant root secretions provide food sources for the large numbers of soil organisms living nearby. In a handful of soil there may be billions of microorganisms from tens of thousands of species plus larger species such as nematodes.

Common practices that developed during the industrialization of agriculture—inadequate crop rotations comprised of relatively few commodity crops, reliance on nitrogen from commercial fertilizers instead of legumes, the concentration of large numbers of farm animals that are separated from the land that grows their feed, and use of intensive tillage that breaks up and opens soil—have led to a great loss of soil organic matter. When Fred was conducting soil testing research he would ask cooperating farmers how many consecutive years corn had been grown in each field. At one location the farmer said that he really didn’t know, that he himself had planted corn in that field for 33 years in a row but was not sure what had happened earlier. The practice of long-term monoculture is irrational from an ecological viewpoint, especially when growing corn to harvest for silage (as that farmer was doing), because little residue remains on the surface in the fall of the year.

Longer term consequences of this agricultural production system include insufficient amounts of organic materials being added to soil, accelerated decomposition of this organic component (because of the practices used), and accelerated erosion taking away topsoil rich in organic matter. The highly prized and fertile soils of the Midwestern U.S. lost some forty percent of their organic matter through accelerated decomposition and erosion. It has been estimated that close to seven inches (seventeen centimeters) of soil have been lost in Iowa since the 1850s.

Soils in the United States have about half of the organic matter that they contained before forests and grasslands were converted to agriculture.[endnoteRef:173] It is estimated that the world’s soils have lost between fifty and seventy percent of the organic matter they contained before they were farmed.[endnoteRef:174] Over thirty percent of the world’s soils are moderately or severely degraded.[endnoteRef:175] [173: Douglas Karlen and Charles Rice, "Soil Degradation: Will Humankind Ever Learn?,” Sustainability 7, 12490-12501 (2015). ] [174: Beth Gardiner, “A boon for soil and the environment,” The New York Times (May 17, 2016). ] [175: Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, The State of the World’s land and Water Resources for Food and Agriculture, (2011), http://www.fao.org/docrep/015/i1688e/i1688e00.pdf. ]

The loss of organic matter from agricultural soils has severe implications. It is not possible to overemphasize how important good amounts of organic matter are to maintaining healthy and productive soils. Organic matter positively influences essentially all soil properties. As soil organic matter content decreases, disease organisms and nematodes that feed on crop plants proliferate because of decreased competition with other organisms. In general, the simpler rotations of modern industrial-style farming make crop pests[footnoteRef:8]—weeds, soil-borne diseases, and insects—more problematic when the soils are depleted of organic matter.[endnoteRef:176] As organic matter decreases, there is less soil biodiversity, soils become more compact, and less water can infiltrate and be stored. And, as organic matter decreases, fewer nutrients are stored in soils, and soil nutrients are more easily lost to both leaching downwards and erosion. [8: We use the term “pest” in the colloquial sense of an organism that does something that humans don’t want it to do. It is commonly used when referring to farming situations: some species of plants, insects, nematodes, fungi, and bacteria interfere with the specific plants farmers are growing or animals they are raising. There are other situations, such as home infestations with ants, cockroaches, or mice.] [176: Fred Magdoff and Harold van Es, Building Soils for Better Crops: Sustainable Soil Management (3rd ed.), Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program Handbook #10 (2009). ]

A downward spiral of soil degradation takes place as loss of organic matter generates accelerated erosion that causes loss of organic matter enriched topsoil. Then more aggregates break down, more erosion occurs, less water is stored in soils, soils supply fewer nutrients for plants, and disease and insect outbreaks are more common. It’s a classic feedback loop: the original disturbance causes other changes that further magnify the first disruption. Drastic intervention with fertilizers, pesticides, extra irrigation, and equipment will only temporarily remedy the situation—but at great ecological, monetary, and social costs.

The importance of disturbances in organic matter flows was recognized over a century ago, with three scientists examining the problem of “worn out soils,” concluding that the “depletion of the soil humus [organic matter] supply is apt to be a fundamental cause of lowered crop yields.”[endnoteRef:177] Contemporary soil scientists have only recently rediscovered this reality.[endnoteRef:178] [177: Joseph Hills, C. Jones, and C. Cutler. Soil deterioration and soil humus. Vermont Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin 135:142-177 (1908). ] [178: Ray Weil and Fred Magdoff, “Significance of Soil Organic Matter to Soil Quality and Health,” pp. 1-43 In Magdoff, F.R. and R. Weil (eds.) Soil Organic Matter in Sustainable Agriculture, CRC Press (2004). ]

The simplistic and reductionist approach of science and industry that seeks to solve each problem in isolation and with use of technology that you need to purchase, has resulted in new ways for private companies to profit from the agricultural system. Pesticides are routinely used to control organisms that limit crop growth. More insecticides are needed because plants growing in soils depleted of organic matter—and in fields and near surroundings that have low plant biodiversity—are more susceptible to insect attack. In other words, farming practices developed within the context of capitalist economies that focus on monocultures or use inadequate rotations, have created large populations of insect pests—“pests” in the sense of reducing crop yields—by eradicating all their competitors and natural predators as well as the soil organisms that stimulate the plants to defend themselves.

The U.S. military put the first synthetic pesticide, DDT, into use for the control of malaria in tropical battlefields of the Second World War. These now numerous synthetic materials have been taken into agriculture as chemical warfare agents against insects. As an integral part of producing food by conventional farms, there is pervasive pesticide contamination of farmers, farm workers, water, and the food itself. Natural enemies are killed along with the target pest, frequently leading to the outbreak of secondary pests. And as the target pest develops resistance to a pesticide, a pesticide treadmill is created, necessitating higher pesticide application rates, use of multiple pesticides, and the continual introduction of new pesticides as older ones become less effective. This creates a chemical arms race between organisms that harm crops and agricultural chemical corporations—sufficient to drive the evolutionary pathway of the pest by selecting for genetic resistance to pesticides. The large numbers of agricultural pest problems found on industrial agriculture farms are much more accurately viewed as an outcome of farming under the constraints of capitalist economics and ideology rather than a product of nature.

More fertilizer is needed as organic matter decreases because the nutrient supplying ability of soils is tied so intimately to the amount of organic matter present. And decreased organic matter reduces the amount of rainfall that can infiltrate into, and be stored in soils, leading rifts in the hydrologic cycle (see below). This is then counteracted by more frequent irrigation. While these “remedies”—pesticides, high rates of fertilizer, more irrigation—help to maintain high yields in the short-term, crop yields are lower than would occur with soils richer in organic matter.

Diminished organic matter, in addition to its effects on soil biodiversity (and plant pests), it plays a role in the nutrient cycle rift discussed above, and in the hydrologic cycle discussed just below. The main cause for the rift in nutrient cycles is the depletion of nutrients when crops are removed and transported to markets far from the farm. And diminished organic matter adds to the problem because soils with less organic matter are less able to store and supply nutrients and water, increasing the need to apply synthetic fertilizers and increasing irrigation, contributing to wasted energy and water, as well as water and air pollution.

The hydrologic (water) cycle

The cycling of water is being significantly distorted in a number of ways: changes in rainfall patterns as global warming proceeds, pumping water from subsurface aquifers faster than replenishment occurs, transporting water long distances to supply another region, excessive use by agricultural methods and growing water-needy crops in regions with inadequate rainfall, and contamination of subsurface water with industrial chemicals.

The warming earth is projected to cause more drought stress in northern South America and parts of Central America and Africa. On the other hand, greater precipitation, much of it in more intense storms, is anticipated for portions of the continental U.S., where heavy precipitation events in the 2000s (through 2012) were forty percent more frequent than in the period 1901 through 1960.[endnoteRef:179] Other regions with increased probabilities of intense storm occurrences include parts of England, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific coastal regions of Colombia and Ecuador. [179: Jerry Melillo, Terese Richmond, and Gary Yohe, eds., Climate Change Impacts in the United States: The Third National Climate Assessment. U.S. Global Change Research Program:36 doi:10.7930/J0Z31WJ2 (2014). ]

Perhaps as an indication of what is in store for the U.S., for a period of a little over 12 months beginning in May 2015, “dozens of people have been killed and thousands of homes have been swamped with water in extreme events in Oklahoma, Texas, South Carolina, West Virginia and Maryland.”[endnoteRef:180] The government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported that eight 500-year storms (with precipitation amounts and/or intensities predicted to occur only every 500 years) occurred during this period. In some locations, the devastating storms that Louisiana in August of 2016 dropped more than two feet (60 cm) of water over a forty-eight hour period. “The Louisiana flooding has been so exceptional that some places in the state experienced storm conditions considered once-every-1,000-year events.”[endnoteRef:181] [180: Oliver Milman, “Disasters like Louisiana floods will worsen as planet warms, scientists warn,” The Guardian (August 16, 2016). ] [181: Ibid. ]

During more normal rainfall events, an estimated sixty percent of the precipitation that falls on land enters the soil and is stored there. The remaining forty percent either flows through the soil into aquifers and springs or overland into streams, rivers, lakes, and wetlands, with a good portion of runoff reaching the ocean. But if the soil is not porous enough to accept much rainfall or, worse still, if it is covered by impenetrable structures then a lot of runoff occurs.

The structural condition of soil, determining its porosity, is a function of how soils are treated (for example, is heavy equipment used when soils are wet) and the living organisms within it.[footnoteRef:9] Rainfall permeates soils more easily with high amounts of biological activity and better physical conditions. Less precipitation runs off the land and there is less soil erosion, resulting in better recharge of aquifers and more water is available for plants and other organisms. When plants are present, rain first hits leaves, lessening the impact of the raindrops on the soil surface, increasing infiltration into the soil, further reducing runoff and erosion while supplying springs and streams with more dependable flows. [9: Soil would not be even be soil without living organic matter, such as microorganisms and plant roots, as an integral part of it—it would be similar to ground rock, consisting of sterile minerals.]

Removal of native vegetation and conversion of forests and grasslands to plowed fields decreases soil organic matter and disturbs natural soil structure, decreasing the amount of rainfall infiltrating soil, leading to accelerated runoff and erosion, as flowing water carries soil sediments downhill. Although accelerated soil erosion[footnoteRef:10] is an old problem that first occurred in some early agricultural societies, it has expanded massively with large-scale agriculture, stimulated by economic incentives that encourage growing row crops, and covering ever-larger land areas.[endnoteRef:182] For example, in the U.S., more than half of Iowa’s topsoil—originally 14 inches (36 centimeters) deep—has been eroded away by water flowing over soils used to grow corn and soybeans.[endnoteRef:183] [10: Erosion is a natural geological process. However, it can be greatly accelerated by human activity.] [182: Fred Magdoff, “A Rational Agriculture is Incompatible with Capitalism,” Monthly Review 66(10):1-18 (March 2015). ] [183: Darryl Fears, "Iowa farmers ripped out prairie; now some hope it can save them,” The Washington Post (August 7, 2016). ]

Huge expansions of urban and suburban areas are promoted by a system highly influenced by businesses with vested interests in constant new construction. This has resulted in increasing portions of land being covered with impermeable structures: houses, commercial buildings, schools, roads, driveways and in particular parking lots because cars are not in use on average ninety-five percent of the time: “It’s estimated that there are three nonresidential parking spaces for every car in the United States. That adds up to almost 800 million parking spaces, covering about 4,360 square miles—an area larger than Puerto Rico. In some cities, like Orlando and Los Angeles, parking lots are estimated to cover at least one-third of the land area, making them one of the most salient landscape features of the built world.”[endnoteRef:184] All of which contribute to large pulses of runoff from storms, swelling local streams and rivers and leading to flooding and water pollution. [184: Eran Ben-Joseph, “When a Parking Lot is So Much More,” The New York Times, (March 25, 2012). ]

Commercial and political considerations rather than scientific and natural ones lead to the large-scale development and use of water at unsustainable rates. On a global basis, irrigating agricultural fields uses by far the largest amount of water, accounting for 70% globally. In California, agriculture accounts for 80% of total fresh water use and a sizeable further portion is used (and polluted) by the oil and gas industry due to the huge increase in horizontal drilling (fracking) that produces enormous quantities of contaminated wastewater.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that 9.6 million gallons of water are used per well that uses hydraulically fracturing.[endnoteRef:185] Even the oil and gas industry recognize they use a “crazy” amount of water. In a series called Measuring Success, engineering firm Siemens, which builds monitoring equipment for wells claim, “the biggest product of the US petroleum industry [is] water” because: [185: Bobby Magill, "Water Use Rises as Fracking Expands,” Scientific American website, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/water-use-rises-as-fracking-expands/ (July 1, 2015). ]

It may seem crazy but each new well requires over 2.5 million gallons of water for completion. Not only that, besides the water needed for drilling and fracking, industry experts have found that for every one barrel of oil produced, over seven and a half barrels of water are also produced. For the production of one million cubic feet of natural gas, over 260 barrels of water are produced. With this much production, water plays a key role in keeping the well pad running and maintaining an optimized system.[endnoteRef:186] [186: Tim Matthews, “How much water is used in the oil and gas market,” Siemens blog (July 16, 2016).]

 

If the idea of “produced water” sounds like a strange and rather unlikely concept, that’s because it is: produced water is the Orwellian term invented by the industry to denote the toxic cocktail of fracking chemicals and water the industry has contaminated and has to try to dispose of by burying underground.

Despite the overwhelming preponderance of water in California being used by big business, when issuing mandatory water restrictions for the first time in the state’s history in 2015, Governor Jerry Brown excluded agriculture and the oil and gas industry.[endnoteRef:187] No clearer evidence could be marshaled for how government officials value the profit-making activities of capital over the wellbeing of people who elect them and the long-term health and stability of the environment. [187: ]

In their defense, politicians argue quite correctly that many farmers are already struggling to access water and make a living. Furthermore, thousands of jobs will be lost if farms and oil and gas companies face restrictions on an essential resource. The common trap laid by people who show by all their other actions they couldn’t care less about the welfare of farm workers, immigrant labor, or workers in general, is to resort to the environment vs. labor argument. There are no other options if the argument remains on the terrain of capital: it is true that more diversion of water, deeper wells and water conservation efforts by residential consumers are the available “solutions.” But carrying out such a plan, particularly in the face of climate change, is only a temporary answer, one that in the long run will make things worse. The only way around this is to reject the assumption that profit-making cannot be touched and rethink what should be grown and where it should be grown based on the best available science and local knowledge and retrain any displaced workers to do the myriad other jobs required to develop public transit, upgrade infrastructure, design and build a new electricity grid based on sources of renewable energy. That would mean closing down the fracking industry that needs to be done for a host reasons.

Reinjection of fracking wastewater has dramatically increased the frequency of earthquakes in nearby localities. The state of Oklahoma, where earthquakes were rare, now experiences them as often as earthquake prone California.[endnoteRef:188] In the Dallas-Fort Worth area of Texas earthquakes had never been recorded in the region until 2008, after wastewater injection took off. Local resident Cathy Wallace now has to contend with the knowledge that house-shaking quakes could come at any time, lives in fear, “Every time it happens you know it’s going to hit, but you don’t know how severe it’s going to be…Is this going to be a bigger one? Is this the part where my house falls down? It’s scary. It’s very scary.”[endnoteRef:189] [188: Michael Wines, "Drilling Is Making Oklahoma as Quake Prone as California,” The New York Times (March 28, 2016). ] [189: Anna Kuchment, “Drilling-induced earthquakes may endanger millions in 2016, USGS says,” PBS Newshour (March 28, 2016). ]

One would think the U.S. government would put a stop to the practice of destabilizing the ground people live on while polluting the water underneath. Even more so when considering that the USGS estimates earthquakes caused by wastewater injection will threaten the lives and livelihoods of up to seven million people in the United States.

What’s most remarkable is that aside from the practice not being stopped, but injection of large quantities of high-pressure liquid as a direct cause of earthquakes has been known about and studied for decades. Unlike much other environmental harm that resulted from unforeseen consequences of the hunt for profits, experiments were carried out in the 1960s conclusively demonstrating not only cause and effect, but the exact amount and pressure of liquid required to destabilize a fault. In reference to these experiments, Stanford University geophysicist Bill Ellsworth notes, “Scores of papers on injection-induced earthquakes were published in the geophysical literature in the following 40-plus years, and the problem was well understood and appreciated by seismologists.”[endnoteRef:190] [190: Ibid. Statistic on 7 million people threatened by fracking-induced earthquakes is from the same article. ]

Industries over-extracting water from aquifers to make soft drinks, themselves a health hazard, also contribute to local problems. An example of one such case with direct social effects of polluted water and lowering of the water-table (requiring deeper wells) is the extraction of water by Coca Cola plants in India. Local demonstrations have been held against fifty-eight of Coke’s bottling plants, with some successfully shut down by protesters.[endnoteRef:191] [191: For more on the campaign against “Killer Coke” in India: http://killercoke.org/crimes_india.php ]

As water intensive crops are not grown exclusively where water is widely available, but where the most money can be made, the costs of the necessary infrastructure to farm in arid regions are socialized by having governments fund dams and the canals, pipes, and energy supply needs of water diversion projects.

Aquifers in dry climates commonly become depleted as water is withdrawn too rapidly: “nearly a third of the world’s 37 largest aquifers are being drained faster than they are being replenished.”[endnoteRef:192] Deeper wells drilled to reach a falling water table, provide only another temporary fix that requires even more energy to pump the water. In some locations, pumping out water in sufficient quantities to lower the subsurface water table can cause the land to subside. This is happening in California’s Central Valley, a major region of U.S. fruit and vegetable production. In 2015, after four years of drought, the land was sinking at the rate of 2 inches (5 cm) a month.[endnoteRef:193] And as the land sinks, roads, bridges, and pipelines need major repairs, costing tens of millions of dollars. The extent of underground water depletion—pumping out more than is replenished—has also led to salt water intrusions into coastal aquifers and, is of sufficient magnitude to significantly contribute to sea-level rise.[endnoteRef:194] [192: Felicity Barringer, "World’s Aquifers Losing Replenishment Race, Researchers Say,” The New York Times (June 25, 2015). ] [193: Suzanne Goldenberg, “The Central Valley is sinking: drought forces farmers to ponder the abyss,” The Guardian (November 28, 2015). ] [194: Wada et al., “Fate of Water Pumped from Underground and Contributions to Sea-level Rise.” Nature Climate Change (2016) May 2, 2016. ]

Our economic system’s answer to insufficient supplies of local water is not to democratically examine and plan alternatives to take into account such realities. Rather the “solution” has been to implement top-down projects for the long distance transport of water from water rich regions via diverting and damming rivers, pipelines and canals, such as has been carried out in country after country, all of which have come with huge ecological and social consequences. This is not an argument that major infrastructure projects are inherently bad practices that should never be contemplated under any circumstances. But whenever such a projects are considered they must be evaluated by different criteria than used for capitalist projects. Rather social justice, equity and genuine, long-term sustainability and short-term and long-term positive and negative outcomes are objectively and thoroughly part of a democratic decision-making process that involves everyone who may be affected.

The Colorado River diversion, in addition to huge socio-ecological costs of water diversion also results in the consumption of enormous amounts of energy to move water thousands of feet up over mountains and through tunnels and canals. The Navajo Generating Station, built primarily to provide the energy needed to move water from the river, uses 15 tons of coal a minute and emits a plume containing 16 million tons of CO2 annually, along with other pollutants such as mercury and lead.[endnoteRef:195] As government scientists and the Navajo predicted, the power plant has turned the Navajo reservation and surrounding region into a “national sacrifice area.” [195: Abrahm Lustgarten, "End of the Miracle Machines: Inside the Power Plant Fueling America’s Drought,” ProPublica (June 16, 2015), accessed June 26, 2015 at https://projects.propublica.org/killing-the-colorado/story/navajo-generating-station-colorado-river-drought. NOTE: there is more than one ton of CO2 emitted per ton of coal burned because coal is mainly composed of carbon (with an atomic weight of 12) and during burning it combines with two atoms of oxygen (with a combined atomic weight of 32). Thus the molecule of CO2 has a molecular weight of 44 vs. 12 for carbon alone. ]

EPA records include tribal complaints of a doubling in cancer rates in the Navajo Nation since the generating station began operating, as well as worsening asthma. The nonprofit environmental organization Clean Air Task Force estimated emissions from the Navajo plant alone were responsible for 12 premature deaths in 2012.[endnoteRef:196] [196: Ibid. ]

Considering the amount of evaporation along the sun-drenched route of the diversion and in the associated dams, further calls into question the overall long-term sustainability and benefits of moving such vast quantities of water to an arid region.

Over half the world’s population, some four billion people, live in areas where for at least one month during the year water is being used at more than twice the replenishment rate.[endnoteRef:197] And as supplies of fresh water become less dependable because of depleted aquifers or changes in rainfall patterns plus the greater need for water in a warming climate, it will be the poor that suffer most. As an article in Scientific American put it, “The first law of hydrodynamics is that water flows toward money.”[endnoteRef:198] [197: Mesfin Mekong and Arjen Hoekstra, "Four billion people facing severe water scarcity,” Science Advances 2(2), e1500323, DOI:10.1126/sciadv.150032 (February 12, 2016). ] [198: Dan Baum, “Change of State: The Science of California's Unprecedented Drought,” Scientific American, 313(2):64-71 (August 2015). ]

Biodiversity

The ongoing loss of biodiversity is unique, and is summed up in a 2012 article in Science as follows:

Ecosystems worldwide are rapidly losing taxonomic, phylogenetic, genetic, and functional diversity as a result of human appropriation of natural resources, modification of habitats and climate, and the spread of pathogenic, exotic, and domestic plants and animals. Twenty years of intense theoretical and empirical research have shown that such biotic impoverishment can markedly alter the biogeochemical and dynamic properties of ecosystems…[endnoteRef:199] [199: Shahid Naeem, J. Emmett Duffy, and Erika Zavaleta, "The functions of biological diversity in an age of extinction,” Science 336:1401-1406 (June 15, 2012). ]

Another group of scientists estimated that the loss of mammals and other vertebrates over the last century would have taken between eight hundred and ten thousand years to occur if extinction rates had remained unchanged.[endnoteRef:200] This rapid decrease in species, now well underway, has been called the “sixth extinction.”[endnoteRef:201] [200: Gerardo Ceballos, Paul Ehrlich, Anthony Barnosky, Andrés García, Robert Pringle, and Todd Palmer, "Accelerated modern human–induced species losses: Entering the sixth mass extinction,” Science Advances 1, e1400253 (2015). ] [201: Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: an Unusual History, Henry Holt (2014). ]

In a classic case of exploitation of the commons under the capitalist imperative of competition and private profits, rapacious exploitation of the oceans is occurring, with massive trawlers visiting the world’s fishing grounds and scooping up catches without consideration for the sustainability of the resource. According to a 2010 report from the Pew Charitable Trusts,

Of the nearly 600 species groups monitored by the United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Organization, only 23 percent are not fully overexploited. Many fisheries scientists consider even this estimate to be optimistic. Recent studies suggest that 90 percent of the world’s large fish have disappeared, that close to one-third of the world’s commercial fisheries have collapsed…[endnoteRef:202] [202: Pew Environmental Group, Protecting Life in the Sea, Pew Charitable Trusts, http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/reports/2010/01/01/protecting-life-in-the-sea (2010). ]

In addition to overfishing (including millions of tons “bycatch” annually brought in with the huge nets but discarded), pollution and warming seas are increasing pressure on global fish populations. The preferential removal of larger species of marine animals by modern fishing industry—species that are at or near the top of the ocean foodweb—may lead to cascading ecological damage. With continued overexploitation of the oceans, the extinction threat is real, according to a 2016 study:

Without a dramatic shift in the business-as-usual course for marine management, our analysis suggests that the oceans will endure a mass extinction of sufficient intensity and ecological selectivity to rank among the major extinctions of the Phanerozoic [the current geological eon that runs from the Cambrian Period, 541 million years ago, to present].[endnoteRef:203] [203: Jonathan Payne, Andrew Bush, Noel Heim, Matthew Knope, and Douglas McCauley, "Ecological selectivity of the emerging mass extinction in the oceans,” Science 353(6305):1284-1286 (September 14, 2016). ]

With regard to the largest of the marine vertebrates, while no whale species have become extinct, their numbers have declined between sixty-six percent and ninety-nine percent (for blue whales) because of commercial whaling.[endnoteRef:204] [204: Op. cit., Christopher Doughty, et al. ]

Overexploitation of wild animals is nothing new—it occurred even in the early days of capitalism. In describing early commercial-scale hunting in the Cuyahoga Valley in what is now Ohio, John Tully wrote: “Foxes, otters, wolves, moose, elk, deer, cougars, buffaloes, and a variety of other animals fell before the settlers’ guns in huge numbers, some species never to recover.”[endnoteRef:205] In addition to the genocide of indigenous peoples and the consequences for animals, settler colonialism has been similarly calamitous for native vegetation. The decline or elimination of original animal and plant populations was a result of exploitation of renewable and nonrenewable resources to feed an insatiable economic system. [205: John Tully, Crooked Deals and Broken Treaties: How American Indians were Displaced by White Settlers in the Cuyahoga Valley. Monthly Review Press, p. 44 (2015). ]

Accelerated settler theft of land and increased trade encouraged the introduction of many invasive species that have displaced native species. Indeed many early colonists actively tried to reproduce their country of origin through the deliberate propagation of the seeds and animals they brought with them. Early humans may well have had a hand in the loss of a number species as they spread throughout much of the world. However, the evidence of prehistoric human-induced extinction of large animals is sometimes ambiguous, and the co-existence of humans and mastodons in North America for a significant period of time certainly makes one question the rapid extinction narrative.[endnoteRef:206] Regardless of the extent of ancient human participation in the demise of many large animals, those losses pale in comparison to what occurred during and after the development of capitalism and which is occurring right now as a result of capitalist production. [206: Sarah Kaplan, "Ancient tools and bone found in Florida could help rewrite the story of the first Americans,” The Washington Post (May 13, 2016). ]

The addition or removal of a top predator has numerous effects on species in other areas of food web and the physical landscape, resulting in what is called a “trophic cascade.” When a non-human top predator is removed, as wolves were in much of the U.S. in order to protect farm animals such as sheep or to eliminate predation of game species, populations of species that were once regulated by availability of food and the presence of its main predator may mushroom, causing overgrazing and a simplification of the remaining habitat. Returning a small population of wolves to Yellowstone National Park has led to dramatic improvements in biodiversity and the physical make-up of the park.[endnoteRef:207] [207: Sustainable Human, “How Wolves Change Rivers,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysa5OBhXz-Q ]

Agriculture, whether on soils that previously supported rainforest, temperate forest or grasslands, always involves eliminating most if not all of the native vegetation in order to grow crops and raise animals, thereby creating a biologically simplified system in place of what came before. However, capitalist agriculture has been especially proficient at decreasing biological diversity in the soil, in the fields, the borders surrounding the fields, and in the genetics of crops and farm animals.

Much of the current loss of biodiversity, discussed as part of the carbon cycle, is the result of cutting down biologically diverse forests for conversion to industrially managed forests, plantations, pastures, or croplands. The Amazon rainforest is believed to be composed of 16,000 tree species.[endnoteRef:208] When converted to soy production only one plant species dominates. And when converted to grasslands for animals to graze, only a few species of plants are present in the pastures. In addition, a wide diversity of animal life, small and large, aquatic and terrestrial, in and around the trees and in the soil is lost during the habitat conversion. [208: Hans ter Steege, et al., “Hyperdominance in the Amazonian Tree Flora.” Science 342 (no. 6156): 1243092-1- 1243092-9 (October 18, 2013). ]

Ecological simplification, using uniform genetics to produce a uniform “product,” also occurs on factory farms when raising a single species of animal in huge numbers, close together. The billions of domesticated animals are treated by the meat, dairy and egg industry not as living creatures that can feel pain and distress, but as machines. Mass-produced in factory-like facilities, their bodies are shaped in accordance with industrial needs. They pass their entire lives as cogs in a giant production line, and the length and quality of their existence is determined by the profits and losses of business corporations.[endnoteRef:209] Genetically uniform livestock raised in crowded industrial fashion fosters disease, requiring routine use of antibiotics to attempt to solve the problem. [209: Yuval Noah Harari, quoted in “Who Are We?,” An interview with Jane Goodall and Yuval Noah Harari, Thought Economics website, access August 7, 2015 at http://thoughteconomics.com/who-are-we/. ]

So concerned has agribusiness become with animal rights activists filming its abusive practices that the practice has been criminalized. After passage of the industry-supported Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, anyone caught filming the horrifying conditions inside an animal processing center or factory farm (renamed CAFO’s: Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations) can be tried as a terrorist under federal law.[endnoteRef:210] The law not only protects cruel commercial activities of Big Agriculture with respect to animals, but also can be applied to workers in a plant who film unsafe or unhealthy working conditions.[endnoteRef:211] [210: Text of 2006 Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act can be found at the Congressional website here: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/109/s3880/text ] [211: Leighton Akio Woodhouse, “Charged with the crime of filming a slaughterhouse,” The Nation (June 31, 2013). ]

One of the key findings of a summit titled Seeds and Breeds for the 21st Century Agriculture is that there is “[i]ncreased vulnerability of agricultural systems to weather or pest disruptions due to the decline of agro-biodiversity on farms and in our commercial seed choices…”[endnoteRef:212] Decreased biodiversity on farms occurs within fields, genetically,[footnoteRef:11] over time, and space. Biological impoverishment by species loss leads to reduced self-sufficiency and self-regulation of ecosystems, including agricultural ones, and leads to greater vulnerability to pests of farm animals and crops. [212: Bill Tracy and Michael Sligh (eds.,), Proceedings of 2014 Summit on Seeds and Breeds for the 21st Century Agriculture, Rural Advancement Foundation International, (RAFI-USA) (2014). ] [11: Genetic diversity is very low in commercial crop varieties and the continuing loss of older varieties and wild relatives removes an important potential future source for breeding.]

Capitalism as poisoning agent

With the growth and development of capitalism came the emergence of the synthetic chemical industry, many incredibly useful and beneficial new substances and products have been created over the last few decades. But when the primary objective is profitability, examples abound of toxic, poisonous materials and products routinely used in a wide variety of products as well as introduced into the air, water, and soil. The “overwhelming majority of chemicals in use today have never been independently tested for safety in the United States.”[endnoteRef:213] [213: Ian Urbina, “Think Those Chemicals have been tested?” The New York Times (April 13, 2013). ]

Essentially free rein is given to corporations to invent and not test and industrial chemical they think may be profitable, regardless of any concern for legal action should the material later be found to be deleterious to the environment or harmful to human health:

In its history, the E.P.A. has mandated safety testing for only a small percentage of the 85,000 industrial chemicals available for use today. And once chemicals are in use, the burden on the E.P.A. is so high that it has succeeded in banning or restricting only five substances, and often only in specific applications: polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxin, hexavalent chromium, asbestos and chlorofluorocarbons.[endnoteRef:214] [214: Ibid. ]

The most severe contamination of humans with toxic chemicals commonly arises in the workplace, with farmworkers exposed to high levels of pesticides, uranium miners exposed to excess amounts of that carcinogenic element, coal miners exposed to high levels of coal dust and many other examples. The general public is also exposed to a multitude of potentially toxic chemicals through household goods, air, drinking water, and food. While we may be shocked to learn so, we should not be completely surprised that “[s]cientists have identified more than 200 industrial chemicals—from pesticides, flame retardants, jet fuel—as well as neurotoxins like lead in the blood or breast milk of Americans, indeed, in people all over our planet.”[endnoteRef:215] [215: Nicholas Kristof, “Are You a Toxic Waste Disposal Site?,” The New York Times (February 13, 2016). ]

Our bodies have become “toxic waste disposal sites.”[endnoteRef:216] According to the 2008-2009 report of the President’s Cancer Panel, we are contaminated even before birth: “Numerous environmental contaminants can cross the placental barrier; to a disturbing extent, babies are born “pre-polluted.”[endnoteRef:217] It is estimated that air pollution in 2013 was responsible for some five and half million premature deaths, with most occurring in China and India.[endnoteRef:218] [216: Ibid., Nicholas Kristof ] [217: Suzanne H. Reuben (for The President’s Cancer Panel), Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now, The 2008-2009 report of the President’s Cancer Panel, http://deainfo.nci.nih.gov/advisory/pcp/annualReports/pcp08-09rpt/PCP_Report_08-09_508.pdf (2010).  ] [218: Alan Yuhas, "Scientists: air pollution led to more than 5.5 million premature deaths in 2013,” The Guardian (February 12, 2016). ]

Endocrine disruptors are a group of chemicals that interfere with the glands that secrete hormones that travel through the body and affect many of the important aspects of life: reproduction, growth, and energy metabolism. These disruptors include “pharmaceuticals, dioxin and dioxin-like compounds, polychlorinated biphenyls [PCBs], DDT and other pesticides, and plasticizers such as bisphenol A [BPA]. Endocrine disruptors may be found in many everyday products—including plastic bottles, metal food cans, detergents, flame retardants, food, toys, cosmetics, and pesticides.”[endnoteRef:219] The Endocrine Society, when releasing their 2015 report on endocrine disruptors, stated the following: “Emerging evidence ties endocrine-disrupting chemical exposure to two of the biggest public health threats facing society – diabetes and obesity… Mounting evidence also indicates EDC [endocrine-disrupting chemical] exposure is connected to infertility, hormone-related cancers, neurological issues and other disorders.”[endnoteRef:220] [219: U.S. National Institute of Health, “Endocrine Disruptors,” http://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/endocrine/, accessed December 7, 2015. ] [220: Endocrine Society Press Release, “Endocrine Society releases Scientific Statement on Endocrine-disrupting Chemicals,” accessed December 7, 2015 at https://www.endocrine.org/news-room/current-press-releases/chemical-exposure-linked-to-rising-diabetes-obesity-risk (September 28, 2015). ]

Since 1970 the chemical industry has grown from $171 billion market to $4.12 trillion in 2010, most of which is still produced in OECD countries but with significant growth in China, South Africa and other developing countries. Chemical production, with hundreds of new chemicals emerging every year is predicted to continue to grow exponentially alongside economic growth. Businesses use chemicals essentially at will because they are not required to go through the expense and time it would take to thoroughly evaluate their environmental consequences—thus profits are enhanced at the expense of the whole biosphere.

Occupational medicine and environmental medicine are areas that exist only because of capitalists’ disregard for human wellbeing in the quest for profits—to help ameliorate the contamination of people and planet. Occasionally, companies under pressure from the public substitute a new chemical for a suspected toxic one. When forced, regulations have helped reduce some environmental contamination such as the decease in black lung disease in coal miners after better mine ventilation was introduced. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has banned BPA use in making plastic baby cups and drinking glasses (though there are questions about the substitute). New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof explained why regulation isn’t more stringent:

…the United States is a laggard because of the power of the chemical lobby. Chemical safety legislation now before the Senate would require the Environmental Protection Agency to start a safety assessment of only 25 chemicals in the first five years—and House legislation isn’t much better…The chemical lobby spent the equivalent of $121,000 per member of Congress last year [2014] so expect chemical companies to enjoy strong quarterly profits, more boys to be born with hypospadias and more women to die unnecessarily of breast cancer.[endnoteRef:221] [221: Nicholas Kristof, “Contaminating Our Bodies With Everyday Products,” The New York Times (November 28, 2015). ]

Over the last 40 years, as the power of capital has grown relative to labor, there has been a reduction of regulatory enforcement of worker safety rules. Black lung disease among coal miners had decreased to almost zero following regulations of mine dust, but a strong resurgence has occurred since 2000. Over the next twelve years, black lung incidence in miners who had worked at least 25 years increased by nine hundred percent.[endnoteRef:222] After the death of twenty-nine miners in the 2010 explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia—for which the CEO at the time was, in 2015, convicted of conspiring to violate federal safety regulations—the state medical examiner autopsied the dead miners. Illustrating that Black Lung is really a social affliction caused by unequal power relations, there was: [222: Carrie Arnold, "A Scourge Returns: Black Lung in Appalachia,” Environmental Health Perspectives 124(1):A13-A18 (January 2016). ]

sufficient lung tissue for post mortem examination in 24 of the 29 victims, and 71% (17 of 24) were noted to have pathologic findings of CWP [CWP=coal worker’s pneumoconiosis=black lung]. The 17 miners whose lungs showed CWP ranged in age from 25 to 61 years, including five who had less than 10 years’ mining experience; nine had been miners for more than 30 years. Of note, 16 of the 17 miners with CWP had started working after the modern dust limits were put into effect.[endnoteRef:223] [223: Edward Petsonk, Cecile Rose, and Robert Cohen, "Coal Mine Dust Lung Disease: New Lessons from an Old Exposure,” American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine 187(11): 1178-1185 (2013). ]

Estimated monetary value of global environmental impacts

It is next to impossible to put a true cost on the entirety of the ecological impacts of the capitalism’s operation. How do you put a meaningful cost on the effects of human contamination by lead, PFOA, or a pesticide, the disappearance of a species, or the destruction of a forest? Although we are skeptical of even trying to do so, a number of groups have made such estimates, in which they calculate the damage in monetary terms. And these dollar numbers give at least some idea of the magnitude of the devastation. For example, a 2015 UN-sponsored study estimated the annual unpaid costs of global industrial agriculture at over three trillion dollars—significantly more than the economic value of the food produced.[endnoteRef:224] An earlier study, also sponsored by the UN, estimated that the environmental damage caused by the world’s three thousand largest publicly traded companies in 2008 was equivalent 2.2 trillion dollars.[endnoteRef:225] When the sportswear company Puma decided to “go green” and put together an environmental profit and loss account in 2011, it quickly found that, if implemented, the corporation would have to dissolve itself.[endnoteRef:226] [224: Nadia El-Hage Scialabba (project leader), Natural Capital Impacts in Agriculture, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, http://www.fao.org/nr/sustainability/natural-capital/en/ (June 2015). ] [225: Narina Mnatsakanian and Olivia Watson (project coordinators), "Why environmental externalities matter to institutional investors,” UNEP Finance Initiative, http://www.unepfi.org/fileadmin/documents/universal_ownership_full.pdf (2011); George Monbiot, "The oil firms' profits ignore the real costs,” The Guardian (June 7 2010). ] [226: Jochen Zeitz, “Puma completes first environmental profit and loss account,” The Guardian, (November 16, 2011). ]

Unnatural natural disasters

The term “natural disaster” takes on new meaning when activities of corporations and governmental bodies create conditions that both make the effects of potential disasters worse than they would otherwise be and ensures that it is the poorest that are most affected.

For example, the building of numerous dams on the Mississippi River has greatly reduced the amount of sediments reaching the delta each year. And because the land in the delta naturally subsides and ocean levels are rising, this lack of replenishment of sediment results in land being swallowed by the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. However, there is an additional factor at work—the operation of the oil companies. Thousands of on-shore and off-shore oil drilling rigs and canals dug for transportation and pipelines have directly damaged wetlands and accelerated erosion of the low lying delta lands, making them more susceptible to hurricane tidal surges. “In just 80 years, some 2,000 square miles of its coastal landscape have turned to open water, wiping places off maps, bringing the Gulf of Mexico to the back door of New Orleans and posing a lethal threat to an energy and shipping corridor vital to the nation’s economy.”[endnoteRef:227] [227: Bob Marshall, "Losing Ground: Southeast Louisiana Is Disappearing Quickly,” Scientific American website, http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/losing-ground-southeast-louisiana-is-disappearing-quickly/ (August 28, 2014). ]

When a storm like Hurricane Katrina hits, the surge swamps communities in the low-lying delta and the surge is able to travel further inland than if the there had been more land to act as a buffer. And when Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, distinguished geographer Neil Smith highlights how most severely impacted the poorest residents:

It is generally accepted among environmental geographers that there is no such thing as a natural disaster. In every phase and aspect of a disaster – causes, vulnerability, preparedness, results and response, and reconstruction – the contours of disaster and the difference between who lives and who dies is to a greater or lesser extent a social calculus… Unfortunately, shocking as it was, the tragedy of New Orleans is neither unique nor even especially unexpected, except perhaps in its scale. The race and class dimensions of who escaped and who was victimized by this decidedly unnatural disaster not only could have been predicted, and was, but it follows a long history of like experiences.[endnoteRef:228] [228: Neil Smith, “There’s no such thing as a natural disaster,” Understanding Katrina: Perspectives from the Social Sciences (June 11, 2006). ]

On a smaller scale, the community in Far Rockaway after Hurricane Sandy struck New York City in 2011 is still struggling to recover five years later—in the richest city in the world. In these examples, the outcomes of capitalist development—economic, social and racial—ensured that the system at some point made those disasters inevitable. By ripping up natural flood defense systems, pushing people onto marginal land and then neglecting to utilize sufficient resources to help, a perfectly non-resilient social and infrastructural system was set up with predictable consequences for the people forced to live there.

The August 2016 rainstorm in southern Louisiana, mentioned earlier in this chapter, caused the loss of eleven lives and destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of homes. Although the storm was severe, estimated in some locations to have a 0.1 percent chance of occurring in a given year (a “1,000-year” storm), the loss of life and property damage was not primarily the result of an unanticipated “freak storm.” The region floods regularly, and the same area was also severely inundated in 1983. According to Louisiana State University Professor Edward Richards, the real problem had to do with how the area was developed:

From a land use perspective, the primary problem was that local planning and zoning commissions have known that the areas are prone to severe flooding for at least the 30 plus years since the 1983 flood. Homeowners and small businesses were not warned about the risk and were not advised to buy flood insurance if they were outside the FEMA 100-year flood zone. They relied on planning and zoning commissions to determine if developers were building in safe locations.[endnoteRef:229] [229: Edward Richards, "Why was the Louisiana Flood of August 2016 so severe?,” Blog of the The Climate Change Law and Policy Project, Louisiana State University, accessed September 8, 2016 at http://sites.law.lsu.edu/coast/2016/08/why-was-the-louisiana-flood-of-august-2016-so-severe/. ]

Planning and zoning commissions commonly accept plans of commercial developers with little or no modifications, unless there is sufficient organized opposition. Developers—who rarely see a piece of land that they don’t want to build on—tend to be local power brokers and their desires to build often coincide with other business interests that seek perpetual local economic growth. Building in floodplains has also been stimulated by federally subsidized flood insurance.

As climate change progresses and brings both drought and more intense storms the problem of unnatural natural disasters will only worsen.

Trying to remediate environmental consequences

In discussion of various ecological rifts and disturbances, we have covered some of the ways that have been tried to ameliorate and/or reverse the damage. What all of these examples of attempted environmental remediation efforts have in common is the underlying cause of the initial problem cannot be questioned: whether that is water pollution, soil erosion, ruptures in nutrient cycles, unsustainable extraction rates (of what should be a renewable resource)—causing a shortage of water, deforestation or climate change. Every method for overcoming the first problem is remedied by treating it in isolation and by technocratic means: we’ve contaminated the water so let’s bury it underground. The solution then often magnifies the original problem or creates a new one; in the case of wastewater disposal from fracking operations, earthquakes and potential contamination of aquifers. Everything must be done to help businesses to function as they wish, and to continue to make as great an amount of profits as possible. Thus, the original cause of the ecological rifts and disturbances—the inability of the economic system to rationally regulate the human interaction with the biosphere in ways that regenerate and maintain a healthy ecosystem—cannot be solved. Short-term, reductionist and reactive technological fixes inevitably lead to creating new problems that widen the metabolic rift between humans and the rest of the nature.

Waste of material resources in capitalist economies

More production means more waste and more waste means more production. In an important sense therefore, rather than a problem for capitalism—a system that needs to constantly produce more—most waste is a sign of its success. When people throw away a product after using it for a short period of time (because of planned obsolescence or change of fashions), they will buy a new one, contributing to growth and corporate profits.[footnoteRef:12] [12: What constitutes waste and how materials are treated once classified has changed dramatically over time. Due to government planning and propaganda, domestic resource conservation efforts during wartime were highly successful. As soon as war ended, manufacturing and marketing switched from conservation to profligate production and an emphasis on consumption.]

As early as 1925, Stuart Chase, writing in his book The Tragedy of Waste, identified four systematic sources of waste under capitalism: the labor power used to produce “vicious or useless goods and services,” labor power wasted due to unemployment, the unplanned nature of production and distribution of goods leading to inefficiencies and over-production, and the senseless waste and overuse of natural resources.[endnoteRef:230] Chase expanded on the term coined by 19th century writer and social reformer John Ruskin that such forms of production produce not wealth, but “illth”. [230: Stuart Chase, The Tragedy of Waste, MacMillan Company, New York:30 (1929). ]

Illth abounds under capitalism. Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, in the 1960s in their book Monopoly Capital: An essay on the American Economic and Social Order, included an appendix written by Joseph D. Phillips, “Estimating the Economic Surplus.” Phillips demonstrated that the economic surplus—aspects of the economy that served no socially useful purpose, and therefore would be considered waste in a more rationally organized society—averaged over half of the Gross National Product of the United States.

Illth comes in many forms. One is conspicuous consumption by the very rich, the luxury cars, yachts, huge houses and other forms of ostentatious consumption. World Bank economists calculate the wealthiest ten percent of the world’s population uses close to sixty percent of all the world’s resources. Therefore, if we just got rid of the richest ten percent at a stroke, we’d more than halve ecological damage.[endnoteRef:231] In fact, if they just reduced their consumption to the average consumption of other ninety percent of humanity, total global resource use would be cut in half. The New York Times estimated the amount spent on luxury items—leaving out their luxury homes—in the U.S. in 2012 at $302 billion.[endnoteRef:232] Backing that up, a report by the British charity Oxfam found the wealthiest ten percent were responsible for half of all emissions of greenhouse gases, while the poorest half of the world’s people were responsible for about ten percent.[endnoteRef:233] [231: World Bank, 2008 World Development Index, http://data.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/wdi08.pdf. ] [232: Nelson Schwartz, “In an age of privilege, not everyone is in the same boat,” The New York Times (April 23, 2016). ] [233: (Oxfam, “Extreme Carbon Inequality,” (December 2, 2015), accessed December 5, 2015 at www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/mb-extreme-carbon-inequality-021215-en.pdf.) ]

The prison-industrial complex, expanded primarily due to the racist “war on drugs,” and developed in large part to control communities of color, is most certainly illth.[endnoteRef:234] Essentially all of what is done in the enormous economic sector referred to as FIRE (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate) is finding ways to make money with money and provides little of social value. The same can be said for marketing, advertising and packaging for brand promotion and the proliferation of products designed with inbuilt obsolescence or to stimulate new wants. [234: Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, The New Press (2012). ]

Delineating the ecological, resource use and social problems with capitalist agriculture and food supply is a gigantic topic in and of itself. As for waste in food production, processing, and use, it is estimated that between thirty and fifty percent of the food grown in the United States goes to waste.[endnoteRef:235] There are losses of food in harvesting, storage and shipment, processing, at the retail store, and in the household. Food is left in the field if it doesn’t meet certain cosmetic standards of large buyers, even if it is perfectly good quality. Supermarkets routinely overstock their produce shelves in deliberate displays of abundance, knowing that a portion will spoil and be thrown away. Globally, about one-third of food is wasted, amounting to about 1.8 billion tons (1.6 billion metric tons) and worth approximately one trillion dollars.[endnoteRef:236] All of this wasted food means wasted water, labor power, energy and all the other resources that went into making it—petrochemicals for pesticide and fertilizer production, to run agricultural machinery and transportation to markets. It is, of course, unconscionable that hunger is still commonplace in the face of so much food produced and wasted. But that is how the economic system functions. [235: For a full discussion of food losses on a global scale, see Food losses and waste in the context of sustainable food systems, A report by The High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition, FAO (June 2014), accessed October 7, 2014 at http://www.fao.org/3/a-i3901e.pdf; also, Suzanne Goldenberg, "Half of all US food produce is thrown away, new research suggests,” The Guardian (July 13, 2016). ] [236: Suzanne Goldenberg, "Half of all US food produce is thrown away, new research suggests,” The Guardian (July 13, 2016). ]

With many commentators blaming individuals for wasting food at home, it’s critical to note that food waste is built into the way the system works. The vast majority of food that is wasted is because of an agricultural and food system set up to generate profit; feeding people is secondary. A lack of storage infrastructure in the Global South is a major problem causing the spoiling of food and pest infestation before it reaches markets. The system of giant multinational supermarket companies controlling food sales and supply can’t help but produce vast quantities of wasted food.

The spread of online shopping, was once touted as environmentally more benign than trips to the retail shops, is instead adding new dimension to the waste of resources. According to The Wall Street Journal, “[g]iant warehouses are springing up across the country as surging online sales send retailers scrambling to find space to house products destined for delivery to customers’ homes.”[endnoteRef:237] The huge increase in e-commerce deliveries means corresponding increases in cardboard boxes, the most rapidly growing part of the 35 million tons of containerboard produced in 2015. Transport of the packages from warehouses creates further environmental damage: [237: Brian Baskin and Jess Kuronen, "Where Are the Warehouses?,” The Wall Street Journal (June 9, 2016). ]

[Commenting on one] recent study of Newark, Del., Ardeshi Faghri, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Delaware, said the [20%] increase of various emissions…“could be due to a multitude of reasons, but we think that online shopping and more delivery trucks are really one of the primary reasons.…Online shopping has not helped the environment,” he said. “It has made it worse.”[endnoteRef:238] [238: Matt Richtelfeb, "E-Commerce: Convenience Built on a Mountain of Cardboard,” The New York Times (February 16, 2016). ]

U.S. per capita energy consumption is twice that of the most industrialized European countries despite a similar standard of living.[endnoteRef:239] The United States consumes twenty-five percent of world energy, but does so almost fifty percent less efficiently than Europe. Clearly, there is ample room for improvement, especially because Europe is not particularly energy efficient in the first place. [239: U.S. Energy Information Agency, “International Energy Statistics” http://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/iedindex3.cfm?tid=44&pid=45&aid=2&cid=regions&syid=2005&eyid=2009&unit=QBTU ]

Thermal power plants, that is, those that burn coal, natural gas or uranium to generate steam, waste two-thirds of the energy as heat, while utilizing enormous quantities of water, creating a need to site them along rivers and lakes or near the ocean.

Waste is also a routine by-product of the tendency of capitalists to overbuild capacity in good times, assuming that growth will continue at its same trajectory. The company that overbuilds capacity eventually comes up against a much lower cost producer, or mistaking market possibilities, or a recession, leading to abandoned factories and stores—with the structure repurposed, torn down to use the site for something else, or just left to decay. Abandoned or torn down facilities such as steel mills, clothing factories, movie theaters, and malls represent a huge waste of resources.[endnoteRef:240] In many cases it makes no social or environmental sense to abandon or tear down such properties, but it becomes a reasonable thing to do in an economy in which decisions are made on whether more profits can be made by abandoning or tearing down a facility than by repurposing the building or constructing a new one. [240: For example, see the website Abandoned America: an autopsy of an American dream, http://www.abandonedamerica.us/business-and-industry. ]

The same occurs with houses—“tear-downs” are common in upper middle class and very wealthy neighborhoods. Perfectly good houses are torn down because the builder or owner sees greater profitable possibilities from building a larger and/or more modern house. A Wall Street Journal article titled “Multimillion-Dollar Homes Face the Wrecking Ball,” describes a 14-bedroom house being purchased for $11.5 million and the empty lot marketed three years later, after the house was torn down, for $14 million. According to the article, “It’s almost becoming routine: eight-figure listings treated as teardowns—and marketed as such. Buyers see value in the land, especially in exclusive neighborhoods or on the waterfront. There, they can build brand new homes with modern design and cutting-edge technology.”[endnoteRef:241] In other areas, whole working class neighborhoods have been torn down and the people dispersed to build highways through cities or to advance urban “renewal” in order to gentrify or commercialize a district. [241: Katy McLaughlin, "Multimillion-Dollar Homes Face the Wrecking Ball,” The Wall Street Journal (December 11, 2015). ]

During the rapid growth in international trade in the early 2010s, large numbers of ships were constructed to haul raw materials as well as parts and finished goods. But with the global economic growth declining in the middle of the decade, the scrapping of ships became common. “About 1,000 ships that have the combined capacity to haul 52 million metric tons of cargo will be dragged onto beaches, cut into pieces and sold for scrap metal this year [2016]. That is second only to the record amount of capacity of 61 million so-called dead weight tons that were scrapped and recycled in 2012.”[endnoteRef:242] While at least the steel is being recycled, the buildup of shipping overcapacity that ends with ships on the scrapheap when shipping prices plunge during a slowdown is a colossal waste of material and human resources. [242: Costas Paris, "Economic Slump Sends Big Ships to Scrap Heap,” The Wall Street Journal (August 15, 2016). ]

Waste and the environmental impact of the U.S. military

By its activities and use of resources the U.S. military is the single greatest destroyer of life and the environment. In fact, the military can be accurately viewed as a vast waste of resources whose purpose is to be available to carry out foreign policy “needs” as perceived by the U.S. government. Over the years this included protecting access to resources such as oil, trade routes, and getting rid of foreign governments that had the audacity to have independent policies not aligned with the geostrategic interests defined by the U.S. elite.

The military is a sinkhole into which large amounts of resources—that could be used for other purposes—disappear. For just two examples, the Obama administration’s one trillion dollar plan to “modernize” U.S. nuclear weapons and the introduction of the most expensive weapons project in history, the F-35 fighter jet. This plane became notorious for escalating costs and failed tests. The use of resources on something for which the sole purpose is to kill other humans, has become staggering, “with an American fleet of more than 2,400 planes planned by the late 2030s—projected total costs will exceed $1 trillion. One billion dollars will be needed just to pay for the highly advanced pilot helmets, running to $400,000 apiece.”[endnoteRef:243] Imagine, what might be able to be done to repair U.S. public schools if two trillion dollars (the cost of the F-35 and nuclear weapon “modernization”) were used to create healthy and pleasant places for children to learn. [243: Clyde Haberman “Despite decades of stealth, sticking points bedevil F-35 jet,” The New York Times, (January 24, 2016). ]

And while the human costs of the U.S. led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early decades of the 21st century are truly horrendous, the financial costs run into the trillions of dollars—money could have done much good if spent on social programs in the U.S. and abroad.

The military also wastes incredible quantities of fuel, as mentioned in Chapter 2. It is exempt from all international climate agreements and local environmental regulations at its hundreds of bases worldwide, allowing the U.S. military to be the single largest user of fossil fuels and by far the world’s biggest polluter. A full eighty percent of the energy consumption of the federal government is for the operation of the Department of Defense.[endnoteRef:244] And according to the CIA World Factbook, in 2006 only thirty-five countries used more oil per day than the Pentagon. The U.S. war in Iraq emitted more CO2 each year than sixty percent of all countries on the planet combined (139).[endnoteRef:245] Even within the military, a voluminous budget of almost one trillion dollars and guaranteed cost-plus contracts facilitate gargantuan waste, such as the $385 billion for military contractors for U.S. overseas bases over a 12-year period.[endnoteRef:246] [244: U.S. Energy Information Agency, “Annual Energy Review 2011,” http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/archive/038411.pdf (2012). ] [245: This blog post has a round up of statistics: “The elephant in the room: the U.S. military is one of the world’s largest sources of CO2,” WashingtonsBlog (December 21, 2009). For more detail on the environmental impact of the U.S. war machine, see Barry Sanders, The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism, AK Press, Oakland. (2009). ] [246: David Vine, “Contractors raked in $385 billion on overseas bases in 12 years,” Mother Jones (May 14, 2013). ]

Individual Responsibility and the Rise of Recycling

Any market-based solution will be contingent on generating profits, which means it will be subject to the gyrations of international markets instead of being evaluating on whether the environmental situation is improving. Recycling serves an important ideological function by convincing people that they’re doing something environmentally positive while obscuring the question of why the product has to be made in the first place and why many products are purposely made to be disposable, have short lifetimes, or are difficult to repair. This view ignores the role of companies that produce, and push the public to purchase, the goods. Instead, it pins the blame on the individuals that consume them—“We have met the enemy and it is us.”

A problem in using a market-based approach to recycling is that it depends on relatively the high prices for basic commodities such as metals, paper, and plastics that have stimulated formal recycling programs in the Global North—easily producing profits. However, the global economy slowed in the mid-2010s, depressing the cost of oil, metal ores, and paper. It’s therefore become cheaper for the makers of water bottles, yogurt containers and paper products to simply buy new feedstock, making the recycling industry unprofitable:

In Montgomery, Ala., Infinitus Energy opened a $35 million recycling center in 2014. By last October, it was hemorrhaging money and shut down. Montgomery’s recyclables are now going to a landfill, and a once booming local business, United Plastic Recycling, filed for bankruptcy last year…

And Waste Management, the biggest recycler in the country…Over the last three quarters, revenues from recycling operations are down 16 percent from the same time a year earlier, to $878 million from just over $1 billion.[endnoteRef:247] [247: David Gelles, "Skid in Oil Prices Pulls the Recycling Industry Down With It,” The New York Times (February 12, 2016). ]

It’s important to note the fastest growing stream of waste, electronics, is toxic, has very low recycling rates and is most often exported from Europe and North America, with the material recovery carried out in an exploitative and polluting manner in the Global South. As the lifetime of electronics continues to shorten more and more waste is generated: one in three of the shipping containers leaving the EU checked by Interpol contained illegal e-waste. According to a spokesperson for Interpol,

Much is falsely classified as 'used goods' although in reality it is non-functional. It is often diverted to the black market and disguised as used goods to avoid the costs associated with legitimate recycling…A substantial proportion of e-waste exports go to countries outside Europe, including west African countries. Treatment in these countries usually occurs in the informal sector, causing significant environmental pollution and health risks for local populations.[endnoteRef:248] [248: John Vidal, “Toxic 'e-waste' dumped in poor nations, says United Nations,” The Guardian (December 13, 2013). ]

Regardless of whether recycling makes money, can a focus on the behavior of the end-user, lifestyle changes or consumer preferences really have an impact on production or result in significant declines in environmental ills?

The answer is an unequivocal no. Real consumer sovereignty is largely fictional under capitalism and where relevant only applies to the very rich, who have enough income to do most of the buying, especially at the most profitable end of production. As for corporations, CEO’s do not sit around waiting for demand to materialize, they actively manipulate and stimulate it through advertising and utilize the most profitable manufacturing methods. Some media commentators made ordinary people’s ‘addiction to oil’ as a cause of BP’s Deepwater Horizon 2010 oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. But the vast majority of people in the United States have no choice but to use gasoline-fueled cars. Nor did ordinary people have anything to do with BP’s repeated evasion of health, safety and environmental protocols that, aside from leaking millions of gallons of oil, caused the deaths of 11 oil workers. Rather,

the range of choices available to buyers is determined not by what is environmentally friendly, but by what can be sold profitably. As a result, we get micro-choices such as Ford vs Hyundai—but not real choices such as automobiles vs reliable and affordable public transit.[endnoteRef:249] [249: Ian Angus and Simon Butler, Too Many People? Population, Immigration and the Environmental Crisis, Haymarket Books, Chicago (2011). ]

One of the defining features of capitalism is that the system is eternally aimed profit generation, only secondarily does it respond to social and environmental needs, and only when it doesn’t infringe on profit.

Not only will consumer choice not change capitalism, changes to what we buy and how we discard the containers and packaging it comes in rely on an acceptance of neoliberal ideology. Similar to the water crisis in California, by far and away the biggest producer of waste is industry and agriculture, not by individuals. EPA data shows that in 2008 individuals generated some two hundred and fifty million tons of municipal solid waste. Once classified as “non-hazardous” there is much less data collected on quantities and type of industrial waste or disposal methods. However, the EPA estimated in 1992 the waste from industrial, mining, extractive and agricultural production at 12 billion tons.[endnoteRef:250] If these estimates are anywhere near the real values, it means that a very small amount of all solid waste in the United States (only two percent) comes from end-users. So even if all municipal solid waste could be recycled (and it’s usually around fifteen to thirty percent in the U.S.) it wouldn’t make any difference to the vast rivers of waste generated in production. Thus, directing efforts against consumption instead of production will not solve the problem. Even when companies do decide to take notice of the pollution they cause, one study found, “companies respond most strongly to consumer pressures by reducing their releases to air and transfers of wastes off-site” which are more observable and verifiable, “but also by increasing less visible releases to subsoil via underground injection.”[endnoteRef:251] [250: Samantha MacBride, Recycling Reconsidered: The present failure and future promise of environmental action in the United States, MIT Press:87-88 (2013). ] [251: Ibid. 119. ]

By focusing on consumption as the “solution” to the waste of resources we see ourselves as the very thing capitalists want: consumers; conscious and concerned or otherwise it doesn’t matter. As Samantha McBride writes,

what we have for producers is freedom: freedom to be green or semi-green or not green, freedom to do what is in their best interests, without strife or inconvenience. What we have for citizens are (1) a definition of their scope of political action as not just personal behavior, but the purchase transaction, and (2) an utter lack of knowledge needed to reenter the realm of the political and advocate for regulatory change.[endnoteRef:252] [252: Ibid. 121-122. ]

Environmental regulations:

Desirable yet always inadequate, never permanent

Pollution can be moderated to a certain extent through laws and regulations. However, as a testament to how inadequate this is at ameliorating pollution, as we outlined in Chapters 1 and 2, the situation is now far worse than it has ever been.

It’s true that the Clean Water and Clean Air acts in the U.S. are examples of attempts to deal with environmental externalities and there have been declines in certain gaseous and liquid pollutants. However, plenty of others have been added, sickening or killing millions of people every year. Pollution of land, water and air occurs on a huge scale—and this in a country that has at least some regulations and some level of enforcement. As previously mentioned, a lot of the cleaning up of developed countries or richer areas within them, is predicated on environmental racism and poisoning poor people by shifting the pollution elsewhere, not stopping it. Larry Summers—former President of Harvard University, Chief Economist of the World Bank, and advisor to U.S. Presidents—explicitly stated this when he wrote that:

underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low [sic]compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. Only the lamentable facts that so much pollution is generated by non-tradable industries (transport, electrical generation) and that the unit transport costs of solid waste are so high prevent world-welfare-enhancing trade in air pollution and waste.[endnoteRef:253] [253: Lawrence Summers, “Let Them Eat Pollution,” The Economist, (February 8, 1992). ]

Even when public pressure forces action against the most egregious and life-threatening pollution, corporate power seeks to water down legislation and weaken laws. Often with the collusion of state regulatory agencies or through budget cuts, environmental regulations are not fully or even minimally enforced. The extent of positive environmental and social changes over time depends on the relative political power of different classes and movements as well as political changes in wider society. In the 1960s and ‘70s, social movements in the United States and elsewhere successfully fought for a range of beneficial changes to civil, political, and environmental laws. However, corporate leaders and business groups lobby and fight to overturn and limit any regulations and return to previous activities. For example, in June 2015 the Supreme Court overturned an EPA regulation that set limits on mercury, arsenic and acid gases emissions by coal-fired power plants that would have prevented an estimated 11,000 premature deaths and 130,000 asthma cases annually. The court maintained that EPA had not adequately taken into account the costs of the regulation to the companies.[endnoteRef:254] [254: Timothy Cama and Lydia Wheeler, "Supreme Court overturns landmark EPA air pollution rule,” The Hill (June 29, 2015). ]

When backed into a corner by social pressure, capitalists and their ideologues dream up counter-narratives to legally enforced environmental limits and controls on pollution and promotion of worker health and safety measures. These take three general forms: better, less polluting technology is just around the corner; market mechanisms; or changes to the consumption choices of individuals, will solve the problem.

The problem with nature as “natural capital.”

There is a long history of elites recognizing environmental degradation and implementing what are clearly limited and inadequate solutions to regulate deforestation, mining, etc. However, the ideological turn toward neoliberalism has been so great that even many people who want to see changes in our relationship to the environment, today often view it as best accomplished through market mechanisms, not government regulation and enforcement. This ideology is passed down and transmitted to the rest of society via a thousand conduits. The result is a situation that no one thought sensible 40 years ago, that markets are looked to as the mechanism to solve pollution.

To take only one example of many, industries such as food processors discharge large quantities of nutrients in their wastes. One of the “solutions” that exists is water pollution trading, involving trading the “right to pollute” and paying for some other enterprise, commonly a farm, to use less polluting practices. The outcome is, “a regulatory avoidance scheme fraught with unaccountability that is destined to destroy waterways and communities.”[endnoteRef:255] [255: Food and Water Watch, Water Quality Trading: Polluting Public Waterways for Private Gain, foodandwaterwatch.org. ]

Over the last few decades, the potential monetary value of nature has taken on a new and ever larger level of importance, stimulated, perhaps unwittingly, by some academics within the field ecological economics. A dollar value can be estimated for what nature does for us—plants that help to clean the air, marshes and mangrove swamps that protect coastal areas from stormy seas, and wetlands that slow down and clean flowing water, etc.

In 1997 one of the ecological economics groups estimated that global “ecosystem services” were “worth” $33 trillion annually, compared with a global economy of $18 trillion.[endnoteRef:256] An update in 2011 put the dollar value of the world’s annual “ecosystem services” at $125 trillion.[endnoteRef:257] In the same year (2011), the world’s total production of goods and services, world GDP, was estimated at approximately $70 trillion, making the monetary value of “ecosystem services” about eighty percent larger than all human economic activity. [256: Robert Costanza, Ralph d’Arge, Rudolf de Groot, Stephen Farberk, Monica Grasso, Bruce Hannon, Karin Limburg, Shahid Naeem, Robert V. O’Neill, Jose Paruelo, Robert G. Raskin, Paul Suttonkk and Marjan van den Belt, “The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital,” Nature 387:253-260(May 15, 1997). ] [257: Robert Costanza, Rudolf de Groot, Paul Sutton, Sander van der Ploeg, Sharolyn Anderson, Ida Kubiszewski, Stephen Farber, and R. Kerry Turner, “Changes in the global value of ecosystem services,” Global Environmental Change 26:152–158 (2014). ]

The assumption that each individual piece and process of nature can be assigned a monetary value is a logical outgrowth of a capitalist worldview adopted wholesale out of neoclassical economics, where every entity is infinitely replaceable and convertible. Once this is done, economists and planners can calculate whether it’s more economically efficient to maintain a forest or clear cut it and turn it into pastureland or a tree plantation. As explained by Andrew Simms, author and researcher at the Centre for Global Political Economy, University of Sussex (UK): “The paradox of environmental economics is that we feel compelled to price nature to make its loss visible on the balance sheet, but in doing so we legitimise its commodification and validate its critical overconsumption in an unbounded market system.”[endnoteRef:258] [258: Andrew Simms, “It's the economy that needs to be integrated into the environment - not the other way around,” The Guardian (June 14, 2016). ]

When viewed as “natural capital”, nature can be subjected to cost-benefit analysis and schemes developed to try to “offset” any damage as a result of a company’s practices. This idea is what lies behind the UN’s Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD and REDD+) and the widespread resistance to it of many indigenous organizations and environmental groups.

Old growth forests can be cut as long as the company plants an equal number of trees to “offset” the loss. Dieter Helm, Chair of the British Government’s Natural Capital Committee maintains that the “environment is part of the economy and needs to be properly integrated into it so that growth opportunities will not be missed.”[endnoteRef:259] The capitalist views the environment as just one part of the economy instead of a more rational outlook that views the economy as embedded in the environment. Nature-as-profitmaking-opportunity has provided the ideological sanctification to privatize more of the earth’s natural resources and the commons. [259: Dieter Helm, The State of Natural Capital: Restoring our Natural Assets, March 2014, accessed April 22, 2014 at http://nebula.wsimg.com/d512efca930f81a0ebddb54353d9c446?AccessKeyId=68F83A8E994328D64D3D&disposition=0&alloworigin=1. ]

The effects of remedial actions such as offsets and pollution trading schemes are deficient when not outright fraudulent. George Lakoff, professor of cognitive science, points out the problem as follows:

What we get from nature is remarkable. And then you get the people who want to monetise that. If it's valuable, what's the value? What's it worth? Which is the wrong question to ask, because, first of all, much of its value has to do with what is visceral to you. What does it mean to you if you hear the birds singing, or the birds all die? Second, as soon as you monetise something in nature, a cost-benefit analysis will come in. Nature always loses...[endnoteRef:260] [260: Zoe Williams, “George Lakoff: 'Conservatives don't follow the polls, they want to change them … Liberals do everything wrong',” The Guardian (January 31, 2014). ]

Market mechanisms to reduce pollution have consistently been shown to fail and end up as another scam, ripe for stock market gambling. And since capitalism has been unable to solve smaller problems of pollution, environmental degradation, and loss of biodiversity, there is no evidence that the people who run the system will step in to solve the much larger problem of climate change. Even if climate change didn’t exist, the vast majority of the population of the planet has more than enough reasons to organize and fight for an alternative.

Profiting from pollution: Are we really all in this together?

Many environmentalists hold out hope that climate change will be the issue that finally puts us all, capitalists and ordinary people, in the same boat. A leading spokesperson for the climate movement, Bill McKibben makes exactly this point in his article, A World at War where, “In the face of a common enemy, Americans worked together in a way they never had before.”[endnoteRef:261] [261: Bill McKibben, “A World at War,” The New Republic (August 15, 2016). ]

McKibben is absolutely correct to argue that the climate crisis has reached a critical juncture and only a massive mobilization of people and resources can change the atmospheric greenhouse gas trajectory. By his analysis, because we are “facing a common enemy” the only comparable analogue is to the effort by the U.S. during the Second World War to retool production and use government planning to redirect the entire economy toward warfare and military victory of Germany. Instead of guns, planes and tanks, U.S. corporations will be redirected to build the hundreds of new factories required to build the millions of solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles for a carbon-free economy. But are we really all on the same side? And if we’re at war, with who are we at war and what’s the strategic objective? For McKibben the problem is not corporations or capitalism, but carbon and the laws of physics:

“The question is not, are we in a world war? The question is, will we fight back? And if we do, can we actually defeat an enemy as powerful and inexorable as the laws of physics?” McKibben continues, “Carbon and methane are seizing physical territory, sowing havoc and panic, racking up casualties…In this war that we’re in—the war that physics is fighting hard, and that we aren’t—winning slowly is exactly the same as losing.”

Leaving aside the highly dubious proposition that the United States fought for democracy and freedom when the government saw no problem with a segregated military. Let alone committing war crimes with the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo, the nuclear annihilation of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the continuation after the war of Jim Crow and legal disenfranchisement of African Americans. Are the laws of physics malicious? Is Nature possessed with a desire to punish, exploit and oppress?

Attempts to evade the physical laws of the universe is precisely what engendered the global ecological crisis in the first place, as capitalists have sought to follow seventeenth century philosopher and early physicist Francis Bacon’s injunction to “make Nature your slave”.[endnoteRef:262] Fortunately, we’re not in an unwinnable war against Nature. It’s not physics that is our foe. As Naomi Klein has written, the problem isn’t carbon but capitalism. As an August 2016 article in the journal Science points out in referencing a 2013 study on which human entities are most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, Heede's [peer reviewed] research shows that nearly two-thirds of anthropogenic carbon emissions originated in just 90 companies and government-run industries. Among them, the top eight companies -- ranked according to annual and cumulative emissions -- account for 20 percent of world carbon emissions from fossil fuels and cement production since the Industrial Revolution.”[endnoteRef:263] [262: Carolyn Merchant, “The violence of impediments: Francis Bacon and the origins of experimentation,” Isis, 2008, 99:731–760 ] [263: Douglas Starr, “Just 90 companies are to blame for most climate change this ‘carbon accountant’ says,” Science. August 25, 2016. ]

As Carroll Muffett, president and CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law in Washington, D.C. correctly commented, "For decades there's been a persistent myth that everyone is responsible, and if everyone is responsible then no one is responsible…[Heede’s] work for the first time identifies a discrete class of defendants."[endnoteRef:264] If we want to solve the problem of climate change therefore, we should direct our efforts first and foremost at shutting down those eight companies. An action which would immediately reduce carbon emissions far more effectively than trying to do battle with universal laws of physics. [264: Ibid. ]

There is not a shred of evidence that governments will discipline giant units of capital and shift the global economy away from fossil fuels. More than two decades of failed climate negotiations, as well as 200 years of accumulating scientific knowledge point to the contrary. To do so would require liquidation of most of the largest corporate entities on the planet and leave Wall St in tatters. It is wishful thinking of the most utopian kind to expect capitalists and governments to allow financing for such an effort. It is only when the elite feel a direct and immediate threat to their system of capital accumulation, such as a major war or civil insurrection, are they willing to commit the vast amount of financial resources necessary and agree to have production directed by government. Although the profits of some capitalists may be hurt by climate change, others actually benefit because of new potential sources of profit when they are called on to deal with problems arising from climate change caused by a different set of capitalists.

If you think capitalists and governments ignoring climate change is bad, wait till they get serious. Because just as it was in WWII, if the people at the top are the ones making the decisions about who should be doing the sacrifice, it certainly won’t be them. World war was the single biggest boon to capitalism, as the Great Acceleration took off in the post-war years. Capitalists were determined to refit all those shiny new factories that were back under their control and direction to promote a new era of globalized mass consumption and capital accumulation the like of which has never been seen before.

In point of fact, one doesn’t need the threat of inter-imperial conflict and the death of 60 million people to mobilize capital for purposes deemed essential. Tens of thousands of miles of new pipeline are laid every year to facilitate the transportation of oil and gas. It should therefore be a very easy task to provide everyone on earth with clean water and sewage treatment facilities if that were the goal of the whole of society. Starting in 1956, over the next 35 years the United States built 47,000 miles of inter-state highways, transforming business and society, which serves as an example of how quickly our energy infrastructure could be transformed with a social transformation.[endnoteRef:265] In the 1950s and ‘60s in Britain, local councils built 250,000 houses annually, matched by similar numbers by the private sector. In 2014-5 however, local councils built a mere 1,350 and the private sector less than half what they were building 50 years ago.[endnoteRef:266] [265: Andrew Simms, “When it comes to a shift to a low carbon economy, key players need a history lesson,” The Guardian. March 4, 2016. ] [266: Ibid. ]

We face a choice between keeping the old fossil-fuel based infrastructure that is burning up the planet, and in the United States alone adding to it at an annual cost of $1.6 trillion just to keep it running, versus transitioning, at much lower economic let alone environmental and social cost to a new energy paradigm. Despite these rationales for the transition, capitalism still won’t make the change. Energy analyst Chris Nelder’s figures and argument, even as they are framed within the limits of the system, are worthy of note:

Instead of incremental spending on an effectively dead transportation regime, we should be thinking about one that can survive the challenges ahead, and deliver more economic benefits than costs. We should be setting an ambitious target, like replacing all commercial passenger air flights with high speed rail for trips under 1,000 miles, replacing 90 percent of our city street traffic with light rail, and moving all long-haul freight traffic to rail. Even if the cost of all that rail infrastructure were in the range of $3 trillion, it would be a fantastic investment.

Against $6 trillion (minimum) in sunk costs and $1.6 trillion per year in maintenance, the $1.2 trillion per year estimate I offered in my article on infrastructure, plus building the high-speed rail network at a generous estimate of $1 trillion, looks very reasonable. Put another way: Would you rather spend another $32 trillion over the next 20 years just to maintain our outmoded, unscalable, aged, unhealthy system, plus another $2.8 trillion in lost productivity due to delays and gridlock, only to wind up out of gas? Or would you rather spend $25 trillion to repair our existing infrastructure, transition transportation to rail, transition the power grid to renewables, upgrade the entire grid, and solve the carbon problem, to have free fuel forever.[endnoteRef:267] [267: Chris Nelder; “Reframing the Transportation Debate;” ZDNet; October 19, 2011 ]

As these examples illustrate, as well as the historical development of different forms of energy, societal choices are much less about what technology works “best” in an objective sense of providing a better, safer, more comfortable life for all, but conform much more closely to the political, military, financial, and ideological priorities of ruling elites.

If the utilization of resources were decided upon rationally, as opposed to by the laws of capitalism, unconventional sources of oil and gas such as the tar sands would never have been developed. Considering how abundant sun and wind power are, and how much we now know about harnessing those forms of energy, society would long ago have made the move toward renewable energy sources.

If we are to do so in the time frame that we have to avoid catastrophic and irreversible climate change and biodiversity loss while moving billions out of poverty and eradicating other forms of violence such as racism and sexism, we must overthrow capitalism and replace it with ecosocialism. As Chris Hayes made clear in an essay on the implications of a successful fight against climate change, a more accurate analogy with regard to the extent of change required is the U.S. Civil War. Additionally, the analogy makes it clear that rather than humans vs. the planet, it’s a battle between different classes with different social and economic priorities. Stating that, “there is absolutely no conceivable moral comparison between the enslavement of Africans and African-Americans and the burning of carbon to power our devices. Humans are humans; molecules are molecules. The comparison I’m making is a comparison between the political economy of slavery and the political economy of fossil fuel”, Hayes goes on, “when you consider the math that McKibben, the Carbon Tracker Initiative and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) all lay out, you must confront the fact that the climate justice movement is demanding that an existing set of political and economic interests be forced to say goodbye to trillions of dollars of wealth. It is impossible to point to any precedent other than abolition.”[endnoteRef:268] [268: Chris Hayes, “The New Abolitionism,” The Nation. April 22, 2014. ]

This illustrates the real problem with the WWII analogy: is the only change we want simply a question of switching the source of our energy? Though it’s not possible in the timeframe available and not with the size and power of the units of capital that are tied to fossil fuel production it’s nevertheless possible to theorize an imaginary capitalism making a transition to a fossil-fuel free economy by privatizing renewable sources of energy. But all the other social inequities would remain. Furthermore, were the system to win its war against the laws of physics and the power of fossil fuel interests, surely the same would happen as after WWII – a rebirth and expansion of a newly invigorated and tooled-up hyper-capitalism reasserting power over workers and the planet.

Indeed capitalists are already busy figuring out ways to make money from climate change. To Wall Street, which sorts risk by its ability to maximize profit, “adaptation” to climate change simply means learning how to profit from it. And there are a variety of ways of doing so—for example, rebuilding after flooding offers a boost for the construction industry as does the building of coastal defenses against rising seas, already occurring along the east coast of the United States. Miami is spending four hundred million dollars for pumps and other infrastructure to prevent flooding. Hoboken, New Jersey received a 230 million dollar federal grant to shore-up protections, and Norfolk, Virginia received 100 million dollars from the federal government to carry out a plan to protect neighborhoods from flooding.[endnoteRef:269] All of this spending is adds to the measured national economic growth (GDP) and so is seen as positive – even when the reason is negative. [269: Brady Dennis, "In Hoboken, a glimpse of cities’ future fights over rising seas,” The Washington Post (August 13, 2016); Justin Gillis, "Flooding of Coast Caused by Global Warming Has Already Begun,” The New York Times (September 3, 2016). ]

The financial system also provides ways to profit from climate change. As David Ravensbergen writes,

Even as extreme weather wreaks havoc on crop yields and threatens coastlines, new custom-made financial instruments offer the savvy investor the chance to profit from destruction. Weather derivatives offer both a profitable investment today and an insurance policy against future damages by flooding or drought. While the estimated costs of climate change continue to climb, the profits to be made by betting on those costs keep growing faster.

In effect, what we have is a situation in which investors are busy betting on what’s going to happen with the climate. Depending on how they invest, they can make money if things get worse or if they get better. If they pick the wrong horse, their bad investments can also be insured by purchasing still more derivatives.[endnoteRef:270] [270: David Ravensbergen, “At the Limits of the Market: Why Capitalism Won't Solve Climate Change, Part 1,” DeSmogBlog (August 29, 2013). ]

One of the growing areas of financial speculation is the issuance and trading of so-called “catastrophe bond,” referred to as “cat bonds,” offering insurance against catastrophic weather events as well as other types of disasters such as wildfires.[endnoteRef:271] The seventy-two billion dollars in cat bonds in 2016 is expected to double in the next few years. [271: Leslie Scism and Anupreeta Das, “The Insurance Industry Has Been Turned Upside Down by Catastrophe Bonds,” The Wall Street Journal (August 8, 2016). ]

In summary, an economic system that has the pursuit of profits as its primary motivating force is anti-human and anti-environmental at its very core and cannot be made “green.” A rationally organized society in an already developed country, aimed at meeting the needs of all people, will be able to drastically reduce the amount of raw material use even as we live better, more fulfilling lives. Although significant construction will be needed, for example, to provide everyone with decent housing, there will be no more production of illth: weapons, over-production, the prison and injustice system, luxury consumption, commodities without a social purpose, as well as huge reductions in the petrochemical, agro-industrial, cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries, manufactured products made to break, the end of the advertising and insurance industries and stock market gambling. With an efficient public transportation system people will be healthier and there will be no need to manufacture automobiles in such quantities or the infrastructure that goes with them once the switch is made to renewable sources of electricity.

A vast amount of labor, resources (including energy) will be saved after elimination of unproductive or unneeded labor in these areas of the economy. Some of this freed-up labor will be needed to build new infrastructure of the kind we lack: more schools, hospitals, healthcare and community centers, public leisure, sporting and cultural facilities, and walkable, ecologically sound cities and towns. We need more nurses, doctors, engineers, ecologists and a host of other socially beneficial occupations that are currently under-served and restricted in funding. However, producing and distributing what people deem necessary for a good quality of life will mean that people will work many fewer hours than is common with full-time jobs in capitalist economies because the purpose of economic activity will no longer be about maximizing productivity, but rather human happiness and fulfillment.

In order eliminate ecological disturbances, rifts, and the mountains of waste generated by capitalism a different economic-social system is needed. One in which the normal operating processes consist of the democratically planned regulation of human interaction with the rest of the natural world and each other with the purpose of producing goods and services in ways that protect the richness and long-term integrity of the biosphere and preserve social equity and enhance people’s lives.

Chapter 4. Capitalism’s effects on people

… one day we must ask the question, “Why are there forty million poor people in America?”  And when you ask that question, you are raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth.  When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy…And you see my friends, when you deal with this you begin to ask the question, “Who owns the oil?”  You begin to ask the question, “Who owns the iron ore?”  You begin to ask the question, “Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that’s two third’s water?”

—Martin Luther King[endnoteRef:272] [272: Martin Luther King, “Where Do We Go From Here?" Delivered at the 11th Annual SCLC Convention, Atlanta Ga. (August 16, 1967), accessed July 26, 2016 at http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/documentsentry/where_do_we_go_from_here_delivered_at_the_11th_annual_sclc_convention/. ]

We have discussed the central characteristics of capitalism and its laws of motion and the severe ecological consequences of an economic system that must grow without end, with no internal mechanisms for rationally managing resources and production to comprehensively minimize or eliminate environmental damage. But what are the system’s effects on people—historically and currently? To develop new procedures and ways of interacting with each other and the biosphere, it is necessary to understand what has happened and why.

An integral feature of capitalism is the systematic imposition and/or reinforcement of various forms of oppression, by race, gender, and class. Maintaining the system requires keeping people divided, threatening and shortening peoples’ lives, damaging their physical and psychological health and the health of their descendants. Discrimination by class, race and gender are interrelated and their combined effects can be more devastating than the individual impacts of each.

The human and ecological after-effects of the colonial and imperial ventures, so central to the capitalist system, continue to shape and profoundly distort the world. Invasion, occupation, and colonization by imperialist countries promoting the interests of their own businesses and a country’s perceived geostrategic interests have rearranged the economy, resources, and social structures of other nations to suit their own objectives. Even as resistance continues, the lives of millions of people are damaged. Just since the Second World War the list of imperial military interventions, bombings and invasions by the United States alone runs to many dozens. Most recently, the U.S. has been using drone strikes and bombs against people in countries in the Horn of Africa such as Somalia, Yemen, the bombing of Libya and Syria and ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Prior to the United States becoming the dominant force in the global economy, European states launched imperial projects across every continent. The same powers continue to dominate global affairs through non-military means: the United Nations, international law, treaties, debt, trade deals and international financial institutions such as the World Bank, IMF and WTO.

The discussion below is not in order of importance or severity. Nor is it a complete examination of social problems arising from, or made worse by, capitalism. Nor is it meant to deny that millions of people have been lifted out of poverty by the growth of capitalist economies or that severe social problems didn’t exist in pre-capitalist class societies. Rather, our intent is to provide important examples, drawn primarily from the U.S. experience, of the way in which capitalism has altered the expression of oppression but exacerbated and deepened it for no other reason than to maintain or enhance economic and political power to service an exploitative system.

Imperialism & Resistance

Imperialism, with and without colonies, has been an integral part of capitalism since its inception and essential for gaining access to markets and resources that have propelled the accumulation of capital. In the process, peoples were expelled from their lands, many enslaved and others killed directly (the death toll in Belgian Congo was estimated to be around 10 million people) and indirectly by disease or mistreatment, and regions of the world pillaged to provide wealth for the developing capitalist countries.

The importance of racism to this project cannot be overstated, as historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz argues:

What we witness in late fifteenth and early sixteenth century Spain is the first instance of class leveling based on imagined biological racial differences, indeed the origin of white supremacy, the necessary ideology of colonial projects in America and Africa. We see here the beginnings of the “thousand year Reich” of settler capitalism/colonialism, and its characteristic tug of war over the hearts and minds of the majority of the settlers—the yeomanry, and later the “white” working classes… The ideology of white supremacy was paramount in neutralizing the class antagonisms of the landless against the landed, and in the distribution of the confiscated lands and properties of Moors, Jews, and of Irish, Native Americans and Africans.[endnoteRef:273] [273: Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, “The Grid of History: Cowboys and Indians,” Monthly Review 55(3):83-92 (July-August, 2003). ]

It was not only that many people were killed and land was stolen, but also the destruction of a way of life, one that was at odds with capitalist priorities to accumulate money, and the fostering of a destabilizing worldview based on a capitalist worldview. For example, the exchange of goods that occurred during the potlatch ceremonies of the Northwestern American Indians was prohibited in Canada because it was believed to be, in the words of missionary William Duncan, “by far the most formidable of all obstacles in the way of Indians becoming Christians, or even civilized.”[endnoteRef:274] After all, the whole point of capitalism (civilization, in his terms) is to accumulate wealth and here were people giving goods away. As part of the process of occupation of Native American land, their economy, culture, and their way of interacting with the land was forcibly minimized and disrupted, leaving disenfranchised but still resistant people many of who continue to fight for alternatives. [274: William Duncan, “Story of Metlakahtla,” In The Church Missionary Intelligencer and Record Vol I. New Series:526 (1876). ]

Land-theft continued in the U.S. long after the reservation system was created and does so to this day. In the 1950s and 1960s, for one of many possible examples, hundreds of thousands of acres were taken from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation by the national government in order to build dams in the Missouri River watershed. In the process, “hundreds of Indian families from various tribes were forcibly relocated and their way of life completely destroyed. The staggering poverty that resulted from the program lives on across the Dakotas today.”[endnoteRef:275] According to an archaeologist with the Standing Rock Sioux, the land theft: “completely stole our burials, our resources, our woods and a lot of the traditional plants…A complete lifeway degradation and families completely uprooted.”[endnoteRef:276] In discussing a 2016 incursion—the Dakota Access pipeline, to transport fracked oil from the Bakken Shale region of North Dakota to Southern Illinois—David Archambault II, chairman of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, explained: [275: Trymaine Lee, “No Man's Land: The Last Tribes of the Plains,” accessed October 24, 2015 at http http://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/no-mans-land-last-tribes-plains, (September 21, 2015). ] [276: Ibid. ]

It’s a familiar story in Indian Country. This is the third time that the Sioux Nation’s lands and resources have been taken without regard for tribal interests. The Sioux peoples signed treaties in 1851 and 1868. The government broke them before the ink was dry.

When the Army Corps of Engineers dammed the Missouri River in 1958, it took our riverfront forests, fruit orchards and most fertile farmland to create Lake Oahe. Now the Corps is taking our clean water and sacred places by approving this river crossing.

Whether it’s gold from the Black Hills or hydropower from the Missouri or oil pipelines that threaten our ancestral inheritance, the tribes have always paid the price for America’s prosperity.[endnoteRef:277] [277: David Archambault II, “Taking a stand at Standing Rock,” The New York Times (August 24, 2016). ]

In August 2016 thousands of Native Americans from ninety tribes formed an occupation site on the banks of the Cannon Ball River to try to stop or reroute the pipeline. They were protesting an undemocratic decision, one that skirted the law by claiming that the huge 3.7 billion dollar pipeline project was really just a number of small projects—eliminating the need to follow then regulations of the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.

And the theft of land from indigenous peoples persists around the world, as private capital and sovereign wealth funds carry out what is being called the 21st century grabs.[endnoteRef:278] The 2016 murder of Berta Cáceres, a leader in the struggle against the flooding of land of the Lenca people of Honduras to build a dam, is an indication of the bravery and fortitude needed by those trying to protect the land of indigenous peoples. [278: Fred Magdoff, "Twenty-First-Century Land Grabs: Accumulation by Agricultural Dispossession,” Monthly Review 55(6):1-18 (November 2013). ]

Compounding the colonial seizures of land for white settlement in Canada, the United States, Australia was the forced attendance of indigenous children in a system of residential schools. It was a coercive and thoroughly racist system, in which children were forbidden to speak their mother tongues. An estimated six thousand children in Canada died from 1876, when the system was founded, through 1920 (when the recording of student deaths ended). These Canadian schools existed as late as 1996. A judge whose parents and grandparents attended such schools exclaimed: “Canada clearly participated in a period of cultural genocide.”[endnoteRef:279] And so did the United States and Australia and everywhere else around the world where colonial settler governments abrogated the rights of indigenous people. [279: Mali Ilse Paquin, Canada confronts its dark history of abuse in residential schools, The Guardian (June 6, 2015). ]

The air and water pollution on tribal lands in the U.S. by uranium and coalmines and coal-fired power plants continue to have an immense detrimental impact on the environment and the health of the people. “[I]t is Native Americans--from Navajo uranium miners to tribal communities targeted with atomic waste dumps-- who have borne the brunt of both the front and back ends of the nuclear fuel cycle.”[endnoteRef:280] And in Canada, the tar sands are being excavated and partially processed on traditional land of First Nations, with toxins such as heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) contaminating people, animals and water. Furthermore, “[t]hese environmental declines contribute to a change in diets as community members shift from healthy country foods to expensive and often nutritionally deficient store-bought foods, a shift that is only accelerated by concerns regarding the quality of and safety regarding locally sourced country foods.”[endnoteRef:281] [280: Environmental Racism, Tribal Sovereignty and Nuclear Waste, http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/pfsejfactsheet.htm. ] [281: Stéphane M. McLachlan, Environmental and Human Health Implications of the Athabasca Oil Sands for the Mikisew Cree First Nation and Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation in Northern Alberta, Phase 2 Report: July 2014, http://onerivernews.ca/health-study-press-release-2014/. ]

The legacy of colonial rulers’ universal practice of inventing or exacerbating differences in ethnicities and cultures to divide and rule continues to torment the world. Deliberately fostering tensions between different groups, such as Tutsi vs. Hutu in Rwanda (a former colony of Belgium), was a common technique of colonial powers, making it easier to rule. Hindu-Muslim antagonisms in India and the Pakistan-Indian hostilities after the creation of Pakistan—with literally millions killed and the largest forced migration in history occurring during the partition of India—were products of societal changes brought about during British colonial rule and forced retreat from the subcontinent in 1947. The Muslim Shia vs. Sunni antagonism was given social force by colonial rule, border-drawing following the First World War, and subsequently reinforced by the more recent imperial violence and instability introduced by the United States and its European junior partners in their Middle East meddling, invasions, bombings, and sanctions from the 1950s to today.

In the mid-1960s, the United States assisted in the slaughter of hundreds of thousands, perhaps as many as one million, suspected Indonesian communists: “The United States provided the special radio system so the Army could coordinate the killings over the vast archipelago. Bob Martens, who worked at the United States Embassy in Jakarta, compiled lists of thousands of names of Indonesian public figures who might be opposed to the new regime and handed these lists over to the Indonesian government.”[endnoteRef:282] Of the more than 50 countries that were bombed, invaded or destabilized by overt and covert U.S. interventions since the Second World War, the list includes counter-insurgency campaigns in El Salvador and Nicaragua as well as assistance in the 1973 coup against the elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende, for the offense of being a democratically-elected socialist. To this day, the people of Chile are still fighting for justice from the repression and killings of thousands of Chilean’s and hundreds of thousands forced into exile, orchestrated by the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet and supported by the United States government. According to Peter Kornbluh of the nonprofit National Security Archives, Henry Kissinger was “the singular most important figure in engineering a policy to overthrow Allende and then, even more, to embrace Pinochet and the human-rights violations that followed.”[endnoteRef:283]. [282: Joshua Oppenheimer, “Joshua Oppenheimer Won’t Go Back to Indonesia,” interview by Adam Shatz, The New York Times magazine section (June 12, 2015). ] [283: Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan, “Kerry, Kissinger and the Other Sept. 11,” Democracy Now (September 12, 2013). ]

As with covert operations, imperial military adventures have had dreadful social consequences, causing enormous numbers of deaths and population dislocations as well as environmental havoc. After the Second World War, France fought a war to try to maintain its colony in Vietnam, passing the imperial baton to the U.S. to stop Vietnam from becoming a united independent country. The vast bombing campaigns—U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay suggested that the project should be to “bomb them back into the stone age”—and other forms of destruction of Vietnam were catastrophic. After decades of war, Vietnam won, but suffered deaths estimated in the millions and the country left in ruins by the bombings, assassinations and ecocide from widespread use of the herbicide Agent Orange. Vietnamese people continue to suffer casualties from unexploded ordinance (the US dropped more high explosive on Vietnam than all countries combined did across the world during WWII) and the ongoing contamination from chemical warfare seeping into land, water and genes.

As part of the war in Indochina, for years the United States secretly (because it was illegal under U.S. law) bombed neighboring Cambodia, supposedly to stop its use by Vietnamese fighters. After the war, Cambodia descended into the butchery of the Khmer Rouge—a small fringe group that was afforded an opportunity by the enormous destruction. The ensuing social dislocation caused by the carpet bombing of Cambodia created the opportunity for the barbarism of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. William Shawcross has written that the "Khmer Rouge were born out of the inferno that American policy did much to create… It was American policy that engulfed the nation in war…Cambodia was not a mistake; it was a crime."[endnoteRef:284] [284: William Shawcross, Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia, Simon and Schuster:396(1979), accessed June 29, 2015 at http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Kissinger/Afterword_Sideshow.html. ]

Likewise, the emergence of ISIS (or ISL or IS)—the Islamic State fighting force in Syria and Iraq—cannot be understood except in the context of a history of colonial and imperial interventions. ISIS formed in the brutal wreckage left over from the United States’ efforts to make Iraq more to its liking. Some IS leaders were among those emerging from the US-run torture and detention centers, such as Abu Ghraib.[endnoteRef:285] Although the U.S. was the primary support for Iraq and Saddam Hussein during the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s, it turned against the regime in the 1990s. After the international sanctions orchestrated by the Clinton presidency (estimated to have caused over one million deaths, half of whom were children), there were the later killings and torture following the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq (well over one hundred thousand people killed, with hundreds tortured in the notorious U.S.-run detention centers), and the destruction of vital infrastructure. These facts, plus the U.S. sponsorship of an Iraqi government composed of Shia Muslims, which quickly began to oppress the Sunni minority, created all the necessary conditions for the rise of a militant resistance against U.S. intervention. [285: Martin Chulov, “ISIS: The Inside Story,” The Guardian (December 11, 2014). ]

United States support by selling billions of dollars of arms (which support the U.S. industry) and providing, refueling, repair, and targeting information has allowed Saudi Arabia’s to carry out a brutal war in Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world in 2015-2016. “This rain of destruction was made possible by the material and moral support of the United States, which supplied most of the bombers, bombs, and missiles required for the aerial onslaught. (Admittedly, the United Kingdom, France, and other NATO arms exporters eagerly did their bit.) U.S. Navy ships aided the blockade.”[endnoteRef:286] [286: Andrew Cockburn, "Acceptable Losses: Aiding and abetting the Saudi slaughter in Yemen,” Harper’s (September 2016), ]

By support for every outrage of the colonial settler-state of Israel, the United States continues to destabilize the Middle East and foster more violence. But a part of the stage was set when the U.S. and Saudi Arabia colluded to foster “political Islam” as an alternative to the rise of nationalist and socialist-oriented regimes in the 1950s and ‘60s, especially in Egypt and Syria. According to a U.S. State Department memo of a 1957 meeting to discuss countering Soviet influence in the Middle East: “The President [Eisenhower] said he thought we should do everything possible to stress the “holy war” aspect.”[endnoteRef:287] As Samir Amin has written, “Political Islam would have had much more difficulty in moving out from the borders of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan without the continual, powerful, and resolute support of the United States.”[endnoteRef:288] The U.S. also unwittingly helped in other ways, such as making ISIS appear larger than life, to bring it to the fore.[endnoteRef:289] It was out of such conditions that an organization arose that is similar in some respects to the Khmer Rouge. [287: U.S. State Department, “388. Memorandum of a Conversation With the President, White House, Washington, September 7, 1957, 10:07 a.m.,” https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1955-57v13/d388 (accessed September 2, 2016). ] [288: Samir Amin, “Political Islam in the Service of Imperialism,” Monthly Review 59(7):1-19 (December 2007). ] [289: Michiko Kakutani, "Review: ‘Black Flags,’ Tracing the Birth of ISIS,” The New York Times (November 30, 2015). ]

As the situation in Greece during the second decade of the 21st century amply demonstrates, in its being “disciplined” by financial markets and economic and political elites—a technique normally reserved for nations of the South—economic destruction can also be visited on European countries. The European Central Bank, the EU, the German Federal Reserve, and the International Monetary Fund are imposing crippling financial austerity on the Greek people in order to force the government to pay back debt accumulated by previous governments with the encouragement and participation of foreign private banks. The private banks that loaned the money lost nothing because banks of various governmental financial entities bought the bad debt. On the other hand, the effects on the Greek people have been disastrous, an economic crisis worse than it suffered during the Great Depression—skyrocketing unemployment (well over twenty percent in early 2016), increases in suicides, homelessness, and infant mortality, and reductions in municipal services.

Aside from its daily operations, from its inception the U.S. military has been at the core of shaping the country. When it, “spearheaded the campaign to eliminate Amerindian power in the national territory, preparing it for settlement by Euro-Americans,” designed and built infrastructure through the Army Corps of Engineers, fostered, promoted and required a gigantic extensive armaments industry, acquired hundreds of overseas bases, led the race to invent, test and use nuclear weapons and, somewhat later, nuclear power.[endnoteRef:290] [290: Charles Closmann (ed), War and the Environment: Military Destruction in the Modern Age, Texas A & M University Press: 10 (2009). ]

Leading industrialists learned how to deskill workers and make interchangeable machine-parts from the first innovations to standardize replaceable components of Colt rifles pioneered for the U.S. military in the 1850s. As already mentioned, the military’s use of DDT inspired the modern pesticide industry (which fed back into military uses with the herbicide Agent Orange during the war in Vietnam). Though little recognized, the much-vaunted creation of the U.S. inter-state highway system linking major cities in the mid 20th century was as much a defense project, to quickly move military materiel about the country and evacuate the cities in the event of nuclear attack as it was about civilian transportation. The bill allocating funding in 1956 is, after all, titled the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways Act.

The location of military bases and giant armaments manufacturing centers helped shape the orientation of states in the south and west with regard to population, employment, infrastructure and water use. Though it’s true that automobile and oil companies did everything they could to stimulate demand for their products by crusading against public transit, it was the federal government that underfunded rail: “Between 1956 and 1970 the federal government spent around $70 billion” funding the construction of the interstate highway system but in, “the same period the federal government spent $795,000 on rail transit.”

All of this money directed—partially or entirely—toward military purposes radically reshaped the country to the detriment of people and the environment. “The patterns of social and economic organization fostered by the U.S. military have resulted in the subsidization of private automobile use, the consequent deterioration of public transportation, and continuing population shifts to the suburbs as well as to the South and West, changes that have stimulated ever-higher levels of energy use.”[endnoteRef:291][endnoteRef:292] [291: Ibid.:25.] [292: ]

The deep interpenetration of the nation state, its military wing, and industrial and finance capital helps us to understand why regulation of the activities of capitalists is so restricted. And there are constant attempts by business interests to water down, repeal, or lessen enforcement of those regulations that are enacted. After all, the nation state exists primarily to facilitate capitalism, not place limits on it.

The “other”

Much of the white male chauvinistic and racist ideology that developed under capitalism views those of other ethnic backgrounds, religions, other classes, and even women as “the other,” different from, and inferior to, white males, especially wealthy white males. Earlier (Chapter 2) we discussed some of the changes in the economy, such as the centrality of cotton and slavery during the early stages of industrial capitalism, and modified family structures. In addition, colonial wars and occupations—from the British takeover and land clearances of Northern Ireland and introducing settlers from Scotland to the expansion of the U.S. frontier to colonial occupations in Africa—led to the necessity of creating “the other” in the minds of soldiers called upon to kill and displace in colonial projects in the formation of the United States, the Philippines, South Africa, Vietnam and a host of other countries. Considering the enemy as “the other” and less than human makes it possible for men to torture and kill people. To this day, when U.S. soldiers go to combat zones around the world they say that they’re in “Injun country.”

Categorizing so many as “the other” at home also makes it easier not to provide adequate assistance for the poor, the single mother, for African Americans, for Native Americans, for the long-term unemployed, for women suffering oppression, and so on.

Feeling “the other” human being can internalize the dichotomy—human, but something different than what is considered the norm. W.E.B. Du Bois, described one of the results of being “the other”:

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.[endnoteRef:293] [293: W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Souls of Black Folk,” accessed June 8, 2015 at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/408/408-h/408-h.htm. ]

Many of the struggles for full equality, such as the Black Power movement as well as many anti-colonial struggles, revolved around attempting to reclassify and re-identify away from the “twoness” Du Bois described, to being recognized as a complete and equal human being,

to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost…He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face…to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius.[endnoteRef:294] [294: Op. cit., W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Souls of Black Folk.” ]

Institutionalized contemporary racism

As Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz has pointed out, racism in the United States has a long history that begins even before the country was founded:

The origins of white supremacy as it is now experienced and institutionalized—and denied—in the United States (and, due to colonialism and imperialism, throughout the world) can be traced to the prior colonizing ventures of Christian Crusades into Muslim-controlled territories, and to the Calvinist Protestant colonization of Ireland. These were the models for the colonization of the Western Hemisphere, and are the two strands that merge in the genetic makeup of U.S. society.[endnoteRef:295] [295: Op cit., Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, “The Grid of History: Cowboys and Indians.” ]

Racism and land theft were part and parcel of the official documents created in the founding the U.S. One of the grievances against British King George in the Declaration of Independence states:

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose, obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands. [“The treaty ending the French and Indian War made British settlement over the Allegheny/Appalachian line into Indian country illegal and ordered the return of those tens of thousand settlers who had already squatted there, demanding land rights.”[endnoteRef:296]] [296: Ibid. ]

And the 27th and final grievance against King George states:

He has excited domestic insurrections [slave uprisings] amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

Slavery was also embedded in the U.S. Constitution, with enslaved Africans (referred to as “all other persons”) counted at three-fifths a person, for purposes of calculating the number of representatives to Congress from the slave-holding states.[footnoteRef:13] [13: This passage of the U.S. Constitution states that representation will be calculated “by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.” (Source: http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html.)]

Racism developed and became ingrained as a way of justifying the slave trade, imperial conquest, and colonialism—the people being conquered and slaughtered were supposedly from a different, and inferior, race than the Europeans who would shoulder the “white man’s burden” in order to convert them to Christianity and bring them “civilization.” Considering Africans as “the other” was essential to the justification of the actual enslavement of other human beings—that “peculiar institution” that was such a central component of the development of industrial capitalism (Chapter 2). Although it hardly needs stating, it is important to remember that, in addition to the killings and brutalized treatment of human beings, whole societies, cultures and ways of living were destroyed, suppressed, or distorted. The new resistance emerging across the world takes its lead and sustenance from hundreds of years of struggle and the failure of the imperial project to eradicate peoples and cultures from the globe.

The various forms of discrimination that currently exist in the United States—especially against overlapping groups of people of color, women, and the poor—is endemic to capitalism and the way it developed. The economic, social, cultural, and political relations that exist today among African American and whites are the result—racial discrimination in labor-capital relations, the fostering of false consciousness of superiority among many European-descended workers, schemes of capitalists to profit from the poverty of African Americans, and unfair treatment of African Americans by a variety of local, state, and national governmental agencies.

W.E.B. Du Bois famously observed in The Souls of Black Folk (1903); "The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color-line -- the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea."[endnoteRef:297] The problem is much deeper and widespread than the terrible toll taken by individual white racists such as Dylann Roof, who sat in a church in 2015 and then quite deliberately murdered nine African Americans. [297: Op. cit., W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Souls of Black Folk.” ]

Racism as part of the very structure of capitalism, serves its interests, and is expressed in numerous ways. In the United States this includes overt and covert discrimination against African Americans seeking employment, substandard and unhealthy housing, substandard healthcare, lower life-expectancy, substandard educational opportunities, the understandable fear of being killed or brutalized by police, and wildly disproportionate incarceration rates. It occurs in plain sight and in hidden forms. Sociologist David R. Williams explains why white racism against African Americans is so pervasive:

As an American raised in this society with negative implicit biases against black people, you are not a bad person. You are simply a normal American. We have to come to grips with the reality that this racism is so deeply embedded in our culture that it shapes how we see the world, it shapes our beliefs, our behavior, our actions toward members of other groups.[endnoteRef:298] [298: Isabel Wilkerson, “Our Racial Moment of Truth,” The New York Times (July 19, 2015). ]

One of the most insidious examples of how deeply racism has embedded itself in the thinking of white American’s is that despite the evidence of massive unfairness, discrimination, and violence against people of color, a majority of whites today tend to believe that discrimination against whites is a bigger problem than discrimination against African Americans.[endnoteRef:299] But racism is much larger and deeper than white people having discriminatory attitudes and behaviors. [299: Michael Fletcher, "Whites think discrimination against whites is a bigger problem than bias against African Americans," Washington Post blog (October 8, 2014), http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/10/08/white-people-think-racial-discrimination-in-america-is-basically-over/. ]

The more some parts of the population can be divided off and seen as inferior, different or “the other,” the greater the ability of businesses and governments to keep costs down and keep everyone under control by maintaining a system of inequality. As Michelle Alexander found in her investigation of the United States criminal justice system, The New Jim Crow, the unequal targeting of people of color doesn’t really require cops to be racist to operate: a system has been set up that inevitably leads to social divisions and disproportionate incarceration rates based on race. The continued operation of capitalism replicates inequality through economic exploitation—in which discrimination and oppression by race, gender, and class are central in allowing the continuation of a highly unequal division of wealth.

The statistics on unequal rates of incarceration, systematic exclusion of African Americans from juries, police harassment and brutality against people of color in the United States, particularly African Americans and Native Americans, makes it clear that the United States has in no way become a “color-blind” society. In Ferguson, Missouri, where African American teenager Michael Brown was shot dead in 2014 by a white police officer, leading to street protests and months of anti-racist organizing which has steadily grown more organized with the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement, the statistics revealed for Ferguson by a Justice Department inquiry are staggering: African Americans are eighty-five percent of people stopped in their cars, are ninety percent of those given citations and ninety-three percent of people arrested, yet are less than seventy percent of the city’s population.

The mass incarcerations, police killings of unarmed African American men, and violence in disenfranchised neighborhoods are large enough that there are now, according to a The New York Times headline, “1.5 Million Missing African American Men.”[endnoteRef:300] The incredible extent of incarceration is responsible for the “missing” African American men. The United States has about five percent of the world’s population, but with some 2.2 million people incarcerated in 2014, the country houses nearly roughly one-fourth of the entire world’s prison population.[endnoteRef:301] Some 40 percent of the overwhelmingly male incarcerated are African American and twenty percent Latino. And when people on parole or probation are added, the total U.S. correctional population in 2014 was 6.8 million.[endnoteRef:302] [300: Justin Wolfers, David Leonhardt, and Kevin Quealy, “1.5 Million Missing African American Men,” The New York Times (April 21, 2015). ] [301: James Jiler, "Digging Out from Prison: A Pathway to Rehabilitation," Solutions 4: (3): 16-22 (June 20, 2013); Danielle Kaeble, Lauren Glaze, Anastasios Tsoutis, and Todd Minton, "Correctional Populations in the United States, 2014,” U.S. Department of Justice (revised January 21, 2016). ] [302: Danielle Kaeble, Lauren Glaze, Anastasios Tsoutis, and Todd Minton, "Correctional Populations in the United States, 2014,” U.S. Department of Justice (revised January 21, 2016).]

Other abuses by the “justice” system: legalized theft and torture. Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. called the police and court system in Ferguson one that was “primed for maximizing revenue” and functioned more as a state-sanctioned extortion and collection agency than as a branch of law enforcement.[endnoteRef:303] [303: Terrance McCoy, “Ferguson Shows How a Police Force Can Turn into a Plundering Collection Agency,” The Washington Post (March 5, 2015). ]

George Washington University political scientist Henry Farrell, wrote in the Washington Post that the “new Department of Justice report depicts a system in Ferguson that is much closer to a racket aimed at squeezing revenue out of its population than a properly working democracy.” Ferguson city employees, from the police chief on down, operated like a European medieval fiefdom collecting tribute, rather than as public servants. As the Justice Department report noted, “City, police, and court officials for years have worked in concert to maximize revenue at every stage of the enforcement process, beginning with how fines and fine enforcement processes are established.”[endnoteRef:304] [304: U.S. Department of Justice, Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department:10 (March 4, 2015), http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/ferguson_police_department_report.pdf. ]

But what’s really remarkable about Ferguson’s so-called justice system and the rampant racial bias revealed by the Justice Department report, is just how unremarkable it is. An investigation by USA Today found that over 1500 police departments around the country arrest African Americans at even more disproportionate rates than in Ferguson.[endnoteRef:305] Chicago, a city with a long history of racially abusive policing, has seen the “war on terror” and confessions obtained through torture transferred directly from Guantánamo to police interrogation cells. Richard Zuley, a decorated Chicago police officer, was for a period of time lieutenant commander for the Navy in Guantánamo and in charge of interrogations of prisoners, none of whom had access to due legal process or were charged with any crime. On his return to Chicago, Zuley transferred the torture skills he learned at the U.S. military base to his police work: [305: Brad Heath, “Racial Disparity in US Arrest Rates: ‘Staggering Disparity,’ USA Today (November 19, 2014). ]

Zuley pursued murder suspects, often poor and African American, who were flimsily linked to crime…Allegations stemming from interviews and court documents suggest a kind of beta test in the ugly history of Chicago police abuse – which has robbed African American and poor Americans of their health and freedom and still costs taxpayers millions in civil-rights payouts – for both the worst excesses of torture in the war on terrorism and a trail of convictions based on dubious confessions born of brutality.[endnoteRef:306] [306: Spencer Ackerman, “How Chicago Police Condemned the Innocent: A Trail of Coerced Confessions,” The Guardian (February 19, 2015). ]

As a result of those confessions, innocent people—it’s not yet clear just how many—have been incarcerated, some for decades, on the basis of forced confessions. Former Chicago police commander John Burge was convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury in 2010, after a decades-long reign of terror, including the use of electroshocking of shackled prisoners and beatings with phone books.

The “African American site” at Homan Square, an off-the-books Chicago police department detention facility uncovered in 2014, where people were hidden from their families and lawyers, is only the latest in a long line of racist and abusive policing stretching back many decades. Prexy Nesbitt, who as a teenager was thrown over a police cruiser and had a gun pointed at his head, spent a lifetime campaigning against torture and was an anti-Apartheid campaigner and mayoral advisor. He notes that “A monopoly and application of the use of illicit violence is the modus vivendi of the Chicago police department and of governance in Chicago…Violence and the use of illicit violence versus people of color, particularly African Americans and Latinos, is as routine in Chicago as traffic lights.”[endnoteRef:307] Cook County commissioner Richard Boykin, likened the tactics used at Homan Square, which according to the Chicago police department itself is only one of several, unlisted police interrogation and detention facilities, or black sites, to the Gestapo.[endnoteRef:308] Chicago and Cook County has paid over one hundred million dollars to settle lawsuits connected to Burge’s operation. In May 2015, the city council authorized additional payment of $5.5 million to those tortured in the 1970s through the early 1990s: “The reparations ordinance is the first of its kind in the country to address police abuse. The measure draws from the United Nations Convention against Torture and human rights practices around the world, especially in nations that overcame the legacy of violent, repressive regimes.”[endnoteRef:309] [307: Spencer Ackerman, “Inside Chicago’s Police Abuse: violence ‘as routine as traffic lights,” The Guardian (March 3, 2015). ] [308: Spencer Ackerman, Zack Stafford, Mark Guarino, Oliver Laughland, “‘Gestapo’ tactics at US police ‘African American site’ ring alarm from Chicago to Washington,” The Guardian, (February 26, 2015). ] [309: Adeshina Emmanuel, “Human rights practices inform Chicago ordinance in police torture case,” The Chicago Reporter (May 6, 2005), http://chicagoreporter.com/human-rights-practices-inform-chicago-ordinance-in-police-torture-case/. ]

The intersection of race, poverty and government spending cuts demanded by neoliberal ideology turned a racist police and legal system into something that the Justice Department report indicated amounted to seeing African American and poor people of the town “less as constituents to be protected than as potential offenders and sources of revenue.”[endnoteRef:310] [310: Campbell Robertson, Shaila Dewan & Matt Apuzzo, “Ferguson Became Symbol, But Bias Knows No Border,” New York Times (March 8, 2015). ]

Racist policing and “justice,” including a return to imprisoning debtors, has become a revenue stream for local governments across the United States. Though federal imprisonment for unpaid debt has been illegal in the United States since 1833, and is specifically barred by the U.S. Constitution, as well as being made illegal in most states, it is now common practice in a third of U.S. states. Numerous fees are added to a person’s debt, escalating the amount owed and making it even more difficult to pay. A report by the ACLU showed that people were jailed even when it cost more to imprison them than the cost of the original debt for transgressions such as traffic violations.[endnoteRef:311] [311: Maria Diamond, “The Return of Debtors Prisons: Thousands of Americans Jailed for not Paying Their Bills,” ThinkProgress (December 13, 2011). ]

Constant cuts to national and state government funding, as taxes on the rich have been systematically reduced and more loopholes introduced so that corporations can avoid most (sometimes all) of what little tax they now are supposed to pay, have resulted in towns and cities attempting to make up for shortfalls in revenue. Using traffic stops and minor violations, the police and court system has turned into an armed and violent state-run debt collection agency focused on the poor and most particularly on people of color. The toxic combination of racism and poverty combine to send disproportionate numbers of African Americans to jail simply for being African American and poor. Tens of thousands of routine police misconduct, violence and brutality are every day occurrences. One particularly horrifying example is the death of Sandra Bland, found dead in her police cell after an illegal traffic stop and brutal arrest when stopped by police in Texas for supposedly not indicating a lane change.[endnoteRef:312] [312: K.K. Rebecca Lai, Heayoun Park, Larry Buchanan & Wilson Andrews, “Assessing the Legality of Sandra Bland’s Arrest,” New York Times. July 22, 2015. See also “Crystal Becerril and Todd St. Hill, “What did they do to Sandra Bland?” Socialist Worker (July 23, 2015). ]

In the second decade of the 21st century, the extent of killing of young African American men in the U.S., many at the hands of police—from Florida to Missouri to New York to Cleveland to South Carolina—has jump-started what may be a new civil rights movement with Black Lives Matter demonstrations pushing for meaningful change in police tactics and reform of a thoroughly racist criminal justice system.

Lack of jobs. Bill Fletcher Jr. wrote about the situation in Baltimore, a renewed zone of struggle following the murder of Freddie Gray by the police (who as of July 2016 have had all charges against the arresting officers dropped) in April 2015:

The de-industrialization of Baltimore has brought with it increased poverty. The ground zero of the recent rebellion is an area with an unemployment level of at least 30 percent and with an average income of $17,000 per year. Yet this poverty is something that one will not necessarily see on a visit to Baltimore because the renovation of the city has created zones of glitter, particularly around the harbor and the sports stadiums. You can go there as a tourist and have no sense that within a short distance you will witness the deadly results of reorganized, late 20th century capitalism.[endnoteRef:313] [313: Bill Fletcher Jr, “Baltimore: Race, Class and Uprisings,” Telesur (April 30, 2015). ]

An economic system that does not create sufficient jobs, let alone good paying ones, and which tolerates and even promotes deeply ingrained racist ideology, encourages racism among whites competing with African Americans for the jobs that do exist, even though African American unemployment is twice that of whites. With many workers employed precariously and the availability of new jobs unsure, fuels white prejudice against minorities competing for jobs, housing and education and even infects some unions. For example, due to evidence of racial discrimination in pay and benefit allocation, the sheet metal workers union in New York City in 2015 was ordered by a court to pay over twelve million dollars to non-white union members.

The union stands as a case study of how workplace discrimination has persisted in corners of the construction trades, according to federal officials, even as unions have become increasingly diverse…The union’s white members have received more work and larger pensions, data show. In contrast, minority members, who have lagged for decades, often struggle to find steady jobs and to earn enough credit to retire on time with full pensions.[endnoteRef:314] [314: Rachel Swarns, “New York Sheet Metal Workers Case Highlights Persistence of Workplace Discrimination,” The New York Times (December 20, 2015). ]

The detrimental health effects of long-term unemployment—which affects African Americans and Native Americans in greater percentages than the rest of the population—are profound. Heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes are more common in the unemployed than in people who did not lose their jobs.[endnoteRef:315] The psychological impact of not being able to earn a living, to do anything productive with your time, is especially damaging for a social species that gains a sense of fulfillment from productive activity, and must obtain and manipulate what we need from the external world in order to stay alive, healthy, and happy. In a study across sixty-three countries, researchers estimated approximately twenty percent of suicides were the result of unemployment.[endnoteRef:316] [315: See discussion in Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster, “The Plight of the U.S. Working Class,” Monthly Review 65(8):1-22. ] [316: Carlos Nordt, Ingeborg Warnke, Erich Seifritz, Wolfram Kawohl, "Modelling suicide and unemployment: a longitudinal analysis covering 63 countries, 2000–11," The Lancet Psychiatry (published online February 10, 2015). ]

Housing and government programs. After the killing of Freddie Gray and the demonstrations that followed, A New York Times editorial described a

…century-long assault that Baltimore’s African Americans have endured at the hands of local, state and federal policy makers, all of whom worked to quarantine African American residents in ghettos, making it difficult even for people of means to move into integrated areas that offered better jobs, schools and lives for their children. This happened in cities all over the country, but the segregationist impulse in Maryland generally was particularly virulent…[endnoteRef:317] [317: The Editorial Board, “How Racism Doomed Baltimore,” The New York Times (May 10, 2015). ]

Encouraged by governments (local, state, and national), real estate interests, and banks, segregated housing is one of the many factors that has kept African Americans from advancing economically. Unsurprisingly, when African Americans are able to move to unsegregated neighborhoods with better resources, their children generally perform better economically than those not able to move.[endnoteRef:318] But discrimination in housing—“Housing Apartheid, American Style” is the way a New York Times editorial put it[endnoteRef:319]—is not the only problem with respect to government. It has been accompanied by discrimination in almost all government interactions with people of color. For example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture discriminated against African American farmers in the South, not offering them the same assistance given to white farmers. New allegations of discrimination against Latino and women farmers and ranchers have emerged.[endnoteRef:320] In settlements of legal cases, the monetary awards can never undo the damage that discrimination by the U.S.D.A. caused. [318: Raj Chetty, The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children: New Evidence from the Moving to Opportunity Experiment, http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/images/mto_exec_summary.pdf.  ] [319: The Editorial Board, “Housing Apartheid, American Style,” The New York Times (May 16, 2015). ] [320: Settlements have also occurred over the last decade in discrimination claims against the U.S. Department of Agriculture by Hispanic, women, and Native American farmers and ranchers. For details see the USDA web page www.outreach.usda.gov/settlements.htm.]

Inadequate schools and healthcare. A report released in 2013 on segregation in public schools in the United States found that they were more segregated than they were 40 years ago, and that:

[t]oday, many African American children still attend schools in racially and economically isolated neighborhoods, while their families still reside in lonely islands of poverty: 39 percent of African American children are from families with incomes below the poverty line, compared with 12 percent of white children; 28 percent of African American children live in high-poverty neighborhoods, compared with 4 percent of white children.[endnoteRef:321] [321: Valerie Strauss, “Report: Public Schools More Segregated Now than 40 Years Ago,” Washington Post (August 29, 2013). ]

African Americans receive inferior healthcare and have lower life expectancies than whites. A 2014 article in Social Science & Medicine concluded,

…institutionalized white socioeconomic resources, discrimination, and racialized framing from centuries of slavery, segregation, and contemporary white oppression severely limit and restrict access of many Americans of color to adequate socioeconomic resources—and to adequate health care and health outcomes.[endnoteRef:322] [322: Joe Feagin and Zinobia Bennefield, “Systemic racism and U.S. health care,” Social Science & Medicine 103:7-14 (2014). ]

Poverty among African Americans across age groups is about twice the rate as for whites, with over one-third of African American children living in poverty. And poor African Americans have few resources to fall back on compared to poor whites. The poorest twenty-five percent of African American families have an average of $5 in savings while the poorest twenty-five percent of whites average $3,000 dollars.[endnoteRef:323] [323: Pew Charitable Trusts, What Resources Do Families Have for Financial Emergencies?, The role of emergency savings in family financial security, http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/assets/2015/11/emergency-savings-report-2_artfinal.pdf?la=en, (November 18, 2015).  ]

Any setback, from a medical emergency to the unexpected loss of hours at work, can be devastating. It means that harsh punishments for the failure to pay small debts harm black families inordinately. Sometimes, the consequence is jail. Other times, electricity is cut, or wages garnished.[endnoteRef:324] [324: Paul Kiel, “Debt and the Racial Wealth Gap,” The New York Times (January 2, 2016).]

Attacks on voting rights. The racist pushback of voting rights gained by African Americans has included vigorous legal and state legislative efforts to turn back the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (reauthorized in 2006), which had made it easier for African Americans to register and vote. In 2013 the Supreme Court gutted Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which had required states and specific counties within states with histories of past discrimination against African American voters to receive preapproval from the U.S. Justice Department for any changes in their voting laws. The arguments for overturning parts of the Voting Rights Act and making it more difficult to register to vote revolve around three spurious assumptions: that we have transcended the legacy of racism and therefore the federal oversight of voting rights legislation in states is no longer needed; that there is significant voter fraud (which, for all practical purposes, is nonexistent); and that the new laws don’t especially hurt African American potential voters. Following the Supreme Court decision, eight states responded in the same year with laws that significantly restrict African American voter access. According to the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University Law School, North Carolina’s 2013 law is one “of the most restrictive laws since the Jim Crow era.”[endnoteRef:325] In July 2016 a Federal court stuck down the North Carolina law, declaring that its provisions deliberately “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision.”[endnoteRef:326] And a Federal judge struck down parts of Wisconsin’s law that made it more difficult to vote. But the fight isn’t over yet—the Supreme Court can overturn these rulings or the laws may be rewritten in ways that still restrict voting by African Americans, but do so more subtlety. [325: ] [326: Michael Wines and Alan Blinder, “Federal appeals court strikes down North Carolina voter ID requirement,” The New York Times (July 29, 2016). ]

Greater exposure to environmental contaminants. In the environmental realm, the discrepancies and discrimination by race and class are just as appalling. As the NAACP report Coal Blooded: Putting Profits Before People documents, 6 million Americans live within three miles of a coal plant.[endnoteRef:327] The average per capita income for those six million is significantly lower than the US average. Of the four million people within three miles of the seventy-five (out of 378 total) dirtiest, oldest, most polluting, coal-fired stations in operation, fifty-three percent are people of color. Compared to the rest of the population, people of color are a) more likely to be living near toxic waste sites (fifty-six percent of those living nearby are people of color), b) twice as likely to live without clean water and modern sanitation facilities, and c) found to have thirty-eight times more exposure to nitrogen dioxide.[endnoteRef:328] This, together with poor people tending to be more concentrated in areas of other types of pollution as well, helps to explain why African Americans visit the emergency room for asthma at nearly three hundred and fifty percent the rate for whites.[endnoteRef:329] [327: Adrian Wilson, Jacqui Patterson, Kimberly Wasserman, Amanda Starbuck, Annie Sartor, Judy Hatcher, John Fleming, and Katie Fink, Coal Blooded: Putting Profits Before People, NAACP, http://www.naacp.org/page/-/Climate/CoalBlooded.pdf (2012). ] [328: Bryce Covert, "Race Best Predicts Whether You Live Near Pollution,” The Nation (March 7, 2016). ] [329: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/07/29/2360971/why-minorities-are-greener-than-the-rest-of-the-population/. ]

The scourge of lead contamination in poor neighborhoods, is such that in 2010 it was estimated that close to eight percent of African American children younger than six had blood lead levels of significant concern, above 5 micrograms per deciliter—“permanent neurologic damage and behavior disorders have been associated with lead exposure even…” below that level.[endnoteRef:330] Approximately fourteen percent of children in Cleveland have lead poisoning.[endnoteRef:331] [330: Jaime Raymond, Will Wheeler, Mary Jean Brown, "Lead Screening and Prevalence of Blood Lead Levels in Children Aged 1–2 Years——Child Blood Lead Surveillance System, United States, 2002–2010 and National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, United States, 1999–2010,” Supplements September 12, 2014 / 63(02):36-42, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention accessed at http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su6302a6.htm (March 4, 2016). ] [331: Michael Wines, “Flint Is in the News, but Lead Poisoning Is Even Worse in Cleveland,” The New York Times (March 4, 2016). ]

A despicable situation of lead contamination in a poor city occurred when the State of Michigan’s appointed an “emergency manager” in 2011 with the power to run the city of Flint, an impoverished city of 140,000 people, after the local economy tanked and jobs were lost as part of the process of automobile companies moving elsewhere in their quest to obtain higher profits. The appointed emergency manager, able to avoid all democratic local control, ordered the city to disconnect from the Detroit water supply and to use the polluted Flint River as its water source—saving about a million dollars each year. However, the change resulted in higher levels of organic carcinogens because of the chlorine, needed to help biologically purify the dirtier water, combined with organic chemicals in the water to form toxic chemicals. In addition the water was more corrosive, causing lead as well as copper to leach into the drinking water. The water was found to contain close to seven times the amount of lead as public health standards allow. As a result, there was a doubling of children with high levels of lead in their blood and difficult rashes and other illness developed.

Despite many complaints from residents of the city about the deteriorating state of their water and its health effects on them and their families, state officials ignored mounting evidence that the river water was corroding the old lead pipes and leaching the highly toxic metal into tap water. If it were not for independent researchers from Virginia Tech, the people of Flint, a city that is 56 percent African American and suffering high levels of unemployment and widespread poverty, might have remained uninformed about the toxicity of the water they were drinking and in which they were bathing. In Congressional hearings in Washington DC, Virginia Tech research scientist Marc Edwards testified:

Agencies that are paid to protect us from lead in water can get away with anything…It’s part 1984 and part Enemy of the People. I’m begging you, please: fix the EPA lead and copper rule, and fix the EPA…The only thing I can conclude is that the EPA doesn’t care about children drinking water with lead in it. You’d have to ask them why they don’t do the job they are paid to do. Had it not been for people completely outside the system, children in Flint would still be drinking that water today. That is a fact.[endnoteRef:332] [332: Oliver Milman & Ryan Fenton, “Flint water crisis: Michigan officials ignored EPA warnings about toxicity,” The Guardian (February 3, 2016). ]

Yet the situation in Flint were followed by revelations from across the country that showed Flint is only the tip of the iceberg for lead contamination of U.S. children. “Data collected by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention shows that over 40 percent of the states that reported lead test results in 2014 have higher rates of lead poisoning among children than Flint.”[endnoteRef:333] According to a Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) report, some eighteen million people in the U.S. drink water from sources that have violated federal drinking water standards.[endnoteRef:334] [333: Yanan Wang, “Untold cities across America have higher rates of lead poisoning than Flint,” The Washington Post (February 4, 2016). ] [334: Oliver Milman, "Millions exposed to dangerous lead levels in US drinking water, report finds,” The Guardian (June 28, 2016). ]

Detroit water is once again flowing to Flint. But contamination from the corroded pipes continued to occur into 2016, although at lower levels.[endnoteRef:335] But even if continued drinking water contamination ceases, the affected children could suffer from lifetime adverse health affects from their prior exposure. [335: Azure Gilman, "Researchers: Lead levels up after Flint switches to cheaper water supply,” Aljazeera (September 25, 2015). ]

While racism impacts the indigenous, African American, and Latino populations with by far the most force and detrimental impact, it spills over to negatively affect everyone. Some of the worst pollution and polluting industries are concentrated in poor communities, many (but not all) comprised mainly of people of color that have the least political power to resist. These dynamics lead to environmental injustice based on poverty and racism—with the more politically influential middle class whites less impacted by a number of forms of pollution, thereby which lessening the drive for environmental regulations. However, this is ultimately detrimental to everyone’s health.

Effects of Poverty

The interaction of race, class, and gender is such that much higher percentages of people of color and women (more so for women of color, but also white women) live in poverty. While we should always keep that in mind, there are specific effects of poverty regardless of a person’s ethnic background or gender. On the other hand, there are numerically many more whites than people of color living in poverty. And the changing “needs” and wishes of corporations have devastated white communities—for example, in the coal country of Appalachia and the steel producing regions of Pennsylvania—with severe effects of marginalization and unemployment that are sometimes believed to be found only in communities of color.

Poverty and great wealth go hand-in-hand in capitalist economies, one cannot have one without the other—as Olivier Goldsmith wrote in 1770 with respect to the land enclosures, the developing situation in England was one “Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.” A majority of poor or struggling people and a small minority of rich are a necessary outcome of capitalism; regardless of how quickly or by what amount the economy grows, inequality is essential to the successful operation of the system.

Even in the richest country the world has ever seen, in the United States “land of plenty,” close to one-third of the entire population, one hundred million people, have low incomes, living within twice the poverty level—including many that have low-paying jobs and are just one paycheck away from economic crisis. Of those, approximately fifty million are considered to be poor, living on income below the poverty level. About half of the poor (twenty to twenty four million people) live in families with a working head of household[endnoteRef:336]—working, but not earning enough to lift them out of poverty. And because of a lack of political will, we have in the U.S. many hungry people in a country that literally produces more food than it knows what to do with—some 48 million people, including 15 million children, live in households that are considered to be “food insecure.” Of those in this category, 17 million, including 1 million children, are considered very food insecure. Globally, at current rates it will take the poorest one billion in the world, 1 in every 7 people, more than 800 years to achieve 10 percent of global income.[endnoteRef:337] [336: Brian Thiede, Daniel Lichter, and Scott Sanders, "America’s Working Poor: Conceptualization, Measurement, and New Estimates,” Work and Occupations: An International Sociological Journal, Published electronically April 9, 2015, DOI: 10.1177/0730888415573635. ] [337: UN News Centre, “Investing in people the smartest way to eradicate poverty, UN says,” October 17, 2011. ]

As any poor person knows, it’s expensive to be poor. Poor people are taken advantage of in numerous ways and actually pay more than the rest of the population for almost everything: services and food, auto insurance, inferior housing, borrowing money, cashing paychecks.[endnoteRef:338] And with few supermarkets in poor neighborhoods, nearby nutritious food is commonly unavailable, and the small accessible stores normally charge high prices. [338: Maxime Robin, “Where being poor costs too much,” Le Monde Diplomatique (December 15, 2015). ]

Harvard sociologist Matthew Despond, writing in The New York Times, described some of the housing problems faced by the poor.

Landlords … aren’t making money in trailer parks or ghettos in spite of their poverty but because of it. Depressed property values offer lower mortgage payments and tax bills. In poor areas of the cities, rents are lower, too—but not by much…Landlords renting to poor families can charge slightly reduced rents but, owing to far lower expenses, still command handsome profits…Poor families are stuck. Because they are already at the bottom of the market, they can’t get cheaper housing unless they uproot their lives, quit their jobs and leave the city.[endnoteRef:339] [339: Matthew Desmond, “The Eviction Economy,” The New York Times (March 6, 2016). ]

Gender Oppression

As with racism, the history, expression and visibility of discrimination against women and gender oppression differ from one country to the next and from one time period to another. But the sense of confinement and restriction on the lives of women, evident for thousands of years, was captured by the words of The Wagoner, a ballad recorded in early 20th century Appalachia, but whose origin goes back to 18th century England:

Oh Hard is the fortune of all womankind

They're always controlled, always confined

Controlled by their parents until they are wives

Then slaves to their husbands the rest of their lives.

Gender inequity is expressed and felt differently in the Global North and South, urban versus rural nevertheless the phenomenon is universal in scope, even as it varies in significant ways by country and class.

Under capitalism, the systematic subjugation of women through the objectification of their bodies, sexual violence, economic inequality and prejudiced and stereotypical ideas about female abilities, is a central fact of life: contemporary society is saturated with sexism. Violence against women continues at epidemic proportions all across the world, with the most vulnerable, women in poor and indigenous communities, suffering the most. But those from more prosperous backgrounds are not immune—in the U.S., some twenty-five percent of college educated women report surviving rape or attempted rape during college.[endnoteRef:340] The World Health Organization (WHO) of the UN estimates that about one-third of all women have experienced either physical or sexual violence, commonly at the hands of their intimate partner.[endnoteRef:341] Gender violence is more of a threat to women’s health than the sum of traffic accidents and malaria. [340: Richard Pérez Peña, "1 in 4 Women Experience Sex Assault on Campus,” The New York Times (September 21, 2015). ] [341: World Health Organization of the United Nations, “Violence against women,” Fact sheet number 239, http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs239/en/ (updated January 2016). ]

But oppression goes even further into the realm of health care, with the struggle continuing in the United States and elsewhere for women to have the right to control their own bodies and the right to free abortion on demand and without apology.[footnoteRef:14] [14: The horror of such inhumanity to women was revealed in a recent case in the United States, which saw Purvi Patel imprisoned for 20 years in Indiana on charges of “feticide” and “child neglect” for inducing her own abortion (since reduced to 10 years imprisonment on appeal). The Guardian (July 22, 2016)]

According to the United Nations, 60% of chronically hungry people in the world are women and girls.[endnoteRef:342] Another UN report indicates: [342: UNDP, Fast Facts: Gender Equality and UNDP (February 2014). ]

As of 2007, roughly 20 percent of women were below the $1.25/day international poverty line, and 40 percent below the $2/day mark. Girls and younger women also suffer disproportionately from poverty, as more than one-quarter of females under the age of 25 were below the $1.25/day international poverty line, and about half on less than $2/day.[endnoteRef:343] [343: Isabel Ortiz & Matthew Cummins, “Inequality: Beyond the Bottom Billion: A rapid Review of income distribution in 141 countries,” A social and economic policy working paper, UNICEF:23 (April 2011) ]

In the United States, over a century since the birth of the first concerted movement for women’s rights, with a mere 17 percent of the House of Representatives female, the US ranks 77th out of 190 countries on gender parity for national parliaments.[endnoteRef:344] To break gender inequality down by race, would reveal further disparities, as racism alters and reinforces the dynamics of sexism within and between countries. [344: "Women in national parliaments," Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/arc/classif010213.htm, accessed May 15, 2016. ]

The statistics on gender inequality however, convey only a limited part of what it means to be systematically oppressed; they say nothing of the subtle menace, the uncounted and undervalued nature of everyday existence. While sex is used to sell everything from cars to toothpaste, and every aspect of popular culture comes draped with sexual imagery of women, contraception and abortion are strictly limited, and women seeking them are vilified in many countries.

Capitalism didn’t invent hierarchies, class stratification, exploitation, or male domination of women. Beginning some eight thousand years ago with the rise of herding and agriculture and the demise of foraging, women were constrained in subordinate roles in most, but not all, societies. This subservient relationship was altered and reinforced in the feudal societies and then again with the rise of capitalism in northern Europe in the 1500s.

With the shifts taking place in Europe in the early capitalist period, the relative position of women in society—in upper classes as well as among peasants and workers—changed in negative ways. On the changing status of women in healing and medicine, Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English write as follows:

We are told that our subservience is biologically ordained: women are inherently nurse-like and not doctor-like. Sometimes we even try to console ourselves with the theory that we were defeated by anatomy before we were defeated by men, that women have been so trapped by the cycles of menstruation and reproduction that they have never been free and creative agents outside their homes. Another myth, fostered by conventional medical histories, is that male professionals won out on the strength of their superior technology. According to these accounts, (male) science more or less automatically replaced (female) superstition—which from then on was called "old wives' tales." But history belies these theories.[endnoteRef:345] [345: Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of women healers, first published in 1973 by The Feminist Press at CUNY. Since republished and updated in a booklet in 2010. ]

Periodic waves of witch trials, the burning and lynching of “witches” from the 15th to the 18th centuries helped men to replace women in what became high status medical occupations as doctors. The overwhelming majority of witches were women who, because of their skills as healers and givers of life as midwives, occupied a strategic and important place in society and were believed to be too powerful.[endnoteRef:346] [346: For more details see Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation, Autonomedia (2004); Clifford Connor, A People’s History of Science: Miners, Midwives, and Low Mechanicks, Nation Books (2006) ]

Before the British land enclosures and the industrialization of the 18th and 19th centuries, peasant women contributed greatly to the subsistence household economy, spinning and weaving cloth, sewing garments, tending kitchen gardens, gathering wild rushes for light as well as cresses, nuts, and berries for food. In addition to subsistence contributions and domestic work, including childcare, they also earned income through selling handicrafts and agricultural products.

With the move from a subsistence economy, in which people lived off the land and sold extra handicrafts or agricultural products in local markets, to an economy in which people worked for wages, home production of goods was converted to piecework organized by middlemen who set up workshops or who provided the raw materials to home workers and skimmed off profits on the finished articles. Women were invariably paid less than men in the new money-wage economy, and could not contribute on the same basis as men to the family income.

Because wealthy landowners using the power of the state to increase their holdings enclosed so much common land in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, most people could no longer graze animals, keep chickens, or plant kitchen gardens. There was little to fall back on in difficult periods. Families could not keep a backyard cow for their own milk and cheese and that might provide at least a meager income and were forced to sell their labor for wages in order to survive. There were a number of inheritance customs within early modern England, including inheritance by first-born male (primogeniture, practiced especially among the nobility), by the youngest male (ultimogeniture), and division among all children (partible inheritance, in some regions). Women in parts of early modern England, especially among free peasants, frequently inherited property to the same extent as men.[endnoteRef:347] As property and money intertwine in the late 17th century, the whole idea that property could become a source of capital accumulation leads to primogeniture becoming the norm among wealthy commoners, as it had been among the nobility. This practice insured that large holdings would remain intact when a wealthy landowner died.  [347: Amy Louise Erickson, Women and Property in Early Modern England, Routledge (1993). According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “…among free peasants, land tended to pass by equal division among sons and daughters.”, accessed at https://www.britannica.com/topic/borough-English (July 26, 2016). ]

During this transition from rural villages to cities in northern Europe, and with increased mobility and urbanization, a shift took place in the kinship structure away from extended (consanguineal) families. In that system, people tended to marry within the same village and did so relatively late, when able to inherit livestock, tools and a dwelling from one of the sets of parents. Due to the needs of capital to privatize social reproduction and place the burden on working people, there was a shift to families created by marriage—the nuclear family. In this system, women lost the importance and protection they had when living in their families of origins—as sisters and daughters—and became more dependent on marrying for a place in the world.

As capitalism developed, women of all classes found themselves confined in a more rigid system, in which men controlled the economic and political structures and in which men were the main, or exclusive, breadwinners. A small indication of the changing condition of women was the transformation of the word spinster in the 18th century, originally referring to a woman with a specific occupation—a spinner of wool—into a word denoting an unmarried woman presumably past marriageable age. Then in the 19th century, the word takes on the negative implication that the woman was too finicky or homely to be married.

As urban commodity manufacture for exchange replaced rural production for use, traditional ways of life and culture were transformed. Former peasants were converted into propertyless workers, and the earth was reimagined as a lifeless machine, ripe for exploitation. And while many women (and children) were part of the early industrial labor force, receiving lower wages than men, when middle class incomes meant that wives didn’t need to earn wages, non-wage earning women became a marker of social class. Raising and caring for the next generation of workers is critical for the continuation of capitalism. But with the turn toward the nuclear family the job fell primarily to the wife—as most other work in the home—instead of to a larger extended family. [Today’s emphasis on “family values” and “maintaining the family,” places a double burden on women, even as they are paid less in workplace and the work of family reproduction is devalued by the system.]

Simone de Beauvoir once commented that "[a] woman is not born; she is made."[footnoteRef:15] This starts early in life and continues into adulthood in myriad ways that encourage and reinforce particular interests and activities.[endnoteRef:348] An article on gendered toys discusses the work of Elizabeth Sweet, a post-doctoral fellow in Sociology at the University of California (Davis) who studies the cultural history of toys. “Sweet has found that the popularity of gender-neutral toys reached a peak in the mid-1970s. Since then, toy makers have embraced the market-doubling effect of pushing certain toys to boys and other toys to girls. Sweet says the level of gender segregation has never been higher.”[endnoteRef:349] Thus instead of selling primarily gender-neutral toys, more money can be made by “pushing certain toys to boys and others to girls.”[endnoteRef:350] What other goal could the large-scale toy sellers have in a capitalist society? [15: The same can be said about a man.] [348: Cordelia Fine has shown that gender imprinting begins before birth, while the fetus is still in the womb. Delusions of Gender: How our Minds, Society and Neurosexism Create Difference, W.W. Norton & Company (2011) ] [349: Binyamin Appelbaum, "How Disney Turned ‘Frozen’ Into a Cash Cow,"The New York Times Sunday Magazine (November 23, 2014). ] [350: Ibid. ]

The hyper-sexualized society we live in—reinforced and encouraged throughout the media, gendered toys, activities and education, rituals such as beauty pageants and gendered dress codes and behavior—straightjackets young girls and boys to see themselves as different from each other from birth; the damage and negative ramifications echo through every sphere of life.

The second-class position of women in society is expressed in numerous ways—including control of their body and body image through fashion. Clothing that restricted activities became more regulated either by custom or law. Dress conventions that became the norm under capitalism, and institutionally enforced in many institutions, accentuate the differences between men and women and help to maintain the system. For example, a women wearing high-heel shoes, which produce greater pelvic rotation, increased vertical motion at the hip, shorter strides, and higher number of steps per minute, and cause tension and fatigue in women’s calf, back, and hip muscles.[endnoteRef:351] The fact that wearing such shoes causes discomfort and physical harm is suppressed because men find the practice attractive. [351: “How High Heels Affect Your Body,” Spine Health Institute website, accessed August 18, 2016 at http://www.thespinehealthinstitute.com/news-room/health-blog/how-high-heels-affect-your-body. ]

Of the enormous and systematic number of ways in which women are controlled, confined, and treated differently than men, one of the most absurd was a near (and actual) prohibition against women wearing pants. For much of human history, most people—men and women—wore loincloths, which, depending on climate, may have been covered with various types of loose fitting tunics, robes, and cloaks. Trousers were invented around 1000 BCE so that people in horse-riding cultures would be more comfortable. In nomadic, horse-based societies of the Eurasian grasslands such as the Scythians, it was common for women and men to wear trousers and to fight together as warriors, “About 20% of Scythian-Sarmatian “warrior graves” on the lower Don and lower Volga contained females dressed for battle as if they were men, the phenomenon that probably inspired the Greek tales about the Amazons.”[endnoteRef:352] While on average women were not able to match the strength and size of men—a distinct disadvantage in ground combat with swords, shields, and armor—they can control horses and shoot arrows as well as men. “They were horse people par excellence, and—no coincidence—many of these groups were also distinguished by relative gender equality, compared to the Greeks.”[endnoteRef:353] [352: David Anthony, “The horse, the wheel and language: how bronze age riders from the Eurasian steppes shaped the modern world,” (Princeton University Press, New Jersey, 2007. 329 ] [353: Adrienne Mayor, “Who Invented Trousers?,” Natural History 122(8): 28-33 (October 2014). ]

While women wearing trousers was part of the culture of a number of societies, in western societies it became more than just unfashionable to do so. One aspect of male domination has been the custom that men wear trousers, allowing men more flexibility and comfort when engaging in a wide range of physical activities while women wear dresses, inhibiting women from participating in the same activities. As ridiculous as it seems today, the wearing of trousers by women (without the permission of the police) was outlawed in France in 1800. Their use by the revolutionary women of Paris during the French Revolution when they marched on Versailles in October 1789 as sans-culottes, was thought to be a dangerous precedent. Although exceptions were made later in the 19th century for women riding bicycles and horses, and it was not enforced for many years, the law nevertheless remained on the books until 2013![endnoteRef:354] [354: John Lichfield, At last, women of Paris can wear the trousers (legally) after 200-year-old law is declared null and void, The Independent, February 4, 2013. ]

Women wearing pants was also seen as promoting radical thought and activity in the United States. In an article titled “The Cult of True Womanhood,” Barbara Welter describes a didactic passage that appeared in a women’s magazine from the mid-1800s:

The girl expresses admiration for the bloomer costume—it gives freedom of motion, is healthful and attractive. The ‘"Professor" sets her straight. Trousers, he explains, are "only one of the many manifestations of that wild spirit of socialism and agrarian radicalism which is at present so rife in our land." The young lady recants immediately: "If this dress has any connexion with Fourierism or Socialism, or fanaticism in any shape whatever, I have no disposition to wear it at all ... no true woman would so far compromise her delicacy as to espouse, however unwittingly, such a cause."[endnoteRef:355] [355: Barbara Welter, "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860," American Quarterly 18 (Issue 2, Part 1):151-174 (Summer, 1966). ]

Girls were not permitted to wear pants to most U.S. public schools until well into the second half of the 20th century. Women Senators were not allowed to wear pants in the U.S. Senate until after Senators Barbara Mikulski and Carol Moseley Braun, flouting the rules, wore trousers onto the floor of that august body in 1993. Therefore, while this example may seem ludicrous, it underlines the extreme degree of social control over a women’s body by systematic cultural reinforcement.[footnoteRef:16] [16: A controversy has arisen once more, regarding appropriate attire for women. This has occurred mainly in parts of the U.S. and Europe, in the midst of a wave of Islamophobia, aimed at Muslim women’s use of such clothing as the hijab (head scarf) and the burka (whole body covering). In 2016, more than thirty towns in France outlawed women wearing a body covering (except hands, face, and feet) “burkini” for swimming. Although a French court suspended the ban in August of 2016, it is absurd that it’s okay for women to wear next to nothing, but that regulation is needed so that they don’t cover too much of their bodies. ]

Why so much effort to distinguish men from women and establish such clear gender demarcation where one gender is always treated worse than the other? Generally, it is advantageous for capitalists to have workers disunited and fighting one another, or at least antagonistic. The hand of the bosses is strengthened, giving them greater control over labor. In this context, it is clear that the absence of true workplace equality for women and minorities is profitable for businesses that employ them. Additionally, there are financial gains to be made by the objectification of women in movies, magazines, and on the web as well as by the sale of differentiated toys and gadgets for girls and boys rather than simply for all children.

While oppression of women hardened during the transition to capitalism and has become ingrained in the system, there have been numerous successful struggles to combat specific aspects of it. The ongoing fight for equal rights for women has been partially successful in some areas, even as more recent decades have seen significant setbacks. It is a disgrace that it has taken so long for women to get the right to vote in the United States and elsewhere, but they still can’t hold any job they might desire and be equally paid for it, violence against women continues unabated, women don’t feel protected by the law when violence is perpetrated against them, they continue to be relegated to poverty when a single mother, and continue to fight for control over their own body and to wear whatever clothing they want.

Women’s second-class position in society gets constantly reinvented and reinforced by the structures and operation of capitalism. As warring states required more workers during the Second World War, huge numbers of women were drawn into the workplace and then let them go after the war was over, with propaganda in the 1950s to convince women their place was “in the home.” With wage stagnation beginning in the 1970s, the only way to increase family income was to have two people working full time. And with the feminist movement providing further impetus, women poured into the workplace during the last decades of the 20th century, with the employment of women as their percent of the population increasing from around thirty-five percent in the early 1960s to around nearly sixty percent in 2000.[endnoteRef:356] [356: St. Louis Federal Reserve FRED Database, Employment-Population Ratio: Women (LNS12300002). ]

Despite significant progress in some areas in the position of women in the U.S. and regression in others, a deep-seated and constantly reinforced prejudice continues to exist, justifying less favorable treatment of women. The idea that biological differences between men and women account for differences in their job opportunities and pay persists, despite mountains of evidence showing such views are not supported by science but rather are a socially constructed concept that justify unequal treatment of women.

When women are in leadership positions they are frequently criticized for being too bossy or pushy, while a man exhibiting the exact same behavior is considered a good leader. Ingrained prejudices, sometimes subconscious, influence decisions. For example, during auditions for symphony orchestras, when the selection committee is not aware of the gender of the musician, they accept many more women than when the gender of the person is known. Similarly, women software developers are considered better coders than their male counterparts, only if “their peers didn’t realise the code had been written by a woman.”[endnoteRef:357]  And students judge a female professor teaching an online course more favorably if they think that she is a he. Women in the workplace still earn less than male counterparts and are expected to be more submissive and not to ask for increased salaries, while that is an accepted practice for males. Women work longer hours when work in the home is included – from two to eight times longer, depending on the country.[endnoteRef:358] But men’s total work time is two thirds financially compensated (itself made possible by the unpaid work of women staying home), while for women, the figure is only one third.[endnoteRef:359] [357: Julia Wong, “Women considered better coders – but only if they hide their gender,” The Guardian (February 12, 2016). ] [358: OECD Development Centre’s Social Cohesion Unit. Social Institutions and Gender Index. Synthesis Report (2014). ] [359: V. Miranda “Cooking, Caring and Volunteering: Unpaid Work Around the World”, OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers, No. 116, OECD Publishing (2011). ]

Echoing radical terminology on the different types of value, and the human worth of its non-monetized form, the UN’s 1995 Development Report recognized that there was a critical issue of the lack of value attached to household and community work. Work is valued in capitalist economies when it helps to produce a commodity or service that has exchange value, something that can be sold and produce profits for a business owner. If work is done that does not end up in something that can be sold, it may be useful, and thereby have use value, but has no exchange value. Domestic work by a spouse or partner, while having very high use value to the family and society but because it has no exchange value, is not considered part of the economy, and is, of course, not compensated. According to the UN report:

This activity has an intrinsic use value or human value that is not captured by its value for exchange. At the heart of human development is the expansion of human choices by developing human capabilities. Income becomes one of the means to ensure the development of capabilities, but it is not an end in itself. The pursuit of good health, the acquisition of knowledge, the time devoted to fostering social relationships, the hours spent in the company of relatives and friends-all are worthwhile activities, yet they carry no price tag.[endnoteRef:360] [360: Op. cit., Human Development Report (1995). ]

A system that benefits from exploitation and exclusion of women—with unequal wages and job stereotyping, limited leadership roles in both public and private sectors, lack of support for child care, unhealthy fashion dictates, and pervasive misogyny among males—will continue to block progress toward full equality for women in all areas: social, political, and economic.

The intertwining of poverty with

oppression of people of color and women

Statistics cited previously show people of color and women are disproportionately represented among those living in poverty. By the middle of the 20th century, W.E.B. Dubois, expanded his view of the importance of the “color line” and the relationship to poverty, originally formulated in the first years of the century:

I still think today as yesterday that the color line is a great problem of this century. But today I see more clearly than yesterday that back of the problem of race and color, lies a greater problem which both obscures and implements it: and that is the fact that so many civilized persons are willing to live in comfort even if the price of this is poverty, ignorance, and disease of the majority of their fellowmen; that to maintain this privilege men have waged war until today war tends to become universal and continuous, and the excuse for this war continues largely to be color and race.[endnoteRef:361] [361: W.E.B. Du Bois, Preface to the Jubilee edition of The Souls of Black Folk, The Blue Heron Press (1953). ]

Thus in Dubois’ thoughts, not only was oppression of people of color tied to class, but inseparable from colonialism and imperialism. The oppression of women—which goes far beyond inequality of pay or life opportunities—is also intertwined with racism and class. But, as true as this may be, and rich women and people of color can minimize or evade some aspects of discrimination (giving them different values and political priorities to working class people), racism and sexism transcend class: distinguished African American Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was racially-profiled and arrested for going in to his own home and upper class women are subject to domestic abuse, violence and the routine sexism of society.

Work, alienation, and stress

What should be one of the most fulfilling aspects of anyone’s life—being productive and serving a purpose to society—is twisted by capitalism into its exact opposite. We spend a majority of our time while awake at work, yet it is the most disempowering, often pointless, frustrating and monotonous part of anyone’s day.

More than half of workers are not satisfied with their job, with about two-thirds dissatisfied over wages, workload, work/life balance, and potential for the future.[endnoteRef:362] In order to maximize profits, emphasis is put on increasing labor productivity by simplifying, routinizing, and automating work tasks so that workers can produce more in a given amount of time, creating boredom and mental and physical problems, as workers use a very small portion of their abilities in work that is both repetitive and speeded up. [362: Ben Cheng, Michelle Kan, Gad Levanon, and Rebecca Ray, Job Satisfaction (2015 Edition), The Conference Board (2015). ]

Some industrial robots replace a portion of the more arduous and repetitive tasks, but that’s a secondary outcome to the primary purpose, which is to increase the productivity of the workforce—turning out the same amount or more commodities with fewer people. Although this is a continuous process going on since the inception of capitalism, the new wave of automation affecting workers in many countries, using increasingly sophisticated robots and software, is having a different and new effect on the future of work. A study by the Associated Press found:

Year after year, the software that runs computers and an array of other machines and devices becomes more sophisticated and powerful and capable of doing more efficiently tasks that humans have always done. For decades, science fiction warned of a future when we would be architects of our own obsolescence, replaced by our machines; an Associated Press analysis finds that the future has arrived.[endnoteRef:363] [363: Bernard Condon, "Recession, technology have combined to kill middle-class jobs,” Associated Press (Jan 23, 2013). ]

What is occurring today is qualitatively different from earlier periods during which machines substituted primarily for relatively simple manual tasks. Now, in addition to more rapid automation of factory manufacture of commodities using robots capable of complex tasks, many aspects of service work, skilled and even intellectual work (such as writing reports and news articles, and examining x-rays) can be carried out by software algorithms. When wages have to be increased because of labor union demands or the need to attract workers with specific skills, companies introduce new ways to use less labor. “But since automation also produces quicker drug development, safer highways, more accurate medical diagnoses, cheaper material goods, and greater energy efficiency, to name just a few of its obvious benefits, there have been few cautionary voices … urging us to take stock, especially, of the effects of automation on our very humanness—what makes us who we are as individuals—and on our humanity—what makes us who we are in aggregate.”[endnoteRef:364] Automation generally leads to loss of employment. And when economic growth is sluggish, as it has been for years, it may result in displaced workers having to take lower-wage jobs or to be nearly permanently unemployment. [364: Sue Halpern, "How Robots & Algorithms Are Taking Over,” The New York Review of Books (April 2, 2105). ]

In reality we are already dehumanized by capitalism. Automation is but a standard product of the constant search to enhance profits through greater power over workers and, when it is financially worthwhile, to substitute machines, robots, and software to reduce costs and increase control of the labor process. In another type of society automation could provide people with more leisure time. However, in a capitalist economy, with its single-minded goal, automation of all sorts leads to loss of employment without the assurance that one will be able to obtain another job with similar pay and work conditions; struggles against machines and automation stretch back hundreds of years. As theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has pointed out, what we should really be worried about is capitalism, not robots:

If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.[endnoteRef:365] [365: Alexander Kaufman, “Stephen Hawking says we should be really scared of capitalism, not robots,” Huffington Post (October 10, 2015). ]

The domineering nature of commodities—the more we work, the more controlled and subservient to them we are—is hidden from us through the operation of the market. It appears that we have free choice: after all, there are over forty thousand items to choose from in a supermarket. But those working are compelled, in order to make a living, to make things over which they ultimately have no say: over what is produced, how it is produced, or what becomes of it afterwards. The capitalists, utilizing the “logic of the market,” decide all of these questions.

Alienation from work, a critical aspect of our humanity, is not only or even primarily a psychological condition, but a feature integral to capitalist social relations, one that profoundly damages us. The repetitive, often pointless monotony of most people’s work life, where they spend most of their waking hours, “is a picture of massive repression, the stifling of one’s urge to self-fulfillment in the most important segment of one’s life, the spending of vital energies at tasks one would never dream of freely choosing.”[endnoteRef:366] [366: Alan Roberts, The Self Managing Environment, Rowman & Littlefield, Totawa, NJ:42 (1979). ]

This is the meaning of alienation. Human unhappiness comes from the very real world of being dominated and controlled by the things we make for someone else, and who profits from our labor. The more we work, the more commodities we produce, the more we lose power and become enslaved to our own creations. Work, far from being the joyful fulfillment of the “American Dream” to which we are all coaxed to aspire, becomes a nightmare of stress and dissatisfaction.

Naturally, this has extensive repercussions on physical and mental health. As long ago as 1993, before the productivity gains of the 21st century and even faster pace of work, sociologist Juliet Schor reported in her book The Overworked American:

Thirty percent of [American] adults say that they experience high stress nearly every day; even higher numbers report high stress once or twice a week…Stress-related diseases have exploded, especially among women and jobs are a major factor…Americans are literally working themselves to death—as jobs contribute to heart disease, hypertension, gastric problems, depression, exhaustion, and a variety of other ailments.[endnoteRef:367] [367: Juliet Schor, The Overworked American: the surprising decline of leisure, Basic Books, New York:11 (1993). ]

As Schor notes, contrary to all the propaganda about how stressful and overworked are the people at the top of societies economic food chain, it’s actually the jobs that come with the least decision-making that are the worst, “Surprisingly, the high-powered jobs are not the most dangerous. The most stressful workplaces are the “electronic sweatshops” and assembly lines where a demanding pace is coupled with virtually no individual discretion.”[endnoteRef:368] [368: Ibid. 11 ]

Lack of decision-making highlights another reason workers are alienated. The priorities of capitalism dictate that every job should be cut up as far as possible into the smallest, most repetitive and unskilled, meaningless tasks possible. As one of the main architects of the automated production line, where workers are forced to work at the pace of the machinery (so effectively lampooned in Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece Modern Times), Henry Ford complained of his hard-to-tame workforce, “Why is it every time I ask for a pair of hands, they come with a brain attached?”[endnoteRef:369] [369: Geoff Colvin, “Humans are underrated,” Fortune (July 23, 2015). ]

Thus for a combination of reasons, most people obtain little to no job satisfaction from their work. Our ability to carry out free, conscious and creative work, what Marx believed to be an inherent part of our species-being, was robbed from us by capitalist social relations in the workplace:

The worker puts his life into the object; but now his life no longer belongs to him but to the object. Hence, the greater this activity, the more the worker lacks objects. Whatever the product of his labor is, he is not. Therefore, the greater this product, the less is he himself. The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labor becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a power on its own confronting him. It means that the life which he has conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien.[endnoteRef:370] [370: Karl Marx, The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm ]

We are relentlessly pushed to consume more goods and services, and sub-divided into different sales demographics to facilitate more effective marketing campaigns. But the need for a huge sales effort to get people to buy more and more stuff highlights just how much we don’t see our happiness and satisfaction through the acquisition of material goods. If we actually did, would there really be the need for spending in the United States alone well over $1 trillion per year on marketing campaigns? Of course, the vast majority of people in the world, including millions in the United States—as much as they might try to live up to what is supposed to make them happy—are unable to take part, or fully participate, in the flood of consumer goods they are encouraged to desire. And in the case of hundreds of millions of the world’s poor, there is a lack of adequate food, housing, sanitation facilities, or access to clean water. They have little ability to access life’s necessities and no way to play a role as good consumers.

What has been shown to give people true happiness—control over their own lives and creative and meaningful work activities, their participation in community activities, and time with friends and family—has decreased through longer hours at work, less control over the workplace environment, more job insecurity, longer commutes to and from work, and an unachievable quest for displaced happiness and alienation through ownership of consumer goods. In a misplaced attempt to overcome that alienation and lack of power, enormous amounts of time are spent in front of screens, further removing us from face-to-face interactions with other humans.

Identifying the source of our alienation as situated in the lack of control in the workplace and recognizing that the substitution of consumerism by capitalist marketing as a form of emotional compensation, as well as an ideological bulwark for the system, is of critical importance in helping us overcome alienation by challenging its origin. As Alan Roberts points out in The Self-Managed Environment:

Ecological values are those linked with consumption, but they are in fact substantially derived from the way in which people experience life as producers. It is that exploited, alienated and relatively powerless period, the working day, which reduces them to settling for commodity satisfaction in their ‘free time’.

The bargain just struck—the deprivation of goods related to human community and creative effort, in exchange for commodities or the promise of them—extends its influence throughout all levels and institutions, marking out the shape of the ‘consumer society’. It is this society which threatens the environment with its unlimited appetite—unlimited precisely because its objects are so unsatisfying.[endnoteRef:371] [371: Alan Roberts, The Self Managing Environment, Rowman & Littlefield, Totawa, NJ: 174 (1979). ]

Which reveals how we can most effectively nullify consumerist urges – not by moralistic appeals against consumption, such as “buy nothing day” or berating ordinary people for wanting an easier life and searching for fulfillment through the acquisition of things they’re told they need. Rather it is to empower people in the workplace by resistance to increases in exploitation through longer working hours, reductions in pay or conditions and for the successful extension of worker’s power on the shop floor. More empowered people will then begin to see their happiness connected and expressed through better working conditions rather than through more consumer goods. This can then lead to a change in values that presages and makes more likely larger social struggles and even greater changes in human values.

Why is the ruling ideology so influential?

The small sliver at the very top of society—owners of capital, high-level corporate managers, plus another portion in the upper middle class—genuinely benefit by divisions and antagonisms among the populace. It permits the continuation of the flow of income, wealth, and power to the upper echelons of the system. Less pay and fewer benefits for women, single mothers, people of color, and the poor in general means more profits due to lower levels of class solidarity. This causes reduced ability to effectively organize resistance in the workplace and elsewhere. Most people up and down the economic ladder become socialized to unequal conditions and treatment and conditions of people and see them as normal (which they are under capitalism) as well as natural. To exorcize responsibility from the system, politicians, capitalist ideologues, and the monopoly-dominated media create an alternative explanatory framework, “blame-the-victim”—if only “they” had made better choices they wouldn’t be in their situations. This is essential, because it is impossible to have an economy based on fostering inequality for the majority without buttressing it with the political benefits of racial, national, gender, and class oppression.

One of the strongest mythologies of capitalist societies asserts that there is equal opportunity for everyone. If you work hard enough and make the right choices you will be able to “pick yourself up by your bootstraps.” However, there is no possibility that a baby born into poverty, with its associated stresses and limitations will have the same opportunity as a baby born to wealthy parents. A child attending substandard schooling and with inadequate health care and few cultural enriching possibilities clearly doesn’t have the same opportunity as one from a wealthy family. It is also clearly untrue that people can, if they just try hard enough, make the best of whatever situation they are born into and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps: a large number of people in the world lack boots, let alone bootstraps. Unfortunately, although it is simple to demonstrate, as we have previously done, that all children do not have anything close to equal opportunities, continuing belief in this falsehood is a powerful reason for the public’s acceptance of gross inequalities in society and continuing discrimination.

This lack of empathy for the poor arises from the ideology that somehow poverty or being discriminated against is somehow their fault (even though, clearly, there is certainly nothing to blame the children for). Blame the victim is rampant as an explanation for sexual assault, the violence of the police against people of color and the very existence of poverty. Therefore, poverty and deep poverty in the midst of plenty becomes “acceptable” instead of the affront to humanity that it is. It is well established through numerous studies that health and longevity improve with income in the Untied States.[endnoteRef:372] Poor children tend to be malnourished, have less access to cultural and sporting events and are more likely to be exposed to environmental toxins,[endnoteRef:373] [372: Steven Woolf, Laudy Aron, and Lisa Dubay, Sarah Simon, and EmIly Zimmerman, "How are Income and Wealth Linked to Health and Longevity?,” The Urban Institute (April 13, 2015). ] [373: “By the mid 1970s, the average U.S. preschool child had 15 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood. Eighty-eight percent of children had a level exceeding 10 μg/dL—which is twice what the CDC currently considers toxic. Among poor African American children, the average level was markedly higher: 23 children had a level exceeding xins That Threaten Our Brains," The Atlantic (March 18, 2014)). ]

Belief in the supposed existence of poor people’s character or genetic flaws is coupled with the mythology that in the United States everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed, as illustrated above a contention that is patently untrue. Mainstream politicians reinforce these opinions when they play to racist, anti-poor, misogynistic, homophobic, and anti-immigrant sentiments in order to get votes from a racist segment of the population. Efforts such as Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” of sympathy and support for anti-integration racist whites, President Reagan’s chastising “welfare queens,” pictured in the media as African American and supposedly living the high life at public expense, and First Lady Hillary Clinton’s 1996 reference to a segment of youth as “super-predators...[that have] no conscience, no empathy” encourage racist attitudes and make them more respectable. That anti-immigrant policies are prominent in the Republican Party was made abundantly clear during the 2016 primaries to select a presidential candidate. Anti-immigrant and neo-fascist politicians in Europe such as those of the Golden Dawn in Greece and the National Front in France play a similar role.[footnoteRef:17] The 2016 British vote in favor of leaving the EU was at least partially a result of anti-immigrant sentiment. [17: Anti-immigrant sentiment (especially against Irish, southern Europeans, Chinese, and Japanese) was common in the U.S., as was anti-Semitism. In 2015 these types of attitudes have been reignited in Europe as European economies have stagnated, instability in a number of countries (frequently a direct consequence of Western interference) has induced a huge wave of people on the move, unemployment is high, and an anti-immigrant backlash has proved a convenient scapegoat to redirect people’s anger away from those at the top.]

As a result of forceful social struggles, as entrenched as the attitudes and behaviors toward “inferior” social groups have been, and as far as we still need to travel, it is important to recognize that attitudes and outcomes have changed over time, illustrating the potential of ordinary people to overcome and fight against discrimination in solidarity with one another. During the 20th century these include the numerous revolutions for democratic, economic and political rights across the world; the successful overthrow of colonial regimes; the fights for civil rights for African Americans and Native Americans in the United States; the right to vote and for equal employment opportunities for women as well as for punishment of violence against women; and rights of access to education and public spaces for the physically and mentally challenged.

The lived reality of ordinary people constantly chaffs against the inner confines of our mental prison, and the limits of our physical lives. If this were not so, absolute propaganda from absolute dictatorships would be the end of human history and make the goal of liberation and equality impossible. The world over, women have long been at the forefront of that struggle, as leaders, fighters and protest organizers. As Rosa Luxemburg wrote, a “world of female misery is waiting for relief” and it will only be relieved when “the working woman shakes the pillars of the existing social order next to the men, and before it grants her the illusion of her rights, she will help bury this social order under rubble.”[endnoteRef:374] [374: ]

Can these problems be solved within capitalist societies?

Toward the end of Chapter 3 we discussed why genuine government regulation, while necessary to rein in corporations, cannot solve the environmental problems created and/or worsened by capitalism. The very nature of the system and how decisions are made based on trying to maximize profits precludes businesses and governments from creating and maintaining a healthy environment. Although regulatory reforms can sometimes help ameliorate problems, they are insufficient, poorly enforced, and reversible.

Likewise, there are insurmountable obstacles that preclude all people being treated equally, eliminating prejudice, discrimination, and violence based on race, gender, and class, let alone eliminating classes all together. Reforms which would go far to address poverty, sexism and racism, such as paying a livable wage across the world to eradicate poverty, building decent housing and pleasant and inviting and well staffed schools for everyone, providing culturally enriching experiences and quality healthcare for everyone, doing away with placement of polluting facilities near where people live, providing continual educational experiences beginning in early childhood and continuing into adult life to teach fairness and equality of all humans are absurdly utopian in the context of current society.

And what about true equality for women? The estimated 2.2 trillion dollar costs of annual environmental damage caused by corporations and 3 trillion dollar estimated damage done by industrial agriculture (see Chapter 3) is dwarfed by the unaccounted for costs of unpaid labor carried out predominantly by women—the $11 trillion of annual externalized and unaccounted for “invisible contribution of women” estimated in the UN’s 1995 Human Development Report. This was equivalent in monetary terms to approximately half of the global economy (GDP) at the time.[endnoteRef:375] [375: Human Development Report 1995, Published for the UN Development Program (UNDP) by Oxford University Press, http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/reports/256/hdr_1995_en_complete_nostats.pdf (1995). ]

As the report noted:

The general problem of unpaid or non-market work has long been noted. At the start of this century, Arthur Cecil Pigou, the pioneer of welfare economics, wrote that if a woman employed as a housekeeper by a bachelor were to marry him, national income would fall, since her previously paid work would now be performed unpaid. But unpaid work goes far beyond housekeeping, and its omission leaves a major gap in national income accounting.[endnoteRef:376] [376: Ibid. ]

The UN report went on to note that factoring in unpaid work by women would only be possible when financial entitlements, “change radically, and the legal system would be overhauled accordingly. Rights to property and inheritance would change, as would access to credit based on collateral, direct entitlement to social security benefits, tax incentives for child care and terms of divorce settlements.”[endnoteRef:377] [377: Op. cit., Human Development Report 1995. ]

In other words, we’d be talking about a completely different system. Rather than privatized, unvalued and invisible work carried out mostly by women, the raising of children, the caring for other humans, and so much else, would be valued and socialized.

The issue of sexism is, of course, much deeper than the unpaid work that women perform in the home—discrimination and violence against women is endemic to capitalism. As for racism, to even begin to solve it would require the commitment of huge amounts of resources to provide decent quality living conditions (homes, food, health care, education, clean water, clean air, etc.) for everyone. It would also mean the rearrangement of the entire globe: there could be no differentiation between North and South, which would mean uprooting the whole financial, military and trade system, while paying billions of dollars in reparations.

If there was an attempt to pay for the labor that produces so much uncompensated work of critical importance to society and take other steps to eliminate the psychological, economic, and physical oppression of women and people of color, eliminate poverty, carry out production using ecologically sound procedures, and rationally manage the human interaction with the environment by internalizing all costs—capitalism would not be able to function economically or ideologically.

But in addition to the issue of profitability, there are other significant obstacles to attaining these goals that go to the heart of the very nature of the capitalist economic-political-social system. It is a system in which a) creates unemployment by the way it functions; b) businesses can move operations almost at will to countries with lower wages and even fewer environmental regulations; c) creates huge inequalities of wealth; d) corporations and the wealthy control political decisions; e) wealthy individuals, capitalists, and corporate leaders have worked the system so as to pay as little tax as possible and are opposed to most of today’s social programs, as inadequate as they are; f) capitalists benefit from a system that keeps the workers divided and fighting among themselves; and g) when progressive reforms are made, in response to massive movements, they are later undone or watered down when there is a change in relative power relations.

Rather than viewed as individual “problems,” because racism, sexism, and poverty (class) are intertwined and help to reinforce each other, they can only be solved together. Fighting for women’s liberation is inseparable from the fight against racism and for human rights in general and for a decent existence for all humanity, along with the fight for our ecological future. If you want to actually solve racism, poverty, and sexism—and protect the environment—you need to be thinking about how we can create a completely different economic, political and social system.

Ecological and social irrationalities of capitalism

The ecological and social rifts and degradations discussed in this chapter and the previous one—unpaid for by companies and of little concern to them—are symptoms of an irrational system. But what does it mean to say that capitalism is an irrational economic system? Given the way in which capitalism works, we need to acknowledge that making decisions that lead to profits is rational. Because the sole purpose of the system is for capitalists try to make as much money as they possibly can in as short a time as possible, they compete against other companies in order to generate more capital and expand. Given the way the system operates, whatever furthers that effort can be thought of as economically rational. Certainly, from the point of view of capitalists trying to maximize their accumulation of capital, most of what they do, including fighting tooth and nail against environmental regulations and social programs, is absolutely rational in that it furthers their goal. And the influence exerted by powerful economic forces over the political system also makes eminent sense—from their point of view. It is also rational from the capitalist point of view that the social and environmental side effects, that in most cases would be impossible to remedy without bankrupting companies, be foisted on the public and the biosphere.

But how can it be rational from a social point of view that all people, aside from the very wealthy, need to work while at the same time the economic system doesn’t guarantee jobs for everyone? And is it rational that many of the jobs that are available do not pay enough for workers to support themselves and their children? And how can it be socially rational that poor people actually pay more than others for almost everything? Rather than question those things, the poor are told to rely on charity and government programs that in effect subsidize corporations. Meanwhile, instead of focusing on political policies that created poverty and great wealth in the first place, everyone is encouraged to donate to charity and to appreciate the philanthropy of the rich, so called “philanthrocapitalism”—relying on the very people who made so many poor in the process of becoming wealthy.

And is it rational—from the point of view of a humane society—that workers suffer detrimental health effects when they lose their jobs, are often poisoned or made susceptible to chronic ailments while doing their jobs and that the working poor can’t earn enough to live decently? And how in the world can pumping poisons into the air, water, and soil, as well as using them in the products people use, be anything but irrational from the point of view of humanity and most other species. How can, aside from gaining profits, destroying mountains to access coal seams or the destruction of entire landscape in the tar sands region of Alberta Canada or Shell’s oil extraction activities in Ogoniland, Nigeria be considered anything but irrational? And the raising of crop monocultures over large portions of a region and the use of simple (or no) rotations is certainly ecologically irrational. A system that does not meet the basic needs of its people, or consider the necessity to maintain a healthy environment as part of the process of production, needs to be superseded by another one that has completely different goals, logic, and ways of operating.

In the following section we will see that the stumbling blocks that many cite as supposedly standing in the way of creating a humane and ecologically sound society, are actually ideological positions and excuses. Our biology and nature as human beings are perfectly compatible with a society organized along very different principles and practices than those of capitalism.

Part Two: Is an Ecological Society Possible?

Chapter 5. Humans as part of nature

Let us not…flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, 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 creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them correctly.

—F. Engels[endnoteRef:378] [378: Frederick Engels, “The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man,” in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, vol. 25 (New York: International Publishers, 1975), 460-61. ]

The systemic environmental and social problems that are caused by and are intrinsic to capitalism were discussed in Part One. Tinkering with the system, passing this law or enforcing that regulation will not solve the root cause of the crises we face. But is there something about humans that present an insurmountable barrier to a new system? This chapter and the next will examine what history and science tell us about how humans have interacted with and changed their environments and whether there are innate human traits or characteristics preventing us from creating a society based on equality and justice.

Arguably, “nature” is one of the hardest words to define. Originating in Latin as “natura,” meaning birth, today people use the word “nature” with a wide variety of meanings. Colloquially, it’s used as a blanket term applied to everything that isn’t human or constructed by humans. In everyday speech, people refer to animals as if humans were in an altogether different category (aside from species), instead of being a fellow animal. Setting humans apart as something so different from other species as to require our own category creates an artificial and damaging dichotomy between humans and the rest of life. Indeed, one dictionary definition of nature makes this assumed differentiation between nature and humans rigidly explicit: “the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations.”[endnoteRef:379] [379: Oxford Dictionaries, accessed January 17, 2014 at http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/nature. ]

“Nature” is commonly viewed as places with few or no humans, but where humans live, visit or exploit. Emerging out of the dominant western narrative as the only sentient species capable of widespread tool use and technological development, humans have a duty or divine right to bend the whole of nature to our purposes. This ideology postulates that though we might feel remorse for some of the negative consequences of our actions on other species, we are nevertheless compelled by our innate nature to behave as “conquerors.” Normalizing the unrestrained exploitation of natural resources as a byproduct of humans’ unique position in the world may not be the cause of environmental problems but it masks the real cause: capitalist economics. To see us as outside of nature, a species free to exploit other life forms and the rest of the world without acceptance of a deep and vital connection to the rest of the biosphere, is not only scientifically incorrect, it disastrously distorts our self-understanding and is, self-defeating in the long run. We are one of an estimated 8.7 million species living on earth. And even among mammals, our kind, Homo sapiens, is only one of more than 5,000 species. Going back in evolutionary history we are directly related to all other cellular life.

The separation of humans from nature as some “higher” form of life correlates with one interpretation of Biblical stories of creation, when one half of humanity, Man, was chosen by God as closer to heaven and more perfectly formed. But the perspective that humans are somehow outside of, separate from nature, emerged as the dominant ideology codified by the Scientific Revolution, serving the interests of the early development of capitalist social relations in the 16th and 17th centuries. Today, the human/nature dichotomy appears to many as “common sense.”

A rigidly anthropocentric view holds that humans are not only the center and most important part of life on earth. According to this view, we are the culmination of an evolutionary process that led to Homo sapiens as the species that not only can, but also has a right to dominate and exploit the rest of nature, thereby promoting a misunderstanding of the science of evolution and ecology. However distantly, all living organisms are connected to each other through evolution. The vast majority species that evolved since life began are now extinct (greater than ninety-nine percent), while new ones have evolved to replace them. The geological fossil record contains evidence of five mass extinction episodes, the earliest of these 430 million years ago.[endnoteRef:380] The most recent, about 65 million years ago, is thought to have occurred when a six-mile wide asteroid wiped out three quarters of all species, including the dinosaurs, and put an end to the Cretaceous Period.[endnoteRef:381] [380: It has recently been argued that a sixth previous mass extinction should be added—the Capitanian, some 260 million years ago. David Bond, Paul Wignall, Michael Joachimski, Yadong Sun, Ivan Savov, Stephen Grasby, Benoit Beauchamp, and Dierk Blomeier, "An abrupt extinction in the Middle Permian (Capitanian) of the Boreal Realm (Spitsbergen) and its link to anoxia and acidification," Geological Society of America Bulletin (March 2015),  doi: 10.1130/B31216.1. ] [381: There is also some evidence that other factors may have been involved in the extinction, including volcanic eruptions in what is now India that may have spewed large volumes of ash into the atmosphere. End-Cretaceous mass extinction, http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/life/dinosaurs-other-extinct-creatures/mass-extinctions/end-cretaceous-mass-extinction/index.html ]

From an evolutionary perspective, our species, Homo sapiens, are one of the four genera in the Hominidae family that includes chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas. We are most closely related to bonobos and chimpanzees, sharing over ninety-seven percent of our DNA. In direct contrast to the popular graphics depicting a single evolutionary line in the form of a ladder, from bipedal hominid to human, archeological evidence shows a far richer set of multiple pathways by which our species evolved.

Our genus (Homo) had many branches, from us (Homo sapiens) to the other hominid species that are now extinct, such as Homo neanderthalensis, Homo erectus, Homo habilis, and the latest potential new member, Homo naledi—whose remains were found in a cave in South Africa in 2015 and are now under investigation as another new relative. Our lineage branched off from the others in the great ape family about three million years ago.

Homo sapiens originated some 150,000 to 200,000 years ago in eastern Africa. But genetic evidence indicates that the population went through a bottleneck approximately 70,000 years ago with greatly reduced numbers, possibly connected to unfavorable climate change. (The period coincides with the Mt. Toba, Sumatra, volcanic eruption—the largest in the last few million years—which sent enough ash into the atmosphere to cause major and prolonged climate change in many parts of the world.[endnoteRef:382]) [382: Christine Lane, Ben Chorn, and Thomas Johnson, "Ash from the Toba supereruption in Lake Malawi shows no volcanic winter in East Africa at 75 ka,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS), 110(20):8025-8029 (May 14, 2013).  ]

As the human population increased and acclimated to new environments demanding new skills, our ancestors began to make different tools, such as improved points and blades for cutting and spearing, objects for adornment, and cave paintings. This is also the period during which groups of humans began their migrations out of Africa. Complicating the popular stories of Homo sapiens relentlessly wiping out our cousins the Neanderthals in acts of genocide, recent research indicates not only that we interbred and mingled our DNA, but that, again contrary to popular mythologizing, Neanderthals were not nearly as limited in cognition as once proposed.

Over the past 10,000 years, our species has transitioned from small groups hunting and gathering to more stable settlements practicing agriculture and the domestication of plants and animals to greater concentrations in towns and cities with greater divisions of labor.

Nature in cities? Today, for the first time in human history, more people live in cities than in rural areas. Living in giant urban megacities, humans are increasingly separated from an intimate and daily relationship with soil, wild animals, crops and other plant life. They are often unaware of the nature that exists in cities and have lost sensitivity to the smaller-scale changes in weather patterns in the cacophony, frenetic pace and construction with so much concrete and steel. Thus, in the degraded urban landscapes where most people live, it is not at all surprising that many people feel that nature exists somewhere other than where they live.

But, whether understood or not, even as we inhabit large cities, we are intimately connected with the biosphere, especially the plants and animals on which we depend for food and medical purposes, as well as the species that help maintain them: the grasses that feed cattle and goats, bees that pollinate many crops, and the wasps that attack insects that eat or otherwise harm plants. The aesthetic pleasure and spiritual and psychological sustenance that humans derive from seeing plant life in forests, gardens, fields, or city parks is considerable.

Numerous studies have shown that connecting with nature in urban green spaces enhances people’s physical and psychological health and resiliency.[endnoteRef:383] The simple non-utilitarian appreciation and enjoyment of nature’s beauty is a key part of human wellbeing and can be found in diverse events and environments: the intricacies of a butterfly’s wing; the color, scent, and form of a flower; the sound of bird song floating on the summer breeze; the miraculous and seemingly organized swarms of birds and fish; the amazing multitude of beetles; the green of a prairie after rain; the new leaves of spring; the feel of hard bark beneath ones palm; the long distance migrations of sea creatures and those with wings.[endnoteRef:384] In similar fashion, the imaginative creativity of human constructions can be just as awe-inspiring and worthy of breath-taking marvel. The universe and our appreciation of it are just as enhanced by the Sistine Chapel, the prehistoric monument of Stonehenge as it is by the Grand Canyon. [383: For example: Eirini Flouri, Emily Midouhas, and Heather Joshi, "The role of urban neighbourhood green space in children's emotional and behavioural resilience," Journal of Environmental Psychology 40:179-186 (2014); Liisa Tyrväinen, Ann Ojala, Kalevi Korpela, Timo Lanki, Yuko Tsunetsugu, and Takahide Kagawa, "The influence of urban green environments on stress relief measures: A field experiment," Journal of Environmental Psychology 38:1-9 (2014); and Jia Wei Zhang, Ryan Howell, and Ravi Iyerc, "Engagement with natural beauty moderates the positive relation between connectedness with nature and psychological well-being" Journal of Environmental Psychology 38:55-63 (2014). ] [384: For more on how flocking birds behave as ‘active matter’ see Gabriel Polkin, “The Physics of Life,” Nature 529 (January 7, 2016). ]

When a beaver uses tree branches and tree trunks to build a dam for water control and a den for protection, everyone would agree that this is part of nature. We would think the same for bird nests, beehives, and so on. The Australian male brush turkey covers its eggs with just enough of the right amount and type of material to let the decomposing substances warm the nest so that the eggs can hatch without having being constantly warmed by a parent turkey sitting on the nest. So why is a house built out of wood by humans not equally a part of nature? And why is a brick made from clay by human hands somehow not natural? Our world is filled with inexhaustible beauty and wonder, an evolutionary masterpiece, begetting and changing life in constant involvement and interaction with its surroundings. An innate human affiliation and bond with nature exists, referred to as “biophilia.”

Although humans have brought gigantic and long-term changes to the earth, one thing has not changed—whether we fully understand it or not. There are strong positive effects from humans seeing and interacting with other living organisms—wherever we experience them. It should not be much of a surprise that we have an affinity for the forms of life with which we co-evolved. Researchers at the University of Exeter Medical School (England)

analyzed mental health data from 10,000 city dwellers and used high-resolution mapping to track where the subjects had lived over 18 years. They found that people living near more green space reported less mental distress, even after adjusting for income, education, and employment (all of which are also correlated with health). In 2009 a team of Dutch researchers found a lower incidence of 15 diseases—including depression, anxiety, heart disease, diabetes, asthma, and migraines—in people who lived within about a half mile of green space. And in 2015 an international team overlaid health questionnaire responses from more than 31,000 Toronto residents onto a map of the city, block by block. Those living on blocks with more trees showed a boost in heart and metabolic health equivalent to what one would experience from a $20,000 gain in income. Lower mortality and fewer stress hormones circulating in the blood have also been connected to living close to green space.[endnoteRef:385] [385: Florence Williams, “This is your brain on nature,” National Geographic (January 2015). ]

The quintessentially human-created environment of the city, with acres of asphalt, canyons of steel, brick, and concrete, thousands of car engines and concentrated, teeming masses of millions of humans, is also natural, constructed by a natural species. Cities are also places where wildlife exists, and ecosystems in their own right. After 14 years of tracking the more than 2,000 coyotes which are thriving on the streets of Chicago, ecologist Stanley Gehrt, has reversed earlier assumptions about the expected dearth of wildlife, “When we started, we didn’t think there was going to be much of a study there…We were wrong.”[endnoteRef:386] And within the confines of New York City, one can find deer, owls, coyotes, turtles, opossum, egrets, herons, falcons, bats, a number of aquatic animal species, and many different insects and plants. [386: Kate Baggeley, “Cities are Brimming with Wildlife Worth Studying,” ScienceNews, vol. 187 No 1. (Jan 10, 2015). ]

Indeed, the more we find out from the new field of urban ecology, and take seriously the premise that urban landscapes can be an opportunity for wildlife as much as a challenge, the more surprises turn up. The new scientific technique of stable isotope analysis allows a distinction to be made between whether the diets of urban animals have switched from their normal prey to human food waste. Though it varies from location to location, the coyotes of Chicago still primarily eat what they always have: rodents, other small mammals and wild fruit.

This leads us to a wider fact: animals and insects play an important role in cleaning up after humans. As reported in research undertaken on the grassy median areas between major streets in New York City, significant waste food consumption was undertaken by insects in a manner unnoticed but beneficial to humans, “When vertebrates also had access to food, more was removed, indicating that arthropods and vertebrates compete for littered food. We estimate that arthropods alone could remove 4–6.5 kg [about 9 to 14 pounds] of food per year in a single street median, reducing its availability to less desirable fauna such as rats…Even small green spaces such as street medians provide ecosystem services that may complement those of larger habitat patches across the urban landscape.”[endnoteRef:387] [387: E. Youngsteadt, R. Henderson, A. Savage, A. Ernst, R. Dunn, and S. Frank, “Habitat and species identity, not diversity, predict the extent of refuse consumption by urban arthropods.” Global Change Biology. (2014) doi: 10.1111/gcb.12791. ]

The important observation is that there is such a thing as urban ecology, that it is an outcome of how humans live, and forms an important potential component toward overcoming rifts and disturbances that arise in the interactions of humans with the rest of the natural world. In a future ecological society, a key objective for urban planners (which means all the people who live there) will be to enhance and expand the spaces where humans, other animals and plants co-exist, even in highly urbanized areas where humans predominate. This will mean reconfiguring cities and raises questions about their location and size as well as about the role that capitalism has played in promoting public policies and private actions that place profits ahead of the protection of nature, including humans.

Plants and soils—the basis for all terrestrial life. Photosynthesis of green plants is the basis for life on land. But how do plants obtain the other components necessary for life? Plant roots occupy a complicated habitat—the soil—alive with billions of microorganisms and other subsurface dwellers. Soil contains a range of microenvironments full of assorted nutrients and organic molecules, and with varying water and temperature conditions: “The thin layer of soil covering the earth’s surface represents the difference between survival and extinction for most terrestrial life.”[endnoteRef:388] [388: John Doran, “Soil health and global sustainability: translating science into practice.” Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 88(2):119–27 (2002). ]

Despite the importance of soil to life, unless one is a farmer or gardener, soil is perhaps the most under-appreciated natural resource. With a forest’s many rich human cultural and historical associations, the soil below is not as evocative, or as emotive as the breathtaking vista of a mountain range, or the easily appreciated beauty of lakes, rivers, prairie vegetation and wildlife. While many might not appreciate the soil as one of the earth’s keystone natural resources, most of the chemicals in our bodies are those that plants drew out of the soil in order to grow and reproduce. It is the same for all land animals, even strict carnivores.

Nature as non-“pristine.” We often think of “pristine wilderness ” as an area untouched by human intrusion. But what are taken to be virgin forests or a “pristine wilderness” is in reality the result of disturbance and change caused by humans. The original forests, even including rainforests that have provided habitat for humans for thousands of years, have been altered. Deposition of airborne pollutants such as mercury from coal-fired power plants has changed forest soils even in remote locations. There is no longer a “pristine wilderness” undisturbed by humans anywhere in the world. But if we are a part of nature as much as any other organism, then even to talk of a “pristine” environment at all is misrepresentative.

What we can describe are local ecologies that have been more altered versus those that have been less altered, those appropriated for direct human use, or those that have reverted or evolved toward a new or different state following such disturbance. The forest that one might enjoy walking through in the eastern U.S. is likely second or third growth that is very different from the colonial or pre-colonial forest. Years after clear-cut logging, a second growth forest may contain a large number of species of plants and animals, but usually they are less biologically diverse than the original forest because recovery to something resembling a pre-altered state of biodiversity requires a very long time and may not be possible.

Human existence is intertwined with innumerable other organisms—their presence, health, activity, and balance. These include those that live within us and help our digestive system and perform many other roles that keep people healthy to the billions of organisms living on our skin. Indeed, the fact that the human microbiome life-forms, that we could not live healthy lives without, contribute about as many cells to our bodies as we have human ones,[footnoteRef:18] raises the question of whether we are not better described not as a single organism but rather a sentient collection of organisms functioning together for mutual benefit. [18: There are estimates of from 10 to 1,000 cells of other organisms living on and within us per human cell. These appear to be overestimates: see Ron Sender, Shai Fuchs Ron Milo, "Revised estimates for the number of human and bacteria cells in the body,” bioRxiv beta website (not peer reviewed), doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/036103, downloaded from http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/01/06/036103.full.pdf on July 13, 2016.]

Classification of plants and animals has always been as much a political and historical question as it is scientific. One only has to peruse the history of botany or read of the trips of people such as Captain Cook to recognize that science and the “discovery” and cataloging of plants and animals were very much in the service of the emerging capitalist state and empire. Identifying non-human creatures as animals—without using any qualifier and implying something very different from humans—is both a distortion of reality and an obstacle to seeing the world as it actually exists.

Humans and other animals. Humans are clearly different from other animals, but then again cows are different from horses and worms are different from insects. We are different from other animals not just because we use tools, for some other animals do that as well. Ravens, chimpanzees, elephants, and other animals have been observed to use simple tools such as sticks or rocks to access food and water and for other purposes. Humans also share certain behaviors, once thought to be exclusively human, with some other animals such as grieving over the death of a family member or friend or being upset when treated unfairly.

Even uniquely human abilities, such conscious decision-making and appreciation of past and future are being found to be not as unique as once postulated. Reflecting on recent research findings, Charles Siebert, writing in the New York Times notes, “…advanced neurological and genetic research … has shown that animals like chimpanzees, orcas and elephants possess self-awareness, self-determination and a sense of both the past and future. They have their own distinct languages, complex social interactions and tool use. They grieve and empathize and pass knowledge from one generation to the next. The very same attributes, in other words, that we once believed distinguished us from other animals.”[endnoteRef:389] [389: Charles Siebert, “Should a Chimp Be Able to Sue Its Owner?,” The New York Times (April 27, 2014). ]

Following the report of the newly discovered remains of what has been named Homo naledi, primatologist Frans de Waal commented that “[t]he discovery of these fossils is a major paleontological breakthrough. Why not seize this moment to overcome our anthropocentrism and recognize the fuzziness of the distinctions within our extended family? We are one rich collection of mosaics, not only genetically and anatomically, but also mentally.”[endnoteRef:390] [390: Frans de Waal, “Who Apes Whom,” The New York Times (September 15, 2015). ]

Biological anthropologist Barbara King echoes the newness of the idea and its recent scientific investigation, that animals other than humans express emotions such as grief. After watching a dolphin mother stay close to her dead calf for two days in the waters off Greece’s Amvrakikos Gulf, King commented:

Was the dolphin mother truly grieving for her dead calf? A decade ago I would have said no. As a biological anthropologist who studies animal cognition and emotion, I would have recognized the poignancy of the mother’s behavior but resisted interpreting it as mourning. Like most animal behaviorists, I was trained to describe such reactions in neutral terms such as “altered behavior in response to another’s death”…Tradition dictates that it is softhearted and unscientific to project human emotions such as grief onto other animals.[endnoteRef:391] [391: Barbara King, “When Animals Mourn,” Scientific American 309 (1) (July 2013). ]

Having seen similar responses in other species however, King concludes that there can be an evolutionary advantage, or trade-off, to the development of behavior that at first glance appears to make an animal more vulnerable to predators and sap vital energy. Emotional distress can be an adaptation which promotes better cooperation and thereby survival. “What is adaptive, then, may not be grief itself but instead the strong positive emotions experienced before grief comes into the picture, shared between two or more living animals whose level of cooperation in nurturing or resource-acquisition tasks is enhanced by these feelings.”[endnoteRef:392] [392: Ibid.]

Although humans manifestly share important characteristics with other animals, they are nevertheless unique in significant ways, particularly in the development and use of complex language. This made it possible to learn and transmit to future generations the knowledge to produce and use increasingly sophisticated tools and machines, allowing humans to shape their local, regional and global environments in more conscious and planned ways than other animals. While other animals seem capable of expressing grief, we are the only living species that anticipates death (as far as we currently know) and weaves the symbolism of it deeply into our art, poetry, writing, and music, with evidence for ceremonial activities around gravesites one of the earliest examples of human culture. Humans plan future actions with each other—sometimes far into the future. We cooperate in complex ways that other animals cannot, we record and are aware of the distant past and a future, which allows for the perpetuation and evolution of culture. Nevertheless, humans are still part of the large family of life, and certainly not something standing aside from, or above, other species.

Ideology, ecology, and humans. Those attempting to justify colonial invasions have promulgated the idea that the colonized land was undisturbed and free of human interference. The notion that newly “discovered” land was “untouched by man,” furnished the colonialists and imperialists of history and today’s proponents of capitalist development with a rationale for the essential rightness of their conquests. If the lands of the “New” World, Australia, Africa, Palestine were virgin, primeval, under-utilized or not “improved” by the humans already living there, then why not put them to good use through occupation, conquest and suppression of the native population, along with the exploitation of the “natural” world for profit?

As environmental historian Carolyn Merchant points out, an important part of the concept of “recovery” of the biblical garden, planted by God but lost in the Fall, is that it can serve as “a powerful narrative, functioning as ideology and legitimation for settlement of the New World, while capitalism, science, and technology provided the means of transforming the material world.”[endnoteRef:393] [393: Carolyn Merchant, “Reinventing Eden” in “Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature,” William Cronon (ed) Norton, New York (1996). ]

But contrary to the myth that the original colonial invaders to the America’s only found small wandering bands of Neolithic hunter-gatherers and mysteriously collapsed empires, the Americas, North and South, were densely populated and highly developed societies. An estimated 100 million people lived in the pre-colonial Americas, subsisting in a full range of sophisticated and highly developed societies, with their own transportation networks, trade routes connecting both continents, legal systems and political decision-making processes. Historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, notes the intimate and long-term connection between some of the societies in the Americas, their cultivation of corn and the growth of complex social systems integrated across space and time:

Unlike most grains, corn cannot grow wild and cannot exist without attentive human care…Corn, being a summer crop, can tolerate no more than twenty to thirty days without water and even less time in high temperatures. Many of the areas where corn was the staple were arid or semiarid, so its cultivation required the design and construction of complex irrigation systems – in place at least two thousand years before Europeans knew the Americas existed. The proliferation of agriculture and [the varieties developed from wild species] could not have occurred without centuries of cultural and commercial interchange among the peoples of North, Central, and South America, whose traders carried seeds as well as other goods and cultural practices.[endnoteRef:394] [394: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, (Beacon Press, Boston, (2014):16.]

In reality, well before the Europeans started describing it as an untouched wilderness ripe for taming the land of the “new” world was significantly and consciously altered by its many millions of inhabitants. As William Cronon wrote in Changes in the Land, a work of environmental history studying pre- and post-colonial New England:

Indians had lived on the continent for thousands of years, and had to a significant extent modified it to their purposes…The choice is not between two landscapes, one with and one without human influence; it is between two human ways of living, two ways of belonging to an ecosystem.[endnoteRef:395] [395: William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, Hill and Wang Publ. (2003). ]

As Cronon goes on to argue, American Indians radically altered the ecology of New England well before the Puritans arrived and did so in conjunction with how they lived, which “could sometimes go so far as to remove the forest altogether, with deleterious effects for trees and Indians.”[endnoteRef:396] What is most important, is to view humans and the physical, cultural and economic environment within which they exist as a set of continual exchanges that are in constant feedback with each other, producing new possibilities and contradictions. As Cronin points out: [396: Ibid. ]

An ecological history begins by assuming a dynamic and changing relationship between environment and culture, one as apt to produce contradictions as continuities. Moreover, it assumes that the interactions are dialectical. Environment may initially shape the range of choices available to a people at a given moment, but then culture reshapes the environment in responding to those choices. The reshaped environment presents a new set of possibilities for cultural reproduction, thus setting up a new cycle of mutual determination between people and the environment.[endnoteRef:397] [397: Ibid. ]

Societal/ecological collapse vs. resiliency and change

A common trope argues that humans have primarily had only a negative impact on the natural world, even to the point of causing societies to collapse, at least partially because of harm they did to the environment.[endnoteRef:398] If numerous previous human societies caused such damage as to lead to their collapse, the blame for the incredible ecological damage currently occurring must be a replay of such human foibles. This conveniently blames all humans for severe ecological damage in the past and relating it to the present bypasses the culpability of the capitalist economic system. [398: For example, see Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, Penquin Books (2005). ]

There are many instances of dramatic changes to the environment and societies, and the causes are certainly complex. However, a growing body of research takes exception to that approach. It explores historical-cultural-ecological interactions and what happened to societies that superficially appear to have changed drastically, even “collapsed.” But, Patricia McAnany and Norman Yoffee summarize much of this work as follows:

When closely examined, the overriding human story is one of survival and regeneration. Certainly crises existed, political forms changed, and landscapes were altered, but rarely did societies collapse in an absolute and apocalyptic sense. Even the examples of societal collapse often touted in the media—Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Norse Greenland, Puebloan U.S. Southwest, and the Maya Lowlands—are also cases of societal resilience when examined carefully…[endnoteRef:399] [399: Op. cit., Patricia McAnany and Norman Yoffee, "Why We Question Collapse and Study Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire,” (2010). ]

Some indigenous peoples, faced with pressure from climate change as well as those wishing to exploit resources in their lands, have responded by expressing the unity of nature. A Yanomami leader and shaman from Brazil, Davi Kopenawa, offers such a perspective:

When they speak about the forest, white people often use the word “environment”. What they refer to in this way is what remains of everything they have destroyed so far. I don’t like this word. The Earth cannot be split apart as if the forest were just a leftover part. With leftover trees and leftover rivers, leftover game, fish and humans who live there, its breath of life will become too short. That is why we are worried. We shamans simply say we are protecting nature as a whole thing. We defend the forests’ trees, mountains and rivers, its fish, game, spirits and human inhabitants. We even defend the land of the white people beyond it and all who live there.[endnoteRef:400] [400: John Vidal, "People in the west live squeezed together, frenzied as wasps in the nest," The Guardian (December 30, 2014). ]

There is clearly a lot to learn from this approach to nature. But the argument here is most certainly not that indigenous people are somehow closer to nature. Indigenous cultural attitudes of foragers or agricultural village societies toward the natural world stemmed from the way in which those societies depend directly on their knowledge of nature in order to stay alive. Historically, resource use was relatively limited, with low productivity and people could always move somewhere else if life became too difficult. Long lasting indigenous cultures evolved over time—by trial and error, paying attention to lessons learned, and transmitting successful strategies to future generations—in ways needed to interact and co-exist with the rest of the natural world in order to perpetuate their societies. These have tended to be the nomadic or rural ones.

What happened to the giant empires and city-states that have left their mark in the magnificent architecture often built by the slave labor of the peoples they conquered, and the intricate and incredible artifacts, pottery and jewelry of their many varied cultures? Societies such as the Maya were frequently held together by fragile alliances and subjugation of conquered peoples. When such a society “collapses,” the upper layers of the hierarchies disappear. It was this, rather than climate change or the supposed predisposition of humans to act foolishly and wastefully that resulted in the downfall of large empires. After the collapse of the power structure that held together the classical Mayan civilization—people moved to new locations and cities were abandoned. But the Mayan people, their language and most of their culture continued. What disappeared were the upper classes and their formal alliances across geographic areas.

The consensus among scientists studying changes in ancient societies is that human culture and society have proven remarkably resilient. When problems occurred, such as soil erosion in the Mediterranean, people changed practices and adapted to the new situation in ways that perpetuated their societies. Those types of creative responses in antiquity as well as current local indigenous knowledge and ways of thinking about our relationship to nature need to be combined with scientific knowledge freed of the exploitative utilitarian perspective of profit making and the consequent actions which have such deleterious effects on our physical environment and our culture. This will provide the opportunity for human societies to thoughtfully plan and coordinate our interactions with the world around us and with each other, in order to be ecological and sustainable stewards of the future on a global scale. Humans are, quite simply, natural, members of the wide community of organisms we call life. As Frans de Waal has written,

There is nothing wrong with the recognition that we are apes—smart ones perhaps, but apes nonetheless. As an ape lover, I can’t see this comparison as insulting. We are endowed with the mental powers and imagination to get under the skin of other species. The more we succeed, the more we will realize that we are not the only intelligent life on earth.[endnoteRef:401] [401: Frans de Waal, “What I Learned From Tickling Apes,” The New York Times (April 8, 2016). ]

Humans are but one form of life in the midst of many, and not the only intelligent one. The more we learn about the history of different cultures the more the idea that humans are innately destructive as a species is undermined. The more we learn about the biology and behavior of other species, the more the idea that we are separate and completely distinct from them is overturned. Our intellectual abilities combined with our potential for cooperative and conscious, planned actions over long time scales give us a unique opportunity among species: to think through our interactions with the environment in which we live, to experiment in order to find the most ecologically sound processes and procedures, and to rationally regulate our interactions with the biosphere as we go about providing ourselves with life’s needs. As we will see in the following chapter, our human characteristics in no way preclude our ability to do so.

Chapter 6. Does “human nature” prevent system change?

Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature. Yet, how can any one speak of it today, with every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed?

—Emma Goldman[endnoteRef:402] [402: Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays, accessed June 8, 2015 at http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-anarchism-and-other-essays. ]

Those who want to make a revolutionary change to create an ecologically healthy society based on equality and social justice are confronted by what many think of as a common sense assumption: a new society, operating on economic, political, and social principles and mechanisms that differ from those of capitalism and promoting truly progressive values can’t happen because it would go against a fixed human nature. The mantra of those opposing change, as well as many who might want and benefit from change but don’t believe it’s possible is, “you just can’t change human nature.” Those promoting this point of view argue that there exist unchangeable human behavioral traits that just happen to fit perfectly with capitalist society, but would make any future society that has different principles, ways of making decisions, and social norms impossible either to create or to maintain over the long term. Our brains are, in the appropriately technologically derived metaphor of a society dominated by the achievements of the computer age, somehow “hard wired” for capitalism.[endnoteRef:403] [403: Each technological era has mapped its most decisive inventions onto the infrastructure and operation of the brain. From brain as pumps, to steam engines to telegraph exchanges, we now have brains not merely analogous, but essentially equivalent to the operation of a computer’s Central Processing Unit; a string of electrical impulses of 1s and 0s, with immutable wiring mechanism’s impervious to change, evolution or development. ]

The notion that human nature is frozen in place is simply another way to justify the status quo. It is an argument used by ruling elites throughout history—what better way to promote the system you run than by claiming it’s the natural outgrowth of human behavior? Capitalism is here forever because humans are, by their nature, individualistic, greedy, acquisitive, and competitive in our attempts to maximize our insatiable appetite for material fulfillment. The long march of human progress has, by this narrative, reached its apex with the development and spread of capitalism and the overthrow of previous economic and political systems. Apologists for capitalism argue that there is no alternative, that capitalism, to quote a famous paper by U.S. State Department official Francis Fukuyama after the collapse of the Soviet Union, represents “the end of history.”[endnoteRef:404] It is argued that an equitable, just, and ecological society is not possible—as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously put it, There is No Alternative (TINA) to neoliberal capitalism. [404: Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History,” The National Interest (Summer 1989).  ]

There are unchanging basic human survival instincts, such as the urge to obtain food to eat and to seek shelter from the elements, instincts we share with all living creatures. However, the group of characteristics and traits that have commonly been referred to as “human nature” has changed a great deal during the history of humankind. When social systems changed, many habits and behavioral traits also changed, as people adapted to new social structures and customs. The wide range of human characteristics, traits, and behaviors runs the gamut from the killing or torture of others, greed, selfishness, individualism, and competitiveness, to cooperation, reciprocity, empathy, altruism and the desire to be treated, and treat others, fairly. While all of these potentials are within us, different societies have encouraged and rewarded some of them, while suppressing others.

Critics of change which would replace current neoliberal capitalism go further however when they argue that even if a successful revolution takes place—one based on ideas of solidarity, reciprocity, cooperation, equality and genuine democracy—semi-permanent leaders will become entrenched and inequality will inevitably re-emerge. Eventually those leaders, driven by ambition and a lust for personal glory, wealth, or status, will succumb to the temptations of power, gradually subverting the high ideals they had once promised to uphold.

Just look, they say, at the deterioration of the Soviet Union into a despotic regime. Tyrannies will arise, by their reasoning, even out of well-meaning attempts to create just and humane societies because people are naturally selfish and wish to dominate others if given the chance. Of course, they are thinking of how people behave in this particular economic/social system and then generalize the common ways of relating to others and the environment as universal human characteristics. But capitalism, a form of social organization based on aggressive competition to maximize profit, requires the inculcation into the culture of an acceptance that humans are pre-programed to be selfish, greedy, and determined to rise to the top through ruthless self-advancement. Therefore, we can’t be blamed for looking out for number one; capitalism is here because it fits perfectly with our “human nature.” In this view, capitalism is not only the pinnacle of human social organization, but it can’t be overthrown or fundamentally altered because to do so would result in an “unnatural” form of human society for which humans are not well fitted and so will inevitably end in totalitarianism. However, the actual history of our species, as opposed to the values of our current economic system, illustrates a very different, and much more hopeful reality.

Education reformer John Dewey saw this more hopeful possibility when he wrote in The Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences in 1932:

The present controversies between those who assert the essential fixity of human nature and those who believe in a great measure of modifiability center chiefly around the future of war and the future of a competitive economic system motivated by private profit. It is justifiable to say without dogmatism that both anthropology and history give support to those who wish to change these institutions. It is demonstrable that many of the obstacles to change which have been attributed to human nature are in fact due to the inertia of institutions and to the voluntary desire of powerful classes to maintain the existing status.[endnoteRef:405] [405: John Dewey, “Human Nature,” in The Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences vol. 7:536, New York: Macmillan (1937). ]

For any society to continue functioning over long term, traits that fit within and supports that society’s social and political organization must be constantly reinforced and taught formally and informally to the next generation, this is part of the social reproduction of society. Certain social traits, values and behaviors that promote the society’s structure and values are brought to the fore, while others are minimized. In this chapter we will compare hunter-gatherer and other pre-capitalist societies—in which humans have lived for almost our entire existence—with capitalist societies, which have existed for only the last 500 years.

“Human nature” in pre-capitalist societies

Hunter and gatherers

Homo sapiens, our species of modern humans, emerged 150,000 to 200,000 years ago. Certain traits, some found in closely related species, are thought to have been critical for the evolution of humans and their subsequent development. For example, the desire for just outcomes in humans and a number of non-human species is indicated by a profound sense of wanting to treat and be treated equally. Protesting unequal treatment and trying to equalize outcomes, are examples of this phenomenon.

Cooperation among members of our particular species, Homo sapiens, was absolutely critical for its early survival and growth in numbers, its success in living across six continents, and the development of cultures and more complex societies. This may have been especially important because human babies are completely dependent on adults for such a long period after birth. “It was cooperation, … whether in the form of monogamous pairs, nuclear families or tribes, that enabled humans to succeed when all our fossil ancestors and cousins went extinct. In fact, cooperation may be the greatest skill we have acquired during the past two million years—one that enabled our young genus to survive through periods of environmental change and stress and one that may well determine our geologically young species’ future.”[endnoteRef:406] Over the millennia, members of our species, the only remaining member of the Homo genus, demonstrated a high degree of cooperation and adaptability as they spread throughout most of the world, while Homo neanderthalensis, Homo erectus, and Homo habilis did not. [406: Blake Edgar, “Powers of Two,” Scientific American 311(3):62-67 (September, 2014). ]

As for fairness, researchers summarizing numerous studies conclude: "humans and other species seem to share basic [negative] reactions to inequity, which serve the need for sustained cooperation."[endnoteRef:407] [407: Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal, "Evolution of responses to (un)fairness," Science 346(6207):314- DOI: 10.1126/science.1251776 (October 17, 2014). ]

One of the earliest behavioral traits exhibited by infants is the desire to help others. A review of research on these early developments concludes:

Young children help those for whom they feel sympathy; they are not motivated by extrinsic rewards; and they are less concerned that they provide help than that the person in need be helped. Young children’s prosocial behavior is thus intrinsically motivated by a concern for the other’s welfare, which has its evolutionary roots in uniquely human forms of social and cultural interactions in which individuals are concerned about the well-being of those with whom they are interdependent.[endnoteRef:408] [408: Robert Hepach and Amrisha Vaish, “A New Look at Children’s Prosocial Motivation,” Infancy 18(1):67–90 (2013). ]

External rewards for helping others were found to be counterproductive. In a study in which twenty-month-olds helped an adult who had dropped a pen, those “who had previously received a material reward for their helping were subsequently less likely to help the adult as compared to children who had received either no reward or social praise.”[endnoteRef:409] [409: Ibid. ]

The evolutionary importance of cooperation is described in science journalist Stefan Klein’s writings on the evolutionary and social benefits of altruism in early human societies and how it relates to today:

[E]verything argues that our ancestors could only afford [the energy expenditure needed to maintain] their large brains once they had learned how to minimize the risks of existence by working together. Before they were smarter than their cousins the chimpanzees, they had to improve their cooperation. Intelligence, language, culture—we owe all of these accomplishments to our sympathy and our ability to put ourselves in another’s place. We humans became first the friendliest and then the most intelligent apes…Cooperation that went beyond the biological family became possible and necessary.[endnoteRef:410] [410: Stefan Klein, Survival of the Nicest: How Altruism Made us Human and Why it Pays to Get Along, The Experiment, New York:115 (2010). ]

Over the last ten thousand years an increasing number of societies have been based on agriculture, although semi-nomadic herding and hunting and gathering societies today still exist, even if they are simultaneously integrated into aspects of the commodity economy.

Studies of existing hunter-gatherer societies provide many insights into the ways humans lived for an overwhelming portion (around ninety-five percent) of the time since the emergence of our species. A number of studies from the 19th century to the present have focused on the !Kung (Khoisan or San) of southern Africa, who until very recently had hunted and gathered for tens of thousands of years. They have very high genetic diversity, believed to be a legacy of a once high population, which at one time may have been the largest human population. Tribes of the !Kung are believed to be humankind’s oldest continuously existing society. When living as nomads, groups such as the !Kung traditionally had a division of labor, with women doing most of the gathering—providing some two thirds of the calorie intake—and men doing most of the hunting but there was also a high level of equality between men and women. Marjory Shostak, who studied the !Kung, summarized her findings regarding the relationship between the sexes as follows:

Here in a society of ancient traditions, men and women live together in a non-exploitative manner, displaying a striking equality between the sexes…Other contemporary gathering and hunting societies have a similar high level of equality—higher at least than that of most agricultural or herding societies. This observation has led to the suggestion that the relations between the sexes that prevailed during the majority of human prehistory were comparable to those seen in the !Kung today.[endnoteRef:411] [411: Marjorie Shostak, Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman, Harvard University Press:213-214 (1981).  ]

This has been confirmed by other studies, such as those of the Mbendjele BaYaka in Central Africa and the Agta of the Philippines, showing that equality between men and women is indicated not only by day-to-day behavior but also by the social structure of the hunter-gatherer bands and their living arrangements.[endnoteRef:412] [412: M. Dyble, G. Salali, N. Chaudhary, A. Page, D. Smith, J. Thompson, L. Vinicius, R. Mace and A. B. Migliano, "Sex equality can explain the unique social structure of hunter-gatherer bands,” Science 348 (6236):796-798 (May 15, 2015). ]

The role and behavior of women in such societies created quite a stir among the early Europeans in what became Canada. In the early 17th century Paul Le Jeune, superior of the Jesuit mission at Quebec and spent many months in eastern Canada learning the language of the semi-nomadic foragers of the Montagnais-Naskapi in order to civilize them. He was horrified by the sexual freedom afforded to women and men in Montagnais society and describes one encounter:

I told him that it was not honorable for a woman to love anyone else except her husband, and that this evil being among them, he himself was not sure that his son, who was there present, was his son. He replied, “Thou hast no sense. You French people love only your own children; but we love all the children of our tribe” I began to laugh, seeing that he philosophized in horse and mule fashion.[endnoteRef:413] [413: Quoted in Eleanor Burke-Leacock, Myths of Male Dominance, Haymarket Books:50 (2008). ]

Studies of hunter gatherer societies have found that “[h]umility, humor, and strict protocols about distributing meat helped keep people on an even footing…!Kung people traditionally downplay their accomplishments: A hunter will say he’s caught only a small skinny animal, even if it’s big and meaty, and his comrades will agree.”[endnoteRef:414] Among the hunting gathering societies studied by anthropologists, “someone other than the successful hunter distribute[s] the meat.”[endnoteRef:415] The hunters of the !Kung “exchange arrows before they hunt. The owner of the arrow, not the bowman himself, gets the credit and decides how to distribute the meat while everyone looks on.”[endnoteRef:416] [414: Elizabeth Pennisi, "Our Egalitarian Eden," Science 344 (6186):824-825 (May 23, 2014). ] [415: Ibid. ] [416: Ibid. ]

Karl Polanyi got to the heart of the matter regarding hunting-gathering societies when he explained in 1944: “The outstanding discovery of recent historical and anthropological research is that man’s economy, as a rule, is submerged in his social relationships. He does not act so as to safeguard his individual interest in the possession of material goods; he acts so as to safeguard his social standing, his social claims, his social assets.” In such societies, the economy was a function of the social relations, and people were not allowed to profit from trading transactions.

Frans de Waal, professor of primate behavior at Emory University, emphasizes the significance of human concerns about safeguarding their social standing as follows:

These concerns over reputation could have been the primordial glue that enabled early Homo sapiens to stick together in ever larger societies. During much of human prehistory, our ancestors lived nomadic lives much like current hunter-gatherers. These modern peoples demonstrate a robust potential for peace and trade between communities, which suggests that early H. sapiens had these traits, too.[endnoteRef:417] [417: Frans de Waal, “All for One,” Scientific American 311(3):69-71 (September, 2014). ]

In addition to valuing social standing, gained by being helpful and cooperative, hunter-gatherer groups suppress characteristics that are advantageous under capitalism but are harmful to their society—individualism, selfishness, greed, competitiveness, and aggression. Characteristics such as these are counterproductive, even destructive, to the welfare of their societies. Instead, they encourage and reward those traits and behaviors necessary for the perpetuation of their way of life: caring, empathy, cooperation and sharing of food and other resources. There is nothing especially unusual or noble about behavior of people hunter-gatherer societies (or contemporary indigenous communities) being inherently more environmentally beneficial or socially just—such ways of behaving helped to maintain their societies and are a function of how they live.

The Neolithic Revolution and changes in societies

Giant climatic changes between 16,000-12,000 years ago saw the world warm, glaciers melt and retreat, and rising seas inundated vast areas of land. New groupings of plants spread with the creation of new biomes. Shortly following, beginning less than 10,000 years ago, during the last phase of the Neolithic period (the New Stone Age), a new form of human interaction with the natural world began with the domestication of animals and plants.

Planting food, corralling animals and relying on farming were revolutionary transformations in the human relationships with each other as well as the metabolism with the biosphere. Agriculture arose independently six or seven times between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago: in the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, China, Southeast Asia, and New Guinea. Most of the areas of origin led to secondary centers and the slow and uneven spread to other regions. The systems developed ranged from very partial reliance on domesticated animals and plants (while depending on hunting and gathering for the majority of sustenance) to pastoral societies (developed especially in grassland regions) to those predominately relying on crops, but those such as cassava, potatoes, and corn (maize) that can be planted (and the soil worked) with hoes, shovels, and planting sticks) to those that developed a simple plow (discussed in the next section).

All crop-raising agricultural societies needed some way of dealing with the plants already growing where they wanted to raise crops (what would nowadays be called “weeds”). One of the primary ways this was done was by converting patches of forest into land on which crops could be raised for a few years. This system lasted thousands of years in the tropics and forests of Eurasia. It is still practiced in a few tropical regions and is referred to as “slash and burn,” “shifting cultivation,” or “swidden-fallow” agriculture.

Even though the term sounds entirely destructive, traditional slash and burn agriculture operates on time scales of decades to allow for the forest to regrow and the land to rejuvenate. Rather than farmed fields surrounding permanent human habitation, in swidden-fallow agriculture land is cleared by felling trees and burning, in some locations with help of domesticated animals like pigs and goats eating the bark of trees before burning, in some places fire was set around trees in order to kill them and fell them later. After a few years of good harvests, soil fertility declines as the nutrients in the ash of the burnt trees is washed away or used by the plants. A community moves to burn new areas before returning some decades later, which makes for a social system requiring greater levels of organization and planning:

Communities that practice it today often have very complex systems that ensure that the forest around villages is used in a particular order. Some systems leave lands to regenerate for three to four decades, others reuse the same land within five to six years. Crops change year on year as the soil slowly degenerates. The complexity of these cycles means that occasionally the interval between one clearance of an area and the next use of land is longer than the lifetimes of the farmers. Those practicing slash and burn cultivation would have needed some form of social organization to coordinate their farming…Slash and burn agriculturalists carry over some of the other characteristics of hunter-gatherer communities, in particular a sense of collective work and common use of land.[endnoteRef:418] [418: Martin Empson, Land and Labour: Marxism, Ecology and Human Labor, Bookmarks, London:34-35 (2014). ]

Although requiring more labor to produce a given amount of food than hunting and gathering, swidden-fallow systems can produce more food per given area, thus supporting greater population densities. Although increasing density of population led to increasing intensification of agricultural production, greater amounts of total food available also caused an increase in local as well as global population. But villages were limited in size because of the need to have an large amount of land nearby—if using a 20 year fallow to allow regrowth and recovery, only approximately one-twentieth (1/20) of the land area will be used for growing crops at any one time. This system of farming did not generally produce enough of a surplus to feed large numbers of people in a single location, and as numbers grew people periodically split off to form new village communities. Although there were undoubtedly village leaders that were looked up to, using simple technologies to prepare the land for planting, such as the swidden-fallow system, did not provide a sufficient surplus of food to allow a dedicated non-farming layer of the population to develop.

“Human nature” in agricultural societies without classes

Pre-capitalist agricultural societies were highly varied and many groups of people practicing agriculture in areas such as isolated mountain valleys and in tropical forests grew food while continuing to hunt and gather. Some relied more on growing food than others. Such societies didn’t produce large food surpluses or population centers and therefore did not develop hierarchical class systems. This was the situation for many of the original inhabitants of what is now the United States and Canada. Although important changes had occurred from the era of strict hunting and gathering, human relations with each other their surrounding landscapes and resources were quite different from what exists today in capitalist societies.

Anthropologists in the 20th century studying still existing pre-capitalist societies, many of which were predominantly agricultural or practiced mixed agriculture and foraging, found that human relations and “human nature” differed markedly from the highly competitive, dog-eat-dog, selfish characteristics that have come to dominate in the capitalist period. The economics of these societies often take the form of reciprocity and redistribution. Trade existed but was not for personal gain. Agricultural land was neither privately owned nor could it be bought and sold. Instead, it was generally allocated and reallocated by village elders or councils of the community. Much of the food collected was redistributed at village ceremonial feasts. Leaders were often chosen based on their generosity and ability to provide for others, rather on than competency in warfare. There were wars and domination by local tyrants—these were not perfect societies—but the point is that people had different values, social mores, and “human natures.”

It was not so long ago—in the span of human existence—that the native peoples in much of North and South America had a very different consciousness from than that imposed by the invasions and conquests of the European armies and settlers. Although the Inca and Aztec empires existed at the time of first contact with Europeans, most peoples of the Americas lived in small settlements, practiced both agriculture and foraging for plants and animals, had ways of behaving that were similar to the pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer societies discussed earlier. Thus Christopher Columbus wrote after his first voyage to the West:

Nor have I been able to learn whether they held personal property, for it seemed to me that whatever one had, they all took shares of. . . .They are so ingenuous and free with all they have that no one would believe it who has not seen it; of anything they possess, if it be asked of them, they never say no; on the contrary, they invite you to share it and show as much love as if their hearts went with it.

According to William Brandon, a prominent historian of Native Americans:

Many travelers in the heart of America, the Indian world real before their eyes, echoed such sentiments year after year, generation after generation. These include observers of the most responsible sort, the missionary Du Tertre for example, writing from the Caribbean in the 1650s: ‘…they are all equal, without anyone recognizing any sort of superiority or any sort of servitude…Neither is richer or poorer than his companion and all unanimously limit their desires to that which is useful and precisely necessary, and are contemptuous of all other things, superfluous things, as not being worthy to be possessed...’”

And Montaigne wrote of three Native Americans who visited France in the late sixteenth century who were struck by the two opposing groups in France. “They had perceived there were men amongst us full gorged with all sorts of commodities and others which hunger-starved, and bare with need and povertie begged at their gates: and found it strange these moieties so needy could endure such an injustice, and they tooke not the others by the throte, or set fire on their house…”[endnoteRef:419] [419: William Brandon, The Last Americans: The Indians in American Culture, McGraw-Hill:4, 6, 292 (1974). ]

The European settlers in the thirteen colonies in what became the United States had no doubts about their superiority in every way over the “savage” Native Americans, many of whom practiced both agriculture based on corn (and beans and squash) as well as hunting and gathering. But an examination of the practices of the Iroquois Nations at that time provides evidence as to which society was savage. They had democracy involving not political parties but people’s participation in decision- making and in removing unsatisfactory officials. Women voted with the men and had special responsibilities in certain areas. Benjamin Franklin thought highly of Native-American councils and their decision-making: “All their Government is by Counsel of the Sages; there is no Force, there are no Prisons, no officers to compel Obedience, or inflict Punishment.” He also noted that

[a]ll of the Indians of North America not under the dominion of the Spaniards are in that natural state, being restrained by no laws, having no Courts, or Ministers of Justice, no Suits, no Prisons, no Governors vested with any Legal Authority. The Persuasion of Men distinguished by Reputation of Wisdom is the only means by which others are govern'd or rather led -- and the State of the Indians was probably the first State of all Nations.[endnoteRef:420] [420: Benjamin Franklin, cited in Bruce Johansen, Forgotten Founders: Benjamin Franklin, the Iroquois and the Rationale for the American Revolution, Gambit Incorporated (1982). Accessed January 19, 2015 at http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/6Nations/FF.pdf ]

At the same time, the so-called civilized settlers relied on white indentured servants and black slaves and severely constrained women’s rights. Amongst the colonists, it took another two and a half centuries after the pilgrims landed and a civil war to end slavery, and three centuries and an enduring and forceful movement for women to get the right to vote! 

Franklin wrote of the Native American’s disparaging thoughts of European civilization in words that mirrored the passage from Montaigne cited above: “The Care and Labour of providing for Artificial and Fashionable Wants, the sight of so many rich wallowing in Superfluous plenty, whereby so many are kept poor and distressed for Want, the Insolence of Office . . . and restraints of Custom, all contrive to disgust them [Indians] with what we call civil Society.”[endnoteRef:421] [421: Ibid. ]

Cities, city-states, empires and the development of classes

As the transition to agriculture and settled living in towns and villages took off, surpluses generated from year to year were marginal and would require careful management. With relatively slim surpluses, it would have been beneficial to have some more centralized accounting apparatus with a few individuals. Though collective leadership developed more often than individual, perhaps those known as good farmers or generous people were designated to look after the all-important food supplies. The more that certain foods such as grains were adapted to long-term storage, more people could live together and settlements grew, eventually coalescing into towns and cities. Thus the greater the need for storage methods and a layer of non-farmers to plan for the use and distribution of the surplus, any necessary public works to assist cultivation and the setting of social norms and values. With so little control over nature people looked to priests, those families who were better at farming and looking after supplies and religious figures for guidance in appeasing deities and interpreting the weather for all-important signs of good planting or harvesting days. Gift giving, an important socially cohesive feature of many hunter-gatherer communities that stress the importance of generosity and mutually cooperative self-help can turn into its opposite and become exploitative under the right conditions:

Gift giving was traditionally an egalitarian form of mutual exchange. But if the gift giver becomes wealthy while the receiver is without property, it eventually becomes impossible for the receiver to reciprocate. In such conditions, the gift giver can easily become an exploiter or a tax collector. A chief who wields little or no authority in a foraging band can later turn into a priest or a bureaucrat standing over the rest of society once classes emerge. And a man who owns a few heads of cattle or a fertile patch of land can, under the right conditions, become a wealthy and powerful landlord.[endnoteRef:422] [422: Smith, Sharon. Women and Socialism: Essays on Women's Liberation (Kindle Locations 1048-1052). Haymarket Books. Kindle Edition. ]

It is when this more socially privileged stratum of people begins to identify their own interests (in acquiring more wealth and status) with the interests of the entire community that they develop into a social class. At that point, the interests of this proto-ruling elite diverge from the interests of everyone else, as they want to force increases in productivity by those laboring directly on the land, an increase in land area (through conquest) and labor force (slavery, kidnapping). All these are beneficial to the upper echelons of society and so they forcibly and ideologically seek to reorient society toward those goals.

Low productivity agriculture required large amounts of human and animal labor to provide large surpluses. But the surplus food was sufficient to allow for the construction of religious, ceremonial, and military buildings to house the elite. Kidnapping and conquest of other peoples helped solve problems of poor harvests or a shortage of human labor. Leaders of these class societies frequently extended their reach through alliances with, or conquest of, neighboring towns and tribes or through assimilation of neighboring peoples. The empires—held together by force and political alliances, usually developed a system of writing for communication and to document tributes, alliances and transactions. And the elite classes, with their desire to extract as much surplus production as possible had dramatically different interests than the farmers who worked so hard to produce the surplus.

The significance of the plow

Along the flood plains of the great rivers of Mesopotamia larger population densities developed based around crops and the annual river flooding and, later, irrigation channels. People in this region had been gathering wild grains such as barley, oats, and wheat. These hunter-gatherers stored grains in home and village granaries, and eventually cultivation began, perhaps after noticing seeds germinating and growing near a granary. This in turn then led to selection of the traits that were desired by these beginning farmers, such as the plants holding onto their seeds when mature (instead of shattering and scattering seed) so they could be more efficiently harvested. A momentous technology was developed that made it possible to farm the larger areas of land needed to support greater concentrations of people and non-farmers. A way was needed to prepare the ground for growing small seeded grain crops—breaking up the soil, killing or suppressing weeds, and sometimes to incorporate the seeds into the soil for better germination. The earliest form of farming equipment used for this purpose is the ard, or scratch plow, pulled by domesticated draft animals. This was a crucial invention that allowed fields to be prepared for growing small seeded grains derived from domesticated grass species—such as wheat, barley, oats and rye in the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia and in what is now Turkey, rice in Asia, and teff in northeastern Africa in what is now Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Parallel to the domestication of animals capable of pulling it, the ard developed first in Mesopotamia in the late Neolithic period before its use eventually spread to Asia and Europe. Unlike the more efficient plough, which was invented later and turns over the earth to create furrows for planting while burying weeds to decompose and help fertilize the ground, the ard is a much simpler but still highly significant piece of technology for areas of the world growing crops that could not be reasonably grown using digging sticks, hoes, mattocks (something like a pickaxe) or spades. Draught animals dragged the ard through the ground to create scratches in cleared land a few inches to a foot deep.

Agriculture based on implements such as the ard allowed the growth of more settled and larger permanent communities in early villages. Yuval Harari suggests once there are more around 150 people living in the same community some leadership or more formal decision-making process is needed, because it becomes impossible to informally organize activities needed for life.[endnoteRef:423] [423: Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A brief history of humankind, Harper (2015). ]

And wherever new farming techniques with greater productivity resulted in production of significant amounts of surplus food—a prerequisite for hierarchies and classes to develop—there eventually grew a layer of non-farmers: full-time craftsmen, merchants, priests, civil servants, soldiers, kings, queens or other royal figureheads and families. Some societies, but by no means all, developed writing and metalworking as they grew into larger units, kingdoms and empires.

The division into different classes in such societies varied over time and place, but began with the rise of agriculture, the lowest rungs occupied by slaves, lower castes, serfs or peasants. This is the era in which the condition of women changed dramatically as well. While a sexual division of labor existed in hunter-gatherer societies, it was not predicated on a system of second-class status for women but rather was often based on substantial equality between the sexes. The roles of women and men were seen as complementary and equally necessary and therefore, while some hunter-gatherer societies did exhibit inequality between the status of men and women, unlike class societies this was far from a universal attribute. But in agricultural societies based on the plow pulled by animals, as men became the field workers and produces, women were more removed from productive activities and existed within a new social structure of oppression focused on reproduction of the next generation of workers: the family unit, where monogamy (for the woman) and the dominance of the man was enforced.[footnoteRef:19] Before spreading through these societies, initially, this was even more pronounced in the families of the ruling elite, as home-life revolved more and more around reproduction to maintain wealth and status and the home changed from a unit of production to one of consumption and reproduction. [19: ]

The advantage of more reliable and greater food supplies came with disadvantages. Skeletal remains indicate that people in agricultural societies were not as well nourished as hunter-gatherers, who ate a much wider variety of foods, their height and life expectancy declined and they had to work significantly more hours per week in the fields than they ever had to when collecting roots, seeds, berries and nuts.[footnoteRef:20] As a result of declines in height and general nutrition, along with the negative impact on women and the rise of social hierarchies, there were many drawbacks to those societies that developed to rely exclusively on farming, especially in regions using the ard plow. The innovation and spread of the this technology to allow for primitive plowing of land for those crops and locations that needed it could not overcome the crisis of food production as towns and cities formed and grew: [20: ]

[S]ystems based on fallowing and animal-drawn cultivation using the ard were hardly more productive than the slash-and-burn systems they replaced [although they allowed the growth of high-starch grain crops that could not be raised in slash and burn systems using hoes]. Therefore they did not put an end to the crisis that began at the end of the Neolithic epoch in the temperate regions undergoing deforestation. This crisis was continually apparent throughout antiquity in a chronic lack of lands and provisions. It was also apparent in the constant difficulty of extracting the surplus necessary to feed the non-agricultural population and supply nascent cities. The crisis formed the backdrop to the agrarian and food question during the whole of antiquity.[endnoteRef:424] [424: Marcel Mazoyer & Laurence Roudart, A History of World Agriculture: from the Neolithic age to the current crisis, Earthscan, London:345 (2006). ]

As population grew this lead to the need to expand the area under production or to conquer other peoples in order to extract greater quantities of surplus (tribute) for use of the non-farming classes in the center.

So why did all this happen? No one sat down and thought, “wouldn’t it be a great idea to leave our egalitarian communities behind, where we work few hours, and spend most of our time relaxing or engaged in creative cultural pursuits rather than hunting or gathering.” No one thought, “wouldn’t it be great to switch to the backbreaking labor of farming.” And no one thought “wouldn’t it be wonderful to have taskmasters to force us to work and to take a portion of our food.” The changes outlined above took place over thousands of years and played out in a variety of ways. They occurred in response to the problems that people faced, such as population growth, as well as to the opportunities that presented themselves, perhaps such as changing climate, and the realization that harvested wild wheat would reseed itself when dropped near the village (or home) granary.

There is no pre-destined line progressing from egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies through mixed agricultural-hunting and gathering societies to city and state agriculture-based class ones, to the modern triumph of capitalism. Human history is far more contingent and dependent on the people alive at the time and the decisions they made in the specific ecological, technical, historical and cultural contexts.

Capitalism & changes to “human nature”

Over the centuries, empires such as those of Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, the Incas, and the Aztecs were dissipated by a variety of forces, discussion of which are beyond the scope of this work. The Qing dynasty in China, founded by the Manchus, was greatly weakened by the time capitalist relations arrived, at first by trade for goods wanted by Europeans such as silk and porcelain. The Opium Wars of the mid-19th century, in which Britain successfully forced China to accept opium imports—needed to help Britain balance its trade with China—and in the process further weakened an already weak Qing dynasty. Most of the world’s people lived in small villages and towns and grew crops and raised animals on small land holdings. Numerous hunting-gathering societies still existed as well as those that depended to varying degrees on both hunting and gathering and agriculture.

Relations among people and their interaction with the rest of the natural world changed dramatically as economic and social relations morphed into what became capitalism. Private property, money, and trade for the purpose of immediate gain came to the forefront, reciprocal obligations were eliminated, and social relations eventually became a reflection of the needs of society’s capitalist economics. All of these behaviors, particularly as they applied to the spread of early capitalist societies, required ideological justification through the evolution and implementation of systematic forms of racism and gender oppression, often presented in religious terminology

Aristotle foresaw the dangers of a society focused on wealth acquisition, as his class-stratified society engaged in elementary forms of making money from money:

There are two sorts of wealth-getting, as I have said; one is a part of household management, the other is retail trade: the former necessary and honorable, while that which consists in exchange is justly censured; for it is unnatural, and a mode by which men gain from one another. The most hated sort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent.[endnoteRef:425] [425: Aristotle, Politics, Book One (Part X), accessed April 26, 2016 at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.1.one.html. ]

Although Aristotle supported slavery as perfectly normal and natural, he thought that selling goods and charging interest to make financial gain unnatural and objectionable. The situation is now reversed. The vast majority of people today see slavery not only as unnatural, but immoral and obscene, while selling goods and services to make profits and charging interest on loans, appear to be the most natural of human activities. Indeed, few even question how it is that when one deposits money in a bank it miraculously accumulates more money (although presently at historically low interest rates), as if quietly and autonomously reproducing itself in some darkened bank vault.

During the small slice of human history characterized by capitalism, aggressive competitiveness, greed, individualism, and selfishness have been brought to prominence and rewarded for the purpose of surviving and thriving within a system based on the competitive accumulation of capital.

As discussed in Chapter 2, capitalism came into the world, as Karl Marx remarked, ‘dripping from head to foot in blood and filth.’ It was built by forcible dispossession of the peasantry, subjugation and theft from indigenous peoples of the colonies, the slave trade, the cotton and sugar that slaves produced, thievery of resources and the suppression and slaughter of native populations with colonial and imperialist projects. Is it really surprising that a system with such a heritage might promote anti-social behavioral traits?

Driving people toward the subset of anti-social characteristics that promote success under capitalism requires intense and constant manipulation from birth. Inculcating competition as a positive behavior begins from early exposure to competitive sports, competition for grades and other rewards in school, to competition among adults for jobs, educational opportunities, social status, and housing, and to competition among businesses for market share, among cities and states for new businesses, and among countries for export markets, geopolitical power, and access to resources. While some cooperation exists within and sometimes even between corporations and between different countries, it is a means to an end: larger and more powerful enterprises and states better able to vie for dominance more effectively against their competitors.

Another aspect of the culture of capitalism, as discussed in Chapters 2 and 4, is the development of consumerism. This is not some fixed innate compulsion, but rather a behavior that capitalist societies need to develop and promote in order to continue selling products. By contrast, for the vast majority of human existence, the idea of “consumerism,” the desire to acquire material goods, was a consideration that would not have made any sense as a concept, let alone try to enact as a real possibility.

The emphasis on this specific assortment of characteristics and behaviors promoted by capitalism has detrimental effects communities as well as the physical, mental, and social health of individuals. The authors of an article in the journal Psychological Inquiry put it this way:

…substantial evidence suggests that when the values and goals necessary for the smooth functioning of ACC [American corporate capitalism] become increasingly central to individuals and to institutions, the result is a corresponding conflict with three other aims: concern for the broader community and the world; close, intimate relationships; and feeling worthy and autonomous.[endnoteRef:426] [426: Tim Kasser, Steve Cohn, Allen Kanner and Richard Ryan, "Some Costs of American Corporate Capitalism: A Psychological Exploration of Value and Goal Conflicts," Psychological Inquiry 18(1):1-22 (2007). ]

“Human nature” of the wealthy: their ethics, behavior, and attitudes

In the 19th century Frederick Engels suggested that morality varies by social status:

[W]hen we see that the three classes of modern society, the feudal aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, each have a morality of their own, we can only draw the one conclusion: that men, consciously or unconsciously, derive their ethical ideas in the last resort from the practical relations on which their class position is based—from the economic relations in which they carry on production and exchange…[endnoteRef:427] [427: Frederick Engels, Anti-Duhring (1877), Lawrence Wishart Ltd., London:107 (1934). ]

Behavior patterns that promote getting rich in capitalist societies are encouraged and the wealthy have high status. Accurately summing up the attitude of the newly-minted rich in the 1980s, is Gordon Gecko’s famous quote from the movie Wall Street which directly naturalizes greed as part of human evolution: “The point ladies and gentlemen, that “greed”—for lack of a better word—is good. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit." Not only is greed good in a capitalist society, it is an attribute necessary to guarantee the smooth workings of the system. As in other spheres of society, people at the top have to believe that they are not doing something evil. Rather, by being rich and powerful and greedy, they consider themselves to be the most important positive contributors to society, the so-called “job creators” (which few really are), thus explaining why they deserve to be paid so handsomely and receive the accolades and thanks of a grateful society. Greed is the emotional compliment to the economic compulsion toward continuous accumulation.

Although the poor give a higher percent of their income to charity than do the rich, it is the big donations that get all the attention. The philanthropy that many of the wealthy engage in is not simply about salving their consciences, making them look like the benevolent patricians they purport to be, but simultaneously funnels money into safe areas, such as charities. Of course, aside from the ideological gains (especially from funding conservative “think tanks”), there are very real tax benefits to corporate and individual donations from which the rich further benefit, decreasing resources available for public use.

Corporate philanthropy and rich benefactors, a social phenomenon that came into its own in the Victorian era, serves as an important ideological safety valve for the system. Charities and foundations do nothing to reduce inequality or human misery—except on the smallest of scales—they merely address some of the immediate symptoms without asking why such inequity exists in the first place. As Dom Hélder Câmara, the Archbishop of Recife during the period of the western-backed military dictatorship in Brazil, commented in reference to the attitude of the ruling elite, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”

In this regard, charity is similar to the role played by recycling: it makes everyone feel like they’re doing something useful, while playing an ideologically stabilizing role for the system as a whole by funneling potential discontent into non-threatening channels. But charities can’t solve a systemic problem such as persistent poverty any more than recycling can solve the environmental problems of a system that must continually grow by selling ever-greater quantities of commodities that need to be produced, packaged, advertised, and shipped to the public.

The rich suffer from a different form of alienation than everyone else. They have more control over their lives and live far more easily, but nevertheless such an existence is likewise a corruption of their humanity, leading to anti-social attitudes and behavior required to justify their activities. In the words of the title of an article title in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: “Higher social class predicts increased, unethical behavior.”[endnoteRef:428] The authors found greed propels this behavior and that “[r]elative to lower-class individuals, individuals from upper-class backgrounds behaved more unethically in both naturalistic and laboratory settings.” [428: Paul K. Piff, Daniel Stancato, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner, “Higher social class predicts increased, unethical behavior,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109(11):4086-4091 (March 13, 2012). ]

There are other studies that provide further evidence for the unethical conduct of the wealthy. In a discussion of investigations, Michael Lewis describes a study that found that

the rich were more likely to shoplift than the poor. Another study, by a coalition of nonprofits…revealed that people with incomes below twenty-five grand give away, on average, 4.2 percent of their income, while those earning more than 150 grand a year give away only 2.7 percent. A UCLA neuroscientist named Keely Muscatell has published an interesting paper showing that wealth quiets the nerves in the brain associated with empathy: if you show rich people and poor people pictures of kids with cancer, the poor people’s brains exhibit a great deal more activity than the rich people’s.[endnoteRef:429] [429: Michael Lewis, “Extreme Wealth Is Bad for Everyone—Especially the Wealthy,” The New Republic (November 12, 2014). ]

One of the authors of the “Higher social class…” study, Dacher Keltner, commented: “As you move up the class ladder, you are more likely to violate the rules of the road, to lie, to cheat, to take candy from kids, to shoplift, and to be tightfisted in giving to others. Straightforward economic analyses have trouble making sense of this pattern of results.”[endnoteRef:430] [430: Ibid. ]

In Phishing for Phools, George Akerlof and Robert Schilling explain that in a capitalist economy “every chance for profit more than the ordinary will be taken up” and that “competitive markets by their very nature spawn deception and trickery.”[endnoteRef:431] It, therefore, appears that the capitalist economic system fosters misconduct in the affluent class in the pursuit of wealth and unethical behavior in general. [431: George Akerlof and Robert Shiller, Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception, Princeton University Press (2015), pages 2 and 165. ]

In terms of social reproduction, naturally the anti-social ethics of the wealthy have to be effectively transmitted to their offspring for the system to replicate and the wealthy to stay wealthy. One study reports the greater the family income, the less altruistic are the children: “Our finding that family income negatively predicted altruism implies that this culture of self-focus could potentially be present in children as young as 4 years old who are from higher SES [socioeconomic status] backgrounds. The implication that their parents socialize greater self-interest in these children is consistent with findings that parents of higher SES value autonomy and individualism as socialization goals, whereas parents of lower SES are concerned with fostering respectfulness and obedience.”[endnoteRef:432] Thus, liberal economist Paul Krugman was correct when he summarized a number of these studies in his New York Times column by asserting: “Wealth can be bad for your soul.”[endnoteRef:433] [432: Jonas Miller, Sarah Kahle, and Paul Hastings, "Roots and Benefits of Costly Giving: Children Who Are More Altruistic Have Greater Autonomic Flexibility and Less Family Wealth,” Psychological Science 26(7):1038–1045 (2015). ] [433: Op. cit., Paul Krugman, “Privilege, Pathology and Power.” ]

But the problem of unscrupulous people at the top of society acting as individuals is dwarfed by their actions in charge of the corporations they run. Some of their activities are apparently legal, although ethically dubious, while others are clearly crimes. In the financial arena, the fallout from the Great Recession exposed significant problems. From Ponzi schemes to banks pushing the sale of investments they knew were rotten (and that they were betting against), to banks cheating to make money on setting the LIBOR rates, to “liar loans” in which the mortgage originator fabricates information to make it appear that borrowers have the ability to pay it back when they really don’t, to robo-signing of mortgage documents that were supposed to be signed by an actual person, to the sale of complex financial “instruments” that few, if any, actually understood, and on and on and on.

The extent of the fraud, corruption, and deception is hard to fully comprehend. It wasn’t just a few “bad apples” that were rotten, but rather the whole barrel. The entire economic and political system and most of its high-level participants displayed the immorality and corruption that results when regulations are loosened and regulators turn a blind eye in a society in which greed, individualism, and competition are glorified and rewarded.

And it is not just wealthy individuals on their own and those in the financial sector that act unethically and illegally. Businesses large and small also act in illegal and unethical ways, hoping that profit gains from doing so will outweigh any penalties and litigation costs they might have to pay. For example, in 2015 General Motors was ordered to pay a $900 million fine for hiding an ignition switch defect that caused the deaths of 124 people. And in the same year, Volkswagen admitted to installing software in their diesel-powered vehicles that turned off emission controls when in normal operation in order to enhance car performance, causing the emission of 40 times as much nitrous oxide (N2O) as allowed by U.S. law. Of the countless examples of corporate malfeasance, one of the most egregious is the tobacco and asbestos industries’ knowledge and decades-long cover-up of the negative health effects of their products. And Exxon knew about the environmental consequences of fossil fuel use for almost forty years; for a long time DuPont did nothing although it knew about the consequences of water contamination with its poisonous chemical PFOA (also called C-8); and the Japanese company Takata was aware for years that its airbags were dangerous—maiming and killing numerous people. It is not a stretch to suggest that the modus operandi of most corporations is to ignore and delay acknowledging and remedying defects and environmental damage for as long as possible. It is the job of corporate lawyers to ensure whenever corporate actions contravene health and safety laws and lead to the deaths or ill-health of workers or pollution of the environment – and they happen to get caught, they are on hand to minimize the financial costs and any damage to corporate public image and brand.

Unsurprisingly, the requirement by the system for CEO’s to act in anti-social ways and not feel guilty tends to attract and retain those best suited to the role. According to some recent research findings, significantly more psychopaths—people unable to empathize with others, prone to superficiality and insincerity, while also frequently flamboyant and charming—disproportionately populate the ranks of corporate leaders. The forensic psychologist Nathan Brooks and two co-researchers studied corporate professionals in the supply chain management industry across the U.S. and found twenty percent of CEOs were psychopaths, versus one percent in the general public. [endnoteRef:434]  [434: Harriet Agerholm, "One in five CEOs are psychopaths, new study finds,” The Independent (UK) (September 14, 2016).; also see Jeff Bercovici, “Why (Some) Psychopaths Make Great CEOs,” Forbes website, http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2011/06/14/why-some-psychopaths-make-great-ceos/2/#67a7723d3c8f (June 14, 2011). ]

The almost complete lack of criminal prosecution of wealthy individuals for wrongdoing, as opposed to inadequate fines (if any) for corporations, is an indication of government complicity in the charades. What we see in these examples is capitalism operating under very favorable conditions for generating profits, in which businesses are able to work with few social controls and government regulations, as well as lax enforcement of existing regulations.

From toxic products to toxic effluent, from the deformation and shortening of the lives of workers to the degradation of the environment, the activities of corporations while hunting for profits are all immoral, but under the legal, philosophical and institutional set-up of capitalism, it’s mostly perfectly acceptable and to be rewarded. And so it must be if corporations are to remain profitable, regardless of the consequences to the biosphere.

Pro-social traits and behavior are still present

Capitalism has existed for about 500 years. Mercantile capitalism, what historian Sven Beckert calls “war capitalism,” endured for about 250 years, followed by industrial capitalism of the last 250 years. In other words, capitalism has been prevalent for less than 0.4 percent of the entire period of modern human existence as a species. As the system expanded it has held sway for an even smaller portion of time or is still in transition; in a few locations it has barely arrived. Even where capitalist social relations are prevalent, or only recently so, there remain a mixture of ideas influenced by pre-capitalist ways of thinking that merge in a new synthesis, or reject important facets of capitalist ideology because they’re antithetical to the deep human values of empathy, solidarity and cooperation. It is evident that people can live in a range of social worlds simultaneously, even as some prior ideas about human behavior clash with more recent ones. As new movements against exploitation and oppression have risen amongst Native Americans, such as with the rise of Idle No More in Canada, indigenous ways of thinking and behaving from the north and south American continents are having an impact and creating inspiration far beyond the societies within which they are locally embedded.

There is well-documented and widespread evidence that the psychological and physical benefits from helping others remain strong. For example, researchers at the University of British Columbia have shown that when people are given money and asked to use it generously it, “enhances one’s own happiness, and that the benefits of such ‘prosocial spending’ hold up around the world, from the United States and Canada to Uganda and India… [And that] people assigned to use the money in generous ways showed a significant reduction in blood pressure…similar in magnitude to what is typically observed when people start engaging in regular aerobic exercise.”[endnoteRef:435] Pro-social behavior and traits are often suppressed by the need to express those contrary behaviors required to survive and flourish within the system of capital. However, though latent, they rise to the fore during natural disasters and periods of mass resistance such as strikes and anti-colonial struggles. Concluding her study of how people react in the wake of natural disasters writer and activist Rebecca Solnit writes: [435: Elizabeth Dunn and Ashley Williams, “Give, if you know what’s good for you," The New York Times (December 24, 2015). ]

The history of disaster demonstrates that most of us are social animals, hungry for connection, as well as for purpose and meaning…Two things matter most about these ephemeral moments. First, they demonstrate what is possible or, more accurately, latent: the resilience and generosity of those around us and their ability to improvise another kind of society. Second, they demonstrate how deeply most of us desire connection, participation, altruism and purposefulness.[endnoteRef:436] [436: Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: the extraordinary communities that arise in disaster, Penguin Books, New York:305-6 (2009). ]

Is warfare innate?

Violence and warfare were not unknown to hunter-gatherer societies, but waging war was not ubiquitous in the way it is for class-based societies. But once a food surplus existed and a way of storing it, warfare and conquest gained a rationale and purpose. Regardless of whether those societies are based on agriculture and fixed social positions, such as in early empires ruled by aristocratic royalty and various forms of directly coerced labor, or in a competitive capitalist society where some social mobility is possible and labor is indirectly coerced, permanent armies and organized warfare to conquer territory and wrestle for geopolitical power and resources is endemic. There is a material reason for a system-wide orientation toward war in class societies of any kind, the motivation for which does not exist in semi-nomadic bands without much property and having space to move elsewhere should conflicts arise. Despite this, another “common sense” part of so-called human nature is our supposed innate aggressiveness and propensity toward violence, killing and war.

Many prominent anthropologists and natural scientists argue for what has been labeled by science journalist John Horgan as the “Deep Roots” theory of war. In this theory, humans have always wanted to organize the mass killing of other humans right back to our ancient hominid predecessors. There are several prominent proponents of this idea, including psychologist Steven Pinker, biologist E. O. Wilson and anthropologist Richard Wrangham. Based on his reading of anthropological evidence, Wilson writes of war as a trans-historical phenomenon, built into human DNA:

It should not be thought that war, often accompanied by genocide, is a cultural artifact of a few societies. Nor has it been an aberration of history, a result of the growing pains of our species’ maturation. Wars and genocide have been universal and eternal, respecting no particular time or culture.[endnoteRef:437] [437: E. O. Wilson, The Social Conquest of Earth, Norton, New York:64 (2012). ]

Indeed Wilson goes so far as to argue that our predilection for violence stems from our evolutionary connection to chimpanzees and even further back in pre-history, “there is a good chance that [tribal aggressiveness] could be a much older heritage, dating beyond the split six million years ago between the lines leading to modern chimpanzees and to humans.”[endnoteRef:438] [438: Ibid, 72 ]

But Wilson is far from alone. Another leading and influential proponent, Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham, based on his studies of violence in chimpanzees has argued, "Chimpanzee-like violence preceded and paved the way for human war, making modern humans the dazed survivors of a continuous, five-million-year habit of lethal aggression."[endnoteRef:439] [439: John Horgan, “10,000-year-old massacre does not bolster claim that war is innate,” Scientific American (January 24, 2016). ]

It hardly needs pointing out that if war and violence is innate to humans, then it’s actually peaceful coexistence that is unnatural, making society, by definition, impossible. All that can be done is to limit the extent and forms of war. The fatalism of this approach was made explicit by President Obama in, of all places, his speech accepting his Nobel Prize for Peace in 2009 (while waging two wars), “I come here…filled with difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other.” After his angst, Obama then goes on to naturalize warfare, “Now these questions are not new.  War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man.  At the dawn of history, its morality was not questioned; it was simply a fact, like drought or disease—the manner in which tribes and then civilizations sought power and settled their differences.”[endnoteRef:440] [440: President Obama, “Remarks by the President at the Acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize,” Oslo City Hall, Oslo, Norway (December 10, 2009). ]

The consequences of which are not only unending warfare, but a moral justification for why war is necessary as an instrument of policy, amazingly even a policy of peace, “We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth:  We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes.  There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified… So yes, the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace.”[endnoteRef:441] [441: Ibid. ]

Despite the United States remaining, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world” and justifying torture and drone strikes on civilian areas within allied countries, E.O. Wilson nevertheless writes, “Civilized societies have tried to eliminate torture, execution and the murder of civilians, but those fighting little wars do not comply.”[endnoteRef:442] [442: Op cit., E. O. Wilson, The Social Conquest of Earth:66. ]

Even the violence of ISIS, by this line of argument, is simply an expression of our ancient tribal imprinting toward brutality and warfare. In an article for the Washington Post, titled “How the Tribal Warfare of Our Ancestors Explains the Islamic State,” another Harvard scholar writes:

Where does this capacity for horrific violence come from? My colleagues and I have been studying the origins of war through systematic analysis of chimpanzees, hunter-gatherers and modern conflicts. We have learned that lethal violence against out-groups is found, in one form or another, at all scales of society, including among our closest relatives, the chimpanzees.[endnoteRef:443] [443: Luke Glowacki, “How the Tribal Warfare of Our Ancestors Explains the Islamic State,” The Washington Post (March 24, 2016). ]

However, direct evidence for these claims is limited and contradictory to say the least, illustrating their ideological bent. Reviewing the archeological findings for widespread violence in hunter-gatherer societies, John Horgan writes in Scientific American:

[T]he oldest clear-cut relic of group violence is a 13,000-year-old grave in the Jebel Sahaba region of Sudan. The grave contains 59 skeletons, 24 of which bear marks of violence, such as embedded projectile points. Other than the Jebel Sahaba site, evidence of war or even homicide dating back more than 10,000 years is extremely rare…anthropologists Jonathan Haas and Matthew Piscitelli have carried out an exhaustive review of hominid remains over 10,000 years old, including more than 2,900 skeletons from over 400 different sites. Excluding the Jebel Sahaba skeletons, Haas and Piscitelli found only four skeletons bearing signs of violence.[endnoteRef:444] [444: John Horgan, “10,000-year-old massacre does not bolster claim that war is innate,” Scientific American (January 24, 2016). ]

Horgan concludes, “The evidence is overwhelming that war, far from being an innate behavior that evolved millions of years ago, was a cultural innovation—an ‘invention,’ as Margaret Mead put it—that emerged relatively recently in our prehistory, toward the end of the Paleolithic era. We should take responsibility for our wars instead of blaming them on our genes.”[endnoteRef:445] [445: Ibid. ]

Corroborating the study of Haas and Piscitelli, a 2016 study published by The Royal Society on violence in Japanese society from 12000-7000 years ago, shows that far from being omnipresent, it was an aberration:

This paper reports the mortality attributable to violence, and the spatio-temporal pattern of violence thus shown among ancient hunter–gatherers using skeletal evidence in prehistoric Japan (the Jomon period: …[approximately 13 000 BC to 800 BC]). Our results suggest that the mortality due to violence was low and spatio-temporally highly restricted in the Jomon period, which implies that violence including warfare in prehistoric Japan was not common.[endnoteRef:446] [446: Hisashi Nakao, Kohei Tamura, Yui Arimatsu, Tomomi Nakagawa, Naoko Matsumoto, Takehiko Matsugi, “Violence in the prehistoric period of Japan: the spatio-temporal pattern of skeletal evidence for violence in the Jomon period,” Biology Letters (Royal Society): 12(3): 20160028 (March 2016). ]

As Richard Haas confirms in reference to the oft-cited research on warfare among chimpanzees:

There is absolutely no scientific evidence in either biology or archaeology (the only two disciplines that really count in this debate) for human warfare going back more than 10,000 years.  Biological accounts of chimpanzee “warfare” demonstrate that chimpanzees engage in intergroup conflict—under conditions that are remarkably similar to those affecting certain relatively recent human societies.  This is simply not evidence for the biological foundations of human warfare, any more than using a sponge (or crumpled leaves) to soak up water is part of the biological makeup of humanity[endnoteRef:447] [447: Quoted as an addendum to the article cited earlier by John Horgan, which also has a list of related literature for those who want to investigate further. John Horgan, “10,000-year-old massacre does not bolster claim that war is innate,” Scientific American (January 24, 2016). ]

Clearly, under a variety of conditions, humans exhibit aggressive behavior, going so far as to kill other humans. And warfare continues to plague our species. But this is not proof that we somehow have a greater propensity to settle disputes by violence rather than using peaceful means. And if elites with all sorts of motivation (including dominating other peoples and their resources) chose to go to war with other groups (nations), how can that supersede the evidence that most disputes are still settled peacefully? And during the long human history before class societies, the preponderance of evidence indicates that peaceful resolution was apparently the norm.

So, what is “human nature”?

It is abundantly evident that there is no such thing as a hard and fast “human nature.” To assert otherwise is to promote an ideological position, not one based on science or the history of our species. Different societies have elicited and promoted varying aspects of the wide diversity of human characteristics, traits, and behaviors while downplaying or suppressing others. The specific set of traits and behaviors encouraged in our society and referred to as “human nature” is a sociological, historical, and political question, not a biological reality. Over the millennia since Homo sapiens emerged as a species there have been many different kinds of societies, with various types of relations among humans and between humans and the resources that we use to perpetuate our existence. This has resulted in many different “human natures.” As Marx wrote, “all history is but the continuous transformation of human nature.”[endnoteRef:448] [448: Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy: Answer to the Philosophy of Poverty by M. Proudhon (1848), accessed October 28, 2015 from https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Poverty-Philosophy.pdf ]

It is evident that the concept of a “human nature” is not a useful indicator of what it means to be human, because the consciousness, behavior, habits, and values of humans are so varied and are influenced by the history, culture and type of economic organization that develops in a given society. Thus it makes no sense to refer to a “human nature” apart from the context of a particular society.

To make the argument clear, we are not a blank slate (tabula rasa), capable of being imprinted and conditioned to unquestionably accept whatever propaganda we are fed. If that were so, slavery, fascism and totalitarian regimes throughout history would never suffer from the revolts that lead to their downfall. In some situations, people can certainly be manipulated to believe false ideas. But our primary assets as a species are our ability to learn and our flexibility, which can lead to changes in our thinking as well as doing.

Instead of studying the supposedly innate basis of human nature as it is expressed in modern capitalist society, we should instead be trying to explain why and how we are so adaptable. As Jesse Prinz writes in Beyond Human Nature: How Culture and Experience Shape the Human Mind, “Rather the investigation of our natural constitution should be directed at explaining human plasticity.”[endnoteRef:449] [449: Jesse Prinz, Beyond Human Nature: How Culture and Experience Shape the Human Mind, W. W. Norton & Company:368 (2014). ]

Human behaviors and traits have changed before and can therefore change again. To reach a truly just and ecologically healthy world, they must change so that pro-social behavior patterns becomes dominant, while anti-social behavior, so prized and rewarded in capitalist societies, fades into the background. The question to address, therefore, is not whether human values and relations can change, but how to do so as part of a transformation of society to a more humane and ecological social organization.

Chapter 7. Equality as biological fact

…Human equality is a contingent fact of history. Equality is not given a priori; it is neither an ethical principle (though equal treatment may be) nor a statement about norms of social action. It just worked out that way. A hundred different and plausible scenarios for human history would have yielded other results (and moral dilemmas of enormous magnitude). They didn't happen.

—Stephen Jay Gould[endnoteRef:450] [450: Stephen Jay Gould, “Human Equality Is a Contingent Fact of History,” Natural History, 93(11):26-32 (November 1984). ]

One of the myths perpetuated about humanity is that there are distinct human races, with differing intellectual and social abilities. Similar myths exist for differential abilities based on gender. But history and science demonstrate the absurdity of both ideas. Of course, individuals within a population vary in capabilities (social, athletic, and intellectual), depending on a host of factors. These include family situations, economic conditions, available opportunities for education and health care, genetic inheritance and anomalies, life experiences, motivation and interests, even birth order. But despite the absence of a scientific basis for separate “races” or fixed gender roles defined by biology, such classifications continue to be used by some to describe capabilities and behaviors, with very real negative social consequences. What needs to be understood is that, in capitalist societies, people are denied equal treatment and opportunities based on perceived characteristics of “race” and gender that differ from those of white males. We must look for explanations, not in biology, but in politics.

“Race” is a political system that governs people by sorting them into social groupings based on perceived biological demarcations. It is not only interpreted according to invented rules, but, more important, race itself is an invented political grouping. Race is not a biological category that is politically charged. It is a political category that has been disguised as a biological one.[endnoteRef:451] [451: Dorothy Roberts, Fatal invention: how science, politics, and big business re-create race in the twenty-first century, New Press (2011). 4 ]

Notwithstanding extensive scientific and historical evidence irrefutably demonstrating the antithesis, supposedly scientific studies, reports, and books continue to be published purporting to show how some “races” are inferior to others and women are inferior to men, or at the very least are intellectually different. Perceived differences in personal characteristics or capabilities according to race, gender, and socio-economic status are very much a part of everyday discourse. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argued in a court brief in 2015 that rather than being admitted to schools such as the University of Texas (UT), for their own good African Americans should be restricted to so-called “lesser” colleges, because they’d feel better learning more slowly:

[O]ne of the briefs pointed out that…most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas…. They come from lesser schools where they do not feel…that they’re being pushed ahead in—in classes that are…too fast for them…. Maybe [UT] ought to have fewer. And maybe some—you know, when you take more, the number of blacks, really competent blacks admitted to lesser schools, turns out to be less. And—and I—I don’t think it—it—it stands to reason that it’s a good thing for the University of Texas to admit as many blacks as possible.”[endnoteRef:452] [452: Valerie Strauss, “what Scalia’s controversial remarks about African Americans expose about U.S. higher education,” Washington Post. December 12, 2015. ]

His views were described in the mainstream media as “controversial” rather than racist. Modern justification of the status quo argues that inequality is a result of genetic differences. The “science” purportedly showing racial difference may have become more sophisticated than simply measuring head, brain or arm size, but it’s just as absurd. That doesn’t stop advocates of biological difference from using scientific and social studies to buttress their preconceived notions of racial and gender hierarchy that, not surprisingly, puts white men at the top.

“Scientific” racism has a long history, but it resurfaced in the 1990s with the publication of psychologist and Harvard professor Richard Herrnstein and influential political scientist Charles Murray’s book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, which used performance on IQ tests as supposed proof that there are real differences in intelligence between different “races” as well as classes, based on genetics and environmental factors. In 2015, Murray continued to argue that IQ scores of children correlate with their parents’ IQ, as well as with their family economic status. The implication is that differences in family economic status are justified because they are but a reflection of ability. Using his circular argument, writing in the New York Times, Murray wants us to acknowledge the reality of differences in supposedly innate intelligence, so that we help “children whose strengths do not lie in academics” do something else.[endnoteRef:453] [453: Charles Murray, “Why the SAT Isn’t a ‘Student Affluence Test’,” The Wall Street Journal (March 25, 2015). ]

First, it is important to understand that any kind of test is stressful, particularly if one knows it’s supposedly testing how smart you are. There is a tendency for students to perform up to, or down to, expectations.

“Decades of science has shown that pervasive stereotypes of certain identity groups as less intelligent or less capable in academics often lead students of these groups to worry that they could be judged through the lens of these negative stereotypes. This threat is stressful and can undermine these students’ learning, performance, and engagement…When we give students exercises designed to reduce stereotype threat, we see their school performance and engagement increase, and the racial achievement gap shrinks.”[endnoteRef:454] Or, as other research has found, poor minority test performance “results not from the content of performance measures, but from the context in which they are assessed—from psychological threats in common academic environments, which depress the performances of people targeted by negative intellectual stereotypes.”[endnoteRef:455] [454: Kate Turetsky and Valerie Purdie-Vaughns, "What Science Has to Say About Affirmative Action,” Scientific American, accessed December 18, 2015 at scientificamerican.com/article/what-science-has-to-say-about-affirmative-action/ (December 17, 2015). ] [455: Gregory Walton and Steven Spencer, “Grades and Test Scores Systematically Underestimate the Intellectual Ability of Negatively Stereotyped Students,” Psychological Science 20(9):1132-1139 (2009). ]

But despite the problems inherent in differentiating people based on tests, the whole idea that something as complex as intelligence can be measured by a simple test, especially one in which previous knowledge is needed to do well, is absurd. As a British researcher put it in 2013: “…I can report hard evidence of what most of us have suspected all along: previously reported links between general intelligence and ‘race’ are bunkum.”[endnoteRef:456] The very idea of testing for racial difference is itself, racist. [456: Roger Highfield, “Raise your IQ instantly -- by no longer believing in it,” Science Wired.uk.co (16 February 2013), accessed March 25, 2015 at http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/02/ideas-bank/raise-your-iq-instantly. ]

From a genetic point of view there is only one race of our species, the human race. “As a species, Homo sapiens is more homogenous (there is less genetic variation) than in a typical wild population of chimpanzees. And in the place where we all began, Africa, populations in Congo, Ethiopia, and South Africa are more different from each other than each is from the population in northern Europe.”[endnoteRef:457] [457: David Spiro, Review of Dorothy Robert’s Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century. New York Journal of Books, http://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/fatal-invention-how-science-politics-and-big-business-re-create-race-twenty-first. ]

Despite all of the research against any biological definition of race and all evidence showing it to be entirely socially constructed, racism justified through science is far from dead and continues to crop up as a supposedly biological explanation for inequality. In 2014, long after the ideas in the Bell Shaped Curve were thoroughly discredited, Nicholas Wade, longtime science writer for the New York Times, published A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, and Human History. He maintains that (contrary to all genetic evidence) there are three distinct human races: Africans, Caucasians, and East Asians. According to Wade, not only do these races have distinct phenotypes (they look different), they have different behavior patterns that are genetically determined. It was genetics, according to him, and not specific historical developments, that allowed the people in Western Europe to develop more open “rules-based” societies—perfect for the development of capitalism. This is why some countries remain poor; they just don’t have the right genes and therefore, don’t have the right inherent behavior tendencies.[endnoteRef:458] [458: For a good review on Wade’s book and the surrounding issues, see: Jonathan Marks, “The Genes Made Us Do It,” In These Times (May 12, 2014). ]

That the reasons for “underdevelopment” have nothing to do with genes but rather with other issues is ignored Many of these countries were exploited for centuries, first as colonies and sources of slaves, and later by commercial ventures seeking resource extraction and cheap labor, their societies destabilized and people killed in large numbers during colonial and imperial interventions. Now, countries of the Global South have to compete with the corporate power of giant trans-nationals headquartered in the advanced capitalist countries and buttressed by their imperial governments. In the U.S., centuries of slavery followed by racism and discrimination in all areas of life, continuing to the present, have handicapped the development and full participation in society of African-Americans. This “underdevelopment” is not a consequence of genetic differences (which are negligible) between African-American and white populations, but rather a result of economic, social, and political conditions created by those in power.

There are a few genetic differences that correspond to where one’s ancestors lived that have significance for health, such as mutations that led to the prevalence of sickle-cell disease where malaria was prevalent—among some Africans, Indians, and certain populations in the Middle East and Europe. Sickle-cell anemia confers partial resistance to malaria and is therefore an example of an evolutionary trade-off. Some genetic differences arose rapidly, as with light skin color, an advantage in getting sufficient vitamin D in a lower light intensity region, and adult ability to tolerate lactose in milk, useful to herding peoples.

While there are examples of these small differences in specific gene frequencies among people commonly considered to be from different races, genetic diversity is greater within a given population than it is between two different ones. In fact, because we are a young species that had a small founding population, genetic variability among randomly selected humans is low, around 0.1 percent. Most of that small variation, some eighty-five to ninety percent, is found within populations from the same continent. And “only ~10% more variation would be found if the collection consisted of Europeans, Asians and Africans.”[endnoteRef:459] [459: Lynn B Jorde & Stephen P Wooding, "Genetic variation, classification and ‘race’,” Nature Genetics 36:S28 - S33 (2004).  ]

Claims for genetically based differences across the entire range of human abilities, between people from different geographic or ethnic groups or between men and women, is clearly entirely spurious.

Racism has nothing to do with biology. It is so persistent because it is useful to a system that thrives by differentiating people by race, nationality, and gender. This works to perpetuate white ruling elites and their positions of power in capitalism—the more divisions and disagreements among the people, the less the possibility of united actions that might challenge the system and its beloved profits.

Racism, something the aggressor does, is transformed into race, something the target is, in a sleight of hand that is easy to miss. Consider the statement “black Southerners were segregated because of their skin color”—a perfectly natural sentence to the ears of most Americans, who tend to overlook what actually happened. In that sentence, segregation is not perceived as an act of segregationists, imposed for economic and social reasons, but rather as a natural distinction between two groups. As gender scholar Michael Kimmel has noted, “gender difference is the product of gender inequality, and not the other way around.”[endnoteRef:460] [460: Quoted in Cordelia Fine, Delusions of Gender: how our minds, society, and neurosexism create difference, W.W. Norton, New York:235 (2010). ]

Women & Biological Determinism

Volumes of pseudo-psychological books have been written on alleged intellectual and behavioral differences between men and women, such as the popular book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus: The Classic Guide to Understanding the Opposite Sex, by John Gray, which has sold over 50 million copies worldwide. Accentuating the behavioral differences between men and women and attempting to find the basis for these supposedly ingrained differences in genetics and brain science persists. Biological determinism is used to justify gender oppression as much as racial oppression, though in different ways. In her bestselling 2006 book, The Female Brain, psychiatrist Louann Brizendine, puts differences down to menstruation and hormones affecting women’s brains to such an extent that it’s a wonder they still have use of a brain at all: “What we’ve found is that the female brain is so deeply affected by hormones that their influence can be said to create a woman’s reality. They can shape a woman’s values and desires, and tell her, day to day, what’s important.”[endnoteRef:461] [461: Louann Brizendine, The Female Brain, Random House, New York:3 (2006). ]

Reflecting every stereotype of males and females, but nevertheless supposedly grounded in objective research, Brizendine goes on to state:

Because of the fluctuations that begin as early as three months old and last until after menopause, a woman’s neurological reality is not as constant as a man’s. His is like a mountain that is worn away imperceptibly over the millennia by glaciers, weather, and the deep tectonic movements of the earth. Hers is more like the weather itself – constantly changing and hard to predict.[endnoteRef:462] [462: Ibid. 4 ]

Scientific studies propose that men and women's divergent ways of interacting with the world are a matter of differences in brain chemistry. But notions about "how the world works" become embedded in societal thinking—mistaking what exists at a particular moment in time in a particular society for what must exist at all times in all places. And somehow, at the same time, these ideas magically align with current conditions and, of course, with the interests of those in power.

Ideas about the supposedly large and unalterable cognitive differences between men and women have resurfaced once again, this time in the guise of the latest scientific studies of the synaptic passages and wiring differences of our brains. We might wonder why this research is even being carried out in the first place. What is it that makes scientists, with their supposedly objective search for truth, so enthralled with trying to prove that "stark differences exist in the wiring of male and female brains," according to a report by a research team at the University of Pennsylvania.[endnoteRef:463] [463: Ian Sample, “Male and female brains wired differently, scans reveal,” The Guardian (December 2, 2103). ]

As researcher Ragini Vermi commented on how the team’s results “surprisingly” validated gender stereotypes, ”If you look at functional studies, the left of the brain is more for logical thinking, the right of the brain is for more intuitive thinking. So if there's a task that involves doing both of those things, it would seem that women are hardwired to do those better…Women are better at intuitive thinking. Women are better at remembering things. When you talk, women are more emotionally involved—they will listen more.” Conversely, if Vermi “wanted to go to a chef or a hairstylist, they are mainly men.”

If the supposedly extreme differences in brain connectivity as an explanation for the abundance of male chefs and hairstylists were not sufficiently preposterous, Vermi also put the putative ability of men to be better skiers down to the male brain’s extra connections in the cerebellum. All of this would be easily dismissed, fatuous nonsense, where it not so influential, and part and parcel of the much larger effort that keeps women as second class citizens.

Clearly, there are genetic differences between men and women dictating some physical differences, but those pertaining to personality, interests, talents, and dreams are shaped and distorted by powerful societal influences.[endnoteRef:464] As many studies have shown, and as Cordelia Fine outlines in her book The Delusion of Gender, despite all the much-hyped claims of differences in cognition and interests assigned to gender, they are repeatedly found to be trivial and socially constructed such that, “our minds, society, and neurosexism create difference. Together they wire gender. But the wiring is soft not hard. It is flexible, malleable and changeable.”[endnoteRef:465] Gender needs to be seen for what it is: a flexible continuum, rather than a permanent, genetically pre-determined binary opposite. [464: Not that long ago boys thought that girls just couldn’t throw a ball overhand and had to “shot put” a ball or throw underhand. This “deficiency” or peculiarity, of course, was a result of girls never being taught to throw a baseball overhand. ] [465: Cordelia Fine, Delusions of Gender: how our minds, society, and neurosexism create difference, W.W. Norton, New York:239 (2010). ]

Professor Dorothy Bishop, of Oxford University, commenting on the University of Pennsylvania study noted that the authors act, "as if there is a typical male and a typical female brain—they even provide a diagram—but they ignore the fact that there is a great deal of variation within the sexes in terms of brain structure. You simply cannot say there is a male brain and a female brain."[endnoteRef:466] [466: Robin McKie, “Why it's time for brain science to ditch the 'Venus and Mars' cliché,” The Observer (December 7, 2013). ]

Summing up information on the supposed male vs. female brain, Cordelia Fine writes, “the overall outcome is a scientific literature that can be viewed as subtly biased toward a presentation of sex differences in the brain as more dichotomous, fixed, and functionally important in stereotype-consistent ways than is warranted.”[endnoteRef:467] [467: Cordelia Fine, “His Brain, Her Brain?,” Science 346:915-916 (November 21, 2104). ]

An American Psychological Association article, citing the work of Psychologist Janet Shibley Hyde, of the University of Wisconsin, noted that a “…2005 analysis of 46 meta-analyses that were conducted during the last two decades of the 20th century underscores that men and women are basically alike in terms of personality, cognitive ability and leadership…”[endnoteRef:468] [468: “Men and Women: No Big Difference,” American Psychological Association website, http://www.apa.org/research/action/difference.aspx (October 20, 2005). ]

And commenting on a scientific article on gender differences in reading and mathematics and science, Peter Dorman, wrote sarcastically:

This proves what many of us have suspected all along: boys are genetically inferior when it comes to reading, at least careful reading. Their brains are not wired for words. So stop trying to make excuses for things like guys failing to understand mortgage contracts or IPCC reports on climate science. This is not a social failing; it’s because of evolutionary inheritance. Back in the cave age, males who got absorbed in reading were eaten by sabretooths or something. Pretending that biological differences don’t exist is just Political Correctness, and we know how horrible that is.[endnoteRef:469] [469: Peter Dorman, “Face it: Boys Can’t Do Words,” (December 6, 2014), accessed December 7, 2014 at econospeak.blogspot.com. ]

Bringing together ideas about the construction of race and gender and the social suppositions they rest on, biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling argues, “ideas about race and gender emerge from underlying assumptions about the body’s physical nature. Understanding how race and gender work—together and independently—helps us learn more about how the social becomes embodied.”[endnoteRef:470] Our bodily experiences, desires, and norms of classification of people have all changed over time, whereby: “[O]ur bodily experiences are brought into being by our development in particular cultures and historical periods. But especially as a biologist, I want to make the argument more specific. As we grow and develop, we literally, not just “discursively” (that is through language and cultural practices), construct our bodies, incorporating experience into our very flesh. To understand this claim, we must erode the distinctions between the physical and the social.”[endnoteRef:471] [470: Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the construction of sexuality, Basic Books, New York:7 (2000). ] [471: Ibid. 20 ]

Women and the sciences

During capitalist development, including the recent past, what many have considered obvious gender related talents and abilities have been shown to be nonsense. Some still consider it a part of human nature or brain structure that women are not able to perform certain tasks competently, such as those needed by medical doctors. Today however, women doctors are common, and women are frequently more than half of the students in medical school.

The remarks in 2005 by Larry Summers, former U.S. Treasury secretary, later economic advisor to President Obama, and Harvard University’s president at the time—“that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude and particularly of the variability of aptitude …”[endnoteRef:472] that explain the underrepresentation of women in these fields—illuminate a reality very different from what was intended. These comments—presumably referring to assumed differences in brain structure and function that mean that women can’t think as well in math and science as men—show that a strong ideological view of a gendered human nature still exists. In 2015, Nobel Laureate Sir Timothy Hunt, a biochemist no less, argued that science laboratories should be segregated to avoid female scientists distracting their male colleagues: “Let me tell you about my trouble with girls … three things happen when they are in the lab … You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you and when you criticise them, they cry.”[endnoteRef:473] Though Summers and Hunt ultimately lost their jobs,[footnoteRef:21] their outlook is not only prevalent in scientific and non-scientific circles, it neglects the history of the development and perpetuation of relations between the sexes and the acculturation that occurs as girls are encouraged or pushed in certain directions and boys in others. [472: Larry Summers, “Remarks at NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce,” http://www.harvard.edu/president/speeches/summers_2005/nber.php (January 14, 2005). ] [473: Rebecca Ratcliffe, “Nobel Scientist Tim Hunt: female scientists cause trouble for men in labs,” The Guardian (June 10, 2015). ] [21: Summers lost his job as President of Harvard University but retained his tenured faculty appointment.]

Biased hiring and promotion practices of educational institutions are widely practiced. A report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences noted that science professors, male and female, consistently preferred male professors for mentoring positions or jobs. If a women was hired, they were offered a salary $4,000 lower than an identically qualified male. The bias was so pervasive as to be unlikely about individual and conscious sexist discrimination, but rather due to subconscious cultural attitudes inculcated throughout a lifetime saturated in a sexist culture.[endnoteRef:474] [474: Kenneth Chang, “Bias Persists for Women of Science, a Study Finds,” The New York Times (September 24, 2012). ]

Against formidable odds, the work of many women who became scientists during the early to mid 20th century was commonly either ignored or co-opted by others without proper credit. For example, the remarkable plant geneticist Barbara McClintock’s (1902-1992) research showing that corn genes or parts of genes could change location on chromosomes during cell division was largely ignored. For many years the phenomenon of “jumping genes” was mainly considered just an eccentric curiosity or oddity. The findings that some fifty percent of the human genome and as much as eighty percent of the corn genome are composed of what are now called “transposable elements,” indicate the significance of McClintock’s research for which she was belatedly recognized and awarded a Nobel Prize in 1983.[endnoteRef:475] McClintock’s “later work showing the importance of epigenetics, heritable changes not caused by changes to the DNA sequence,”[endnoteRef:476] is another indication that her research was ahead of its time in the field of genetics. And the work of the English chemist and crystallographer Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958) provided critical evidence for ferreting out the structure of DNA. James Watson and Francis Crick essentially appropriated Franklin’s work and originally did not even acknowledge the significance of her contribution to “their” discovery. While Crick has since died, Watson, who as a world famous geneticist really should know better, has become infamous and a pariah among the scientific community for his openly espoused racist and sexist bigotry.[endnoteRef:477] [475: Leslie Pray and Kira Zhaurova, “Barbara McClintock and the Discovery of Jumping Genes (Transposons),” Nature Education 1(1):169, accessed October 15, 2014 at http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/Transposons-The-Jumping-Genes-518 ] [476: Sandeep Ravindran, “Barbara McClintock and the discovery of jumping genes,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109 (50):20198–20199 (December 12, 2012). ] [477: Adam Rutherford. “He May have unraveled DNA, but James Watson deserves to be shunned,” The Guardian (December 1, 2014). ]

It is now recognized that in the first half of the 19th century, Ada Lovelace became the first computer programmer by providing algorithms for Charles Babbage’s “Difference Machine.” Women programed the first modern computer, ENIAC, although they were not invited to the dinner following the announcement that it actually worked. And a group women created one of the first computer programs that used words instead of numbers, COBOL, led by Grace Hopper, who is commonly referred to as "the mother of COBOL." Katherine G. Johnson, an African American woman who grew up in segregated West Virginia, developed the calculations for numerous space flights that took place during the 1960s, and when electronic computers began to be used, “they asked Johnson to double check the computer’s work.” She co-authored the paper that provided the mathematical basis for orbital flights, “Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite over a Selected Earth Position,” and “calculated the path of the most famous space flight in world history, the Apollo 11 trip to the moon.”[endnoteRef:478] [478: David Gutman, “West Virginian of the Year: Katherine G. Johnson,” Charleston Gazette-Mail (December 26, 2015). ]

Social norms that reinforce the oppression of women (especially women of color) influence the development of girls’ interests, turning them away from certain areas, while outright sexism makes participation unpleasant. Despite gains in gender equality, institutionalized gender bias continues to promote the notion that leadership qualities are incompatible with women’s natural abilities, the images of successful scientists remain overwhelmingly male and white, promotion is still biased toward male professors, mothers are viewed as less competent in the workforce than women who are not mothers, and the list of academic studies showing bias against women continues to grow.[endnoteRef:479] [479: Gendered Innovations in Science, Health & Medicine, Engineering and Environment report. Stanford University. Available at http://genderedinnovations.stanford.edu/institutions/bias.html. ]

This is not a story of exceptional women in mathematics and science. A bigot might say, exceptions don’t prove anything. But considering the long held belief that women are not as capable as men in math and science, including those indicated by Larry Summers, a brief historical view dispels such notions.

In 1960, only 5.9% of all doctorates in mathematics went to women. In a very short time, however, women increased their representation in most fields of science 3- to 10-fold; by 2006, women earned 29.6% of PhDs in mathematics, and similarly impressive gains occurred in engineering and physics. This rapid growth disabused those who believed women were not cut out for science…In 1963, fewer than 5% of veterinary students were female, but today 77% of DVM recipients are women. Similarly, in 1976, only 8% of biology PhDs went to women, but by 2006, 48% to 52% went to women.[endnoteRef:480] [480: Stephen Ceci and Wendy Williams, "Sex Differences in Math-Intensive Fields," Current Directions in Psychological Science 19(5):275-279 (2010). ]

There have been significant gains by women in attaining advanced degrees in math and science. However, they do not advance as rapidly as men, and tend to drop out more than men do. Well-documented instances of institutional biases, along with the continuing unequal responsibilities around child rearing doing a double shift of work, one paid in the workplace and the other unpaid in the home explain this. In addition, harassment by male colleagues is common, particularly in male-dominated scientific and technology fields.[endnoteRef:481] [481: A. Hope Jahren, “Why Women Quite Science,” The New York Times (March 6, 2016). ]

While only women can bear children, men and women can have equal shares in child rearing and have done so in earlier societies, as mentioned in Chapter 6. To enable that process today, society could and should provide resources to ensure that quality, free childcare is available to all. A vastly improved and free day care system for small children is needed to allow women to participate equally in all aspects of society. But this kind of social service is not supported in what is still a patriarchal society because businesses profit from depressed pay and unequal opportunity for women.

Epigenetics and the interaction of environment, organism, and genes

The more we learn about genetics and the role of DNA, the molecule that holds the code for most of the basic functioning of cells, the more biological determinism becomes untenable. Despite the best attempts of ideologues to show otherwise, the idea that humans have genetically determined social traits and talents that determine who they will be and how successful they will be as individuals before they’re even born has been clearly debunked. Confirming Anne Fausto-Sterling’s assertion that “we must erode the distinctions between the physical and the social,” recent scientific research illustrates even further how subject to change humans and other species are, depending on how we live our lives and the type of environment to which we are subjected. Biology cannot explain social inequality and oppression, nor do our genes alone determine our future. But reversing the question can teach us a lot: biology informs us about the impacts of an unequal society on the people in it.

Many environmental stimuli affect the functioning of our cells and bodies in ways that are only now beginning to be understood. The study of the chemicals that are attached to genes in our DNA is called epigenetics (the prefix “epi” refers to surface, and is used in the same way epidermis refers to the skin covering the human body). Established as a new field of study in the 21st century, scientists have found that the attachment of a methyl group (-CH3) to DNA affects the degree of expression of genes, which is to say whether or not the gene will become active and affect the organism.

In addition, surface attachment of a number of chemicals (including methyl groups) on histones—the protein bundles that the chromosomes wrap around—also influences gene expression. The chemicals attached to genes and histones determine whether or not a particular gene will function to make a protein and, if it does, how much will it make. “Like a computer, DNA is impotent without its software, the epigenome, telling it when, where and how to work.”[endnoteRef:482] [482: Randy Jirtle, "Epigenome: the program for human health and disease," Epigenomics 1(1):13-16 (2009).  ]

Although it is still a young field of study, epigenetic research has indicated: a) a number of factors, including exposure to a variety of chemicals and airborne pollution as well as psychological and material stress, can cause changes in the epigenome; b) some of these epigenetic changes are implicated in a range of diseases, including cancer as well as other serious health conditions;[endnoteRef:483] and c) these epigenetic changes can be passed along to offspring, affecting the lives of their children or grandchildren. Even stress, resulting from a mother’s malnutrition during pregnancy, for example, can cause large negative effects throughout a child’s life. Children of Dutch women who were pregnant during the famine at the end of the Second World War were found to “have an increased incidence of metabolic disorders, cardiovascular disease and mental disorders in adulthood.”[endnoteRef:484] [483: Tafari Mbadiwe and Richard Millis, "Epigenetics and Autism," Autism Research and Treatment Volume 2013 (2013), http://www.hindawi.com/journals/aurt/2013/826156/; Susan Murphy, John Hollingsworth, " Stress: A Possible Link between Genetics, Epigenetics, and Childhood Asthma," American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine 187(6): 563–571 (March 15, 2013); Shuk-mei Ho, "Epigenetics: The Interface Between Environment and the Genome," lecture at The Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA, Candad) Distinguished Lecture Series: Advance in Toxicology and Risk Assessment, accessed October 22, 2014 at http://oehha.ca.gov/public_info/lecture/OEHHAFeb20Ho.pdf; M. Ngollo, A. Dagdemir, S. Karsli-Ceppioglu, G. Judes, A. Pajon, F. Penault-Llorca, J.P. Boiteux, Y. Bignon, L. Guy, D. Bernard-Gallon, "Epigenetic modifications in prostate cancer," Epigenomics 6(4):415-26 ( August 2014); Mark Hoenerhoff and James Hartke, "Overview of the 'Epigenetic End Points in Toxicologic Pathology and Relevance to Human Health' Session of the 2014 Society of Toxicologic Pathology Annual Symposium," Toxicologic Pathology, XX:1-3 (2014).  ] [484: Op. cit., Randy Jirtle, “Epigenome: the program for human health and disease.” ]

Studies of genetically identical mice, observed over a three-month period in an intricate environment of great diversity, while another set of control mice were kept in uninteresting cages, showed some surprising results. Even though the mice were all genetically identical and behaved similarly at the beginning of the experiment, their exploratory behavior was markedly different by the end. Mice that moved around a lot and explored grew new nerve cells in the hippocampus, an area of the brain influenced by environmental complexity. In other words, the brain structure of genetically identical mice changed as a result of their life activity. As the researchers pointed out, these changes come about due to contingent facts about the mice’s life, highlighting the plasticity of the brain:

Different experiences might modify gene expression by changing the control systems in a cell’s DNA. Such changes are known to happen in human identical twins as they age. Other factors that might generate individual differences in genetically identical animals include intrauterine position during fetal development, nutrition, maternal stress, and early postnatal events, such as a researcher handling individual mice. Finally, there is mere chance. If the mice entered the cage in the same general spot, some might have been on the outside of the crowd, others on the inside.[endnoteRef:485] [485: Anne Fausto-Sterling, “Getting Personal,” Boston Review:12. (March/April 2015): ]

The findings of epigenetics have added a new dimension to the outdated “nature vs. nurture” debate, underlining just how wrong the proposed dichotomy was in the first place. The genes, as well as chemical markers attached to the DNA that are present as a result of environmental influences (chemical, physical, and social), combine to influence much of what happens with respect to human wellbeing and development. The stress effects of poverty, maltreatment, being constantly reminded that you are “the other,” and exposure to toxins have a negative influence on individuals directly subject to those factors. Furthermore, those negative impacts we now know can be passed on to one’s progeny, bringing back into the realm of science a version of the much derided ideas of the late 18th century naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.

The idea of either nature or nurture, or some percentage of each, determining our behavior and development has always provided an incomplete and inaccurate account of how genes, organism, and environment interact. How should we understand the interaction of organism and environment? Biological determinism holds the organism as the subject within strict limits set from birth by its genetic make-up, the surrounding environment as passive object. Alternatively, the organism is a blank slate, ready for environmental imprinting. These static and one-sided accounts are sometimes melded to produce a certain percentage of each determining the organism's life track. None of these explanations are satisfactory as they fail to capture the dynamic and reciprocating interaction between all three factors: gene, organism, and environment. In the case of humans, our environment is social as much as it is biological.[endnoteRef:486] [486: For more detail on the dynamic interaction between gene, organism and environment, a good place to start is, Richard Lewontin, The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment, Harvard University Press (2002). ]

In summary, humans, as a part of the natural world, derive our sustenance from working with the external environment, have lived in many different types of societies with a variety of social norms, have a wide range of traits and behaviors that are shaped by, and interact with, local environmental conditions as well as the needs and stimuli of the society in which we live. There is no such thing as a fixed set of human traits and behaviors that are equally displayed in all societies. No group is innately intellectually or morally superior to another. We are not compelled by our biology to act in anti-social ways—to be greedy, selfish and competitive or for men to dominate women or for whites to discriminate against people of color. Rather than written in our genes, racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination and oppression are the creation of unequal societies and function to maintain them that way. The future is therefore open to the creation of a society of genuine equality, and there is nothing in our biology to constrain or derail its blossoming.

As biology can inform us about social impacts, broader ecological knowledge gained from a more objective and comprehensive investigation of the natural world offers insight as to how we might bring about a genuinely sustainable society. It is to this exploration that we now turn.

Part Three: Learning from nature

Chapter 8. The biosphere: cycles of life

In nature nothing takes place in isolation. Everything affects and is affected by every other thing, and it is mostly because this manifold motion and interaction is forgotten that our natural scientists are prevented from gaining a clear insight into the simplest things.

—F. Engels[endnoteRef:487] [487: Op. cit., Frederick Engels, “The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man.” ]

In the process of investigating and surviving in the world, human societies have learned a remarkable amount about how ecosystems function and about techniques and technologies that minimize harm to the environment, or do so over time frames that allow for recovery. We need to mobilize the knowledge, experience and enthusiasm of humanity to develop and implement a genuinely ecological economy. Under capitalism these socially and ecologically rational approaches can not be implemented because they are not compatible with how the socio-economic system works. We discussed in chapter 3 the increasingly large disruptions to ecological cycles and flows by the workings of capitalism, even to the point of ruptures or rifts. The ecological crisis facing the world today—developing at an accelerating pace—is of local, regional, and global proportions. We examined the ecological damage prior to a fuller explanation of how ecological processes and systems function, how they are connected, and the complexity of interactions among organisms and between organisms and the non-living geophysical world.

In the next three chapters, we discuss the functioning of ecosystems to elucidate how the application of ecological concepts can help us develop more sound socio-ecological systems. These can provide examples of meeting people’s life needs in more ecologically healthy ways, which means sustainable over the long term. We recognize that there are limits to how society can or should be arranged to mimic nature. Nevertheless, important insights can and have been gained. What have we learned from the rest of nature that can be applied to a socio-ecological society based on equality for all?

All living creatures interact with other species and their surroundings. The degree of stability and the amount of biomass productivity of an ecosystem are determined by these relationships. Ecosystems are composed of assemblages of living organisms, including organisms living within and on the surfaces of other organisms, all interacting among themselves as well as with their habitat—the water, the air, the soil. There is enormous variation in the interactions of organisms with their chemical and physical surroundings and other organisms. Emergent properties of ecosystems—those that unexpectedly arise out of these interactions—hold many lessons for humanity, most of which would never have been discovered by focusing on individual species. It is through a better understanding of the multitude of these effects and the mechanisms used by organisms to help them thrive under particular conditions, including working in conjunction with other organisms, that we can find inspiration to design better practices to obtain our needs.

We’ll explore some linkages and associations, as well as the exchange of matter that occurs as organisms go through natural processes. When doing so, we should remember that the world is in a constant state of change. When an organism goes about its normal life activities it changes its surroundings as well as itself. As soil minerals dissolve in water, both the minerals and the water are changed in the process. As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus wrote some 2,500 years ago, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.” The water molecules that passed by the first time are long gone by the second time one steps in, and they will never return with their cohort of water molecules to that spot. Likewise, one can never walk into the same forest twice. Just walking on the forest floor creates measurable biological and chemical changes, and the soil in those footsteps is different from before you took that step. The passage of time causes chemical and physical changes, including mental states, in each person; the memory of a prior walk alters how we perceive a future one.

Due to the inbuilt bias of living in a social system based on individualized competition, people are very familiar with the concept of biological competition and how it is central to evolution: “survival of the fittest,” a widely known and over-utilized term in evolutionary biology. It’s such a well-worn expression because it fits so well with the ideology and practice of capitalist economies, in which people and institutions are encouraged, actually compelled, to compete and are rewarded for on that basis. Whoever thrives by setting up a flourishing business while others flounder, is by definition the fittest capitalist. Though much less investigated and analyzed, cooperation within and among species is just as critical to the process of evolution. As discussed earlier, cooperation is one of the keys to the evolution of humans and our success as a species; it pervaded the hunter-gatherer societies that prevailed for so much of our existence.

Looking at it with a more overarching view, Fritjof Capra, physicist, author, and co-founder of the Center for Ecoliteracy, has explained it this way: “Nature nurtures life through communities. This is a process that started with the first single-celled organisms. Life, from its beginning more than three billion years ago, took over the planet by networking, not combat.”[endnoteRef:488] Cooperation takes many forms between and across species and is common throughout the history and scope of the 4 billion year old story of life. [488: Quoted in Jeremy Smith and Alex Dixon, “Birds Do It. Bats Do It,” accessed February 19, 2015 at http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/birds_do_it_bats_do_it. ]

Cooperation and Life

Cooperation exists everywhere. Among different species of microorganisms that tend to live “in complex communities, where they communicate with one another to cooperate for the greater good.”[endnoteRef:489] When a critical population of many bacteria is reached they exude sticky material that makes a protective mat or biofilm that they live within. Inside multicellular organisms, under normal healthy conditions, the various types of cells are not in competition, but rather receive assistance from other types of cells—as when red blood cells deliver oxygen from the lungs throughout our bodies. [489: Carl Zimmer, “A weakness in bacteria’s fortress,” Scientific American 312(1):41-45 (January 2015). ]

In plants, nitrogen-fixing bacteria create a home inside the roots of legumes, obtaining sugars from the plant in order to live and providing nitrogen to the plant in a form it can use. Large populations of microbes living near plant roots, an area called the rhizosphere, receive energy and material that’s exuded from roots and provide the plant with soluble forms of phosphorus and a variety of organic substances that stimulate plant growth. Similarly, there is cooperation between certain fungi (mycorrhizae) and plant roots. There are so many other examples—bees pollinating flowers as they obtain pollen, to “cleaner” fish eating parasites from the mouths of other fish, to cattle egrets and cowbirds eating flies and other bugs from the backs of cattle—that it should be clear that cooperation is one of the most important ways that species, and individuals within species, interact.

Certain structures common to eukaryotes ( all cellular life with DNA enclosed in a nucleus) such as the chloroplasts in green plants, the energy converting mitochondria found in all plant and animal cells originated independently. There is now considerable evidence that these structures began as free-living organisms that then became incorporated into the normal workings of larger cells. So, cooperation in these instances led to cellular integration in and the viability of an entirely new set of organisms and a huge increase in biodiversity, a process that took billions of years. Martin A. Nowak, Director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics and professor of Mathematics and Biology at Harvard University and an internationally recognized expert on evolution and game theory, notes that

Co-operation was the principle architect of 4 billion years of evolution. Co-operation built the first bacterial cells, then higher cells, then complex multicellular life …Co-operation can draw living matter upward to higher levels of organisation. It generates the possibility for greater diversity by new specialisations, new niches and new divisions of labour. Co-operation makes evolution constructive and open ended.[endnoteRef:490] [490: Charles Leadbeater, “No, we are not all selfish – cooperation is at the heart of our existence,” The Guardian (March 7, 2012). ]

In order to grow, exist, and reproduce, all living organisms have some fundamental needs—energy, water, and other essential elements and compounds, and removal of waste products. All organisms need sources of essential materials and sinks that can absorb their wastes, frequently used as sources of energy and nutrients by other organisms. “The difference between a living organism and a dead organism lies in the basic process of life—in what sages and poets throughout the ages have called the ‘breath of life.’”[endnoteRef:491] As organisms go about their lives, the biochemical processes are commonly grouped together under the term metabolism. This includes production or synthesis of materials—such as proteins, carbohydrates and fats for growing new tissue and storing energy—as well as the breakdown of substances to produce energy and to provide chemical building blocks to make other molecules, to repair damaged tissue, and to reproduce. In the process the chemical and biological surroundings of organisms and the organisms themselves are changed by resources they use and by the release of waste products. Derived from the Greek metabole, ‘to change,’ the word metabolism was used by Karl Marx in a much enlarged sense to describe the interactions between humans, the social system, and their physical, biological, and chemical surroundings. [491: Fritjof Capra, “The New Facts of Life, ” accessed February 18, 2015 at, http://www.ecoliteracy.org/essays/new-facts-life. ]

The interaction of living organisms with the non-living as well as the living part of the world was highlighted by Engels: “Animals…change the environment by their activities in the same way, even if not to the same extent, as man does, and these changes, as we have seen, in turn react upon and change those who made them.”[endnoteRef:492] The same can also be said of plants, as they remove nutrients and water from soils, depleting these substances, even if only temporarily, making it more difficult to obtain their basic needs in the future if the nutrients and water are not replenished. There is a continuous exchange of matter and energy among organisms and between organisms and the biosphere. Human biogeochemical interactions are mediated through the particular social system within which we are embedded. [492: Op. cit., Frederick Engels, “The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man.” ]

In many interactions, both species cooperate to make life possible, such as with bacteria living in legume root nodules, gaining energy and safety from the plant while converting nitrogen gas from the atmosphere into forms that the plant can use to make amino acids, proteins, and other nitrogen containing compounds. There are also signaling interactions; for example most plants give off gaseous substances when attacked by insects, thereby stimulating their neighbors to start making defense chemicals to help withstand a similar assault.

To shape and be shaped

Striking examples of a species interacting with the rest of the environment took place long before multi-cellular life evolved, illustrating the extraordinary environmental changes caused by living organisms. Indeed, one cannot separate life from earth as it exists today; in a very real sense, they created each other, and co-evolved together. Oxygen is far too reactive a gas to have existed in the early atmosphere of the earth. Any small amount of oxygen that might have been produced would have been combined with other elements such as iron and rendered insoluble and unreactive. Because there was none in the early atmosphere, something must have put oxygen there and brought it up to its current twenty-one percent level.

A species of single-celled bacterium brought about this singularly most significant change. Cyanobacter, a bacteria that is often referred to as blue-green algae, is capable of photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation, providing the organism with energy, the complex carbon-based molecules it needs, and nitrogen in forms that can be used to make amino acids and proteins. “Cyanobacteria are arguably the most successful group of microorganisms on earth. They are the most genetically diverse; they occupy a broad range of habitats across all latitudes, widespread in freshwater, marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and they are found in the most extreme niches such as hot springs, salt works, and hypersaline bays.”[endnoteRef:493] While not the only nitrogen-fixing organism present, a filamentous form of cyanobacter, anabaena azollae, is important for maintaining nitrogen fertility in rice paddies that have been farmed for centuries. [493: Stewart, I, and Falconer, I.R. (2008) "Cyanobacteria and cyanobacterial toxins" Pages 271–296 in Oceans and human health: risks and remedies from the seas, Eds: Walsh PJ, Smith SL and Fleming LE. Academic Press, ISBN 0-12-372584-4. ]

Cyanobacteria emit oxygen as a byproduct of photosynthesis, as do the terrestrial plants that developed much later in evolutionary history. The production of oxygen by oceans full of Cyanobacter two billion years ago created the oxygenated atmosphere that the earth has had ever since. (It is thought that the current levels of atmospheric oxygen—around twenty-one percent—were reached only some four hundred million years ago, after colonization of the earth by land plants, beginning with mosses.) As a consequence of the production of oxygen, organisms living in direct contact with the atmosphere that had no way of coping with such high oxygen concentrations were decimated. Today, anaerobic organisms that require an oxygen-free environment exist only in sediments and microenvironments where oxygen can’t penetrate. A die-off of such large proportions simultaneously created the opportunity for the evolutionary development of organisms that require oxygen, including multi-cellular forms of life.

Engels’ important insight quoted at the beginning of this chapter—“In nature nothing takes place in isolation…” is now a core principle of ecological science. Studying cells or individual organisms separate from this realty can produce important understandings and knowledge. However, this reductionist approach is a major obstruction to advancing an understanding of our world in all its complexity. The real ecological action takes place as organisms interact with other organisms and their surroundings. And as they do so, properties emerge that the individual organisms don’t have by themselves. The near absence of holistic thinking in western science—considering the whole system and examining the interactions occurring within it—continues to be responsible for slow progress in many branches of science. Although considerable lip service is given to the importance of holistic thinking, in most fields and with few exceptions, researchers study isolated phenomena, separate from the interactions among organisms and between organisms and their chemical and physical surroundings.

Take a breath and then slowly let it out. During this process, repeated unconsciously thousands of times each day, you are interacting with the global atmosphere, depleting the atmosphere ever so slightly of oxygen and enriching it ever so slightly with carbon dioxide. As the cells in our bodies work, they take in oxygen in order to function and emit carbon dioxide as a waste product that we need to excrete. This exchange of gases that occurs during breathing, resulting from the process of aerobic respiration is a metabolic interaction between a human and the atmosphere.

Soils breathe as if they were single organisms. Soil-dwelling microorganisms, medium size animals such as nematodes and rotifers, and larger organisms such as ants, earthworms and plant roots go about their everyday life processes changing the composition of the soil. Carbon dioxide given off by these organisms enters soil pore spaces and diffuses up to the atmosphere. Simultaneously, soil organisms take up oxygen, lowering its concentration in the soil’s air-filled pores, causing it to diffuse from the atmosphere into the ground. Wind and changes in atmospheric pressure assist the continual movement of oxygen and carbon dioxide into and out of soils.

The famous Keeling Curve (see Figure 4 in Chapter 3), which shows steadily rising CO2 levels since the 1950s, illustrates the whole planet breathing. As plants change their seasonal behavior, carbon dioxide concentrations rise in the Northern hemisphere during spring and summer and decrease in the winter, Both animals and plants are required, along with geophysical and chemical weathering processes, to maintain relatively stable atmospheric, oceanic and soil oxygen and carbon dioxide concentrations.

Food Webs

How do organisms get the energy that they need to live? Plants use the energy of sunlight to drive photosynthesis, a process in which they incorporate carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to produce energy-rich molecules that are then used to carry out essential metabolic processes. Green plants are referred to as primary producers because it is only through the process of photosynthesis by plants that energy is provided for essentially all other organisms.[endnoteRef:494] The exception being certain groups of bacteria, which obtain energy from simple inorganic compounds: sulfur, iron, and ammonium. [494: Although plants are primary “producers” of energy that other organisms use they are also “consumers” of water and the numerous nutrients obtained mainly from the soil. ]

In other words, virtually all organisms unable to photosynthesize use solar energy that is first captured by plants. The most simplified general pattern is a connection of organisms arranged in a network or web. It is, of course, much more complicated and extensive than this. Nutrients and energy are transferred from one organism to another, with some of the energy dissipated as organisms use it for their growth, development, and reproduction.

The interactions arranged in food webs, in which the waste products of one organism, or the organism itself, become the food source for another in the web of life. For example, many soil fungi feed on the remains of primary producers, and they become a nutrition source for springtails that can then be eaten by a ground beetle (see Figure 5). There is a continuous flow of metabolic energy needs and wastes between organisms and other parts of the environment.

Figure 5. Soil food web.[endnoteRef:495] [495: USDA Soil Biology Primer Photo Gallery, http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/photogallery/soils/health/biology/gallery/?cid=1788&position=Promo. ]

At each stage there is a transfer of energy from the sun to producers to primary, secondary, and tertiary consumers. It is common to refer to organisms that are higher up the food web as being at a higher trophic level. However, relationships among organisms are not hierarchical. There are organisms that feed on others, such as when a bacteria-feeding nematode uses bacteria as a food source. But when an organism that appears to be higher up one of the branches of the food web dies, it then becomes food for those lower down, completing a cycle of nutrients. As described above, there are other types of relationships in addition to antagonistic ones and cooperation among and between species is equally common.

The Biblical saying “For soil thou art, and unto soil thou shalt return[footnoteRef:22]” is literally true for most terrestrial organisms. Out of the eighteen nutrients essential for plants to grow, all of them aside from carbon and a portion of the oxygen are taken up from the soil. The calcium and phosphorus in our bones comes from the plants and animal products we ingest. But how did these elements get into plants? It came from the calcium and phosphorus dissolved in soil water that was taken up by roots and moved together with water through specialized tubes to leaves, fruits, and seeds. [22: In modern translations, the Hebrew word is commonly rendered as ground, earth, or soil instead of “dust,” used in the King James translation. ]

Life participates in global cycles

Previously, we outlined how the capitalist economy has either created or worsened disturbances and rifts in basic natural cycles. But how do these cycles of water, nutrients and gases function and what roles do organisms play in the various processes?

The hydrologic cycle. Plants need a lot of water to grow. To produce 1 pound of the edible portion of food plants it takes hundreds to well over a thousand pounds of water.[endnoteRef:496] Most of this water is taken up from the soil and then transported through the plant’s specialized tubes to the leaves, where it evaporates from the same openings in the leaves that provide entry for the CO2 needed for photosynthesis. An estimated sixty percent of the precipitation that falls on relatively undisturbed land enters the soil, and is stored there in a form that’s mostly available to plants. The remaining forty percent flows either through the soil into aquifers and springs or by overland flow into streams, rivers, lakes, and wetlands. [496: The Guardian Datablog, “How much water is needed to produce food and how much do we waste?,” http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/jan/10/how-much-water-food-production-waste. ]

Around ninety-five percent of the water taken up by plants is returned to the atmosphere by evaporation from the surfaces of leaves, while about five percent is used during photosynthesis or in the production of new cells. Most of the water that comes from the atmosphere as rainfall that enters the soil and is taken up by plants is then returned to the atmosphere—an essential part of the hydrologic cycle.[endnoteRef:497] Soil would not even be soil, without living organic matter, such as plants and other organisms as an integral part of it; it would be just be groundup sterile rocks and minerals. The structural condition of soils—how porous they are and the number of large pores open at the surface—is primarily a function of the living organisms in it: plants, fungi, bacteria, earthworms, beetles and so on. Rainfall is able to more easily infiltrate into soils with high amounts of biological activity and better physical conditions. This means that less precipitation runs off the land, less soil erosion, better recharge of aquifers, and more water available for plants to use. And when plants are present, rain first hits leaves, lessening the impact of the raindrops on the soil surface, increasing infiltration into the soil, reducing runoff and erosion, allowing more water to infiltrate down to aquifers, and supply springs and streams with more dependable flows. [497: The remaining water inside the plant will be returned to the atmosphere as the plant dies, cells rupture, and the residue dries out. ]

Another aspect of the interaction of living organisms and the water cycle has become appreciated only recently.[endnoteRef:498] There are transfers into the atmosphere of organisms, dust particles, and gaseous organic compounds given off by plants. As wind sweeps over the land and sea and waves break in the ocean, organisms and particles are picked up and whisked along, eventually reaching high into the atmosphere. In addition, trees and other organisms in tropical forests release compounds that contribute to enhanced rainfall.[endnoteRef:499] Almost all rainfall begins its descent into the atmosphere as ice. The compounds, organisms, and inorganic particles become the nuclei around which ice particles form. One of the bacteria considered to play an important role in promoting rainfall through initiating ice nucleation also damages plant cells with a protein that promotes ice formation. One of the researchers on the phenomena of bacteria and ice nucleation in clouds, David Sands, has commented: “We need to recognize these microbes as a part—maybe even a major part—of meteorological processes.”[endnoteRef:500] [498: Brent Christner, Cindy Morris, Christine Foreman, Rongman Cai, David Sands, "Ubiquity of Biological Ice Nucleators in Snowfall," Science 319 (5867):1214, (February 29, 2008); U. Pöschl, S. Martin, B. Sinha, Q. Chen, S. Gunthe, J. Huffman, S. Borrmann, D. Farmer, R. Garland, G. Helas, J. Jimenez, S. King, A. Manzi, E. Mikhailov, T. Pauliquevis, M. Petters, A. Prenni, P. Roldin, D. Rose, J. Schneider, H. Su, S. Zorn, P. Artaxo, M. Andreae, "Rainforest Aerosols as Biogenic Nuclei of Clouds and Precipitation in the Amazon," Science 329 (5998):1513-1516 (September 17, 2010). ] [499: Douglas Sheil, "How plants water our planet: advances and imperatives,” Trends in Plant Science 19(4):209-211 (April 2014). ] [500: Ferris Jabr, “It’s buggy out there,” The New York Times (February 15, 2015). ]

Nutrient and carbon cycles and flows—When trees or grasses die their roots, stems, and leaves decompose and nutrients are released back into the soil. For terrestrial animals, metabolic products containing nutrients deposited as urine and feces near to where food is consumed also facilitate a cycling of nutrients. But a true nutrient cycle, in which nutrients return to the location from which plants removed them, is only one type of flow. Nutrients removed from a plot of land in the form of food for use in some other location is another type of flow. These nutrients often end up as sewage in cities, and as huge quantities of manure on factory farms, which import most of the feed for farm animals.

Nutrient flows also occur on a global scale, as when the dust from the Sahara Desert and the Sahel region of North Africa is picked up and transported to the Southeast of the U.S. and South America. One of the ways that the Amazon has been able to maintain its fertility over centuries is through a large input of nutrients from the Sahel: annual dust transported from Africa is estimated to be approximately twenty-seven million tons, and to contribute some twenty-two thousand tons of phosphorus to the Amazon basin, enough to balance losses from runoff and leaching.[endnoteRef:501] This flow of nutrients interacts with the water cycle: years of higher than normal rainfall in the Sahel promote plant growth and are followed by years of below normal dust transfers to the Amazon. [501: Hongbin Yu, Mian Chin, Tianle Yuan, Huisheng Bian, Lorraine Remer, Joseph Prospero, Ali Omar, David Winker, Yuekui Yang, Yan Zhang, Zhibo Zhan, and Chun Zhao, "The Fertilizing Role of African Dust in the Amazon Rainforest: A First Multiyear Assessment Based on CALIPSO Lidar Observations," Geophysical Research Letters (February 2007), accessed February 25, 2015 at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1002/2015GL063040/asset/grl52660.pdf?v=1&t=i6kvnfh3&s=6f82e794a5ab9af9f07204fcdce8ce6f2d8772b8. ]

Large land and sea animals such as bison, elephants, whales, seabirds, and anadromous fish[footnoteRef:23] such as salmon and seabirds play vital roles in moving nutrients long distances away from high concentrations and distributing them around the planet, enhancing the earth’s fertility and biological productivity.[endnoteRef:502] Whales move nutrients from deep in the ocean to surface waters and anadromous fish and seabirds from the ocean to the land while migrating herds of herbivores distribute nutrients over long terrestrial distances. [23: Anadromous fish are born in fresh water, migrate into the ocean where they spend most of their lives, returning to the rivers where they were born in order to spawn, after which they die. ] [502: Op. cit., Christopher Doughty, et al. ]

Aside from the global cycling of carbon between organisms and biosphere (Figure 6), there are other gaseous interactions between organisms and their surroundings. For example, microorganisms in wetland soils produce methane (natural gas, or CH4—a greenhouse gas that, pound for pound, has about twenty times the warming effect of CO2) with a portion reaching the atmosphere. Farm animals, particularly when raised by industrial methods produce large amounts of methane during their digestion. If manure is stored as a liquid in a lagoon, methane is produced and given off by microorganisms. Soil microorganisms produce nitrous oxide—another greenhouse gas—when plentiful levels of nitrate are present and soils are wet.

Figure 6. Carbon Cycle. (Bold type indicates carbon losses.)

The exchange of substances between an organism and its surroundings changes the chemical, biological and physical conditions in its vicinity. Through their interactions with their local environments, organisms shape and reshape the environments in which they are living. While cyanobacteria may have had the largest effect at the planetary level, other organisms profoundly mold and change the soil and water.

As illustrated in Figure 7, plants are in a dynamic interrelationship with various organisms and the chemical and physical environment in soil. In addition to participating in global cycles, plants sense their environment and respond to ensure better nutrition, growth, and protection against diseases and insects. Plants have such sweeping effects that “soil undergoes great and lasting evolutionary changes as a direct consequence of the activity of the plants growing in it, and these changes in turn feed back on the organisms’ conditions of existence.”[endnoteRef:503] [503: Richard Levins & Richard Lewontin, The Dialectical Biologist, Harvard University Press:134 (1985). ]

Connected by underground networks of symbiotic fungi, trees of the same species are able to transfer nutrients from a resource rich tree to a deficient one. Such transfers, by way of the very thin root-like fungal connections also occur between many different plant species. Most plants grown for food form mutually beneficial associations with mycorrhizae,[endnoteRef:504] with the fungus receiving sugars produced by photosynthesis, while providing the plant with many benefits: by exploring more of the soil than roots can do alone the plant has access to greater quantities of nitrogen, phosphorus, and water. And the fungus also helps to make forms of phosphorus in the soil more soluble and available for uptake. If those advantages aren’t enough, the presence of mycorrhizae lessens the ability of disease organisms to attack roots. [504: Crops that do not form associations with mycorrhizal fungi are beets and members of the cabbage (Crucifer) family such as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and rape (canola) and a few such as buckwheat only form weak associations. ]

Plants continually produce defense compounds such as nicotine and tannic acid that offer protection from attack by bacteria, fungi, and viruses. They are able to ramp up production of defense chemicals in response to infection or attack. Some of the chemicals in fruits and vegetables that help to ward off diseases and insects induce mild stress in humans, which is believed to account for their health benefits, including “protection against brain disorders” such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.[endnoteRef:505] [505: Mark Mattson, “What Doesn’t Kill You…,” Scientific American 213(1):41-44 (July 2015). ]

Figure 7. Plant interactions with soil and atmosphere.

Bees, other insects and bats pollinate many plants and a variety of mammals and birds disperse tree seeds by eating the fruit and dispersing the seeds. Approximately ninety-five percent of Brazilian rainforest trees depend upon animals to spread seeds. Larger animals such as toucans, monkeys, and tapirs are especially important for reproduction of hardwood species. The loss of these animals because of modern over-hunting and habitat loss is leading to softwood trees replacing hardwoods in the Amazon. This change in plant composition has led to an estimated loss of ten to fifteen percent of the carbon stored in the tropical forest.[endnoteRef:506] Aquatic ecosystems, are similarly intertwined and interactive; phytoplankton in the oceans absorb as much carbon dioxide as terrestrial plants and sequester a portion of it in the deep ocean layers when they die. [506: Damian Carrington, "Loss of monkeys and birds in tropical forests driving up carbon emissions,” The Guardian (December 18, 2015). ]

Animal and microbe interactions

When discussing microbes, the first examples that might come to mind are probably harmful disease causing organisms. Though there are numerous microbial diseases, there is a whole other dimension to animal-microbe interactions: “Most microbes do not make us sick. At worst, they are passengers or hitchhikers. At best, they are invaluable parts of our bodies: not takers of life but its guardians. They help to digest our food, educate our immune systems, protect us from disease, sculpt our organs, guide our behaviour, and maintain our health.”[endnoteRef:507] There are literally trillions of microbes living on and inside each large animal, including, of course, humans. [507: Ed Yong, “Gut Reaction: the surprising power of microbes,” The Guardian (August 25, 2016). ]

It is only recently that scientists have appreciated the importance of these organisms, their large range in types, and the effects they have on people.[endnoteRef:508] It is estimated that over ten thousand species of microorganisms are living in cooperative association with healthy humans—with total populations in the trillions of organisms per person inside our mouths and digestive systems and on our skin. This human microbiome allows us to digest food and protects us as we provide these organisms a safe environment and sustenance. It is estimated that these organisms comprise about half of the cells in our bodies.[endnoteRef:509] [508: Nicholas Bakalar, “40 Trillion Bacteria on and in Us? Fewer Than We Thought,” The New York Times (February 15, 2016); Ed Young, I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life, Ecco (2016).  ] [509: Megan Thoemmes, Daniel Fergus, and Julie Urban, “Face time: A molecular look at the mites that live in our pores,” Natural History 123(3):10-11 (April 2015). ]

Human microbiomes co-evolved with our species and contribute to the normal functioning of the body. “[A] burgeoning body of research suggests that the makeup of this complex microbial ecosystem is closely linked with our immune function. Some researchers now suspect that, aside from protecting us from infection, one of the immune system's jobs is to cultivate, or “farm,” the friendly microbes that we rely on to keep us healthy. This “farming” goes both ways, though. Our resident microbes seem to control aspects of our immune function in a way that suggests they are farming us, too.”[endnoteRef:510] Lessening the diversity of the human microbiome through overuse of antibiotics, living in reduced microbial conditions, routinely using anti-microbial soaps (in 2016, 19 of the active ingredients found in them were banned in the United States[endnoteRef:511]) or children not playing outdoors in contact with grass and soil can have detrimental health effects. The increase in developed countries of cases of a number of ailments may be caused by an imbalance and low diversity of the bacteria in the gut.[endnoteRef:512] There is much more to be learned in this area, but it appears that studying organism interactions can provide a major breakthrough in human health and ecological understanding. [510: Moises Velasquez-Manoff, “Among Trillions of Microbes in the Gut, a Few Are Special,” Scientific American (February 17, 2105), accessed February 18, 2015 at http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/among-trillions-of-microbes-in-the-gut-a-few-are-special/. ] [511: Monique Brouillette, “U.S. bans common chemicals found in antibacterial soaps,” Scientific American (September 2, 2016). ] [512: Martin J. Blaser, Missing Microbes: How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues, Henry Holt and Co. (2014). ]

Intentional human interaction with the ecosystem. Current complex interactions of animals, plants, and the physical/chemical environment have taken millions, even billions of years to evolve. And these interactions continue to change, most dramatically with human actions. Humans have developed a way of living and interacting with the environment that involves, in the terminology of C.S. Holling, three unique aspects—foresight and intentionality, communication, and technology.[endnoteRef:513] Human activities are generally intentional and can be thought through ahead of time to anticipate outcomes of individual actions. When results are not ecologically or socially satisfactory, alternative strategies and techniques can be used to modify activities. Or as Frederick Engels wrote, “we have the advantage over all other creatures of being able to learn [nature’s] laws and apply them correctly.”[endnoteRef:514] Although communication is a general characteristic of all organisms, from bacteria to land plants to animals, humans have a unique ability to communicate ideas and experiences and have developed technology that can spread information around the globe in milliseconds. And other technologies that humans have developed—from use of fire, to control of vegetation, to gigantic mining equipment, to electric generating plants spewing pollutants—have given us the ability to greatly influence large areas of the earth, well beyond the local or temporary effects that most organisms exert. However, as biologist Stephen Mulkey has written: [513: C. S. Holling, "Understanding the Complexity of Economic, Ecological, and Social Systems," Ecosystems 4: 390-405 (2001). ] [514: Op. cit., Frederick Engels, “The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man.” ]

Presently human-caused climate change is an amplifier, rather than a primary driver, of human impacts on ecosystems. Toward the middle of this century, climate change will inexorably become the dominant cause of ecological restructuring of the biosphere, causing species displacements and local, regional, and global extinctions…The double whammy of human overexploitation and accelerating climate change, if unchecked, will result in progressive ecological disruption on a scale not seen on Earth since the K-T Extinction 66 million years ago when catastrophic geologic events were the agents of wholesale disruptions of all of our planet’s systems. There is no other analog in the recent geological record that compares to the speed and comprehensive nature of the transformation unfolding during this century and beyond.[endnoteRef:515] [515: Stephen Mulkey, “The integrity of ecosystems,” The Environmental Century. Blog post (August 3, 2016). ]

While nature tends to operate in a circular fashion, capitalist economies operate linearly—extracted resources are refined and manufactured into products which are shipped and used elsewhere, with waste produced at each step of the process. Although some recognize the economy should function in a more circular manner, there are systemic obstacles that prohibit that from occurring—primarily the basic requirement for capitalists to obtain the most profit in the shortest period of time (see chapter 3 for a discussion of the rifts and disturbances to natural cycles and flows by the operation of the logic of capitalism). While the idea of a circular economy has begun to generate a lot of interest because of the depredations of capitalism, to actually operate a more circular economy a different socio-economic system is required.[endnoteRef:516] One in which the decision making processes incorporate the wisdom of all the people in working to maintain ecological health and integrity. [516: See the special issue of Nature, March 23, 2016 for a discussion of the circular economy. ]

In the following chapter we discuss some thoughts—not hard and fast rules—about what resilient systems are like, socially and ecologically, and ways to think about creating them. This means learning from nature and four billion years of evolutionary experiments trying out different ways to solve problems and to apply lessons to our interactions with each other and the rest of the natural world.

Chapter 9. Developing resilient socio-ecological systems

A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.

—Aldo Leopold[endnoteRef:517] [517: Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac, Oxford University Press:262 (1949). ]

Still championed by many indigenous communities around the world, there is an important concept contained in pre-capitalist ways of seeing the earth as an interconnected whole. Or, to put it in the words of the late environmental activist and socialist Barry Commoner, everything is connected to everything else. Data from satellites is confirming Commoner’s aphorism and shedding new light on the ways in which life, land, oceans, atmosphere, the moon, and the star at the center of our solar system make up one interacting, dynamic system. The relatively new discipline of earth systems analysis takes this approach. Geologists and other scientists have increasingly come to recognize that physical phenomena can only be truly understood through their interactions and processes, i.e. as an integrated system. However, earth systems science remains trapped in partial solutions because its understandings of biological systems are not yet fully integrated and combined with a critique and analysis of social systems. What is required is to take and apply the lessons from the previous chapter and adapt them to the socio-ecological context of creating an equitable and sustainable human society.

An ecosystem interacts with other ecosystems, for example, when birds migrate from winter-feeding areas to summer breeding grounds. Neighboring ecosystems overlap in transition zones known as ecotones, which frequently exhibit greater biodiversity than each individual ecosystem of which they are composed. And disparate ecosystems, in location and type, may impact one another over distances of thousands of miles, with the Amazon fertilized in part with dust from storms originating in the Sahara and with weather systems that begin off the coast of western Africa and emerge as hurricanes in the Caribbean and southeastern United States.[endnoteRef:518] While acknowledging interconnectedness, we still need frequently to separate out and focus on various phenomena in order to gain a better understanding of how the planet operates. [518: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/earth-from-space.html. ]

The numerous ecological disturbances and degradations described earlier (Chapter 3) can largely be healed, and attempts can be made to limit and avoid them in the future. This requires a methodology for making economic decisions that recognizes the need to create and regenerate resilient people, human economies, and ecosystems. It requires the creation not just of new economic systems, but of new ethics and ways of behaving towards fellow humans, and of new procedures for interacting with the rest of the natural world, all of which grow out of a new economic-social system. In practical terms, this will require democratic planning and cooperation as humanity sets about erasing and compensating for, to the extent possible, the numerous negative impacts of capitalism’s five-hundred-year history, as the system spread and penetrated virtually every corner of the globe.

Society will need a very different approach to the material world in order to replace an emphasis on capitalist efficiency that uses linear processes relying on simplification of production, producing with the least amount of (and most unskilled) labor possible, lowering labor and other costs to reap maximum profits, and ignoring detrimental environmental effects. In the economic activities of society, ecological concepts of metabolic efficiency in the use and cycling of materials and energy that permit the sustainability of the society need to come to the fore. This means that residual materials will become inputs for other activities, analogous to waste products of animals becoming energy and nutrient sources for other species. The development and maintenance of such connections rely on synergies that evolve among people living in cooperation with each other, instead of in competition and individualist isolation, and in harmony with nature, instead of attempting to conquer and dominate it.

We need a new way of making and implementing decisions that takes into account possible effects over the very long term, something that the capitalist laws of motion make impossible. As Marx wrote,

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 the household].[endnoteRef:519] [519: Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. III, Vintage, New York:911 (1981). ]

Replacement of capitalist firms’ uncontrolled exploitation of resources by the conscious regulation of human interactions with the rest of nature does not guarantee that people will be good partners with the rest of nature. Mistakes will be made because of incomplete knowledge or in the way the human interactions with resources are carried out. However, well thought out approaches that incorporate ecological concerns provide the only real opportunity for us to be good members of the earth community and to leave the earth in “an improved state to succeeding generations.” Reclaiming the commons from private exploitation and managing it in closer harmony with the natural processes essential for survival of humans and other species will permit us to reach the goal of leaving the planet a better, more stable, more biodiverse place than we find it today. “Better” is defined by the improvement in the ability of ecosystems of humans and other species to exist in relative stability over the medium term, even as some species evolve, die out, new ones form and ecosystems themselves go through cycles of challenge, regeneration and change.

It is important to keep in mind that the only constant in the universe is change. Everything interacting with everything else means that nature is in a constant state of flux. There is no direction to evolution, nor is true equilibrium (stasis) possible or even necessarily desirable in the social or natural worlds. But we need to stabilize the biosphere, reverse current rates of extinction, and prevent further climate change. The ability to do so depends on revolutionary social change that does not harken back to some mythic Edenic past, nor contain a desire to make time stand still. Evolutionary change of our species, other species, and ecosystems is a natural and necessary component for the rejuvenation of life as it interacts with abiotic processes, and the two impinge and alter each other.

The conception of the earth having a vital force or interactivity, deriving not just from plants and animals, but also from inanimate features of the earth, water, and sky, has roots in many pre-capitalist societies. Today, it opens a window for a far wider audience into a more holistic understanding of our relationship to the earth and to each other. Indeed, the very word ‘vital’ derives from the Latin vitalis, which comes from the meaning of vita, or “life.” The idea of a biosphere that is a constantly interacting whole, across space and time, has inspired millions around the world, and provides a counter-model to the stark lifelessness of the machine, and our part as cogs in it, of western capitalist ideology. We need an alternative ideology grounded in the latest science but integrating older views of the earth.

Resilience and Regeneration

Any ecosystem can be degraded if it is affected by a huge shock or repeatedly subject to moderate ones. But some ecosystems tend to be more stable and better able to resist being degraded by extreme weather events, insects, disease or human activity. The attributes of relatively stable ecosystems will be discussed below, as well as ways in which human society can learn from the interactions of the living and non-living world and seek to emulate some of the relevant features that foster sustainability. Ecosystems that go through periodic low to moderate disturbances have, in a sense become accustomed to these disruptions and have developed ways to recuperate. These ecosystems resist damage to their composition and functioning because of weather or longer-lasting climate anomalies or other disturbances and are able to recover quickly from most disruptions. This is the essence of resilience, a concept of importance to humans individually and collectively as a society, as well as when applied to watersheds, forests, deserts, agricultural fields, or grasslands. Ultimately, resiliency is a measure of sustainability over the long term.

A biome is a large geographic region with similar climate, vegetation and animals—a desert, grassland, or a type of forest. Conditions within a biome are in a continual state of flux as weather goes through its seasonal changes, as well as its variability within seasons, and as organisms metabolize and reproduce and sometimes cause dramatic changes as they go about their activities. Beavers provide an example of change over time within a biome. One of the essential life activities of beavers in North America is the damming of streams in order to provide ponds for protecting their dens. This turns a free flowing network of streams into a series of lakes and ponds followed by swampy bog land and, eventually, into a soil with better drainage suitable for the growth of forest. Some ecosystems, or biomes, evolve because of long-term changes in weather patterns and orbital rotation. Ten thousand years ago the world’s largest hot desert, the Sahara, began to receive significant rainfall, and what had been a desert became a lush savanna, with grassland interspersed with trees. Five thousand years later rainfall began to decrease again and eventually the desert returned to its current arid state.[endnoteRef:520] [520: Becky Oskin, “Sahara went from green to desert in a flash,” Live Science (April 5, 2013). ]

Although small and frequent disturbances promote stability in most ecosystems, some have adapted to infrequent but periodic extreme events, and species have evolved to require disturbances in order to propagate themselves. The Giant sequoia, the largest and one of the longest living individual life forms on the planet requires periodic fires to kill off less fire-resistant species and open their cones so that the seeds can germinate.

There is no guiding purpose to an ecosystem, nor is there an inherent bias toward stability and equilibrium. However, there are certain characteristics of ecosystems that tend to make them longer-lived and relatively stable over many years, even centuries. And when we construct buildings in cities or produce food on farms, reasonably stable local ecosystems and intimate knowledge of them are an advantage, allowing better future planning and helping to ensure that what actually happens is what we hoped would occur.

Resilience has become a buzzword, like sustainability, that is almost universally embraced, threatening to make the word meaningless. After all, who would want to be “unsustainable” or lack resilience or have an unsustainable business? Companies, governments, and even the U.S. military regularly bandy about these terms in order to illustrate their abiding concern for the environment. An article from Maxwell Air Force base is titled “Airmen learn to 'bounce back' at resiliency training.”[endnoteRef:521] And there is a “100 Resilient Cities” program begun by the Rockefeller Foundation in 2013. This effort is best described as primarily a disaster preparedness program rather than one trying to build meaningful resilience into the cities and their communities.[footnoteRef:24] Despite the resiliency bandwagon and the use of the term as a way to avoid considering potential political and economic causes for socio-ecological crises, the basic concept is extremely important when we consider people, their societies, and ecosystems. [521: Donovan Jackson, “Airmen learn to 'bounce back' at resiliency training,” Inside Maxwell AFB (July 23, 2013), www.maxwell.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123356919. ] [24: The academic and political emphasis on resilience has been strongly criticized as focusing on how to deal with a variety of crises, accepting that they are inevitable and we just need to learn how to adapt. For example, see Resilient Life: The Art of Living Dangerously by Brad Evans and Julian Reid (2014). Our approach to resilience is in keeping with such critiques, in that we do not accept the inevitability of the social and ecological crises we now face. Rather, we emphasize the need to develop systems that by their nature attempt to avoid the crises from developing. But when problems arise in the future (for example, a strong hurricane comes through), the ecological and social systems would be resilient—they would possess the ability to bounce back or self-correct.]

Severe stress is a major cause of animals, plants, and entire ecosystems losing resistance to adverse conditions and becoming less resilient. An ecosystem can be stressed by extreme weather events and fire or by removal of a keystone species—one that plays a singularly decisive role in the ecosystem. For example, when vultures were poisoned by a synthetic chemical in India they no longer recycled the flesh of dead animals. With so much extra food, there was a large increase in the feral dog population and an increased incidence of human deaths because of rabies. Vultures of Africa are disappearing at a rapid rate, with six of the eleven species on the continent in danger of extinction. As in India, the disappearance of African vultures is a health risk to humans and farm animals “since populations of other scavengers such as rats and jackals could rise as a result.”[endnoteRef:522] [522: Reuters, “Vultures nearing extinction in Africa,” The Guardian (October 29, 2015). ]

When coastal mangroves are removed for such purposes as shrimp farming, roads, and tourist facilities, other land nearby is no longer protected from the effects of sea level rise and of extremely high seas caused by tsunamis, cyclones or other strong storm surges. It is estimated that over half of the world’s mangrove forests have been lost, increasing the vulnerability of all those exposed areas of the coast. And when plants are stressed by growing on compact soils or suffering rainfall extremes they become more susceptible to insect attack and root diseases. When humans are stressed by loss of employment or other adverse occurrences such as persistent poverty and discrimination, people are less resistant to illness, are less able to bounce back from adverse conditions, and are more likely to die younger.

Just as with the human microbiome, balanced soil microorganism-plant-animal metabolic interactions, capable of continual regeneration of functions, are critical to maintaining stable and resilient ecosystems. And though these populations fluctuate over time, within the soil the metabolic interactions of the great diversity of organisms are essential for self-regulation of populations so as to keep sufficient balance and functioning of the whole system. This diverse population of soil organisms provide the nutrients and compounds that help plants grow and defend themselves against pests, and help maintain good soil structure that enhances infiltration of rainfall and storage capacity for water in the soil.

It is the loss of diversity in soil characteristic of industrialized monocultures, which inhibit the beneficial fungi, nematodes, and bacteria from biologically controlling plant pests that leads to the use of pesticides to protect crops. Indeed, monocultures are the perfect medium not just for the spread of pests but for creation of them. Capitalist mono-crop agriculture requires such a large quantity of pesticides for a number of reasons. When growing a single crop over large areas using little or no crop rotation, pests that are adapted to feeding on the crop or growing in the field with the crop are able to increase in population, creating problems that wouldn’t exist in a more complex system. Once pesticides are used target organisms become resistant to the pesticide, requiring higher doses and mixes of pesticide. By wiping out natural enemies, insecticides frequently allow insects that previously were minor problems to exist in abundance and feast on the crop.

Learning from nature

In the 19th century Frederick Engels emphasized the need to align our thinking with the laws of nature:

Freedom does not consist in any dreamt-of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends. This holds good in relation both to the laws of external nature and to those which govern the bodily and mental existence of men themselves—two classes of laws which we can separate from each other at most only in thought but not in reality.[endnoteRef:523] [523: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch09.htm. ]

But in the capitalist society in which Engels lived, business owners sought instead to learn how to overcome or circumvent the way nature worked in order to exploit its resources without concern for any short- or long-term negative effects—a phenomenon Engels decried with great passion.

A holistic understanding of the interactions of living and non-living matter has been part of early human cultures directly dependent on that knowledge for thousands of years. However, the scientific understanding in industrial societies of nature’s laws, especially the complex interactions occurring within ecosystems, and how to apply them to human endeavors, has only recently come into its own with developments in fields such as agroecology, ecological design, and most recently biomimicry. Although there is considerable overlap among them, the common denominator of these different fields is a commitment to providing human needs by using methods based on those of individual organisms or stable and resilient ecosystems and, when practical, by integrating these endeavors with understanding the processes of the surrounding living organisms. After all, over many hundreds of millions of years of evolution, life has come up with many elegant solutions to problems organisms have encountered.[footnoteRef:25] [25: Just because a holistic understanding and an ecological awareness has benefits as to how humans might better interact with other aspects of nature, it doesn’t thereby follow that such an outlook is inherently progressive. For example, the racist former prime minister of South Africa, General Jan Smuts, was keen to popularize a holistic understanding of nature and propagate the idea of holism, publishing the influential book Holism and Evolution in 1926 in which he states that there is, “the tendency in nature to form wholes that are greater than the sums of the parts through creative evolution.” (http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/general-jan-christiaan-smuts) A concern for nature does not in any way determine a similar concern for humans in general or necessarily incorporate any desire for human equality. ]

As with all living creatures, when humans interact with the rest of the biological world and other facets of the biosphere, we change the ecology of the land, rivers, forests, oceans, and parts of the countryside that become cities, as well as where mine tailings are dumped. However, it is possible to manage the areas we disturb in ways that minimize the negative impacts on the functioning of the ecosystem—if we have an economic, political and social system that has as its primary goal meeting the needs of all people equally over the long term in ways that regenerate and then maintain healthy and well-functioning ecosystems. A combination of sustainable practices makes this possible. Such as those developed by indigenous peoples and others over centuries—including applications of the findings of science using whole system approaches, understandings about how individual practices fit well together, and lessons learned from the study of ways that evolutionary processes have generated organisms and ecosystems adapted to a wide range of conditions. As we interact with the rest of the natural world, it is essential to keep an open mind and to re-evaluate ongoing practices, with the benefit of experience and advances in scientific knowledge and technology, in order to ensue that the ecosystem is functioning in ways that promote long-term sustainability and human health.

Biomimicry is an approach to working with and learning from nature by studying how organisms have overcome similar issues, and applying that knowledge to solve human social and technical issues in a more ecological and holistic manner. For example, tall termite mounds in Africa maintain throughput of oxygen in and waste gases out by having enough thermal mass and ventilation to bring in fresh air to replace air inside the mound. “Functionally, these mounds are devices for capturing wind energy to power active ventilation of the nest. They are adaptive structures, continually molded by the termites to maintain the nest atmosphere. This ability confers on the colony … the regulation of the nest environment by the collective activities of the inhabitants.”[endnoteRef:524] On a small scale, this general approach has been used to inspire the design and building of the Eastgate Center in Harare, Zimbabwe, used for offices and a shopping center, that has greatly reduced energy use for ventilation and cooling and did not require installation of an air conditioning system.[endnoteRef:525] Other examples of using nature’s design in human activities include the invention of Velcro, based on the attaching and holding power of burrs, and modification of wind turbines based on the surface characteristics of whale tails and most famously the design of an airplane wing that mimics that of birds. As biologist Janine Benyus writes in Biomimicry: [524: Scott Turner, Termite Research Main Page, accessed November 19, 2014 at http://www.esf.edu/efb/turner/termitepages/termiteMain.html. ] [525: J Scott Turner & Rupert Soar, “Beyond biomimicry: What termites can tell us about realizing the living building,” First International Conference on Industrialized, Intelligent Construction (I3CON) Loughborough University (May14-16, 2008). ]

In a biomimetic world, we would manufacture the way animals and plants do, using sun and simple compounds to produce totally biodegradeable fibers, ceramics, plastics and chemicals. Our farms, modeled on prairies, would be self-fertilizing and pest-resistant. To find new drugs or crops, we would consult animals and insects that have used plants for millions of years to keep themselves healthy and nourished. Even computing would take its cue from nature, with software that “evolves” solutions, and hardware that uses the lock-and-key paradigm to compute by touch.[endnoteRef:526] [526: Janine Benyus, “Biomimicry: Innovation inspired by nature,” Harper Collins, New York:2 (1997). ]

Characteristics of stable and resilient ecosystems: implications for human society

A number of characteristics can be thought of as pillars supporting stable natural ecosystems, allowing them to resist degradation and to be resilient in the face of challenges. These can be considered and evaluated when managing ecosystems for agricultural or other purposes and can be investigated as to their suitability and usefulness for human societies.

Examination of the characteristics of many terrestrial ecosystems with limited human damage—species rich or species poor, whether highly productive or not, easily disturbed or resistant to disturbance—verifies that all exist by relying almost exclusively on locally available resources: sunlight, rainfall, the soil and its organisms, and the plants and animals living on the land. This is not to imply that these are closed systems, that any particular area of forest or grassland doesn’t interact with other regions or even biomes—birds, wildebeest, butterflies and other insects migrate seasonally from distant lands, energy and rivers flow through them, bringing water and carrying away soil and minerals.

To the extent that it is reasonable and avoids duplication or waste of resources, there is an analogy for human society: each community, town, city, region and multi-regional area should utilize locally available resources in order to provide the goods and services needed by everyone. Although this is a general concept with the details to be worked out during the process of change to a new society and economy, the point is that what can logically be done locally should be done locally—from growing at least some of the basic foods to feed the local population to being able to install and repair domestic water and electricity systems to generating electricity, to having access to educational and recreational opportunities, medical care, and so on. It stands in contrast to how production is organized under capitalism, whereby polluting factories are built in low-income neighborhoods and production facilities are moved to wherever on the globe labor costs and environmental regulations are the lowest.

We are not suggesting some absolute requirement of local and regional self-sufficiency. But rather, the more a community, town, city, or region can rely on its own or nearby resources, the better it is able to avoid potential problems with providing its inhabitants with the basics of life, and the better it can withstand problems that do arise. Producing certain goods such as railcars or computers or foods such as oranges that require particular climates will require extensive cooperation and coordination across large distances. It makes environmental and common sense to produce such goods and have certain services only in selected locations—not in every town or city. And while small communities will rely on clinics, large fully staffed hospitals ready to deal with a wide range of problems should be within reasonable distance of most people.

Appropriate locations for goods production and service provision will need to be worked out. But production of goods and provision of services near where they will be needed and based on the utilization of local human and natural resources, minimize the use of energy in transportation and provides for a more direct and simpler path to reach the public. When the societies of all peoples of the globe are organized to fulfill the needs of everyone, coordination, sharing and planning across continents will become much more extensive, multi-faceted and integrated to meet the goals of equality and sustainability. For most locations decentralized power supply, sewage systems to recycle nutrients, and water provision will make a region more resilient, use fewer resources, and be more sustainable. On the other hand, in some locations it will make more sense to move electricity longer distances through a grid from a solar farm located in a desert region and have cities connected up to a more centralized water and sewage treatment systems. Decisions about what is best will be carried out democratically by those involved and affected, based on the best available scientific knowledge and alternatives debated out in full.

This is a very different notion than the one advanced by the contemporary “localist” movement. Aside from having great difficulty in defining what is “local,” the movement confuses and conflates material things with social relations. In capitalist society, in which so much money leaves the locale to be funneled to large corporations hundreds or thousands of miles away, a primary goal of the localist movement is to help provide jobs by keeping more money circulating locally. But the real problem is not things and where and by whom they are produced and in what kind of store they are sold, but the relations between people and the things in question. In an ecological society, there can be no problem of insufficient jobs—if less labor is required to produce what we need, workers will just work fewer hours. And if the goal of society is to maximize equal access to resources needed for a high quality of life, while minimizing negative environmental effects over the long term, then the questions become: which industrial production processes and types of agriculture should be used; in which locations should they occur; by what means of transportation should goods be moved; and how should goods be distributed.

Biological diversity and interdependence. A diversity of organisms characterizes many stable, relatively undisturbed ecosystems in temperate and tropical regions. It is not only the number of different species present that is important about diversity. Because some organisms carry out the same or similar functions, the extent of functional diversity (organisms performing different types of tasks) influences how an ecosystem performs. And while the presence of many species carrying out different functions is important, the relative abundance of organisms, and the degree of evenness also determines the level of stability and resilience. The rich metabolic connections between so many species provide biological synergies and nutrient availability and reduce the possibility that a single causal factor will undermine the whole ecosystem.

A particular beetle that feeds on plants may encounter numerous other competing or antagonistic species that keep its population from getting too high. For example, the Colorado potato beetle can be attacked “by a variety of predatory bugs and beetles in the foliage of the plants, and pathogenic nematodes and fungi that inhabit the soil.”[endnoteRef:527] But, and this is an important but, this means that human management—in this case, by famers of their farms in agricultural ecosystems—must have the development and maintenance of a rich diversity of species as an important overall strategy in order to limit outbreaks of pests. [527: Lindsay Turnbull and Andy Hector, “How to Get Even with Pests,” Nature vol. 466:36-37 (July 1, 2010). ]

A similar principle applies to human societies. A diverse array of human contributions, skills and knowledge confers a strength and resiliency to society. It contributes to the vibrancy of the social, cultural, and economic life of communities. Societal diversity can also occur as communities experiment and find a variety of different ways to organize, communicate, and solve particular problems—as long as all are dedicated to the goals of equity and ecological stability. Multiplicity in opportunities for work, education, recreation, and for the development of one’s own interests will characterize stable and resilient communities.[footnoteRef:26] [26: Researchers have found that “[i]n diverse groups, across ethnicities and locales, participants were more likely to distinguish between wrong and accurate answers. Diversity brought cognitive friction that enhanced deliberation.” (Sheen Levine and David Stark, “Diversity makes you brighter,” The New York Times (December 9, 2015). ]

High amounts of biological diversity tend to produce so many interactions and multiple pathways among organisms that large outbreaks of diseases and parasites, herbivores, or predators, enough to compromise the integrity of the ecosystem are generally uncommon. With so many different species competing and cooperating for resources and living off one another in various ways, populations stay in relative balance over the short and medium term. Populations of individual species in the soil, oceans, rivers, and on land will naturally vary with the time of day, the time of year, the amount and frequency of rainfall, etc., as well as with levels of activity. But a high degree of functional activity is maintained. The efficient cycling of inorganic nutrients through biological processes is a type of regulation that makes large and constant human additions of nutrients unnecessary to maintain fully functioning non-managed ecosystems.

Examples of regulation that enhance survival include the many systems animals have to defend themselves when under attack by other organisms. But plants also have a number of defense mechanisms—some stimulated or induced by soil organisms—that help protect them from attack by fungi and bacteria. There are also beneficial insects that prey on (or lay their eggs in) other insects that feed on plants. Plants being eaten by herbivores produce chemicals that slow insect feeding, produce substances that can be used by beneficial organisms and send out chemical signals that recruit the specific organism to attack the particular herbivore (Figure 8).[endnoteRef:528] [528: A more detailed description of plant defense mechanisms can be found in pages 77 to 81 in Fred Magdoff and Harold van Es, Building Soils for Better Crops (3rd edition), http://sare.org/ publications/bsbc/bsbc.pdf.. ]

Figure 8. Plants use a number of defense strategies following damage by feeding insects.[endnoteRef:529] [529: Modified from unpublished slide of W.J. Lewis. ]

Even more awe-inspiring is the interaction that has been documented for biological control of an insect that feeds on tomato plants, the hornworm caterpillar. The small parasitic wasp that lays its eggs in the caterpillar—after having been enticed by the gaseous chemicals released by the plant—simultaneously injects a virus that deactivates the immune system of the caterpillar.[endnoteRef:530] This allows the eggs to develop inside the caterpillar, eventually killing it. Without the virus from the wasp, the caterpillar’s immune system is able to destroy the wasp’s eggs—an astonishing example of population interactions and regulations brought about by the co-evolution of organisms. Or consider the case of the microbe Bifidobacterium longum infantis: [530: Nancy Beckage, “The Parasitic Wasp’s Secret Weapon,” Scientific American 277(5):82-87 (November 1997). ]

Human breast milk contains lactose, fat and more than 200 complex sugars called oligosaccharides. Human infants, however, can digest none of these. One single-celled creature called Bifidobacterium longum infantis gobbles up the lot. It is reportedly the dominant microbe in the bowels of breast-fed babies, and as it digests the sugars, it releases short-chain fatty acids, which then feed the infant gut cells. So the nursing mother feeds the microbe which then feeds the baby.[endnoteRef:531] [531: Tim Radford, “I contain multitudes by Ed Yong Review – we are possessed by bacteria,” The Guardian (September 3, 2016). ]

An interesting illustration of self-regulating behavior in the wild that seemingly replicates, in an unconscious way, the democratic decision-making of humans, occurs when the number of bees in a hive grows too great and “bees swarm to a temporary location. Scouts go out in different directions and then report back by performing a dance that provides information about the location scouted and its conditions. Other bees congregate around the original scout they think has selected the best site. When enough bees agree on one of the locations, the entire swarm then goes off to build a hive there. When a large enough number of bees agree about a site, they end up selecting the best one.”[endnoteRef:532] There are other similar instances in other species. For example, European bison, when deciding which direction to move after exhausting local feed, “operate by majority rule.”[endnoteRef:533] [532: Fred Magdoff, “Ecological Civilization,” Monthly Review 62(8):1-25 (January 2011). The original citation is Peter Miller, “Swarm Behavior,” National Geographic (July 2007); Thomas D. Seeley, Honeybee Democracy, Princeton University Press (2010). ] [533: Jason Goldman, “Ballots for Bison,” Scientific American 314(1): 18 (January 2016). ]

Self-regulation in human society corresponds to profound democracy, beginning at the productive base of society, in which all voices participate and make decisions on group needs (including a healthy environment) to provide everyone with the essentials of a good and fulfilling life. At the society-wide level, it implies democratically decided regulation of interactions with fellow humans and the rest of the natural world. This means conscious and well-thought-out management and use of resources to supply human needs so that the maintenance of healthy environmental functions and succeeding generations are accounted for. When provided with the necessary information, groups of people tend to make better decisions than individuals making decisions for the group. And when people are meaningfully involved in the decision-making process, they feel more personal involvement and more of a desire to help implement group decisions.

As mentioned previously, some environmentalists consider human overpopulation of the earth as the central ecological and social issue. What are seen as more progressive solutions usually involve birth control programs and education of women in countries with high birth rates. However, the overwhelming problem of resource use and pollution occurs not because some countries still have high birth rates, but as a result of the consumption pattern of the wealthiest people and the activities of corporations. It is estimated that the richest ten percent of the population consumes over half of the earth’s resources and are responsible for half of the world’s greenhouse gases.[endnoteRef:534] Of course, all women and men should have access to health services, including birth control. And smaller families happen spontaneously as poverty is lessened, eliminating the economic and social drivers that make having more children a rational choice, i.e. by removing the economic stresses of poverty. Self-regulation of family size occurs by conscious choice, as economic security increases and women gain access to economic independence, political empowerment, education, and health care.[endnoteRef:535] [534: Fred Magdoff, “The Depletion of the World’s Natural Resources: Is Population the Problem?,” Monthly Review 64(8):13-28 (January 2013); Oxfam, Extreme Carbon Inequality, www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/mb-extreme-carbon-inequality-021215-en.pdf. ] [535: Amartya Sen, “Women’s Progress Outdid China’s One-Child Policy,” The New York Times (November 2, 2015). ]

Balanced natural cycles occur as a result of closely linked biological interactions, associations, and biological synergies. Terrestrial ecosystems with healthy soils and diverse plant species tend to be efficient in capturing, using and storing rainfall, particularly in more arid areas and during dry spells in humid regions, and in mobilizing and cycling nutrients. This balanced consumption and production of nutrients, continuous energy and material flows, and ability to accept and store plentiful rainwater helps to keep the ecosystem from running down through the excessive loss of energy, nutrients and topsoil and, at the same time helps maintain the quality of the groundwater and surface waters. Precipitation tends to enter the porous soil, rather than run off, providing water to plants and recharging ground water, slowly releasing water to springs, streams, and rivers.

Resiliency through self-renewal following disturbances. Ecosystems that are more stable are more resistant to disturbances, less damage is done, and are able to bounce back more quickly. Such resiliency is a key characteristic of stable ecosystems, with other characteristics contributing to the ability for self-renewal. A seed naturally stored in the soil that germinates after a fire is an example of the self-renewal of plants. A nearby habitat with the same species as in an area that has been disturbed and lost biodiversity will allow for more rapid reintroduction of plant and animal species lost from the habitat suffering the disturbance.

The contrast between more and less resilient agricultural ecosystems was strikingly observed after Hurricane Mitch tore into Central America in 1998. The U.S. Climate Data Center described the storm as follows: “In an awesome display of power and destruction, Hurricane Mitch will be remembered as the most deadly hurricane to strike the Western Hemisphere in the last two centuries! Not since the Great Hurricane of 1780, which killed approximately 22,000 people in the eastern Caribbean, was there a more deadly hurricane. Mitch struck Central America with such viciousness that it was nearly a week before the magnitude of the disaster began to reach the outside world.”[endnoteRef:536] A participatory study during the following year—involving farmers, NGOs, and scientists—examined the damage and recovery of agricultural areas of Nicaragua and found that “[o]n average, agroecological plots on sustainable farms had more topsoil, higher field moisture, more vegetation, less erosion and lower economic losses after the hurricane than control plots on conventional farms.”[endnoteRef:537] [536: National Climate Data Center, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA),"Mitch: The Deadliest Atlantic Hurricane Since 1780,"  www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/reports/mitch/mitch.html (Accessed October 7, 2014). ] [537: Eric Holt-Gimenez, “Measuring farmers’eagroecological resistance after Hurricane Mitch in Nicaragua: a case study in participatory, sustainable land management impact monitoring,” Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 93(1):87–105 (2002). ]

Community, regional, and inter-continental social structures and economies that embrace and enhance diversity of backgrounds and ideas, and which exhibit democratic communal regulation and balanced socio-ecological cycles, will better withstand adverse events and regenerate all their functions more quickly following such events. An entire human society built on principles of solidarity, reciprocity, and cooperation across geographic regions will immeasurably enhance resiliency.

Frequent human contact with relatively undisturbed systems—experiencing forests, lakes, prairies, even agricultural areas interspersed with grasslands and forested areas—helps people appreciate these ecosystems and is healthy for body and mind. Overcoming what has been called “nature deficit disorder”—resulting from children and adults spending so much time indoors and involved with electronic gadgets—promotes a child’s well-being. Just living near green spaces in a city helps improve human health, emphasizing the importance of providing quality green spaces within and near cities and encouraging people to engage with the sights, smells, and sounds of birds, trees, streams and rocks. Human dominated habitats such as cities need to be redesigned so as to mesh better within cycles of nature and overcome the idea that “nature” is somewhere other than in urban landscapes.

 

Design of resilient human infrastructure and living and work environments can benefit from observations of how nature works and well-connected communities function. Increasing the connectivity among people in their communities as well as among communities and among regions enhances resilience. In addition, the best possible and most appropriate architecture and construction should be used only after objectively assessing local environmental risks such as storm surges or earthquakes and meshing these with local cultural knowledge and experience. One example is the protection of coastal communities from storm surges via reintroduction of mangrove, wetlands, and oyster beds and integration of those with the edges of coastal cities; another is reforesting of denuded slopes and changes of land use so that marginal terrain does not have to be farmed. There are other obvious benefits to doing these things in terms of increasing biodiversity, allowing people to observe wildlife from their homes and workplaces, and creating living cities that are, in a very literal sense, green.

However, all those physical changes won’t be possible unless they are embedded in an economic and social structure that has eradicated poverty and values equality, cooperation, and solidarity. Communities will then be protected because decisions about land and resource use will be based on the interests and desires of the community in question and utilizing the relevant scientific knowledge. And there will also be multiple threads of support, internally and from surrounding areas, with which to pull the community together in the event of an extreme weather event. In such a society, an earthquake, major storm, hurricane or other natural event will be just that—something that periodically happens but that everyone in society sees as their responsibility to do something about, utilizing all available resources.

Truly ecological systems of production can’t become the norm today because that would go against the logic of capitalism. A capitalist economic and social system is simply incapable of doing more than occasionally adopting ecologically sound techniques here or there in piecemeal fashion only as long as they don’t interfere with its mandate for profits and unlimited growth. However, an ecological society would open the door to a completely different logic—one that treasures fulfillment of human needs while regenerating and maintaining environmental health. The following chapter examines some examples of alternative approaches to managing our interaction with resources used to provide our basic needs. 

Chapter 10. Ecological approaches to fulfilling human needs

Good solutions exist only in proof, and are not to be expected from absentee owners or absentee experts. Problems must be solved in work and in place, with particular knowledge, fidelity, and care, by people who will suffer the consequences of their mistakes. There is no theoretical or ideal practice.

—Wendell Berry[endnoteRef:538] [538: Wendell Berry, “Solving for Pattern,” Chapter 9 in The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural & Agricultural, North Point Press (1981). http://www.seedbed.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Berry_Solving_for_Pattern.pdf. ]

The overarching goal of an ecological society is the long-term health of the biosphere while providing for human equality through genuine, bottom-up democracy, cooperation, and planning. Human health includes psychological and physical features. People will eat healthy food, live in healthy housing in democratically planned and well-designed cities or rural communities, breath clean air, drink clean water, have access to good sanitation facilities, pursue health-promoting cultural, intellectual, and physical activities, and develop their full potential in whatever directions they please. In order to provide for these needs while minimizing environmental harm, resilient and ecologically sound processes and practices will be created and maintained—for agricultural production, energy production, water provision and conservation, transportation, and the production and distribution of housing, clothing, furniture, appliances and so on, as well as their repurposing and recycling at the end of their useful lives.

On a global basis and within every country, there is a huge amount of change needed to provide everyone with what might be considered the basic minimum of a good life. Approximately one billion people are either routinely hungry or malnourished. Globally, some 2.5 billion people—about one-third of the earth’s human population—suffer poor or no sanitation.[endnoteRef:539] Close to 700 million have no access to clean drinking water. Over two billion people live on a daily income equivalent to less than what $2. Billions of people do not have access to needed medicines or any regular healthcare. And even in developed countries, tens of millions of people do not have adequate access to good quality health care because of lack of affordability. Millions of people around the world die or have their health impaired because they are breathing polluted air. In the richest country in the world, one in five children suffer from food insecurity. Hundreds of millions of people in Asia and Africa have no access to electricity. Conversely, the charity Oxfam reported that in 2015 more wealth was accumulated by as few as 62 billionaires than by almost half of the world’s poorest people combined—3.5 billion people.[endnoteRef:540] In addition to the direct indications of human need resulting from obscene disparities in wealth and resource distribution, there is a growing loss of soil and arable land, large animals and fish stocks have been decimated, pollinators are threatened and biodiversity loss and land-use changes are undermining and threatening the stability of ecosystems and ultimately our future ability to obtain sufficient food and water. [539: Sam Jones, “Lack of toilets blights the lives of 2.5 billion people, UN chief warns,” The Guardian (August 28, 2014). ] [540: Simon Kennedy, "Richest 1% Now Wealthier Than the Rest of the World, Oxfam Says,” Bloomberg Business (January 17, 2016). ]

When the motivation and strategies for solving these problems are dominated by the quest for profits, proposed solutions are inadequate or even counterproductive. Viable, democratically determined, and ecologically sound solutions are possible only when our interactions with each other and the environment are guided by what is needed for the good of all humankind and for the stability and health of the natural world. The rationality of actions is no longer evaluated by considering what is best for business; rather, social equality and environmental considerations become paramount. Approaches that are irrational when viewed from the point of view of a capitalist economy become perfectly rational when the primary goal is the good of the biosphere and every member our own species.

The purpose of this chapter is not to provide complete solutions to all the various aspects of human interaction with the rest of the natural world. Not only is this an impossible task, but doing so runs counter to a vision of society in which everyone is involved in decision-making. Developing concrete, detailed solutions will have to be made democratically by the people affected. But there are realistic approaches to dealing with critical aspects of human activity, including how we grow our food, the design of buildings and cities, the production and use of energy, transportation and the provision of clean water and sanitation. We draw ideas from history, scientific knowledge, and people who are experimenting with these and other issues and developing more ecologically and socially sound systems that provide windows into our future. We are continually learning about each of these facets of human society and the world around us, and more is known every day that will help people design and use technologies appropriate to a more ecologically sound and socially just world. However, the systematic implementation of ecological techniques and technologies that we already know of and which could be implemented on a very wide scale will happen only once social relations have gone through a revolutionary transformation.

Rather than a reductionist approach commonly applied to science and society, whereby only the individual parts of complicated systems are investigated, this will be complemented by a whole-system approach. A focus on individual issues in isolation can create all sorts of problems by missing the larger view of how all the parts fit together and interact. For example, in agriculture, a reductionist approach leads to simplified agricultural ecosystems, more pest problems, unhealthy soils, increased erosion, and decreased ability of the soil to accept and store rainfall.[endnoteRef:541] [541: Op. cit. Fred Magdoff, “A Rational Agriculture is Incompatible with Capitalism.” ]

But what if we look at farming differently? For example, what if we first internalized American environmentalist Aldo Leopold’s land ethic , characterized by a changed “role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain members and citizens of it. It implies respect for his fellow members, and also respect for the community as such.”[endnoteRef:542]? And instead of thinking of the obstacles that arise when growing crops or raising animals as individual problems, what if we considered them as symptoms of an unhealthy agricultural ecosystem? We could then develop an entirely different framework in order to fully understand and evaluate social and ecological questions and to develop solutions. [542: Op. cit., Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac. ]

Viewed in this way, the ethics, art, and practice of farming with the objective of feeding people healthy food can be consciously considered and agricultural ecosystems can be rationally managed in ways that are more in harmony with the rest of the natural world. This is a preventive approach to farming and food that builds ecological and social health and resilience as opposed to the common reactive approach that waits until problems develop and then tries to deal with them individually in piecemeal fashion, relying primarily on technology and the potential for profits.

Such a proactive approach would also characterize healthcare, whereby we would strive to prevent disease and ailments rather than relying on treating them after the fact. Preventive approaches begin by studying the underlying systemic problem and then analyzing how to modify the system—not just an isolated individual practice or symptom—in order to reduce or eliminate the root causes of negative phenomena such as diabetes in humans, an insect attack on a food crop in farming, or air pollution caused by extraction, processing, and use of fossil fuels. Prevention is crucial to addressing means solving for multiple challenges in the human health, poverty eradication, food production, transportation, and generation and distribution of electricity as well as to meeting the rest of life’s material, cultural and aesthetic needs. Many of the problems that are treated as technical are in fact social. Remove poverty, inequality, and polluting factories and immediately human health will improve, regardless of any medical treatment.

Hand-in-hand with preventive procedures and techniques is another critical aspect of an ecological approach to managing human interactions with the rest of the biosphere—“adaptive management.” This means that people need to learn to adapt to changed or unanticipated conditions by changing techniques or strategies in appropriate ways—and then evaluating the results. This is not to be confused with “adaptation” to climate change, which is in fact an example of a reactive approach whereby climate change is anticipated but little is done to prevent it, requiring people to “adapt.”

In a society based on human equality and ecological approaches and practice, there will be a need for increased emphasis on scientific research into various natural systems to better understand how the universe works. But science will not be solely performed by a specialized class of technocrats, whose job it is to inform a specialized set of bureaucrats, financiers, or corporate managers, who then impose their decision on affected communities with at best only lip service paid to local decision-making. Rather, scientific knowledge and expertise will be much more broadly defined and very widely disseminated, with many more local experts. Those interested in studying various aspects of science will interact with experiential learning, for example local farming knowledge, to propose solutions that are voted on by affected communities.

The ideas discussed below—on ecological approaches to growing food, conserving water, designing and living in cities, generating and using energy, transportation systems, reducing waste, and creating healthy cities—are not an exhaustive treatment of the issues. Rather, they are presented as examples to indicate that we already know a great deal about how to live in a world without poverty, inequality, fossil fuels and planetary degradation.

Agricultural production

How we grow food is one of the most fundamental interactions between humans and the planet.[endnoteRef:543] In order to make the discussion manageable in the space we have available, we will examine an annual crop. But the same methods can be used to look at growing perennial crops, raising animals, integrating animals and crops on the same farm, indeed the entire food system: production practices and downstream purchasing, processing, and distribution of food. [543: The discussion in the section on agriculture is based on W. Lewis, J. van Lenteren, Sharad Phatak, and J. Tumlinson, “A total system approach to sustainable pest management,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99:12243–12248, (November 1997) and Fred Magdoff, “Ecological agriculture: Principles, practices and constraints,” Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems: 22(2):109–117 (2007). ]

In short, the objective is to manage the field and farm as a socio-ecological whole that serves the wider society, with the ultimate goal being to build the strengths of resilient and productive ecosystems into the agricultural ecosystem. By doing so, we are likely to confirm that many pests are as much an outcome of industrialized capitalist agriculture as they are a biological phenomenon.

Everything that a farmer or gardener does in the field, should be aimed at accomplishing one or more of three general goals: a) creating habitat above and below ground that promotes the growth of healthy plants and animals, b) acting to pressure and control potential pests and c) enhancing the presence and populations of beneficial organisms that are beneficial to plants.

Examples of practices that build resilience into the above ground portion of agricultural ecosystems include:

· Select varieties of crops not only for yield and taste, but also for resistance to local pests and adaption to the climatic region and soil.

· Use planting densities that are appropriate for optimal production and weed control.

· Use mixed cropping (polyculture) including multi-story cropping in which grains such as corn or vegetables such as carrots are interspersed with fruit trees or berry bushes. Alternately, plant high growing leguminous trees in sufficient numbers and arrangement to allow for the fertilizing effects when their leaves fall, reduction of wind speeds, and making the fields cooler than they would otherwise be—helping to conserve water—while at the same time precluding interference with production of the annual crop grown in the field.[endnoteRef:544] Non-legume trees can also be grown in an agro-forestry system, producing mulch from harvested branches, wood (after trees are mature), and shade from intense sunlight. Polycropping tends to raise productivity per acre through better use of resources, lessens damage by insects and diseases, and adds organic matter and nutrients to fields. [544: John Reganold and Jerry Glover, “A Cure for Africa’s Soil,” Scientific American 314 (5):66-69 (May 2016). ]

There are other methods that productively integrate more than one crop into agricultural fields for example, two crops can be planted near each other—one a fast growing species and the other one that will do most of its growing after the first crop is harvested. Another multi-crop system includes strips of grass/legume perennials alternating with annual crops. Sometimes these strips can be feed for livestock: for example, in Africa strips of the perennial legume desmodium provide animal feed and at the same time repels corn stem borer insects. In addition, legume roots emit a chemical that suppresses the witchweed, a parasitic plant that can drastically reduce corn and sorghum yields.[endnoteRef:545] [545: Ibid. ]

· Plant crops around the field (perimeter crops) that are more attractive to insect pests than the economic crop growing in the middle of the field.

· Create field boundaries and zones within fields that are attractive to beneficial insects. This usually involves planting a mix of flowering plants to provide habitat for them. It could be as few as one or two alyssum for every fifty lettuce plants, attracting “beneficial insects including hoverflies, whose larvae each chomp down as many as 150 aphids per day.”[endnoteRef:546] [546: Eric Brennan, “Agronomic aspects of strip intercropping lettuce with alyssum for biological control of aphids,” Biological Control, 65(3):302-311(2013). ]

· Routinely use cover crops[footnoteRef:27] to provide multiple benefits such as habitat for beneficial insects, addition of nitrogen and organic matter to soil, reduction of erosion and enhancement of water infiltration into the soil, retaining nutrients in soil, and much more. It is possible to supply all of the nitrogen required for following crops by growing a vigorous winter legume cover crop such as crimson clover in the south of the United States and hairy vetch in much of the north. In Central America, the fast growing legume macuna has been used by farmers both to protect the soil and to provide nitrogen for the following food crop. [27: Cover crops, also called green manure crops, are normally planted to grow during the period of the year when there is no food crop growing. They then can be incorporated into the soil by tillage or suppressed by mechanical or other means before the next food crop is grown.]

· Use rotations that are complex, involve plants of different families and, if at all possible, include sod crops such as grass, clover, or clover-grass hay that grow for a number of years without the need to disturb the soil. This helps build up soil organic matter and nitrogen, improve soil structure, and control a variety of diseases and weeds.

· Reduce tillage that buries residues and leaves the soil bare and more susceptible to the erosive effects of rainfall, and at the same time breaks up natural soil aggregates that are critical to infiltration, storage, and drainage of precipitation.

Building soil ecological health and resilience using multiple practices

Healthy soil is the basis of a healthy and productive agriculture. In fact, healthy soil is nothing less than one of the physical foundations of an ecological society. Ohio State University scientist Rattan Lal describes the importance: “Political stability, environmental quality, hunger, and poverty all have the same root. In the long run, the solution to each is restoring the most basic of all resources, the soil.”[endnoteRef:547] [547: Busani Bafana, “More Than Half of Africa’s Arable Land ‘Too Damaged’ for Food Production,” IPS Newsnet (January 13, 2015). ]

Needless to say, plants grow better in healthy soils, are more nutritious, taste better and have fewer disease and insect problems. Managing soil organic matter is at the heart of creating healthy soils that have significant internal ecological strengths and that produce healthy plants with active defense mechanisms against insects and diseases. To manage soil organic matter in order to promote healthy soils:

· Add appropriate quantities and varieties of organic materials (animal manures, composts, tree leaves, cover crops, rotation crops) on a regular basis.

· Keep soil covered with living vegetation and/or crop residues and reduce tillage, a practice that encourages water to infiltrate into the soil instead of running off.

· Use appropriate machinery that limits soil disturbance. Like everything else in a socio-ecological society, agricultural machinery will need to be radically redesigned. Currently machinery is designed to increase profits by reducing the amount and skill of human labor and to maximizing production in minimal time. Therefore, agricultural machinery is built to take advantage of giant fields filled with the same crop. Although large fields may still be necessary to produce staples such as wheat or potatoes, they may consist of wide strips of alternating crops rather than planted solidly with one species. Even using multiple varieties of the same species is preferable to fields of genetically uniform plants. More specialized machinery will need to be developed and evaluated for use in smaller fields with a large variety of crops and animals.

· In addition to planting cover crops, use a variety of practices to reduce erosion: establish rotations that include perennials, minimize tillage, introduce terracing, grassed waterways, and strip cropping along the contour by alternating a row crop with a sod crop, and use natural or planted buffers between fields and streams.

· Use practices that supply supplemental fertility to better match nutrient availability with times that crops actually need the nutrients, periods which vary during the growing season.

· Rely on legume crops to provide the nitrogen needs of grain and vegetable crops and efficiently cycle nutrients from farm animal manures back to the fields. Human sewage freed of industrial contaminants should also be used to fertilize fields near cities and towns.

Above are key strategies and practices to create healthy agricultural ecosystems using a whole system approach to growing annual crops. But there is another aspect to a more integrated and sustainable farming—raising farm animals as well as perennial crops in combination with annual crops. Integrating animals and crops together on small to medium size farms has many advantages, such as direct use for soil-building grass and legume perennial forage crops in a rotation, elimination of the need for long-distance transport of feed to animals, and use of the nutrients in the farm animal manures for easy cycling back onto the land.

Environmental writer and farmer Wendell Berry describes attempting to strengthen a complex system as “solving for pattern.” Berry elaborates on what happens when integrated animal-crop farms take the place of industrial type farms in which animals are raised far away from their feed:

Perhaps it is not until health is set down as the aim that we come in sight of the third kind of solution: that which causes a ramifying series of solutions—as when meat animals are fed on the farm where the feed is raised, and where the feed is raised to be fed to the animals that are on the farm. Even so rudimentary a description implies a concern for pattern, for quality, which necessarily complicates the concern for production. The farmer has put plants and animals into a relationship of mutual dependence, and must perforce be concerned for balance or symmetry, a reciprocating connection in the pattern of the farm that is biological, not industrial, and that involves solutions to problems of fertility, soil husbandry, economics, sanitation—the whole complex of problems whose proper solutions add up to health: the health of the soil, of plants and animals, of farm and farmer, of farm family and farm community, all involved in the same inter-nested, interlocking pattern...[endnoteRef:548] [548: Op. cit., Wendell Berry, “Solving for Pattern.” ]

Animal husbandry. Raising farm animals using industrial farming practices is cruel to the animals and damaging to human health and the environment. The capitalist imperative to raise animals as quickly as possible, with low turnover times, in order to reap the highest profits results in inhumane crowding conditions for the animals, routine use of antibiotics, injection of growth hormones and feeding of high energy crops to beef cows, even though they are capable of getting their entire nutritional requirements from pastures. Factory farming to raise farm animals also causes a rift in nutrient cycling, as nutrients contained in the crops are transported long distances from where feed crops are raised to the factory farms. This system uses much more water than would otherwise be needed. In addition, the large numbers of genetically similar beef cows, combined with how they are fed and how manure is handled, have led to significant atmospheric releases of methane (CH4), a potent greenhouse gas. Beef and dairy cows are estimated to be responsible for about twenty percent of U.S. methane emissions (the rest coming from coal mines, landfills, natural gas and oil production facilities, and other sources).[endnoteRef:549] There are, therefore, plenty of reasons that animal agriculture as practiced by factory farms has been attacked as anti-environmental, cruel, and bad for the health of farm workers and consumers. [549: “Methane Emissions,” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/ch4.html. ]

However, there are good reasons to raise farm animals as part of a diversified and integrated farming system. Animal products such as eggs, milk and meat supply high quality protein, and they can be part of a varied and healthy diet when eaten in moderate quantities as they are in many parts of the world. Farm animals can and should be raised in humane ways that are also ecologically sound. This will likely mean that fewer animals will be raised, with meat becoming a much smaller part of what is now known as a western style diet, and that farm animals will be more widely dispersed over the countryside. There are many synergies that occur on integrated animal-crop farms, allowing better rotations with healthier crops, more flexibility in transferring nutrients around the farm, fewer crop pest problems, and improved soil health. A substantial ecological advantage to growing a hay crop to feed to ruminants such as cows and sheep is the reduction of rainfall runoff and soil erosion while enhancing infiltration of water for recharge of both surface soil and aquifers.[endnoteRef:550] [550: For more details on the ecological benefits of sustainable meat farming, see: Simon Fairlie, Meat: A Benign Extravagance, Permanent Publications, Hampshire, UK (2010) and Nocolette Hahn Niman, “Defending Beef: The case for sustainable meat production,” Chelsea Green Publishing, Vermont (2014). ]

Having a perennial crop in rotation with annuals allows for better control of annual weeds. Large areas of land around the world are not conducive to growing crops but can be used for rotational grazing. In such cases, animals don’t have to be in competition with humans for use of cropland. Pigs can utilize leftover food and crop waste for a significant portion of their diet. Controlled grazing can also help prepare land that will later be used to grow crops and help reduce future weed pressure. There is some evidence that, compared to conventional industrial scale farming systems, integrated animal-crop farms in which manure is composted and returned to soil, along with the crop residues, have a positive effect on greenhouse gas emissions.[endnoteRef:551] Pastoralism and the farming of animals in general are central parts of many cultures and there is a lot to learn from people practicing sustainable animal husbandry on marginal land for hundreds of years. [551: Haitao Liu, Jing Li, Xiao Li, Yanhai Zheng, Sufei Feng, and Gaoming Jiang, “ Mitigating greenhouse gas emissions through replacement of chemical fertilizer with organic manure in a temperate farmland,” Science Bulletin 60(6):598–606(2015).  ]

Methane emissions from beef cows, the major animal emitters of this greenhouse gas can be reduced. When cows spread their manure in pastures rather than it being stored in lagoons, methane production is reduced. When cows eat high quality feeds, they can more efficiently convert them into usable energy for their growth, reducing methane emissions. Although beef and milk cows will always emit methane-laced flatulence, raising beef animals in a rotational grazing system may have minimal net greenhouse gas emission because high quality feed lowers methane emission and sequestering of carbon occurs with the build-up of soil organic matter.[endnoteRef:552] [552: Tong Wang, W. Richard Teague, Seong Park, and Stan Bevers, "GHG Mitigation Potential of Different Grazing Strategies in the United States Southern Great Plains,” Sustainability 7(10):13500-13521 (2015). ]

Ultimately, the focus on methane from cows as one of the central problems to tackle is part of an ideological offensive that seeks to blame ordinary people for their eating habits. Instead of attacking the economic system for consciously encouraging people to eat more meat and creating the far larger problem of CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels and methane emissions from natural gas extraction, the problem is framed as too many cows. We certainly want to raise animals in more humane ways, examine how much meat it’s healthy to eat, and reduce the number of cattle for other reasons having to do with soil or forest regeneration as well as assurance of a sufficient land base to produce all the crops needed for direct human consumption. But if we stop burning fossil fuels for energy, raise cows where it makes ecological and cultural sense, reintegrate them as part of mixed crop-livestock farms, and eat only moderate amounts of animal products, methane from cows will not be the political or scientific issue that it is currently.

Powering agriculture. As we turn away from fossil fuels, how to power agricultural equipment will be one of many challenges for society. Food can be grown without power equipment, using just human or animal power, but this is physically very demanding and has low labor productivity. Furthermore, if animals are used for plowing or other field operations, extra land must be used to grow their food. Still, reversing the capitalist imperative to replace human labor with machines to drive down costs of production will be a general goal of society. The machinery designed and built under capitalism is much less about “labor-saving” for the benefit of workers than it is about enhancing profits, de-skilling the workforce, making workers replaceable, and providing only repetitive, monotonous, machine-like jobs that make work unappealing.

When the purpose of agriculture is to grow nutritious food in an ecologically sustainable manner, as opposed to producing commodities to be sold for profit, in many countries farming will require more people working on farms. And they certainly should use machinery that makes the work less arduous. A future ecological society will have to decide democratically how to best ensure the growing of enough food in a sustainable manner. Farmers will work in conjunction with engineers to design and build farm machinery adapted to both the land and the people who work in partnership with it. As all people will be able to lead fulfilling lives, and there will not be a lower standard of living in more rural or farming communities, it may mean that the majority of people farm at some point in their lives.

Electricity is the most useful form of energy we know of, though its one major weakness is the difficulty of storing it in large quantities, for transportation to and in rural areas and for shipping, fishing vessels, trains, buses, cars, and airplanes. It will take our collective ingenuity to design and build more powerful and compact batteries so that engines for transportation, including mobile agricultural equipment, can be powered by electric means generated from renewable energy sources. Advances in battery design and power, already a major area of research, will be required.

Grazing animals and photovoltaic arrays or wind turbines may actually go together quite well, encouraging solar energy development and use in rural areas. For example, sheep grazing fields with solar arrays can use the shade to get out of the sun.

Water conservation. With few exceptions, fresh water is a renewable resource. However, in a number of areas around the world, groundwater is being used at a faster pace than it is being replenished by rainfall. This means that increasingly deeper wells requiring more energy to pump water to the surface are needed.

To address imbalances create by capitalist agriculture when crops are grown in regions with insufficient rainfall (leading to long-distance water transport and/or aquifer depletion), will require growing crops in more climate and soil appropriate regions. It makes no ecological sense to grow rice or cotton in California when there is essentially no rainfall during the growing season.

There are less ecologically destructive means of water harvesting in dry regions than large-scale construction projects or desalination. These can vary from having small depressions dispersed throughout a field to building small ponds and appropriate size reservoirs to store rainwater for later use. The melting of glaciers, which accumulate water in cold months and slowly release it in the warmer months, is creating the need for reservoirs that can serve the same purpose. Irrigation techniques to minimize water loss, such as targeted and controlled drip irrigation systems, which reduce water use by up to 90%, should become widespread.

Reforestation has extensive material and spiritual benefits: climate control, habitat for wildlife and humans, medicinal plants, rubber, and wood that can be harvested selectively without damaging a forest’s integrity. By slowing down water movement over the land and encouraging it to infiltrate into soil, forested areas help recharge groundwater and springs, and to modulate the flow of streams and rivers.

Energy generation and use

Changing our energy system to one that supplies the needs of all people in environmentally sound ways is no trivial task and will take a significant period of time to implement. On the other hand, it can be done if we devote sufficient resources. An ecological approach to doing so will reduce wasteful energy use: moving away from reliance on personal automobiles, eliminating production and use of luxury products, eliminating the military, eliminating advertising, reducing packaging and many other detrimental forms of energy use that are unnecessary in a society based on cooperation and need rather than on competition and profit. Building and retrofitting homes and workplaces to rely more on natural lighting, ventilation, and temperature modulation, replacing over time inefficient energy-consuming goods with more efficient ones, and using educational programs and assistance to promote energy-saving behavior will all reduce the demand for energy.

Heating, cooling, and ventilation accounts for forty to forty-five percent of energy use in residential and commercial buildings. A concerted program of retrofitting existing housing stock and constructing new buildings to take advantage of local materials and climate conditions can radically reduce this percentage. Currently buildings are constructed to require air conditioning and heating as well as extensive artificial lighting even during daytime; yet the technology and designs exist to minimize these energy needs. There are many ways in which passive design features of buildings can maintain a comfortable internal temperature and flow of fresh air.

Much of the energy currently generated is wasted in frivolous or actively detrimental ways to promote commerce, consumption, and the military and could be radically reduced. However, more electricity will be required to provide energy to the hundreds of millions of people with limited or no current access and to power electric ground transportation. While a significant amount of new energy needs will be met from freed up capacity as a result of reductions in wasteful uses in the North, much more electrical generation capacity will be required in the countries of the South. Significant investment in solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources could address this need.

There is also a substantial amount of energy that is wasted as heat and dissipated into the atmosphere. This comes from fossil fueled electric generating plants but also from industrial facilities. A number of district energy projects exist in which heat generated by industrial production, Internet server farms, and shopping malls (though malls will also disappear) is used to heat homes. Denmark is one of the leaders in this effort, with sixty-three percent of homes connected to district energy networks.

What is particularly clever about district heat networks is that they also capture and redistribute heat that would otherwise be wasted. The surplus heat produced by electricity generating stations, factories, server farms and public transport networks is funnelled into the network, eliminating waste, lowering carbon emissions, lowering fuel consumption and saving everybody money.[endnoteRef:553] [553:  Frederika Whitehead, "Lessons from Denmark: how district heating could improve energy security,” The Guardian (August 20, 2014). ]

Combined heat and power stations are seventy percent efficient at conversion into usable energy vs. thirty percent for conventional power plants.

Minimizing the urban heat island effect, when temperatures in the city are significantly above the non-urban surrounding region by as much as 9 degrees F (5 degrees C), will be will be one of the goals of reevaluating the ratio of concrete, trees and green space in a city. The fact that cities are hotter, and don’t cool down as much at night, means more people use air conditioning in the summer months, which has the effect of raising the outdoor temperature still further. The U.S. isn’t one of the hottest countries but it uses more electricity to cool buildings than all other countries combined. New research indicates that nighttime air conditioner use in some U.S. cities can add an additional 1.8 degree F (1 degree C) to outdoor night-time city temperatures. In genuinely hot cities, such as Phoenix in the summer months, a hot day means air conditioning consumes up to half of all the electricity on the grid.[endnoteRef:554] [554: Tim Radford, “Air Conditioning Turns up City Heat,” Climate News Network (June 9, 2014). ]

Reducing wasteful energy use needs to be combined with changing to renewable energy generation. Switching to reliance on renewable energy—solar, wind, hydro, wave, tidal, and geothermal[endnoteRef:555]—in a mix of centralized and de-centralized electricity generation will radically reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and other air pollutants. Distributed energy sources have the advantage of less electricity loss than occurs with long-distance transmission. This reduces the length and capacity of any needed transmission grids. [555: Geothermal power is not actually renewable. However, its supply is, for all practical purposes, so plentiful as to be considered as such. ]

While the goal is to move to one hundred percent renewable energy throughout society as quickly as possible, and there are technologies available to take us there, at the present time there is no easy way to replace fossil fuels used in air and sea transportation. Needless to say, each renewable technology comes with its own drawbacks and requires energy and other resources, many nonrenewable, in order to construct facilities. For example, “[o]ne 5-megawatt [wind or marine] turbine requires a ton of rare earths, the mining and refining of which will leave behind 75 cubic meters of toxic acidic waste water and one ton of radioactive sludge.”[endnoteRef:556] But these drawbacks pale beside the continued use of fossil fuels. And in an ecological society, mining and treatment of mining wastes, as well as the recovery of materials will all be prioritized completely differently, with human and ecological health placed in first rather than last place. Other environmental costs may also occur, such as bird deaths at wind instillations and obstructions of fish migration from hydropower dams. Large dams for hydropower have historically often forcibly displaced local inhabitants and submerged cultural sites and areas of natural beauty and are inefficient and gigantically expensive. But “micro-hydropower” systems from small dams to micro-turbines in pipes carrying water by gravity—both in actual use, offer additional possibilities for renewable energy production.[endnoteRef:557] [556: Almuth Ernsting, "Abundant Clean Renewables? Think Again!,” Truthout (November 16, 2014), accessed May 2, 2015 at http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/27392-abundant-clean-renewables-think-again. ] [557: Terry Slavin, "From Oregon to Johannesburg, micro-hydropower offers a solution for drought hit cities,” The Guardian (September 18, 2015). ]

The biggest benefit of renewable energy is of course…it’s renewable. Aside from maintenance, upgrades and eventual replacement, once wind turbines and solar panels are built, the energy is free and requires no more mining or resource use for long periods of time. If society simultaneously mines and uses materials more effectively and reclaims significantly more materials at the end of the useful life of all infrastructure, energy production and use will be a much less significant issue, not to mention far less polluting of the atmosphere and people’s lungs.

Research budgets and numbers of facilities and workers will rise substantially as society seeks improvements in technology to do more with less, invent new materials, improve old ones, and completely reconsider of the notion of waste. How to run ships and planes on alternative forms of energy, including a possible return of ships to partially or entirely relying on sail technology, which has advanced significantly since the days before fossil fuels took over moving ships, will need examining. Sails, at least on smaller ships, may well have a new lease on life for ocean shipping in an era in which speed is not as important as it is to the economics of capitalism.

Studies have shown that it’s entirely feasible to replace electricity generation from fossil fuels, primarily coal and natural gas, with renewable sources. For example, 101,000 Terawatts (TW) of power come from the sun each day, whereas the total daily energy currently used by humans amounts to a small fraction, 15 TW. The two oft-cited main drawbacks of renewable forms of energy such as wind and solar are that they are intermittent, and therefore have low capacity compared with the theoretical output if the systems could operate continually, and that the electricity generated is difficult to store.[footnoteRef:28] The intermittency problem can be solved in a number of ways. [28: While the efficiency of conversion of solar energy to electricity by photovoltaic panels has been increasing, in 2015 the best silicon cells converted only about twenty-five percent into electricity. Research is progressing on using another mineral for photovoltaic use, called perovskite. Perovskite doesn’t require the high temperature processing of silicon and can be made into flexible film in contrast to silicon’s more rigid structure. It also may be used in layers with silicon to increase efficiency of conversion. It’s not clear that perovskite will pan out and greatly increase the efficiency of solar energy, but it may do just that. (Varun Sivaram, Samuel Stranks, and Henry Snaith, “Outshining Silicon,” Scientific American 313(1):55-59 (July 2015).) It’s also important to note that fossil fuel-powered thermal power stations are only around 30% efficient and also come with a lot of built-in redundancy to cope with peak demand.]

First, individual users, as well as industry can be encouraged to use more energy when solar and wind are actively generating electricity and to use less during other periods of the day.[footnoteRef:29] Smart-grids, whereby energy generation can flow in and out of the system from distributed power systems and real-time energy monitoring can smooth out flow. Better matching generating capacity to electricity use has been accomplished for Niagara Falls hydropower, with some of the energy produced at night used to pump water up to reservoirs, enhancing generating capacity the following day. Considering that workdays and workweeks will be considerably shorter, it will be much easier to stagger when people work to different times of the day so as to smooth out and equalize transportation needs and energy generation. [29: Private electric companies in Texas, a state with significant number of wind turbines, have offered customers the option to pay slightly more for daytime use of energy and, in return, receive free electricity every night from 9 pm to 6 am.]

Second, distributed and relatively small-scale systems spread over different regions can be integrated with the mixing of different forms of energy generation so as to complement each other and overlap. Third, if energy generation is combined with energy storage mechanisms, it will be more robust and reliable than conventional sources, which currently see one in three people in the United States without power at least once per year. For example, energy can be stored by pumping water uphill when more electricity is produced than needed, to later run downhill through hydroelectric turbines to convert the energy back to electricity. And batteries are already being used for temporary storage on commercial scale and companies such as J.C. Penny and Cargill charge them up during periods of the day when electricity is less expensive and draw them down when rates are high.[endnoteRef:558] The flow battery—not new, but a different technology than standard batteries that is constantly being improved and re-evaluated—may provide significant storage capability for helping to smooth out intermittent renewable power generation. Although larger than the lithium-ion battery in electric cars and the lead-acid battery used to start internal combustion vehicles, flow batteries have significant advantages when used for storage connected to the electric power grid. While they cannot provide the sudden energy surge needed to start a vehicle, because flow batteries can discharge for a longer period they have great promise for backing up the grid and meeting capacity demands during periods of heavy electricity usage.[endnoteRef:559] [558: Cassandra Sweet, “To Trim Electricity Bills, Companies Draw on Batteries,” The Wall Street Journal (September 14, 2016). ] [559: Henry Fountain, “Liquid Batteries for Solar and Wind Power,” The New York Times (April 23, 2015). ]

One of the most efficient uses of solar energy is to heat water. The use of solar hot water installations, found on many rooftops in countries with reliable and plentiful sunshine, can produce a significant portion of needed hot water for family use as well as for a variety of industrial or agricultural uses. Solar systems—hot water heaters as well as photovoltaic (PV) cells—may be problematic in cloudy and cold regions but the example of Germany, a country in northern Europe not renowned for its balmy climate, is encouraging: in 2015 photovoltaic generated electricity accounted for 7.5 percent of total electricity consumption. “On sunny weekdays, PV power can cover 35 percent of the momentary electricity demand. On weekends and holidays the coverage rate of PV can reach 50 percent.”[endnoteRef:560] [560: Harry Wirth and Fraunhofer ISE, "Recent Facts about Photovoltaics in Germany,"   www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/veroeffentlichungen-pdf-dateien-en/studien-und-konzeptpapiere/recent-facts-about-photovoltaics-in-germany.pdf (December 2015). ]

Society will have to decide how to provide energy for cooking and rural heating purposes. In the developed world most stoves currently use either electricity or natural gas and many rural heating supply systems run on methane or propane. In some rural locations with reliable solar energy, outdoor use of solar ovens in rural areas has proven successful. Electricity could be substituted for gas, but from a thermodynamic perspective it’s a poor use of such a high-grade source of energy. Decisions to do so will rest on analyses of local conditions and determination of what makes the most overall sense. However, usage of natural gas will decline significantly because gas-fired power stations will be phased out, and there will be no fracking.

Fossil fuel production and consumption won’t drop to zero—for example, unless suitable substitutes are found, coal will still be needed to make steel. But consumption will radically decrease and emissions will be small as transportation and energy production shifts away from fossil fuels, military and many commercial uses. The need for air transportation declines as superfluous business trips are eradicated, relocation of industries to wherever labor and environmental costs are lowest, and there is more reliance on locally available resources for production of goods. This means that the need for much of the importing and exporting that is currently required to make capitalism work will be eliminated. The petrochemical industry, while vastly reduced in its negative aspects, will nevertheless need to continue to produce synthetic materials, reconstituted along more ecological lines. Though plastic is ubiquitous, oil for the petrochemical industry represents only six percent of its uses, the vast majority being reserved for refinement into gasoline, diesel, kerosene, or fuel oil for transportation and heating.[endnoteRef:561] [561: http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=41&t=6 ]

Plastic is an important substance in part because organisms are unable to attack it, it’s not susceptible to rust, and it’s cheap and almost infinitely malleable. Clearly, some uses of plastic makes no ecological sense and plastics of all kinds litter the oceans as documented in Chapter 1. All plastic designed for single use will be eliminated.

While individuals see plastic bags as an enormous problem because they’re so visible, single-use plastic for other purposes is far more problematic and also needs addressing. With plastic coming into contact with almost all food (even metal cans that contain food and drinks have epoxy liners containing plastics), plastic chemicals and their by-products—some of which are endocrine disrupters—leach into food and contaminate our bodies. Needless to say, we must find other ways to store food. One easy answer for many applications is to return to glass, steel, and aluminum containers, coated with non-toxic materials. And greater use of fresh produce instead of highly processed and packaged foods will have many benefits in addition to the reduction of plastic use.

On the other hand, there are a host of uses to which plastic is better suited than traditional materials such as wood or metal, or for which there is no other substitute. For example, as underground pipes for water infrastructure, as well as for many medical and other product uses, plastic is far superior. We could still make non-food containers out of plastic because it’s so lightweight, resistant to chemical and biological degradation and can be made with many different levels of strength, flexibility and shape. But containers would have to be returnable and reusable, only being recycled and reclaimed, as other materials are, when they have reached the end of their serviceable lifetimes. The real problem with recycling plastics is the way in which profit-seeking corporations mix additives and hundreds of different substances within a given polymer, a practice which contaminates each product and makes effective separation virtually impossible, as noted in a report from the World Economic Forum in 2014:

In pursuit of profitable value creation, companies have broadened the spectrum of materials used in today’s (consumer) products in myriad creative and complex ways. In the world of plastics, the number of new polymers has continued to increase in the past decades, mostly driven by new combinations of existing monomers. New additives—whether heat stabilizers, pigments, flame retardants, antimicrobials or impact modifiers—have been the main driver of major innovations in polymer materials science. This has increased materials complexity exponentially within and beyond the four major classes of polymers in use across different industries and applications today.[endnoteRef:562] [562: “Towards the Circular Economy: Accelerating the Scale-Up Across Global Supply Chains,” World Economic Forum, Geneva:33 (2014). ]

Beyond the manufacture of plastics from petro-chemicals, significant advances have been made in the development of bioplastics, based on renewable biomass. It might become possible to replace some useful products made with petroleum-based plastics with bioplastics, assuming we are not growing the feedstock in competition with other necessary uses of land and replicating any of the errors of the biofuel industry (which will be dismantled).

Transportation

Eliminating the need for cars by most of the population through redesign of cities, the construction of light rail and tram lines, re-establishment of rural electric bus and van routes, and creation (or re-creation) of a convenient long distance passenger rail network will mean a huge reduction in the global production of cars, 68 million in 2015. There’s no reason trains and buses can’t be made as comfortable, if not more so, than cars. So much money, time, expertise, resources, and advertising goes into cars because they are such a central commodity in the economy, marketed to epitomize individual freedom under capitalism. Cars are sanctified as a status symbol for this reason and because they are the lynchpin of so much profitable manufacturing in associated oil, refining, asphalt, cement, construction, rubber, steel and plastics industries.

When a society based on competition and growth, where everyone is under constant stress to “get somewhere” fast, is replaced by one based on cooperation and solidarity, traveling with fellow humans will be a delight to be savored, rather than a time-sink to be minimized. The manufacture and use of gasoline for automobiles consumes almost half of the 80 million barrels of oil produced each and every day. The vast decrease in automobile production and use would in turn feed through into reductions in the need for concrete, steel, rubber, asphalt, paint, petroleum and plastics, even if some auto factories were converted to produce wind turbines, solar panels, buses and trains. All short-haul flights, many of which are for superfluous business reasons anyway, could be replaced with train or bus travel (and as documented earlier, a full 25% of jet fuel in the United States is used by the military).

Reducing waste

Many current branches of industry and commerce can and should be eliminated. Weapons manufacturers, car companies, advertising and marketing, the security industry, insurance and financial sectors, the prison-industrial complex and associated capitalist enterprises geared toward socially useless production will all be shut down. These industries are not just a waste of material resources; they are equally a waste of the lives of those who work in such socially unnecessary or actively counter-productive jobs. The switch to agro-ecological methods of farming would radically reduce the need for the manufacture of petroleum-based pesticides and fertilizers—heavy energy consumers in modern industrial agriculture.

Metals are, in theory, infinitely recyclable. Dependence on reclaimed metals would therefore mean a massive reduction in new mining and refining of metal ores, which are highly energy-, water- and chemical- intensive activities, not to mention hugely polluting and with significant health risks for the workers and nearby communities, toward depending on reclaimed metals would mean a massive reduction in those activities. Goods that still use metal will need to be manufactured in such ways that make it relatively simple and safe to extract and recycle metals and other components.

The enormous waste of resources inherent in the practice of each family individually owning not its own car or cars, but its own set of household appliances, power tools, and gardening equipment will be eliminated by their social provision. Rather than items like cars, drills, and washing machines items standing idle for the vast majority of the time (an individual car sits unused 95% of the time), these articles and many more could all be provided at locations within the community, free for use as required. Even in some communities today, gardening tools can be borrowed through the public library, a practice that will be vastly enlarged in scope. The concept of the library will be extended into entirely new areas of durable goods—furniture, clothes and other categories.

Instead of being designed and built for short life spans and obsolescence in order to increase profits, all products will be built to the highest degree of longevity practical, using the most energy- and resource-efficient methods and materials embedded in a socially equitable and democratic social structure. All of these factors will radically reduce resource throughput while enhancing everyone’s lives by providing access to the necessities of life whenever they are required. It will also that mean people’s life activities, especially labor that goes into making disposable products and is therefore currently wasted, will be put toward much more fulfilling and productive uses.

Much of what currently goes into landfill can be radically reduced by the elimination of packaging for advertising purposes, the repeated reuse of washable containers, and reduction in the use of plastic, possible in part because food will be fresher and less processed. Even the concept of the buried landfills—arising from the needs of the military in the 1940s to industrialize the treatment of gigantic mounds of waste from the concentration of troops in giant military bases—needs to be. . Today, single-sort recycling, with materials being separated for reuse at a materials recovery facility, conversion of remaining waste into electric energy with potash residue, and other innovations (not without their own problems) have somewhat reduced quantities of waste ending up in landfills; still, almost 70% of waste in the U.S. goes into landfills. (Percentages are much smaller some European in countries.)[endnoteRef:563] Science can play a role, in deepening our understanding of molecular bonding and enhancing our separation techniques to recover materials. [563: www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Look-at-How-Much-Waste-America-Puts-Into-Landfills-Compared-to-Europe (accessed September 5, 2016).  ]

The systematic separation of all organic waste from the waste stream allows it to be fed to animals or turned into compost. Even the word “waste” is problematic if we reconceive of production and consumption as circular rather than a linear process. What is wasteful to capitalism is forgoing opportunities for the extraction of profit. Conversely, what is “efficient” is that which maximizes profit. What is wasteful for an ecologically-based and socially-oriented society is for items to be needlessly discarded or for excess energy or resources to be used in their manufacture; what is efficient is that which minimizes material resources, labor, and energy inputs (whether or not doing so would make sense given capitalist economics). The “waste” from fabrication of an industrial product, and the product itself when it is worn out and needs to be replaced, should, where possible, become an input for another product or process. This is a circular system and has been popularized by William McDonough and Michael Braungart in their book Cradle to Cradle.[endnoteRef:564] Design and production of goods and buildings need not only to consider the waste occurring during the process of construction and use, but also to make it as easy as possible to reuse the components in the future, or to convert buildings to other purposes. [564: William McDonough and Michael Braungart, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, North Point Press (2002). ]

Creating healthy cities

For the first time in human history, more than half of the global population lives in cities, many of those in slums, and that proportion continues to grow. With little or no choice, people continue to move into cities because of flight from wars, persistent droughts, rural poverty, and lack of employment, and the fact that the countryside is still being actively depopulated in large portions of the world due to land-grabs by capitalist firms and sovereign wealth funds working hand-in-hand with corrupt local officials.[endnoteRef:565] With less dependable climate—too many hot days, droughts, and floods threatening yields—threatening crop yields, millions more climate refugees are to be expected. Despite the rural exodus, small, under-resourced farms in the Global South continue to provide the majority of food for everyone living in the cities. [565: Fred Magdoff, “Twenty-First-Century Land Grabs: Accumulation by Agricultural Dispossession,” Monthly Review 65(6):1-18 (November, 2103). ]

Many cities, especially in the developed world, are surrounded by lower density suburbs—along with strip malls and big box stores reachable almost exclusively by the ubiquitous automobile. Sixty million people in the United States live in suburbs far from their jobs, with little to no access to public transportation, creating the need to commute by automobile. In 2011, daily round trip work commutes in the U.S. averaged around 50 minutes a day, while some eight percent of the population traveled two or more hours to get to and from work.[endnoteRef:566] This represents a tremendous waste of human and natural resources, especially when one takes into account the resulting traffic jams, elevated stress levels and lack of time to spend with friends and family or experiencing and performing cultural activities. [566: Brian McKenzie, “Out-of-State and Long Commutes: 2011,” Census Bureau, U.S. Department of Commerce, accessed November 10, 2015 at https://www.census.gov/hhes/commuting/files/2012/ACS-20.pdf. ]

A future ecological society will comprehensively address sanitation for all—currently more than four billion people do not have access to the most basic sanitation facilities.[endnoteRef:567] Addressing this urgent problem in need of immediate solutions will enlarge the current return of nutrients in human sewage back to the soil, but without the contaminants from industrial production and products that are found in today’s sludges and sewage effluents.[footnoteRef:30] Even though the food and agriculture sector will be completely redesigned, eliminating the production of wasteful and unhealthy junk food, we already grow enough food to feed more humans than currently exist on the planet. But the same is not true of the provision of sanitation and sewage facilities, or electricity production. The world needs billions more toilets and many more sewage treatment plants, even as we select, plan and build better facilities. The developing world can have state-of-the-art sanitation systems put in place that take into account not only people’s immediate toilet needs, but also longer-term issues of how to design and treat wastewater in the most ecologically sustainable manner possible. [567: Rachel Baum, Jeanne Luh, and Jamie Bartram, "Sanitation: A Global Estimate of Sewerage Connections without Treatment and the Resulting Impact on MDG Progress,” Environmental Science and Technology 47 (4):1994–2000 (2013). ] [30: There are a number of types of toilets that do not use water for flushing, thus not adding to the liquid sewage stream. These might be adapted for widespread use in the future.]

One of the key elements of an ecological society is a democratic and inclusive process to plan and make critical decisions. With regard to cities, participation in decision-making cannot be limited to architects and professional city planners, but must include the people that decisions will affect. While an ecological society will eradicate inequities in childcare responsibilities, job opportunities and all other aspects of social life, the voice of all people, of all genders, ages and those differently abled will be essential in designing new cities and redesigning already-built cities to realize the goal of equal access and benefits for all.

As indicated above with respect to sanitation, a significant proportion of this redesign will be easier to carry out in cities which are still coming into being in the Global South, rather than in well-established ones in the developed world. It is quite possible, indeed likely, that currently under-served and poorly serviced cities in the South will become the most advanced with regard to their socio-ecological redesign, able to skip over some of the worst aspects of cities fully built within a capitalist framework. An ecological and socially progressive approach to the design and arrangements of housing, other buildings, and open space in urban environments—parks, playing fields, squares, gardens, and urban agriculture—intersects with the need for new transportation systems and new ways to produce and use energy. Water use and management are deeply connected to the above issues.

It should be noted that inclusive planning for the design and construction of large scale infrastructure projects cuts against popular notions that small-scale local decision-making is inherently better than larger bodies of people coming together, either in person or facilitated electronically via the internet, to make key decisions. A huge number of people need to be involved—directly and indirectly—in making decisions that affect an entire city or region. Whenever a city, town, or village requires a new sanitation system, who will decide how and where a sewage treatment plant will be built and to what specifications?

London, a city of 8.8 million people, has over 40,000 miles of sewage pipes, 1.2 million manholes to access the pipes, more than five hundred pumping stations to move the water, and over three hundred and fifty sewage treatment works.[endnoteRef:568] All of this infrastructure employs hundreds of people, and can also generate energy from the waste sludge. The planning and decision-making process currently occurs outside of the purview or oversight of almost all of the users of the water; in London it’s carried out by a for-profit corporation. Better outcomes will be obtained by involving the people directly affected by any decision to transform a neighborhood or an entire city. It cannot be left to a small handful of professional administrators. Some of the time freed up from large reductions in the workweek, when wasteful aspects of the economy are done away with, will be devoted to people meeting in person, online or through conference calls, to discuss and make these important decisions on long-lasting infrastructure developments, and to prioritize and coordinate civil and cultural activities. [568: Thames Water Factsheet. Accessible at: http://www.thameswater.co.uk/cycles/accessible/sewage_treatment.html. ]

Local residents clearly need to be involved, but so do engineers, construction workers who would be doing the actual building, and other administrative workers to calculate and allocate funding. If the water is to go back into the local river, as is done in many places in the world, downstream users would also need to be involved, and so decision-making would spread to the surrounding communities within the watershed.

If a new rail line is planned for a city, or between cities, many people will need to be involved to decide on the location of track, stations, timetables, construction schedules, and funding. In addition, as we will want so many more areas serviced by public transport, we will need to make decisions about the numbers of people needed to be trained or retrained to drive vans, buses, trains, and subways, as well as to design, operate, build, and maintain railway systems. Furthermore, the involvement of even more people will be required to decide if there are enough schools, where they should be designed, funded, and built, how many teachers need training, and so on. In this way, not only will duplication be avoided but also everyone will be involved in decisions that affect their lives.

Over the long-term cities will likely be smaller than today’s “megatropolises” that contain many millions of people living within the urban core. There are currently thirty-five cities around the world with more than twenty million people living in their metropolitan areas. Cities would best be more dispersed over the countryside, connected to each other by efficient means of public transportation. This would permit the better integration of urban and rural ecosystems, including their peoples. One of the aims would be to design cities, towns, and rural areas in order to stimulate the cycling of nutrients transported to cities as food and then returned to agricultural soils. In order to maintain the health and productivity of soils, this would necessitate a vigorous program to keep industrial chemicals and those from some household products, hospitals, etc. from comingling with the waste stream that contains human bodily wastes. Another goal would be to remove the disparities in cultural and recreational opportunities between urban and rural populations.

Jan Gel, one of the forward-looking thinkers about urban areas, in his Cities for People,[endnoteRef:569] suggests four social goals for cities: liveliness, whereby cities are active and fun places in which to live and work; visually interesting design, encouraging interactions among people and with soft edges where vegetation replaces the hard edges separating pedestrians from buildings, streets, open areas, and coastal borders; safety, for people of all ages and abilities; and sustainability, with priority given to non-motorized transport and human health, promoted by more walking and the absence of air pollutants. [569: Jan Gehl, Cities for People, Island Press (2010). ]

Cities will have significant amounts of open and green space dispersed throughout neighborhoods. Planning will be needed to address and reverse urban sprawl. On the other hand, new cities can be much more integrated places of food production, recreation, storm runoff, water regulation, energy generation, public transit hubs, and other work-related productive activities.

New cities, could base light rail and/or bus transportation on a hub, spoke, and circle system (Figure 9). The central urban core contains a transportation hub as well as housing and workplaces. Concentrated areas of housing and workplaces occur where the transportation spokes and circles intersect. Housing will be built so that it is a relatively short walk or bike ride to a mass transit station. Areas between the spokes and circles can encompass farms and gardens as well as wetlands to accept and renovate urban and rural runoff waters. There would also be parks and gardens and other types of recreation facilities in the denser housing/workplace zones.

Figure 9. Urban spaces integrated with farms, gardens, and wetlands.

Whether or not new intercity rail networks should be of the high-speed variety is an important question for a socio-ecological society to consider. Under capitalism at least, faster trains facilitate the expansion of a city into one giant urban metropolis, eating up all the green space in between the central city and its satellite “bedroom communities” whose residents have to spend many hours commuting to jobs in areas in which they can’t afford to live. Simultaneously, rural lines that branch off main commuting routes shrivel, further disconnecting smaller communities from the urban center. The Shinkansen bullet train system in Japan was specifically designed to connect different Japanese regions to the capital, Tokyo. The result has been to turn the Greater Tokyo Metropolitan Area into a megalopolis of 35 million people, or 27 percent of the total Japanese population. As Philip Braso and Masako Tsubuku note, the “bullet train has sucked the country’s workforce into Tokyo, rendering an increasingly huge part of the country little more than a bedroom community for the capital.”[endnoteRef:570] At the same time, the “Shinkansen’s focus on Tokyo, and the subsequent emphasis on profitability over service, has also accelerated flight from the countryside. It’s often easier to get from a regional capital to Tokyo than to the nearest neighbouring city.”[endnoteRef:571] Despite this, more Shinkansen lines, and even faster trains, are being planned. [570: Philip Braso & Masako Tsubuku, “How the Shinkansen Bullet Train Made Tokyo into the Monster it is today,” The Guardian (September 30, 2014). ] [571: Ibid. ]

The need for speed is a prerequisite of capitalism, because the aim is always to compress time in order to facilitate ever-more production, ever-faster purchasing of commodities, and ever-faster accumulation. But the increasing speed of trains and other forms of transportation, alongside other capitalist innovations, such as fast food and regimented production lines, all act to dehumanize and alienate humans from taking the time to enjoy the journey itself, a meal, or time spent working. Drastically reducing the workweek and democratically redesigning all aspects of work to make jobs fulfilling and useful will undo the most pernicious distortions of the significance of time. This ethos will also underpin travel. And so, while more and much improved transportation networks will be created to aid with the interconnection of all of humanity, it is debatable whether land and sea transportation will become faster, or perhaps slower and more pleasant. Because differential real estate prices will longer be a problem, people will not be forced to move out of a gentrifying urban neighborhood (as there will be no gentry) into suburbs. There will therefore be no need for far-flung workforces to commute into a central economic hub. All of the issues relating to spreading out the population into more ecologically and socially integrated communities will remain a question for debate as to how best it can be accomplished.

Apartments, houses and other buildings in cities will be designed to be comfortable and long lasting, while optimizing use of natural lighting, ventilation, and heating and cooling so as to minimize energy use. We can learn much from the design of structures and use of local materials practiced by pre-capitalist cultures. Connecting those features to what we’ve learned about energy, heat and ventilation from passive methods of environmental control and technology will enable us to implement and control indoor spaces efficiently. Naturally, cities and buildings in different climatic regions will look quite different, taking into account variations in weather patterns, temperature gradients, the angle the sun strikes the earth during winter and summer, forms and amount of precipitation, and cultural and historical factors and preferences.

Architectural design will represent the coming together of older knowledge of how to build resilient and comfortable structures along with taking into account environmental factors and the technological knowhow we have acquired and repurposed to address human need. Critically, it will be people who live in and among the buildings, together with expert knowledge from people who have studied building design, who will make the decisions on what to build, where, and how as well as what materials to use. Plantings in cities should consist of native species able to thrive with temperatures of the region and amounts and patterns of precipitation.

Priorities during transition to a socially just ecological society will include building healthy and adequate housing for the homeless and poorly housed as well as integrating communities with people from the many backgrounds and abilities represented in the city. However, as noted earlier in the case of the United States, it is quite likely that more than enough housing exists for everyone, at least in developed countries. Homelessness in those societies is not caused by a lack of houses, but by deficiencies of money in the hands of the poor and of societal responsibility toward the most vulnerable. According to the 2010 government census, the United States has more than five times the number of empty residential buildings as there are homeless people.

Due to their low quality, many houses in poor neighborhoods across the world will need to be demolished, along with shanty towns and squatter and refugee camps. The negatively impacted and historically disenfranchised communities will decide how to redress the wrongs done to them through forcible displacement and relocation, This affects huge numbers of people across the world, from Native Americans, Africans in what were European settler colonies, Australian Aborigines, Palestinians, and war refugees as they return to their homelands. A democratically planned and managed economy, working from the bottom up, will be able to avoid the frequent imbalance among local economies, jobs and labor that plagues the anarchic supply and demand model of capitalist development, and leads to humanitarian disasters, war, waste, and pollution.

Dwellings, workplaces, and places for provisioning people and for providing for their other needs—food markets, outdoor and indoor recreation facilities, cultural centers, health clinics, hospitals, dentists and optician offices, schools, and so on—will be interspersed with apartment buildings and within them. In this way distinct neighborhoods will form in which people who live there will also go to school there and work either in the community or nearby. If the primary goal of production is to provide for people’s needs while limiting waste and controlling pollution, then it will be a lot easier to have production facilities nearer to where people live. Because the rate of turnover of buildings is generally quite low, a lot of work will be required to retrofit the existing stock of structures for energy efficiency and human comfort.

A significant amount of urban space will be reacquired in existing cities for public use by the massive reduction and need for individual vehicles. Cars are commonly used about five percent of the time. And in modern cities, storage of vehicles when not in use presents almost as large a problem as when they are being driven. One third of some cities, such as Tampa and Los Angeles, are given over to non-residential parking. Even if cars run on electricity produced with renewable energy sources, the negative implications of a car-based society are immense: waste of resources for people to have their own vehicles; the space taken up by cars when not in use; and the vast acreage of impermeable concrete required for storage; and the social isolation, sense of entitlement, and individualism promoted by car ownership. In existing cities large areas of concrete and asphalt dedicated to the parking of cars will be ripped up and converted to public green space, recreational areas, bike paths, tree plantings, and gardening/farming areas. Data compiled by Lester Brown in 2001 shows how:

The U.S., with its 214 million motor vehicles, has paved 3.9 million miles of roads, enough to circle the earth at the equator 157 times. In addition to roads, cars require parking space. Imagine a parking lot for 214 million cars and trucks. If that is too difficult, try visualizing a parking lot for 1,000 cars and then imagine what 214,000 of these would look like.

However we visualize it, the U.S. area devoted to roads and parking lots covers an estimated 61,000 square miles, an expanse approaching the size of the 51.9 million acres that U.S. farmers planted in wheat last year.[endnoteRef:572] [572: Lester Brown, “Pavement is Replacing the world’s croplands,” Grist (March 1, 2001). ]

Already mentioned, but so important that it bears repeating, is the issue of providing a variety of community and outdoor spaces for people to meet and enjoy activities together. Transportation services will be reorganized so people can easily travel to nearby forests, mountains, rivers, and beaches to appreciate and rejuvenate. “[R]esearch has shown that addition of only two trees and a patch of grass to a concrete dominated housing project can improve health, mood and school performance.”[endnoteRef:573] Imagine the positive effect of greening all our city neighborhoods by providing dispersed open green spaces and easy access to the surrounding countryside. [573: Natalie Angier, “Ever Green,” The New York Times (April 21, 2015). ]

One of the problems in many cities today is that their sewers receive and transmit both human sewage as well as less polluted water from storm runoff. Separate city systems for storm and sewage water are rare. Facilities for treating sewage therefore become overloaded during high runoff events, frequently requiring the discharge of untreated sewage into nearby surface waters. There are two general approaches to the runoff problem: a) reducing the amount of runoff waters and b) slowing down the flow so that less erosion occurs, particulates in runoff can settle out, and other cleansing can occur before water reaches a stream or lake; some practices encourage both. Techniques for decreasing storm runoff include: constructing green roofs; decreasing the percentage of surface area that is impermeable by using porous coverings on some streets; leaving spaces between paving stones; creating micro-underground water sinks to accept rainwater and allow it to infiltrate into the subsoil; and playgrounds and public parks that are designed to accept runoff, allowing it to percolate into permeable soils or to move through wetlands, helping clean the water.

The decrease in runoff quantity and intensity needs to be paired with diversion of as much surface runoff as possible either through dedicated sewers specifically for runoff or, better yet, channeling of runoff to nearby infiltration basins or parks containing wetlands. The development of “sponge cities” is possible, especially important in regions that lack sufficient water resources but do have periods of the year when there are significant amounts of precipitation. In light of climate change and sea level rise and the many cities that are built along coastal regions and at river mouths, there is a need to rebuild barrier islands, revive coastline sea grasses, mangroves, and salt marshes, and create “soft edges” around cities to absorb storm surges and integrate the city into its surrounding water.

Gardens planted on top of buildings, a relatively new practice referred to as green roofs, not only help intercept and slowdown the flow of rainfall and lessen runoff, they also insulate buildings from extreme heat and cold, reducing energy costs, as well as increase the life of roofs by protecting them from UV radiation. They have other little studied benefits that are only beginning to be recognized. The diverse microbial inhabitants living there may be an “underestimated component of these biotic systems functioning to support some of the valued ecological services of green roofs.”[endnoteRef:574] [574: Krista McGuire, Sara Payne, Mathew Palmer, Caitlyn Gillikin, Dominique Keefe, et al. Digging the New York City Skyline: Soil Fungal Communities in Green Roofs and City Parks. PLOS ONE 8(3): e58020. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0058020 (2013). ]

There are a variety of ways to clean runoff waters and sewage effluent in order to maintain surface water quality in canals, ponds, and lakes. One of these is to use either wetlands or systems that mimic the properties of wetlands. Undisturbed wetlands are extremely efficient at cleansing water as it makes its way through the landscape. Wetlands are composed of a complex mix of interacting organisms and habitats. As ecological design pioneer John Todd explains, “…the engineering is human but the cast of creatures that actually does the work is gathered from a diversity of wild systems.” The organisms “organize themselves into new and complex living systems…a partnership between human designers and other life forms with the objective of solving particular problems.”[endnoteRef:575] Humans have modified the ground, engineered the site, added plants and a variety of other organisms, and then let nature take its course. This concept can be applied to rehabilitation of polluted ponds and lakes, treatment of surface runoff, and renovation of sewage sludge. [575: John Todd, “Lessons from the Sea,” Annals of the Earth XXXIII (1):9-12 (2015). ]

There are substantial advantages to a re-imagined urban space as a different type of ecosystem, rather than as a degraded wasteland, too densely packed with people to be much other than a human-dominated concrete, asphalt, and steel eyesore. Especially as cars are removed and industrial production is made more environmentally benign, with controls for gaseous, solid, and liquid wastes, all these changes will be combined with an increase in urban space to grow nutritious food uncontaminated by synthetic compounds or industrial toxins. Incorporating more food-growing areas into cities—including areas within dense development at mass transit stops—may render rooftop food-producing gardens unnecessary, allowing the use of roofs as locations for solar panels. Perhaps green roofs with non-food crops may be able to be integrated with solar panels, maintaining their advantages of modulating water runoff and interior temperatures.

It’s worth re-emphasizing the huge differences in the make-up and organization of the people who will be doing all this reimagined urban planning. Today, people designing urban transformations are drawn from a separate technocratic class of highly educated architects and engineers, given the task of maximizing commercial opportunities and the throughput of cars, energy and water, while keeping costs low, all in consultation with financiers and commercial real estate interests. It is highly unlikely that any of them would live in or come from the neighborhood under consideration. In contrast, while there will still be experts trained in relevant fields, there may well be more local experts as well and any decisions would be democratically arrived at and include the voices of those impacted by any planning decisions. People educated using more experiential methods designed to develop individuals who are more knowledgeable and well-rounded will be a vital part of the process. Furthermore, the objective will be to enhance the quality of life, which will mean enlarged green spaces, more variation in building design, and ease of transport for all members of society. Transportation that isn’t focused on minimizing the time taken to travel between two points can be based on the recognition that the journey itself can have value, especially when in the company of others using a pleasant and efficient transportation system.

Overcoming the urban-rural divide

While cities can be made healthier and pleasanter places to live and there is much that can be accomplished with urban agriculture, it is important to maintain a significant rural population of farmers. Migration to urban areas is being driven mainly by land grabs, rural poverty, a lack of rural employment opportunities and relocation of refugees due to war, political instability, and climate change.

The rural population can develop its full potential through technical and material support for small farms and small-scale light industry as well as greatly improved housing, clean water, sanitation facilities, and educational, recreational, and cultural opportunities. For this to happen, farmers will be needed on the land instead of being former farmers living in cities. Rural areas will be less isolated and separated from urban areas, and the divide between rural and urban will decline. A major strategic societal goal will be to overcome the ever-growing urban-rural split that is symptomatic of capitalism. For that to happen, better integration of surrounding farmland with the urban core and improvement rural living conditions and transportation networks, are needed.

New methods, techniques, and approaches to producing the necessities of life, and new ways of building or modifying cities and reducing the differences in living between urban and rural areas, as outlined above, are all essential. But how will it all fit together and be organized? What are the bedrock principles and practices of social organization in an equitable, ecological society? What values and ways of relating to one another and to the rest of the natural world will allow for the changes sketched above to take place? These are the subjects of the next chapter.

Part Four: Toward a New Society

Chapter 11. Characteristics of an Ecological Society

…the absence of a vision for the future, of a project, of a radical alternative cripples and paralyzes the potential movement from below and may divert it in dangerous directions.

—Daniel Singer[endnoteRef:576] [576: Daniel Singer, “In Defence of Utopia,” pp. 249-256 in Ralph Miliband and Leo Panich (eds.) Real Problems, False Solutions, Socialist Register 1993, The Merlin Press (1993). ]

It has been said that among the most important things to know in life are where you come from and where you are going. In both individual and societal terms, having a good understanding of both is critical. What have been lacking in current critiques of capitalism are a fresh and wholesale reexamination of where we should be heading and a vision of a new society. Resolving the social and environmental failings of capitalism necessitates the building of a society in which all humans are equal, with society organized cooperatively, equitably, and democratically from the bottom up, with recognition and respect given to the importance of healthy functioning natural systems.

The only way such a society is possible is through conscious, democratic, and rational management of the human interaction with the rest of the natural world, intentionally aimed at preserving renewable and nonrenewable resources for future generations, thereby maintaining resilient ecosystems. The way the economy functions, how humans relate to one another to obtain the things we need to flourish collectively, must be the instrument used to achieve the goals of equity, justice, and ecological health. But how might we define such an economy and society? Economic and social relations must encourage and facilitate the development and expression of everyone’s full human potential in ways that keep the world in which we are embedded—with all its complexities, essential cycles, and biological interrelationships—intact, functioning, and healthy over the long term. In other words, we need an economy designed to be at the service of humanity, regenerating and maintaining environmental health on which we and all other species depend, an economy without the compulsion for exponential growth, able to function well in a constantly evolving state.

Human society and the rest of nature will co-evolve in more harmonious ways, as we discover more about earth’s ecosystems and ourselves. Such a society, under democratic social control—without classes or hierarchies, is what we refer to as an ecosocialist society and culture.[endnoteRef:577] The term socialism refers to a society of social equality, in which democracy extends to the realm of the economy, with workers and the surrounding communities in control of production, producing for social needs and purposes, and use practices and strategies that regenerate and maintain environmental and social health. Although socialism, in our view by definition, must be both democratic and ecologically sound, the term eco socialism has come into use in order to stress the importance of an ecological approach to human interactions with the rest of the natural world. [577: “Socialism” has been used in a number of different ways—one being the European social democratic socialist parties that strive to lessen the worst of capitalism’s hard edges. The term has gotten an especially bad name because of the experiences of early attempts to achieve socialism such as the Soviet Union—a country that while not capitalist in terms of private enterprise, was neither socialist in any meaningful sense of the word, nor what Marx had in mind when he used the word. ]

An economic system in which the decision-making processes incorporate ecological principles and new ethics, to every extent possible, works in concert with the rest of nature—its water, nutrient, and biological cycles—and optimizes use of natural phenomena such as with enhanced natural lighting for buildings and animals and plants for biological control of insects and diseases. It recognizes the need to conserve and protect renewable resources and use them in ways that ensure their availability for future generations while reducing use of nonrenewable resources and re-using and re-purposing them efficiently. Such an economic system needs to be under democratic social control and management, instead of under private management for self-enrichment, an essential element of capitalism. A human society that is truly ecological, recognizes that humans cannot long exist without being part of a fully functioning, biologically diverse set of ecosystems.

New ethics for a new society

The values of a society reflect its social organization, as people go about the work of meeting and transforming life’s needs. The functioning of the economy and peoples’ relationships within it determine the ethics and mores that develop in a society and that it transmits to its people. Individualism, conspicuous consumption, and greed are ethical and behavioral products of capitalism, an economic system that is driven by profit and unlimited growth. At the same time, the ethics and mores fostered by capitalism influence peoples’ behavior and limits their thinking about what is possible in the world.

To create and live in an ecological society, not only is a completely different economic and social system required, but evolving out of those, entirely different ethics and values. Characteristics such as compassion, empathy, sharing, reciprocity, solidarity, cooperation, fairness, must be brought to the fore. While new ethics and behaviors are needed in our relationships towards other people, one’s community and other communities around the world, that is not sufficient. We also need to develop and promote a framework in which we view ourselves as stewards of the natural world.

Even taking a utilitarian view, it is to the direct benefit of humans and their societies to create and maintain biological and habitat diversity and functionality. It is the only way to ensure that people can live healthy, satisfied, and happy lives now and for generations to come. People need clean water and air, healthy and productive soils. For this to happen, society will need to collectively and cooperatively make decisions about how best to promote wise and careful management and use of renewable and nonrenewable resources.

Such a society would need to embrace a way of thinking similar to the concept of buen vivir, which can be translated as “living well.” This refers to a life that is fulfilling in its most comprehensive human sense: through our activities and relationships and spiritual, mental and artistic development, rather than through an aggregation of material goods as the definition is under capitalism. According to the Uruguayan scholar Eduardo Gudynas of buen vivir, the phrase:

includes the classical ideas of quality of life, but with the specific idea that well-being is only possible within a community. Furthermore, in most approaches the community concept is understood in an expanded sense, to include Nature. Buen Vivir therefore embraces the broad notion of well-being and cohabitation with others and Nature. In this regard, the concept is also plural, as there are many different interpretations depending on cultural, historical and ecological setting.[endnoteRef:578] [578: Eduardo Gudynas, “Buen Vivir: Today's tomorrow,” Development 54(4):441–447 (2011), http://www.palgrave-journals.com/development/journal/v54/n4/full/dev201186a.html. ]

It will be the relationships one engages in and how one contributes to society that are valued, rather than the acquisition of material goods and services. As Gudynas makes clear, buen vivir draws from a variety of sources and can be applied in many different realms: “It is equally influenced by western critiques [of capitalism] over the last 30 years, especially from the field of feminist thought and environmentalism…It certainly doesn't require a return to some sort of indigenous, pre-Colombian past.”[endnoteRef:579] [579: Oliver Balch, "Buen vivir: the social philosophy inspiring movements in South America," blog at The Guardian (February 4, 2013), http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/blog/buen-vivir-philosophy-south-america-eduardo-gudynas. ]

The importance of the individual as a member of, and active participant in, society. What we describe below is a society under social control, one in which the individual is not lost. In fact, such a society needs the full participation of all members in order to best work out important economic, social, and political decisions. Individual freedom is achieved within the social context when the goal is for all members of society to have equal access to resources and opportunities needed for buen vivir. As literary critic Terry Eagleton explains:

…socialism does not simply reject liberal society, with its passionate commitment to the individual. Instead, it builds on and completes it. In doing so, it shows how some of the contradictions of liberalism, in which your freedom can flourish only at the expense of mine, may be resolved. Only through others can we finally come into our own. This means an enrichment of individual freedom, not a diminishing of it. It is harder to think of a finer ethics. On a personal level, it is known as love.[endnoteRef:580] [580: Terry Eagleton, Why Marx was Right, Yale University Press:86 (2011). ]

We fully understand that the people who will bring about a new socio-ecological society, in all its complexities, must work out the details through a democratic process of revolutionary change. There can be no pre-ordained grand design. The ideas outlined here are put forward with humility for the purpose of stimulating thought and discussion. However, they are not proposed as a grab bag of possibilities from which to choose some and discard others. Rather, the various parts need each other, in a mutually reinforcing and self-perpetuating fashion, for the economy and society to function in an ecological manner while creating and maintaining social equity. Each fits into one or more of the attributes or pillars of stable and resilient natural systems—self-regulation, diversity and interdependence, ecologically sound metabolic interaction with the rest of nature, and resilience through the potential for self-renewal. At the root of such a vision is a social system based on cooperation and bottom-up democracy to produce the things we need to stay alive and to share them out equitably.

Described below is a set of characteristics and features for democratic control of society and its economy, based on equity and using socio-ecological principles, in other words, a view of how a future ecosocialist society might function.

Equality and democratic decision-making

For a society free of class divisions, people will be treated equally and participate in society with equal access to resources and opportunities. “The free development of each is the condition for the free development of all,” is the way that Marx and Engels described the concept in The Communist Manifesto.

Profound democracy will be needed to obtain the most objective and accurate information, to make the best plans and decisions so that everyone has a voice in society, and to keep bureaucratic layers from developing. True political democracy is only possible when there is economic equality and free access to information and education among all people. Through open and free debate, humanity will collectively decide what constitutes the essentials of living well, how to come up with the most appropriate plans and enact them, and how they should be evaluated. None of that is possible without the construction of a society in which all humans are equal in life opportunities and oppression of all kinds is eradicated. There is nothing in our history, genetics, or “human nature” that, a priori, prevents such a future from becoming reality. Needless to say, to make possible the active and equal involvement of everyone on the planet will require the eradication of unequal power relationships among people based on social class (or caste), race, and gender. Instead there will be equal access to the necessities, including resources, technology, education, meaningful work, and leisure time. In a global economy based on sharing, cooperation, bottom-up democracy, and equality, this will be the most immediate task. Another essential and urgent issue will be how to transition different regions to have more balanced economies. Capital has dictated that less developed countries concentrate their economies where they supposedly have “comparative advantage” in the market place, condemning many countries to focus on extractive industries and the sale of raw commodities such as foodstuffs and metal ores, while industries remain largely underdeveloped.

Goods and services. The provision of goods and services will be decided on democratically and apportioned with respect to minimizing adverse environmental effects over the long term. Where everyone has enough for personal and communal needs, attempts to acquire more than others will be socially unacceptable and seen as deviant, anti-social behavior.[endnoteRef:581] History has made it abundantly clear that significant differences in wealth lead to differences in power and are enemies of equality. People will have richer lives with less individual stuff or property because they will have time, assistance, and encouragement to develop and follow their passions—at work, in sports, science, music, dance, writing, painting, woodworking, gardening, etc.—and to more fully engage with family, friends, community and nature. Currently, the market and an individual’s income determine how much one has to go without. With ecosocialism, no one will go without, but no one will own land or buildings or be able to accumulate material wealth. Under capitalism we don’t decide on where factories are located, who gets jobs, how much time we work, how our energy is produced, or any other economic decisions that affect our lives. With ecosocialism, we will be deciding all of those things. [581: History has made it abundantly clear that significant differences in wealth lead to differences in power and is the enemy of equality. ]

An ecosocialist society will facilitate genuine human fulfillment through aesthetically pleasing, passionate activity and relationships that are an end in themselves, not a means to accumulate property. We will develop what Marx calls ‘a totality of the manifestations of life’ as a central feature of the new society. To create a social human means to expand the senses. Rather than in a society in which “the dealer in minerals sees only the commercial value but not the beauty and the specific character of the mineral: he has no mineralogical sense,” a new society calls for the all-around development of our senses to appreciate nature and the world in all their manifestations and beauty.

We will not be able to do or have anything we might please, nor will we be free of pain and suffering. We will be able to recognize limits and come to terms with them. All that one can do in a lifetime is to live a full life while recognizing and accepting that a full life is still a limited life. The generation of new needs and capacities that serve social purposes are the incentive for society to strive to further reduce the time spent working on essential productive activities necessary to keep society running: “If we presuppose communal production, the time factor naturally remains essential. The less time society requires to produce corn, livestock, etc., the more time it wins for other production, material or spiritual…”[endnoteRef:582] [582: Karl Marx, Outlines of the Critique to Political Economy (Rough Draft of 1857-8):109, https://gruppegrundrisse.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/vol-28-collected-works-of-marx-and-engels-1857-611.pdf. ]

Rights and responsibilities. In the immediate aftermath of revolution, a basic set of economic, political, and social rights, responsibilities and laws will need to be democratically developed and upheld by popularly elected local, regional, and multiregional councils. These economic and social rights will be equivalent for all people. Because new ways of behaving will be designed and upheld by mass participation, they will be completely different from the idea of individual rights under capitalism, whereby such rights as we are granted mostly exist only on paper, and are contradicted in practice whenever they conflict with the priorities of capital.

With the vast expansion over the last two decades of the internet that and possibilities for instant communication on every geographical and community level, it will be easy for every person to instantly take part in discussions and to vote on all manner of economic decisions that have implications for resource use, methods and quantities of production, new infrastructure and every other decision taken by society. Naturally, electronic communications will not replace community and regional meetings in which issues can be thrashed out and debated before important decisions are made. How to balance local needs against wider social goals, with reference in particular to historically disenfranchised and oppressed indigenous groups whose land was stolen from them by colonial regimes that then encouraged settlers to take over, will have to be addressed in a socially just manner. Wider society will have to take the lead from the demands and wishes of those groups for historical redress.

Addressing historical injustice. In order to provide equality in treatment, access to resources, and opportunity for all people, the historical injustices of racism and colonial oppression will need to be addressed. Indigenous communities that seek to return to land stolen from them will be given priority to do so and provided with the resources to develop economically. Massive amounts of capital and technological knowhow will flow to developing countries to eradicate centuries of inequality and racism. This will require re-arranging living conditions so that there are no depressed or deprived areas where people of color and the poor are concentrated. It will mean examining the location and operation of polluting industries so there is no more environmental racism and building more schools and hospitals to service everyone with the best education and highest quality healthcare (and the training of more teachers, doctors, and nurses to work in them).

New ways of behaving. Under ecosocialism, the social mores and culture of the general population will not allow racism, sexism and all other types and forms of oppression. The set of rights and obligations, forming the bedrock of a socialist society, include the right to equal access to the material goods, services, and environmental conditions needed to be able to live well. Ultimately, as people come to grow up and live in a world without class inequality and never having experienced oppression, treating segments of the population differently based on their gender, race, sexuality, different physical or mental abilities, or other attributes will not even make sense, making laws against oppression superfluous. Prior to that, an entirely new legal system will need to be democratically enacted, as well as current police forces and courts dismantled, because the existing injustice system is predicated on class rule, racism and the protection and sanctity of private property, which will no longer exist.

Requirements for a good life. The economic rationing based on wealth that goes on under capitalism, where a few have far too much and most far way too little, will disappear. Therefore, we need to decide what goods and services everyone should have access to and how they will be provided and made. This includes high quality nutritious and varied food, clothing, housing, communication, transportation, access to energy and technology, heating and cooling, education, health care, potable drinking water, and sanitation facilities, as well as support for recreation and other cultural activities, access to parks, outdoor activities and travel, and a clean and healthy local, regional, and global environment. The vast majority of the world’s people will have many more goods, services and life opportunities than under capitalism—especially such necessities as quality health care, housing, education, sanitation facilities, water, and food—while the upper middle class and the very wealthy will have fewer, but enough to meet basic needs.

Devices, houses and goods, will be built and designed to serve their purposes as effectively as possible, incorporating entirely new forms of artistry. Rather than a dour utilitarianism, society will have the skills to construct the things it needs to prosper as much from the realm of art and culture as from the world of engineering. Aesthetically, culturally and ecologically pleasing buildings of a wide variety of designs will be the norm, not the exception reserved for those that can afford them, as baubles of social status. The new society will need many more architects, designers and engineers drawn from a wide range of technical and artistic backgrounds.

What should be available in each home and what can be available communally will be entirely reconceived. Most of the things taken for granted as essential to have in today’s developed countries are used only rarely, such as cars, power tools and washing machines. Most goods can be easily shared through community centers, of which there will be many more. Ownership of such items will be minimal when it’s so much easier, more efficient, and economical to share and return devices and tools that are rarely used by individuals or families to distribution points and communal areas.

The Economy

Planning for people and the environment. An economy that has a social purpose, one that by its nature includes ecological considerations, must involve considerable active, democratic management. Production workers, scientists, engineers, and planners will develop environmentally and socially rational ways of interacting with resources used to produce needed goods and services.

The whole idea of economic planning has an understandably poor reputation as a result of the bureaucratic, top-down state planning characterized by the Soviet system and by other countries claiming the mantle of Marx.[endnoteRef:583] The neoliberal version of capitalism of the last four decades has put its own negative ideological spin on the issue by denying the potential effectiveness of any government planning for the public good. But once there is social purpose for an economy, there is no way to operate rationally without much more coordination and planning than occurs under capitalism. Allocation of resources in an unplanned system is critically inadequate when supplies are limited compared to the needs, which is why all capitalist states opt for increased state direction of national economies during wars that require major mobilizations of people, resources, and production facilities.[footnoteRef:31] [583: For a discussion of the problems of planning in the Soviet Union see section “Planning and the Soviet Economy” in Harry Magdoff and Fred Magdoff, “Approaching Socialism,” Monthly Review 57(3):19-61 (July-August 2005). ] [31: Planning occurs, of course, within capitalist enterprises, by individual states and collections of states. But whatever planning occurs is done for the purpose of generating more exchange value, or for one region to gain an advantage over another, instead of satisfying the needs of all people. Corporations and states also cooperate, and expect workers to cooperate with each other and the rules imposed by their bosses. Governments intervene continually in the operation of the market through trade deals and other laws, the construction (or non-construction) of infrastructure and by favoring different sectors of the economy depending on economic, political and military needs. If there is too much unrest within the workforce, the state will intervene on the side of the corporations, through the courts and, if need be, its police and military, in order to ensure the uninterrupted and maximum flow of profit. As stated earlier, the nation state is essential to the functioning of capitalism, because it is the state that creates the conditions for markets to operate.]

The production needs of all belligerent countries for the First and Second World Wars were accomplished only through planning and the wholesale mobilization of the economy—and the use of rationing for the public. The plans developed to supply war needs were essential because market forces could not be relied upon to efficiently allocate limited resources. After all, given the competition among the military services and between civilian and military needs as well, how else could you ensure that a particular part arrived at the right factory at the right time to produce a tank?

In the absence of a planned democratic system for production and distribution, how can we ensure that all people have access to what they need for buen vivir? It is not possible for markets to allocate resources effectively, equitably and sustainably—from either social or environmental viewpoints. Nor is it possible to price goods in an ecologically and socially responsible manner under capitalism. Witness the rampant over-production of goods wherever profits can be made, and the way in which prices bear little to no relationship to the ecological costs of production, price-gouging in the drug and other industries, and the lack of equal pay for equal work. In contrast, in an ecosocialist society, planning becomes a process for ensuring democratic control of the economy. However, it’s important to note that experimentation will be an integral feature of society. Different groups will have the freedom to experiment (and to make mistakes), surprising discoveries and results may well be a far larger feature of an ecosocialist society than they ever were under capitalism or its state-run variants, such as the former Soviet Union and current China.

Planning for short term and longer term social needs begins at the community level (as has happened in a limited way with the over thirty thousand community councils of Venezuela, though they are still subject to overall capitalist economic relations) but must be intertwined and coordinated with other communities in a regional plan. And regional plans need to be intertwined with multi-regional plans with attention and sensitivity to local environmental and climatological conditions, natural resource constraints, and cultural desires and differences. Contrary to common stereotypes, an ecosocialist society would lead to the flourishing and diversification of human culture, rather than to the increasingly globalized mono-culture foisted on us by transnational corporations, producing and selling the same products. (McDonalds sells its unhealthy food in over 119 countries.)

There may be markets in a post-capitalist society for the purpose of trading materials, as there have been since long before the existence of capitalism. And in an economy of substantive equality where basic needs are met, perhaps markets may provide some information to planners, certainly immediately after the demise of capitalism. But as Harry Magdoff notes, it will

be necessary first to reorder the social relations within the society, achieve equitable terms between the nations that buy and sell raw materials, start on the road to equality and the abolition of classes, and provide plenty of latitude for the creation and use of a healthy surplus for nonmarket activities. Then, perhaps, the resultant price schedules might assist in guiding the economy.”[endnoteRef:584] [584: Harry Magdoff, “A Note on Market Socialism,” Monthly Review 47(1):12-18 (May 1995). ]

In the event that an item is scarce for some reason, temporary rationing will ensure that everyone has a fair share.[endnoteRef:585] The point is not whether there are markets, or even whether money or a money equivalent is used (both of which will need to continue for a period of time after the revolutions). What is important is that relations among humans will be non-exploitative, people will be valued equally, and market relations will not control decisions about what basic needs are required for everyone and about how to produce and distribute those needs. [585: It is important to note that, “the market” in capitalist economies is a rationing system—rationing according to individual/family resources. In our capitalist economies and societies, commodities are theoretically available for anyone to purchase but most of these are out of the reach of most people. The consequence of a small minority having ownership of so much private property is, as Marx famously noted, its non-ownership by the vast majority. Often, even the most basic needs such as adequate food are also beyond the reach of the poor, even in wealthy countries. Close to fifty million people in the United States are considered to be “food insecure.” This is clearly food rationing. But instead of rationing so that everyone has equal access in the face of limited supply, this is rationing according to ability to pay, occurring in the presence of surplus food supplies—with the better quality and quantity going to those able to afford the cost. ]

Unlike capitalism, an ecosocialist society has no built-in need for growth. Capitalism is compelled toward exponential growth because of its drive to obtain increased profits without end in a competitive system. Even if populations decrease, as they currently are doing in most of Europe and Japan, the GDP in every country (the overall size of each country’s national production) must continually increase or the country is in economic crisis. With ecosocialism, once socially determined material and non-material human needs are equally met across the world, the economy will continue to evolve and develop in new ways as we come to better understand and apply natural laws. This will lead to substantively neutral or positive side effects for society as energy, resource use, labor time, and waste are minimized, re-circulated, or reclaimed. What was formerly considered waste instead becomes material that can be used in other ways.

Research and development will have goals that are compatible with a socio-ecological society and will involve many more human minds than are currently brought to bare, with “citizen scientists” working together with those having more formal training. Some of the results will help us better manage our interactions with resources, while other findings will expand our knowledge in ways that might not have practical implications. Rather than an end to innovation in science, it will be a new beginning of far more creative innovation.

Production aims. Methods and aims of industrial production and building construction will be such that goods and buildings have a long life and are easily repaired, repurposed, and/or recycled.[endnoteRef:586] The goals of production are not designed to foster more production (a consequence under capitalism of the drive to gain more profits, as well as built-in obsolescence, and shoddy quality). Wherever practical, the leftover materials from producing one item become inputs for another. Once made, regular maintenance of manufactured items and buildings will drastically reduce the requirement to keep making replacements. When improvements are made or when products reach the end of their lifetime, people will be able to return items to distribution centers for replacement. Buildings will be constructed to be as energy-efficient as possible. Conversely, non-renewable resources will be conserved and used sparingly and in ways such that they can be recycled efficiently where possible, as efforts are continued to replace them with renewable ones. Here are just two examples, one, very well-known and one very new: the routine cultivation of legumes as part of farm crop rotations to supply nitrogen to the following grain crops and a recently developed process in which fungal hyphae replaces Styrofoam as packing or insulating material.[endnoteRef:587] [586: See, for example, Op. Cit., William McDonough and Michael Braungart. ] [587: Laura Shin, Using Fungi to Replace Styrofoam, Green, a New York Times blog about energy and the environment, April 13, 2013, green.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/using-fungi-to-replace-styrofoam/. ]

Energy will come from renewable energy sources and will be used as near as practically makes sense to where it is produced. The burning of fossil fuels for energy, manufacturing and transport will be substantially reduced in comparison with today’s per capita consumption in developed countries. Although distributed electrical energy from a variety of renewable sources is important, backup systems, emergency generators, and regional high voltage power lines will also be needed. With the advances being made in renewable energy for generating electricity as well as in battery technology, ground transportation will be based on electricity rather than on liquid fuels. Hydrogen produced from renewable sources may also be part of the mix along with batteries and plug-in systems for buses and trucks. Because much of the world lives in energy poverty, reductions in energy use in one region, or by the more affluent within one country, will be offset by increases in consumption elsewhere in order to bring everyone up to an appropriate and equivalent level of comfort.

Agricultural production will be carried out based on soil and above ground habitat management that produces healthy plants better able to defend themselves from diseases and insects, suppresses plant pests, and to enhance habitat for beneficial organisms. Integrated crop/animal farms will be encouraged, providing a mosaic of habitats for agricultural and wild species, with different levels of disturbance. Farm animals will be treated humanely and eat what they would normally eat. Farms will rely on legumes for nitrogen for non-legume crops, return of composted food wastes, and efficient nutrient cycling for most nutrient needs. Integrated animal-crop farms make this easier to accomplish.[endnoteRef:588] Farming and gardening will be made possible within cities—in open space for community gardens and in agricultural peninsulas that are outside city boundaries. [588: For information about ecological soil and crop management practices see Fred Magdoff and Harold van Es, Building Soils for Better Crops, Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program and Fred Magdoff, “Ecological Agriculture,” Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems 22(2): 109–117 (2007). The book and other material from the SARE program can be downloaded without cost at: www.sare.org/Learning-Center/Books. ]

Nutrients from human excreta and unused or spoiled food waste will be cycled back to farmland as efficiently and safely as possible. But this means that industrial wastes and other such chemicals cannot enter into the human waste stream so that there is no inadvertent soil pollution occurring as these human wastes are returned to farmland. Carrying this out will take a major re-evaluation of production and disposal of materials.

Workplace, community, and cooperation

General approach. Each community and region will strive, within reason, to build the capacity to rely on locally available resources with respect to basic needs such as water, energy, food, housing, and health care. This is not a call for total local self-sufficiency but rather for an attempt to build resilient communities and regions and reduce the need for long distance transport. Given how variation of climatic and geographic areas where humans live, as well as the concentration of certain resources in particular locations, this task will differ greatly from region to region and will depend on an objective and democratic assessment of how best to provide for human and environmental needs from the perspective of equity and resource use. We are not advocating abandoning certain regions of the planet because to live there requires more resources than other regions, forcing people to move for ecological reasons. Rather, we propose that the needs of different areas can be taken care of by interaction and solidarity with the rest of society.

Putting into practice reliance on the use of local resources where feasible would have to be balanced against what it makes sense to produce within a given area or that is produced globally. Clearly very few manufactured goods are going to be produced in every community, or even every city or region. Rail cars, clothing, computers and the vast majority of other goods do not need to be produced in every community, city, or even region—nor could they be.

On the other hand, there will be many more hospitals, schools, clinics, dentistal offices, theaters, and community centers in many more locations, requiring many more training centers, art schools, and universities, or whatever educational and cultural forms a new society devises that are more equitable and better than our current university system. And while some foods might be produced locally or regionally, others will need to be produced wherever the appropriate local climate, soils, and topography exist. But developing local resources to provide some of the necessities of life can still be a goal. Some excess capacity for production at different geographic locations is an important part of resilience. People with similar skills are needed in any community as are some redundancy in production facilities and excess capacity for unforeseen events. However, should there be an extreme weather event causing local or regional disruption, the resources of the entire society will be mobilized to minimize harm and disturbance to people’s lives and to repair damage in the shortest possible time.

Regarding the food system, farmers in surrounding communities and wider society will plan together for the types of crops and animals, in what quantities and in which locations make for a sufficient variety and quality of food to provide everyone with a nutritious and mixed diet.

Worker and community control. Workers in factories, workshops, and farms and the surrounding communities will decide about production in those facilities, but with input from and coordination with the larger geographic areas they serve. The local population—those who work and run the factories, shops of varying kinds, mines, fisheries, and farms—are the ones that know their workplaces, with all their complexities, better than anyone. They also know that the decisions they make regarding their interactions with resources in the production process will have direct consequences for themselves, the environment, their communities, children, and future generations. They are, therefore, in the best position to regulate metabolic relations between humans and the rest of the natural world in and around their particular location.

Production being controlled by workers and carried out for the purpose of satisfying basic needs of the population, instead of production of commodities for sale to make profits, implies enormous changes. With people having a totally different concept of what is important—the goal of buen vivir being to live a well and full life and develop ones interests and potentials—a totally different conception of wealth and value underpins and creates new ways of relating to each other and the productive process.

Management of natural resources. Communities will cooperatively manage natural resources such as nearby forests and fisheries to restore and perpetuate them for future generations. Conservation of and care for resources will become part of a society-wide land and water ethic. Regional and inter-regional bodies will decide how ocean and large lake fishing will be carried out. For example, a completely different relationship with resources occurs after replacing exploitation of coastal fisheries by industrial scale trawlers with stewardship of nearby coastal fisheries managed by members of a fishing cooperative, with their children and grandchildren in mind.

The exact size of any given fishing vessel or cooperative is not the dominant consideration. The critical factor is social control and management according to the long-term objectives of society while providing people with fish. People in the cooperative will decide what methods are used to catch enough fish to satisfy needs without compromising future fish stocks. The best local knowledge combined with the most complete scientific knowledge will determine strategies for fishing that accomplishes the goal of feeding people without undermining long-term sustainability. If fish stocks need temporary replenishing, fishing communities will not be left to fend for themselves and endure unemployment as they would be today; assistance and alternative employment and retraining will be available. Society will collectively take care of all social and ecological needs so as to satisfy the goals of social equity and ecological longevity.

Workers rotate responsibilities. Omar Garcia, one of the eighty-three members of the Las Lajitas cooperative farm in Monte Verde, Venezuela describes how they operate, providing a glimpse of what is possible without bosses:

We organize ourselves into teams. There are teams that are in charge of chicken production, a team that’s in charge of the development of organic crops, another team that is in charge, in this case me, of the seeds, and that’s how we are organized by teams. We also do the administrative work and that's rotational. Right now we have a fixed time, which is two months, in which each member takes on the accounting and administrative pieces. We have had some difficulty with people who don't like doing the administrative piece and they say "I can’t do it, I am not going to take on this responsibility,” but I think that each member has to take on this responsibility so that there is transparency so that we are equals. The problem with many cooperatives and organizations is when they leave the economic aspect to two or three people, when they leave the economic management up to the president, the secretary and the treasurer; this is what often causes problems. So we are breaking this scheme, so that there is transparency and also so that we are learning as cooperative members, as farmers and as producers.[endnoteRef:589] [589: Radio al Reves, Cooperatives in Venezuela Promote Solidarity, Equality and Dignity, (April 6, 2011), accessed August 5, 2014 at upsidedownworld.org/main/venezuela-archives-35/2988-cooperatives-in-venezuela-promote-solidarity-equality-and-dignity. ]

In other words, should there be jobs that insufficient numbers of people want to do, they are handled on a rotational basis, agreed to by common consent. Because people will obtain fulfillment through their work, there will be no need for bosses or managers, whose primary role under capitalism is to ensure that workers keep working as fast and efficiently as possible. Production will be collectively self-managed and carried out in a planned manner for socially useful purposes that benefit all layers of society. People will decide how to run their workplaces and determine their conditions of work the hours required to complete the work. Under capitalism, many people are required to work excessive hours to meet financial needs, while others are denied full-time work so that businesses can avoid paying benefits and force workers to compete for low-paying jobs.

There will be no more mind-numbing, repetitive, pointless work such as that which primarily exists for most people under capitalism. Work will be creative and self-organized by the workers, taking on properties more akin to art. No one will be locked into a job for his or her entire productive life, but will be free to experiment with different types of jobs and get retrained and educated in several different occupations. Indeed, such freedom to experiment and personally grow is an innate goal of ecosocialism.

Interactions between and among communities and regions will be based on principles of reciprocity, solidarity, and mutual assistance. Nation states and national borders will disappear, to be replaced by regional associations that almost certainly cross current national borders and that make more sense from a social and ecological perspective than current borders developed according to the desires and needs of colonialism and imperialism. Assuming that revolutionary transformations will not occur in all countries at the same time, national boundaries may likely remain as an important distinction prior to the global spread of an ecosocialist society, but it will be crucial to internationalize the struggle for a world without borders. Without national antagonisms, or the need to think about the geopolitical balance of power, sharing of water, energy, and food across what are now national boundaries will be a much more prevalent—not to mention rational—practice, and one of the defining characteristics of the new society.

It is self-evident that any given region has climate, water resources, soil, and cultural and historical skills and interests appropriate for particular sets of food types and production. Similarly, metals and minerals are found only at recoverable concentrations in specific geographic locations. And so, a substantial amount of movement of materials—more a sharing of resources, as opposed to “trade” in the capitalist sense—will continue.

There will be considerable redistribution of resources and cultural exchange to currently underserved and disenfranchised areas within rich countries and to poorer areas of the world. The import and export of goods will no longer be based on the profit and loss columns of capitalist accounting and the financial gyrations of stock markets and private and institutional investors; goods will not be preferentially produced wherever labor is cheapest and environmental regulations the most lax; and production and processing will not be situated next to the poorest communities, those least able to resist corporate malfeasance and racism.

Education, work, and life

New ethics and behaviors. For a socially equitable and ecological society to function, educational efforts need to encourage compassion, cooperation, reciprocity and sharing, an appreciation of nature in all its complexity and beauty, and egalitarianism. This means actively working to create new ethics that govern our relationships to towards the land, our fellow human beings, our communities, and other species with which we share the planet. This highlights the critical need for developing responsible members of society through education as well as during the process of carrying out democratic social decision-making and control over the economy and the society.

The development of new ethics and behavior patterns will be forged during the struggle to create a new society out of the remnants of the old. Without such a struggle, in which people are an integral and essential part, they cannot internalize these values. One cannot enact new ethics and behavior patterns by decree, or convince the majority of their necessity, unless they have gone through the process of enacting change themselves, through collective and individual acts of solidarity, reciprocity, cooperation and anti-oppression. On the other hand, even after a new society has formed, dynamic and vigorous attention must be paid to educating for, and reinforcing, new ethical attitudes—especially those necessary to overcome long-standing discrimination, whether based on previous caste or class affiliation, race, gender, religion or sexual orientation. Prabhat Patnaik, while discussing the need to actively combat the inequality of the caste system in India, explains that

we must not fall victims to the illusion that economic factors alone can overcome caste prejudice, caste consciousness and caste oppression. To believe this is tantamount to recreating the earlier illusion that capitalism would automatically overcome the old caste-based social structure. There has to be a conscious and direct assault on the inherited structure of social inequality which calls for a socio-cultural revolution.[endnoteRef:590] [590: Prabhat Patnaik, “The Spectre of Social Counter-Revolution,” 5th Dr. BR Ambedkar Memorial Lecture, Indian Institute of Dalit Studies, New Delhi, (September 27, 2014), accessed November 25, 2014 at http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2014/patnaik211114.html. ]

People will be able to live near where they work and use a multifaceted and efficient public transportation when needed. Reshaping and redesigning cities and taking cars out of them will make bicycling and walking more practical and safe. Automobiles will play a much smaller role in transportation. Where cars may still necessary, in more rural or remote areas and for some specialized purposes, they will be shared and communally owned, rather than the property of individuals. Needless to say, this will not only enhance community and people’s health, while making cities and everywhere else much safer places to live, but also provide other benefits such as quieter neighborhoods and large reductions in resource use.

New cities. New cities will evolve to be smaller and well dispersed, connected to each other with reliable public transportation systems of light rail, trains, and buses and designed with meaningful participation of those who will live in them. They will incorporate sufficient space for cultural and recreational facilities with significant green spaces in addition to houses, apartments, workplaces, and distribution facilities. Without private automobiles, significant space will be available for other purposes. Cities will be built as a series of connected neighborhoods with access to educational and other facilities. Where practical, given climate, soils, and people’s needs, agriculture surrounding urban areas will help supply nearby cities.

Rural communities will become more culturally vibrant and active, with more attention to the variety of needs of rural communities and investment in their infrastructure. Although farming may remain the primary occupation, other jobs will exist as all communities will be socially and economically much more diverse.

All people who can work will have a role in the economy. Harry Magdoff, in an article about the meaning of work, wrote that it is a common belief

…that people will work only if driven by an economic motive. Yet this notion is refuted by many of the [non-capitalist] societies we know about, where noneconomic work incentives predominate: social responsibility, tradition, desire for prestige, and pleasure in craftsmanship. Given the record of past changes in people’s attitudes to the community and to their work, it is reasonable to assume that human nature will adapt, and adapt with enthusiasm, to a social order based on cooperation, elimination of a rigid division of labor, and the opportunity for a fuller development of the individual.[endnoteRef:591] [591: Harry Magdoff, “The meaning of Work: A Marxist Perspective,” Monthly Review 34(5):1-15 (October 1982). ]

Full participation in society. A goal of society will be to ensure that everyone, regardless of level of disability or health, can participate as fully as possible and on an equal basis with able bodied and younger people; many more societal resources will be allocated to provide for this. People with disabilities will decide how they can best participate in the economy and society will be obligated to facilitate their decisions, regardless of the expense. To bring people with disabilities fully into society rather than being marginalized, many more resources will be allocated to design better equipment and infrastructure for differently abled people. Provision for how work will be reduced or eliminated for the elderly, the infirm, and others not able to work will be made, while recognizing that our elders, full of important knowledge and wisdom, should be incorporated into society, not shunted off into social exclusion once their so-called productive life has ended.

As noted in Omar Garcia’s description of his cooperative farm in Venezuela, leadership positions will rotate among people, with a system in place for easy recall of elected leaders. Currently seen in a positive light as a limit on entrenchment of politicians, strict term limits or term lengths in an ecosocialist society could actually undermine direct democracy and facilitate non-fulfillment of the wishes of the electorate by forcing changes in leadership. But the principle of encouraging rotation of positions is an important tool for human growth and guards against the development of a self-perpetuating bureaucracy. All delegates will be subject to instant recall votes. In order to allow for continuity of programs and institutional memory, past leaders could serve for a certain period of time as advisors to the new leadership. To ensure that corruption does not creep in, there will be no extra perks or payment for these roles, nor will elected representatives be able to handpick new teams of advisors to stack the system.

Ecologically sound and productive agriculture—based on better rotations, intercropping, more efficient cycling of nutrients, intensive cover cropping, and use of equipment that can be operated without fossil fuels—will be an essential facet of an ecological society. This might smaller farms with more people working on them, rather than the very labor-efficient factory-size operations currently promoted by the capitalist agribusiness. It may also include greater automation for the purpose of reducing labor time and labor intensity of those who work (as contrasted to the purpose of increasing profits in capitalist economies). These farmers should be able to produce high yields per acre (hectare), but will have lower output per hour of labor.

Naturally, ways will be explored to lessen the burden of onerous jobs and redesign them using technology. Labor-, energy-, and resource-saving devices and discoveries need to be fully evaluated. The point is that the drive to replace labor with machines—so integral to an economic system driven by the profit motive—does not play the same role in ecosocialism. New machines will be invented, but their purpose will be to make work more enjoyable and shorter and to minimize the ecological impact of production. When jobs become superfluous due to technological development, people will easily be able to retrain and take on other types of jobs. A huge proportion of the population currently work in jobs that would not be needed in an ecological society[footnoteRef:32] [32: For example in 2015 approximately 14 million workers were employed in sales and retail, 7 million in management occupations, another 7 million in business and financial operations, 2 million in law enforcement and legal professions, 3 million as fast food counter workers, 21 million in office and administrative support, 3 million by the department of defense (including the national guard), another estimated 3 million in defense industries and their support industries, not to mention the government bureaucracy. (Source, BLS (http://data.bls.gov/oes/areatype.do) and http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/22/defense-cuts-the-jobs-numbers-game/) ]

No more prisons! The approach to whatever limited anti-social or destructive behavior still exists is to develop processes that reintegrate the offender into the community as a fully functioning individual. Instead of a complex and expensive punitive system of criminal (in)justice, an organized system of restorative justice that includes accountability and making amends, education, working to repair any damage and bringing together the offender and victim with other members of the community for reconciliation will be implemented.[footnoteRef:33] Needless to say, the vast majority of crime under capitalism is related to poverty and against private property or driven by the horrible social and psychological pressures created by this social system. As has been shown in other revolutionary periods in history, crime will drop drastically because there will be no incentive to commit crime. [33: There are a number of ongoing worldwide restorative justice efforts. See “About Restorative Justice,” at the website of Center for Justice and Reconciliation, http://restorativejustice.org/restorative-justice/about-restorative-justice/.]

Environmental Remediation and Regeneration

Cleaning up the toxic mess bequeathed to society by capitalism and the so-called socialist countries through the virtually untrammeled production of toxins and their release into the air, water and soil will have to be a major and long-term project of humanity, requiring the highest levels of cooperation and coordination of best practices, utilizing our knowledge of bioremediation and technological know-how involving chemistry, biology, physics, and materials science. (To give some idea of the magnitude of the issue, there are an estimated thirty thousand abandoned mines on government property in the United States.[endnoteRef:592] And an enormous effort will be needed to clean up all the polluted soils in China, a project that is estimated to cost approximately 1 trillion dollars.[endnoteRef:593] These are but two examples of the monumental cleanup task that confront humanity around the world.) [592: Dan Frosch and Alexandra Berzon, “GAO Finds Incomplete Inventory of Potentially Toxic Abandoned Mines,” The Wall Street Journal (September 12-13, 2015). ] [593: Anonymous, "Funding issue bogs down China’s 2020 soil clean-up plan” Today Online, http://www.todayonline.com/chinaindia/china/funding-issue-bogs-down-chinas-2020-soil-clean-plan (June 14, 2016). ]

In addition to mines, there are processing and industrial sites and adjacent sites where pollutants were discarded that require decontamination. Procedures will include a variety of phytoremediation techniques such as cover crops, special plants that absorb metals that need to be removed, and crops with high amounts of residue in order to increase soil organic matter. Additions of other organic materials such as composts from off the site are frequently helpful in stimulating biological activity in soil that can help break down industrial organic chemicals. Land recently deforested for farming will be evaluated for reforestation to help absorb the excess carbon dioxide put into the air by 150 years of fossil fuel burning.

A long-term solution to the problems of nuclear waste, tens of thousands of tons of which already exist, nuclear reactors and nuclear, biological and chemical weapons will likewise require enormous resources and a long-term and coordinated perspective and plan. There is significant experience in remediating sites containing various contaminants and the procedures chosen should be those least likely to have negative side effects.

Other remediation programs will include reforestation of fragile hillsides, stabilization of sand dunes and highly erosive soils with appropriate vegetation, rewilding of certain zones by introduction of formerly present animal and plant species, repair of the damage done to riparian zones so as to allow rivers to flow more freely, and relocation of homes and other such structures out of flood zones.

Priority for the nobodies

It will take a long time and much effort to undo all the damage that has been done to the soil, water and atmosphere, to other species and humans, as well as to the cycles of nature. Even with everyone on the planet contributing it will require a long process to overcome the toxic physical and social contaminants bequeathed to us by capitalism.

It will also take a long time to undo the damage done to humanity in order to create a society oriented toward encouraging all people to strive to reach their full human potential, living a culturally and socially rich life free from exploitation, want and oppression. A new society that is set to create an equitable and ecological alternative will put at the top of its agenda easing the burden on the lives of the poor, the discriminated against, the discarded—those Franz Fanon referred to as “the wretched of the earth” and Eduardo Galeano called the “nobodies,” often living in urban slums and rural hovels, some in the cardboard houses of Ali Primera’s haunting song (Casas de Cartón),[footnoteRef:34] existing outside an economy and society that has no need for them. Whether or not the new economic and social system rapidly improves the lives of those at the bottom of the old society will be a critical early indication of the revolution’s direction.[footnoteRef:35] [34: Casas de Cartón was written in 1950s Venezuela by a young Ali Primera (1942-1985). The song ends as follows: ] [35: It is no coincidence that Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia—countries trying in their different ways, and with varying levels of success, to address creating more equitable societies and economies—have used the resources at their disposal to drastically lessen the number of people living in extreme poverty. When the goal is to achieve full equality outside of the logic of capitalism, rather than a return to government-directed social reforms of the Keynesian era, they have a long way to go. However, many people in those countries understand that a new morality is needed and that relief for the most destitute is part of that effort as well as a simple humane response to obvious human needs.]

The principles, characteristics, and procedures proposed in this chapter offer a glimpse of another society—one that prioritizes equally fulfilling the needs of all of people in ways that maintain a healthy biosphere. It describes a society very different from our present one in all respects. The magnitude to the differences between capitalist societies and this possible is future are enormous. One example of how great the change will be can be seen in the way Marx discussed free time as “wealth itself”:

Time of labour…remains the creative substance of wealth and the measure of the cost of its production. But free time, disposable time, is wealth itself, partly for the enjoyment of the product, partly for free activity which – unlike labour – is not determined by a compelling extraneous purpose which must be fulfilled, and the fulfillment of which is regarded as a natural necessity or a social duty, according to one’s inclination.[endnoteRef:594] [emphasis in original] [594: Quoted in, Peter Hudis, Marx’s concept of the alternative to capitalism, Haymarket, Chicago:144 (2012). ]

But as the expression goes, “easier said than done.” While acknowledging the difficulties of establishing an ecologically healthy and socially just society, in the final chapter we explore how we could make the transition.

Chapter 12. Revolution—Creating an Ecological Society

Let’s begin by saying that we are living through a very dangerous time. Everyone in this room is in one way or another aware of that. We are in a revolutionary situation, no matter how unpopular that word has become in this country. The society in which we live is desperately menaced…you must understand that in the attempt to correct so many generations of bad faith and cruelty, when it is operating not only in the classroom but in society, you will meet the most fantastic, the most brutal, and the most determined resistance. There is no point in pretending that this won’t happen.

—James Baldwin, A Talk to Teachers, 1963[endnoteRef:595] [595: James Baldwin, “A Talk to Teachers,” The Saturday Review, 21:42-44 (1963). ]

Before discussing how we might organize for a revolutionary change, replacing capitalism (with its many socio-ecological crises) with an ecological society—let’s summarize the main arguments made so far.

1. Extent of the problems. The socio-ecological crisis is upon is, and getting worse at an accelerating rate. As we outlined in chapter 1, it threatens the lives and livelihoods of tens of millions of people across the globe and calls into question the continuation of an interconnected human society. The equilibrium of earth’s biogeochemical pathways is destabilizing due to the input of gigantic quantities of human-made chemicals into the atmosphere, oceans and soils and the bodies and tissue of all living creatures. Changes to land use and climate are making it impossible for ecosystems to continue to function as they have, with organisms migrating at different rates and some becoming extinct. We are tipping the earth system into an entirely new state, one in which many species will not survive and humans have never experienced in our history as a species.

2. Reform possibilities. Fighting for genuine reforms, and winning them is essential, yet these alone cannot solve the crisis. The problem is not just one of aggressive capitalism—neoliberalism—which allows capitalists to operate with limited state regulation of business, exploit low-cost labor by using the government to undermine labor laws, and destroy the environment by evading environmental laws. And certainly international trade treaties and changes to national laws have made things worse. However, as we outlined in chapter 2, it is the very way the system operates, and must operate, that makes it so destructive—historically and at the present time. Economic exploitation and inequality in the service of profit, Imperial competition, racism, sexism and warfare for geopolitical advantage and access to resources are a constant and integral to capitalism. In addition, bitterly fought-for reforms are under constant threat of being reversed and undone as the balance of social power shifts back and forth. Whenever environmental or social reforms threaten profits or its freedom to operate, the capitalist class never gives up trying to roll back these reforms, taking a long-run view toward turning back the clock. Regarding the environment, this may mean influencing governments to go soft on enforcing labor and environmental regulations or restricting funding to government regulators such as the Environmental Protection Agency or other government bodies charged with overseeing health and safety. Environmental and labor laws are repealed or greatly watered down. Many laws and regulations have loopholes—put there by legislators influenced and even controlled by lobbyists and dark money funders—so that they have minimal impact on business operations and don’t cut in to profit. All other social and ecological considerations are secondary to the prime objective on which capitalism operates: the accumulation of greater and greater quantities of capital through profit, securely sequestered at the very top of society.

Any and all social gains and programs, such as those of the New Deal and "Great Society" in the United States—Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, welfare, etc., as well as the power of unions and the gains of social movements against racism—and social reforms won elsewhere in the world, are never fully accepted nor deemed permanent by capital. In chapter 2 we described how due to its internal dynamics, capital was forced to take a more aggressive posture toward social reforms after the Second World War and, beginning in the 1970s, forged an all-out attack on previous gains.[endnoteRef:596] As billionaire investor Warren Buffett said when asked whether class war existed: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”[endnoteRef:597] And we should expect continuation of this class war from above, waged by the country’s most powerful economic and political forces, whenever they feel conditions permit and require it. [596: For a short description of the class war against workers see pages 3-5 in Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster, “The plight of the U.S. Working class,” Monthly Review 65(8):1-22 (2014). ] [597: Ben Stein, “In class warfare, guess which class is winning,” The New York Times, (November 26, 2006). ]

3. System change is needed. A system to replace capitalism, one based on economic and political equality and ecologically sound economics is not only possible, it is essential. Capitalists and governments have long known of the detrimental effects of many technologies. But they remained in use because they served specific purposes of the ruling elite—usually helping companies to profit or to keep the population’s actions within desired bounds. If we are to move to a different world, it is much less a question of changing technology such as how we produce electricity than it is of rearranging the terms of social power.

Capitalism has no off switch, no matter how bad the situation gets, no mechanism for self-reflection, no way to change to a different way of operating. That is why all that has happened in 250 years of industrialized capitalism as it has spread around the globe and created or worsened environmental and social problems.

In chapters 5 and 6 we have shown that there is nothing inherent in humans, our history, or the ways ecosystems function that prevents a completely different economic and social system from being successful. Cooperative relations and relative equality have existed in various forms for long periods of time in human societies of the past, indeed ninety-five percent of human history, and still do today in some parts of the world. Although a new society is no guarantee of solving the social and ecological problems we face, it is the only hope of doing so.

The resources and technological knowhow needed to create a society based on human equality and ecological principles and practices that can supply everyone with the essentials of a good life (buen vivir) exist today. Unintentionally underlining the social and ecological contradictions that lie at the heart of capitalism, the Wall Street Journal explained in the spring of 2015, “The global economy is awash as never before in commodities like oil, cotton and iron ore, but also with capital and labor—a glut that presents several challenges as policy makers struggle to stoke demand.”[endnoteRef:598] The fabulous wealth accumulated of the richest 1% of the world’s population is so great that, in 2014, this select group of private individuals controlled 130 trillion dollar, half of all the world’s assets. This is almost twice the total annual world production of goods and services. On top of that, as outlined earlier in the book, the trillions of dollars spent on the military, nuclear weapons and the arms trade, marketing, packaging, advertising, replication of production and over-production and other built-in waste of all kinds, would present humanity with a further tens of trillions of dollars-worth of capital, factories and other productive resources, as well as huge reservoirs of human knowledge and labor power. [598: Josh Zumbrun and Carolyn Cui, “Glut of Capital and Labor Challenge Policy Makers,” The Wall Street Journal (April 25, 2015). ]

If the available financial and material resources and human labor—all seven billion plus human minds—are freed up and put to use to solve the social and ecological problems facing the earth and its inhabitants, creation of an ecological society is eminently possible. More than enough human and natural resources exist to eradicate hunger, end poverty, and build the new infrastructure—sanitation, water, energy, housing, education, research and development transportation, parks, industry, and agriculture—needed to provide everyone with a good quality of life.

4. Wealth, poverty, and environmental degradation go together. Despite the fabulous wealth that could be available for meeting human needs, the economic crisis is still deeply felt across the globe, with persistent economic stagnation and continuing calls for austerity and cuts to social spending. The social and economic crises are intertwined with the ecological crisis. These crises are each manifestations of the same systemic crisis and have brought about what social theorists call a "historic moment,” when real change suddenly seems possible.

5. A vision of a new society. We have outlined our ideas and views of the principles, practices, and characteristics of a society created for the purpose of establishing social equity and ecologically sound interactions between humans and the rest of the natural world. What we are suggesting is the need for revolution, a complete rearrangement of social power, the end of capitalism and class society.

The word “revolution” is currently used by all manner of people in very different contexts. Some environmentalists and politicians talk of the need for an “energy revolution” or a “great transformation” in infrastructure, but believe that those things can be achieved through private-public collaboration without significantly altering the prevailing relations of socio-economic power. It is therefore important to define what we mean by revolution, which to us means the total rearrangement of social power and its reconstitution on the basis of substantive equality. In other words, the only way to create an ecological society is by the creation of a classless society based on cooperation and the democratic decisions of the entire population of associated producers, i.e. ecosocialism. Only by the overturning of current social relations is it possible to create a truly ecological society, compatible with the wellbeing of the planet and its people.

Just as capitalism replaced feudalism through a series of revolutions in the 17th and 18th centuries, with the replacement a ruling class of aristocrats (and their functionaries) by another composed of capitalists, so today revolutions are necessary to replace the capitalists (and their functionaries). During the feudal period, despite growing social dysfunction and poverty, kings, barons, and lords no more saw the need for their rule to end than do the capitalists, politicians and other members of the ruling class today. The lack of concern of the 1% in the face of severe global social and ecological problems is captured by the catchphrase, après nous, le déluge (after us, the deluge).

6. It’s not too late. To those who say we are too late, we ask, too late for what? To struggle for a better world means taking the world as it is and seeking to transform it. Although the situation is in many respects quite desperate, we are not condemned to continued degradation of either the environment or of social conditions. Based on what has already happened—the release of greenhouse gases and a multitude of other pollutants into the environment—global warming will continue regardless of what we do, with all its negative side effects, and pollutants will contaminate the biosphere for a long period of time. However, we can stop the slide to an even more degraded earth, poorer in species and in the health of remaining species. It is completely possible that by using the wisdom and efforts of over seven billion people, along with trillions of dollars in capital and huge productive capacity, the world economy can be reoriented to benefit all people, simultaneously organizing production using sustainable, ecologically sound practices. This will allow us to do all the things which are currently off the table, goals that capitalism has repeatedly shown itself unable to achieve, providing everyone with: clean water, renewable electricity, sanitation, nutritious food, adequate housing, better transportation, meaningful and socially useful work, and vastly increased leisure and cultural time.

These goals can be accomplished in ways that regenerate and maintain fully functioning and healthy ecosystems by remediating the global commons, halting land- and species-degrading practices, reforesting more areas, and plan wildlife corridors and other sanctuaries for wild nature to return. In fact, solving our environmental and social problems can only happen when they are tackled together.

Organizing for change: the need for a united mass movement

An anti-capitalist political movement can start anywhere (in labor processes, around mental conceptions, in the relation to nature, in social relations, in the design of revolutionary technologies and organizational forms, out of daily life, or through attempts to reform institutional and administrative structures including the reconfiguration of state powers).  The trick is to keep the political movement moving from one moment to another in mutually reinforcing ways.

—David Harvey[endnoteRef:599]   [599: David Harvey, “Organizing for the Anti-Capitalist Transition,” MRzine (December 15, 2009), http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2009/harvey151209.html. ]

Ordinary people, even in a country like the United States where propaganda denying climate change has been relentless, recognize that climate change is happening and that human activity is the cause; and they are extremely worried about it. According to Gallup polling in March 2016, almost two thirds of Americans believe global warming is happening and is due to human activity. A similar percentage of those polled are worried either a “great deal” or a “fair amount” that global warming will affect them in their lifetimes; 41% said it represented a “serious threat.”[endnoteRef:600] Furthermore, as lamented in a 2016 issue of Time magazine, titled Saving Capitalism, a Harvard Institute of Politics poll recorded only forty-two percent of Americans between 18-29 years old “supported capitalism,” with only a slight majority of older Americans doing so. “This represents more than just millennials not minding the label “socialist” or disaffected middle-aged Americans tiring of an anemic recovery. This is a majority of citizens being uncomfortable with the country’s economic foundation.” The author, highlights the fact that after adjusting for inflation, the hourly wage has increased by only $1.25 in the last fifty years and goes on to admit, “the data shows Americans have plenty of concrete reasons to question their system.”[endnoteRef:601] [600: Oliver Millman, “‘A tipping point': record number of Americans see global warming as threat,” The Guardian (March 18, 2016). ] [601: Rana Foroohar, “Saving Capitalism,” Time Magazine (May 23, 2016). ]

But abolishing an unequal and violent system, one that will not balk at destroying the resiliency and sustainability of the planet itself, will require a sustained, coordinated revolutionary mass movement: a movement that is centered on the power of working people to stop production when necessary to effect change and has the vision and capacity to bring into being a new and totally different society, a movement that also recognizes that power must be taken away from the capitalist class and its assistants and hangers-on and placed in the hands of the people. The large number of issues we must solve are those created or made worse by capitalism; the key to solving them is solidarity. The path forward is to recognize they can’t be dealt with in a piecemeal fashion. As the old union slogan originating with the International Workers of the World (the IWW) has it, An Injury to One, is an Injury to All.

To be successful, any revolutionary upheaval will have to dwarf the mobilizations we have seen recently around the world and take place on a qualitatively different basis. It will have to be organized to reflect the principles of the future society and take control of the centers of production so as to bring capitalism to a halt. Factories, farms, businesses, entire neighborhoods, cities, larger geographical areas, and nation states will have to come under the control of the people. Street demonstrations that are not tied to prolonged and generalized strike activity and to the systematic occupation and takeover of factories, businesses, farms, and schools will be insufficient for victory. The speed with which decisions can be made today, as well as information about how successful revolutions can spread, hampers security crackdowns, and enhances the chances of solidarity revolutions. (Needless to say, the extent of government spying on citizens’ electronic communications, particularly in the United States and the ability of the security apparatus to shut down the internet and cell phone service is an impediment to safe, rapid communication for which we need to be prepared.) All countries are much more developed and much more interconnected than they were during previous revolutionary periods.

Overcoming fragmentation

In the years since the anti-globalization protests of the late 1990s, many activists, particularly in the United States, have rejected the model of political organizing that sees as its goal the formation of political parties and their support organizations as inherently flawed and prone to corruption and tyranny. With the late 20th century demise of highly centralized regimes that labeled themselves “socialist,” historical and contemporary factors have led many radical anti-capitalists to reject formal large-scale membership organizations in favor of small, single-issue oriented groups arranged in loose, ad-hoc “networks.” The struggle for a better world in the United States is fragmented into literally hundreds, if not thousands of local, state, and national groups, each one often organized around a single issue.

Some consider the current political and organizational fragmentation to be a good thing. Even some of those who believe that systemic change is necessary, they are convinced that numerous formally splintered, “horizontal” efforts (Hardt and Negri’s idea of the “multitude”[endnoteRef:602]) may gradually coalesce into a larger and larger, more amorphous force that will experiment and foreshadow important aspects of the new society with the implementation of direct democracy and new economic arrangements at local levels. [602: See Antonio Negri, Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza's Metaphysics and Politics, University Of Minnesota Press (1999) and   Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire, Harvard University Press (2001). ]

Resistance must start somewhere. Some people move into opposition and action sooner than others. Organizations and organizational models that are fully democratic and are serious about challenging dominant forms of oppression within their own structures will go through ebbs and flows. If we are to succeed, such organizations must involve a majority of the people or bring the majority along with them.

In any transition to a new society, and indeed any human endeavor, leaders will emerge. Even movements described as “leaderless,” such as the Occupy movement, there were people who did lead, who did take responsibility for certain aspects of life, communications, and organizing at the various sites. Even post-revolution, in a profoundly democratic society, there will be people who, because of their particular skills or inclinations, will become leaders in various areas. There is nothing inherently wrong with producing leaders—people who take an issue more seriously, accept more responsibility or have the skills necessary to be successful. But any leadership must be kept accountable to the people. In this regard, we can learn from historical examples and contemporary experiments by ensuring that there is no extra pay or other perks for serving as leader and any elections are democratic and transparent, with any decision instantly revocable by another vote. In addition, the practice of rotating key leadership positions in organizations whenever possible serves a number of purposes: promoting transparency in decision making, developing leadership capabilities in more people, and preventing the establishment of a permanent group that comes to see itself as separate from the mass of people with its own interests.

The position of the right, dismissing all attempts at fundamental change, is that “all revolutions end in tyranny” because humans are corruptible and greedy by nature. In more cynical terms: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” To argue that a truly democratic society is not possible returns us to the debate about human nature addressed earlier, and transforms the discussion into an ahistorical one. We understand that humans are capable of a wide range of behaviors, with specific configurations reinforced by the economic and social conditions and values of the society in which they live. The transformation from capitalist behaviors and ethics to those of ecosocialism will not end with the revolution. It will most likely be a continuous, one that will require time and conscious planning to make it happen.

Capitalism’s ideal labor force, one that has been greatly expanded over the last 40 years with more countries available for investment and trade—demoralized, many unskilled, fragmented, and with even more desperate people waiting in the wings to take its place—mading it more difficult for older notions of solidarity to attract a new generation of worker activists, trade-unionists and intellectuals. When work for many in the developed and developing world is often a revolving door of people, hours and locations, in disconnected work environments, and there has been an ideological assault on collective action, it has proven difficult to rebuild an ongoing movement for broad social/ecological change located in factories, businesses, fields, and campuses. Though there are other factors such as the desperate nature of the social crisis in many developing countries, the weakening of organized labor in the developed world helps to explain why some of the larger and more coordinated challenges to state and corporate authority, principally by workers, have come in developing countries rather than in the wealthier countries of the North. In some ways of course, we’ve been here before. In the 1920’s and ‘30’s unions had to be built from scratch in the teeth of often vicious and coordinated violence carried out by corporations, frequently with armed government assistance and the passage and implementation of anti-union laws. As elsewhere, the history of the labor movement in the United States is soaked in the blood of workers whose only crime was trying to form a union.

If we are to stand a chance of taking on the forces arrayed against us, it’s clear that some kind of long-term organization, or series of connected organizations, held accountable by an informed and active membership dedicated to a democratically decided upon program is required. Naomi Klein recognizes some of the limitations inherent in the idea of “spontaneous coalescing” and “horizontalist’”organizing:

I have, in the past, strongly defended the right of young movements to their amorphous structures—which means rejecting identifiable leadership or eschewing programmatic demands. And there is no question that old political habits and structures must be reinvented to reflect the new realities, as well as past failures…As many are coming to realize, the fetish for structurelessness, the rebellion against any kind of institutionalization, is not a luxury today’s transformative movements can afford.

Klein continues,

In practice, that means that, despite endless griping, tweeting, flashmobbing, and occupying, we collectively lack many of the tools that built and sustained transformative movements of the past.[endnoteRef:603] [603: Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism Versus the Climate, Simon & Schuster, New York:158 (2014). ]

There is a growing recognition that fragmented and single-issue groups need to link up because all of the social justice, economic justice, and environmental struggles are really the same struggle and must unite to challenge capitalism if there is to be lasting change. No amount of tinkering with the current system will be sufficient—changing the system is the only path to a humane and ecological society. As Mark Bittman explained in his New York Times food column:

I have spent a great deal of time talking about the food movement and its potential, because to truly change the food system you really have to change just about everything: good nutrition stems from access to good food; access to good food isn’t going to happen without economic justice; that isn’t going to happen without taxing the superrich; and so on. The same is true of other issues: You can’t fix climate change or the environment without stopping the unlimited exploitation of natural and human resources (see Naomi Klein’s “This Changes Everything”). Same with social well-being.

Everything affects everything. It’s all tied together, and the starting place hardly matters: A just and righteous system will have a positive impact on everything we care about, just as an unjust, exploitative system makes everything worse.[endnoteRef:604] [604: Mark Bittman, “Is it bad enough yet?,” The New York Times (December 14, 2014). ]

There are indications that people are coming to such an understanding, that the various struggles are really all part of a single overall goal—for a humane, just, and ecologically sound future. At the Peoples Climate Change March in New York City in September 2014, an estimated four hundred thousand people participated, from all sorts of groups with varying “main concerns.” Unions, community groups, civil rights and Native American organizations, social and environmental justice groups, and many others united with a variety of environmental groups for the effort. The Black Lives Matter demonstrations have involved many who previously might not have placed racial justice at the top of their agendas, but who are beginning to see that, in addition to being a clear moral imperative, the fight against racism is an essential part of a more general fight against an unjust system. And Black Lives Matter has endorsed the BDS (Boycott Divestment Sanctions) campaign against Israel because Black activists fighting for justice in the United States recognize, “Israel is an apartheid state with over 50 laws on the books that sanction discrimination against the Palestinian people” and because of its military and political support, the U.S. is, “complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people.”[endnoteRef:605] [605: “Black Lives Matter Endorses BDS: Israel is ‘Apartheid State’,” Haaretz (August 4, 2016). ]

University students from various organizations have begun to realize that there is considerable strength gained by uniting the various struggles, as described in a news story at the end of 2015:

Beyond the call for divestments, students have thrown other causes into the mix. After fighting to get Columbia University to divest from fossil fuels, a student group organized a coalition with five other campus groups that tackle issues such as racism, sexual assault and workers' rights. Together, as the Barnard Columbia Solidarity Network, they issued merged demands to campus administrators. “I don't think they've dealt with anything like this,” said Daniela Lapidous, a senior and a group member. “Only by building these coalitions will we win any of our demands.”[endnoteRef:606] [606: Collin Binkley, "Campus activists unite on key issues,” Associated Press (December 29, 2015). ]

While broad-based unity is essential, it can’t be used to sacrifice a minimum set of agreed upon demands that will take the struggle forward, to alleviate social injustice and limit ecological harm while simultaneously maintaining the ultimate goal of a society without classes, one of equity and long-term ecological stability. Unity also has to be sought around tactical questions, such as identifying the key next steps to move us closer to the ultimate victory and replacement of capitalism with a new social system. In addition to a set of demands, people within the movement need to abide by and promote new values among all those involved in the struggle—solidarity across social and political groups; respect for others involved in the struggle who have different backgrounds, ideas or approaches; sustained support for traditionally marginalized groups; behaving ethically toward others inside and outside the movement; and personally acting in ways that are socially and ecologically responsible. Vigorous but comradely debate will be required in all these areas based on an understanding that we are all committed to the same project that requires us to act in solidarity with one another and, to the fullest extent possible, begin to practice some of the values which we espouse for the new ecosocialist society: reciprocity, cooperation, honesty and solidarity.

A movement seeking reforms that weaken the system, with the ultimate goal of getting rid of it entirely, must maintain its organizational and political independence in order to keep its sights set on bringing a new society into existence. As more immediate problems are tackled, there is always a danger of insufficient analysis and political understanding, of demands being too loosely defined, or of the cause of the underlying problem not being acknowledged. That can lead to a “Big Tent” approach, in which there are indeed lots of people involved, and it looks like the movement is growing, but it then becomes a political vacuum dominated by reformists. This results in the absence of demands and actions aimed at actually changing the system. Cash-flush, media-savvy opportunists, who act to channel the movement into safe conduits, always ultimately fill such a vacuum. The big tent approach typifies the activities and purpose of the Democratic Party: a vehicle of the elite where anyone can be a member and politics tends to reflect the interests of the ruling elite because of who funds and controls the party.

Organization by large green NGO’s of the People’s Climate March in September of 2014 is an example of how a big tent can lead to a dead end. The organizers refrained from making particular demands, thinking to do so would be divisive, and preferred to focus on numbers, making it the “largest climate march in history.” Without over-emphasizing the importance of a single large demonstration, nevertheless getting almost half a million people to come out on a march against climate change illustrates how many people want more to be done to protect the earth and rein in fossil fuel production, as well as the willingness of many groups to come together in a common struggle. All of which is an extremely hopeful sign and should have been built upon. On the other hand, because of the conservative politics of some of the lead organizers and funders of the march, it left little organizing residue, and many who participated were disoriented because they were given nothing to do after the demonstration. In the following months, these problems resulted in the dissipation of the massive energy and momentum of such a giant demonstration.

Deconstructing the capitalist state

For a meaningful transformation to occur, the government of a capitalist nation must be taken over, the power to make decisions and act must be transferred to the mass of the people, and the people must be willing and able to experiment with the practices, processes, and procedures discussed in chapters 10 and 11. In addition, they will need to absorb the multi-faceted and revolutionary cultural and social shifts necessary to do so

Over the last few years, very large resistance movements arising on various continents and countries around the world—in Egypt and other countries in North Africa, Latin America, Europe, China, and the United States (Occupy Wall Street)—and significant movements in support of women’s rights, gay rights, and against racist laws and police brutality have found it difficult to sustain themselves over the long term. In part, this is due to the hesitancy and difficulty of setting up new and united, lasting, militant, grassroots democratic organizations that people are confident serve their interests. Things are somewhat different in countries such as Bolivia, Venezuela, and Greece, and, to a somewhat lesser degree, Spain. In these countries, people have been learning that only by participating in the process through the creation of entirely new parties—or the take-over of pre-existing older ones by a new generation of activists—and the election of more genuinely leftwing governments are the possibilities raised for real change. The rebirth of interest in political organization and the formation of new leftwing parties around the world should be embraced as a promising sign of things to come and as a sea-change in what activists are learning about what is required to win back some of the social gains that have suffered retrenchment over the last 40 years. However, as we have seen with recent setbacks in these countries, without democratic control from below able to hold the leadership accountable, and with the old state apparatus and economic power of the wealthy intact, things can all too easily revert to a left-tinged version of the status quo.

Can the power to transform society be achieved through electoral processes alone? Where it’s legal, working through the electoral process can be effective and useful, and it should not be dismissed as an avenue for activism. But a government cannot just be taken over through elections and used to build a non-class-based society. In most countries, there is a vast governmental bureaucracy of unelected officials, a barrier to developing new procedures and practices. More importantly, the current economic structures were designed to maintain the power of the capitalist class in order to permit and facilitate exploitation and the accumulation of capital. For these reasons, the state must be disassembled and rebuilt using new democratic administrative bodies that serve a completely different set of objectives and operate in a completely different way. Winning elections, even sweeping victories in most elected governmental positions, create many opportunities for cooptation or outright selling out by those newly elected. And when election campaigns are the exclusive undertaking of a movement or party, most people function largely in a passive mode, limiting their involvement to voting in representatives of a political party to carry out change on their behalf.

Even if representatives of a new party dedicated to system change are voted into office, economic power (as opposed to political power) will still reside with those in various sectors of society who see their interests aligned with the capitalist system. Those deposed from positions of political power can manipulate this significant opposition to change in an attempt to sabotage the movement by any means possible—both violent and non-violent. The forces that can be marshaled by the ruling class—sections of the army, the police, the courts and legal system, the power of commercial and industrial business owners and bankers to move money and resources around, close factories, or otherwise limit production, causing chaos and disorder—will largely remain in place. Chaos fomented by opponents of change can galvanize those members of the public who are uninvolved, unsympathetic, or have something to lose. If a movement that wants to change the system is only organized in a passive and limited way around an electoral campaign, it will be in a weak position to withstand such a coordinated ideological, economic, and physical assault.

Political democracy is not the same as economic democracy, and both are essential. Samir Amin has explained this as follows:

I think that the reason for the failure of electoral democracy to produce real change is not hard to find: all hitherto existing societies have been based on a dual system of exploitation of labor (in various forms) and of concentration of the state's powers on behalf of the ruling class.  This fundamental reality results in a relative "depoliticization/disacculturation" of very large segments of society.  And this result, broadly designed and implemented to fulfill the systemic function expected of it, is simultaneously the condition for reproduction of the system without changes other than those it can control and absorb -- the condition of its stability.[endnoteRef:607] [607: Samir Amin, “The Democratic Fraud and the Universalist Alternative,” Monthly Review 63(5):29-45 (October 2011). ]

Problems encountered by past attempts to change capitalist societies, including those encountered by the recent attempts in the Middle East, point to the need for a rapid takeover of real political and economic power. As has historically always occurred during revolutionary crises, community councils need to be set up to make economic and political decisions, workers and farmers need to control workplaces, and decisions must be made in conjunction with the needs of surrounding communities. In addition, groups representing larger geographic areas can plan for the needs of regions and even an entire country. A rapid transition away from state-run and private capitalist control of productive and financial resources to control by local, regional, and multiregional assemblies of the people, with elected representatives receiving no more pay or benefits than other workers, subject to instant recall and with no set terms, ensures that the needs of the people are seen as paramount and that a new government doesn’t eventually adopt different priorities.

We need to face a contradiction inherent in seeking to overturn capitalist society and replace it with an egalitarian and cooperative one. To be successful, the majority of the people, who will benefit from a revolutionary reconstitution of social power, must impose its wishes and authority on the minority who will lose out, and who we can anticipate will use every economic, political, and military lever they have to oppose any such change. What is therefore required is not only organization, but enough leverage to impose the will of the majority on counter-revolutionary forces that will not shrink from actions aimed at destabilizing the new society.

A majority needed. The best guarantee for a sustained revolutionary process, one which attains the socio-ecological goals we have set forth, will therefore require the majority of the population to actively participate in the process of change. When large segments of the population become actively involved, they become protagonists and begin to produce a new ethics and ideology of: equality, solidarity, reciprocity, and concern for collective needs instead of individualism. And the changes they undergo during the struggle help to prepare people to live in a new society.[footnoteRef:36] [36: Marx explained this as follows: “The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of changed circumstances and upbringing, forgets that it is men who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be educated. Hence this doctrine is bound to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change [Selbstveränderung] can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.” (Karl Marx, Thesis on Feuerbach (1845), https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/; “Man” was not the word Marx used. He wrote “Mensch,” which in German means “person” and applies equally to men and women.) “The crucial phrase used in the above quotation is ‘revolutionary practice.’ That calls for a high degree of people’s involvement in the revolutionary process of building a new society. And that, at the very least, requires and should encourage the people’s full freedom to criticize leaders and dispute policies.” (Harry Magdoff and Fred Magdoff, “Approaching Socialism,” Monthly Review 57(3):19-62 (July-August 2005).) ]

Even prior to system change, the issue that Marx raised of "the educator [who] must himself be educated" is one that must be faced during a transition to a new society. Education needs to take place during the struggle for change, and is an essential part of that effort. Movements and parties need to be aware of the various ways in which dominant forms of social oppression and exclusion can be replicated even within organizations formally committed to their eradication. The revolutionary process needs to include modeling of relationships and behavior that reflect the type of society we wish to bring into existence. Therefore, it is important to ensure an absolute commitment to equality regardless of gender, race, or other social identifiers and to heed the voices of all participants.

It’s important that we model the reciprocity, cooperation, and selflessness that will be prominent human characteristics in an ecosocialist society. For example, the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil has helped to organize land occupations that have resulted in settling 300,000 families with about one million people on their own farms. The MST leaders in schools and other locations attempt to bring out and reinforce cooperative, non-sexist, and non-racist behavior, and many of the people living in settlements have started to frame their future in terms of thinking of the group instead of the individual: “we” and “us” in place of “I” and “me.”

The larger and more prolonged the struggle, the larger and more lasting the impact on the ideas and values of the people involved. Because the struggle against capitalism can only be won through cooperation and solidarity that breaks down the barriers of oppression and unites people, it provides the basis for society-wide change.

Vision, Organization, and Solidarity

Oscar Olivera, former Executive Secretary of the Federation of Factory Workers of Cochabamba, Bolivia, who helped establish La Coordinadora de Defensa del Agua y de la Vida and was a lead organizer of the Water Wars in Cochabamba in 2000 and a recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize, ascribed their victory against water privatization and the armed forces of the state this way: “The people won in Cochabamba because of two things: an all-encompassing cosmo-vision based on indigenous values of reciprocity and solidarity, and organization and coordination at every level.”[endnoteRef:608] The fight against privatizing the municipal water system in Cochabamba was successful because of the combination of a dramatic vision for a radically reordered world that went far beyond control of water and reforming current institutions, allied with the kind of broad and deep working-class democratic self-organization required to bring about that vision. [608: Interview with Chris Williams, Cochabamba (May 2014). ]

The ruling class has many factors in its favor: virtually unlimited financial clout, the control of the media, the education system, the state, and all of the weaponry. The question that needs responding to is this: what social force exists in society powerful enough to bring the whole system to a standstill? Almost always overlooked in mainstream critiques and environmental analyses, is that the ones who do all the work constitute the mass of the population. If we stop working, the machine grinds to a halt very quickly: no more mining, no more transportation, no more production of any kind without the decision of those who do those jobs. Here is the missing factor from many accounts about the need for change and why it can be so difficult to envision change in the way Olivera saw it happen and helped to organize it in Cochabamba. Only the people who do the work for the capitalists, organized across their area of labor and in conjunction and coordination with other workers, including those across borders, possess that power and have the motivation to use it.

Fighting for reforms as part of a struggle for system change. The struggle ahead must be thought of as combining, on the one hand, the fight for immediate gains and genuine reforms that help us live better in the here-and-now in order to build confidence and, on the other, organization to take on the system as a whole in a revolutionary reconstitution of social power. This in no way negates what we have argued earlier—reforms by themselves do not offer a way out of the plight we’re in. Radical social and ecological organizations need to unite in order to fight together for large and small social and ecological battles that might possibly be won in the near to medium term, but they must do so certain in the knowledge that a revolution is ultimately necessary in order to end capitalism and transition to a cooperative, fully democratic society based on equality and ecological sustainability.

Though some revolutionary changes have come about relatively quickly in a matter of days, weeks, or months, it is likely that a transition to ecosocialism won’t come about without a long period of tireless and persistent organizing. When one examines the titanic struggle of slaves and abolitionists to end slavery in the United States, it is clear that the fight to replace the socio-economic system of capitalism with ecosocialism will require even more massive struggle because those in power it will forcefully resist it. Yet the change, from 400 years of slavery to its abolition within a few short years, illustrates how quickly things can change when the balance of forces is changed and millions of the oppressed and exploited move in to action.

Successful struggles for reform will alleviate, slow down, or prevent some of the ecological and social damage endemic to capitalism. They also provide possibilities for educating others to the necessity for systemic change; and victories, however small—such as winning a local workers’ strike or banning the import into a city of tar sands oil—provide a needed lift for activists and generate enthusiasm, confidence, belief, and trust in one another, thereby nurturing stronger organization for the next fight. Sometimes, movements and organizations are so strong and expectations so high that, despite the ruling elite’s best efforts at destabilization and repression, it is forced to concede to people’s demands. The Conservative MP and future Lord Hailsham noted in the British parliament in 1943, presaging the creation of the Welfare State, “If you do not give the people social reform, they are going to give you social revolution.”[endnoteRef:609] On the other hand, if workers cannot organize to win a 15-minute coffee break at work, they are not going to be able to organize for a much larger victory or to take strike action. Solidarity and trust is built through action, by example, and over time. Every victory, no matter how seemingly “small” builds confidence and organization—no victory is ever insignificant. However, they all need to be considered as part of a larger struggle for change. [609: Quoted in Iain Ferguson, Michael Lavallete, Gerry Mooney, Rethinking Welfare: A critical perspective, Sage Publications, London:43 (2002). ]

The scope and extent of the battlefront before us is very wide. We must continue to demand and fight for: full economic, social, and political equality for people of color, indigenous rights; an end to the scourge of hunger amidst plenty; full and equal rights of women; the introduction of renewable energy sources and the end of fossil fuels; empowerment of workers through unionization; full equality for transgender people; more resources for public education; cancellation of student debt and the debt of developing countries; an end to discrimination against immigrants, Muslims and refugees; more hospitals; well-paid, unionized jobs for everyone; against endless wars; and for increased taxes on the rich and corporations. The list of necessary reforms is long and there is always the danger of activists taking up only single-issue causes or getting caught up in striving to win limited reforms, believing that they can solve our problems while retaining the basic structures and tenets of capitalism. In a prolonged struggle, as this will certainly be, there is also the danger of losing faith in an alternative future altogether.

Internationalism. As the still volatile situation in North Africa demonstrates, to succeed even for a short period of time against the forces of reaction, strong domestic revolutionary political organization must expand internationally to achieve genuine revolutionary change. If a revolutionary country, or even region, remains isolated and under attack internally and externally by the forces of capitalism and imperialism, it cannot hold out for long. This is especially true when revolutions break out, as they have tended to do, in less developed countries with fewer resources to sustain an independent, ongoing struggle and subject to greater pressures from outside.

This sense of internationalism can be seen in the struggles and political outlook of some indigenous communities, many of whom have long held the concept of “indigenous internationalism.” Networks such as the National Council of Indigenous and Popular Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), which the recently assassinated environmental leader Berta Cáceres founded in 1993, and the International Indian Treaty Council, consisting of groups from North, Central, and South America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific, are the modern-day inheritors of a long tradition of pan-continental and international organizing for justice on the part of indigenous groups.  Internationalism has long been the principle foundation of socialist organizing and is even more critical today. When manufacturers constantly threaten to relocate businesses to other countries or to bring in scabs from other regions of the country to break strikes, solidarity among geographically distant workers is imperative if struggles are to be successful. Expressing the need for solidarity as attacks against Native Americans who were building the Transcontinental Railroad escalated, Abolitionist and women’s rights campaigner Wendell Phillips wrote in 1869, “Every blow struck on those rails is heard round the globe. Haunt that road with such dangers that none will dare use it.”[endnoteRef:610] [610: David Roediger, Seizing Freedom: slave emancipation and liberty for all, Verso, New York:211 (2014). ]

Learning from history

The vast majority of progressive changes in capitalist societies over the last few hundred years—large and small—did not happen through electoral processes.  They grew out of mass strikes and demonstrations, in conjunction with agitation and other forms of direct action and civil disobedience, actions which forced legislators to acquiesce to the demands of the people (or the people would elect new legislators who would).  When changes have occurred through "representative" governments, it was because of the pressure exerted by activists. As Frederick Douglas declared, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress….Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

Changes to the law that favor working people always occur after organizing and activism. Representatives of capital, comprising the ruling class, are sometimes willing or forced to accept limited reforms to the system and on occasion are willing to do so because there are mutual benefits; for example, better healthcare systems prolong the lives of workers but also enhance their productivity for the benefit of capitalists (assuming the capitalists are successful in making workers pay for their own healthcare). Some of these reforms have been important advances for beneficiaries and the larger society.

What the rulers don’t want, and will co-opt, blackmail, bribe, and repress to prevent, is for change to come about through the actions of ordinary people stepping outside the bounds of permissible political action. Even when granting civil rights for African Americans would be beneficial for social peace and as propaganda for the United States as a whole, change was resisted not only by committed racists in power in the South and elsewhere, but also by more liberal members of the elite who objected to the way in which change was being forced through on the streets. As Attorney General Robert F Kennedy told James Farmer, the leader of the Congress on Racial Equality in 1961, “Why don’t you guys quit all that shit, freedom riding and sitting-in shit, and concentrate on voter registration. If you do that I’ll give you tax-free status.”[endnoteRef:611] [611: Aldon Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change, Free Press, New York: 234- 5 (1984). ]

Political disappointment with organizations that once held the hope of millions for a better world is not hard to find. The African National Congress was an organization of committed activists involved in a multi-decade long struggle for Black freedom. But since coming to power in South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, the ANC—with assistance from representatives of international capital—has strayed far from its emancipatory roots and the vision of its founders, with the imposition of what South African activists have dubbed “economic Apartheid.” Former activists that became part of the government bureaucracy have been frequently co-opted and corrupted by the wealth offered or available to them. And in the midst of the wealthiest and most developed country in Africa, abject poverty, landlessness, and white privilege, as well as privilege of newly enriched black business interests, co-exist in an unstable, socially explosive, and contradictory combination.

Repression and resistance. Ruling elites across the world have used the ideology of neoliberalism to argue against any alternative to the market and for continuing cuts to social services. For the disenfranchised who continue to argue and fight for a different world, ruling classes have used a combination of state-sponsored repression through an increasingly militarized police force, mass incarceration, a new infrastructure of total surveillance with the end to privacy, monopoly control of mainstream media and cooptation through the promotion of NGO’s taking over government services. David Harvey has explained,

The mix of authoritarianism, monetary corruption of representative democracy, surveillance, policing and militarization (particularly through the war on terror), media control and spin suggests a world in which the control of discontent through disinformation, fragmentations of oppositions, and the shaping of oppositional cultures through the promotion of NGOs [is the aim]…[endnoteRef:612] [612: Op cit., David Harvey, “Organizing for the Anti-Capitalist Transition.” ]

But the demands or activities of movements and organizations can grow beyond the bounds deemed acceptable to those in positions of power. When co-option fails, coercion, subversion, and espionage are never off the table. When an effort to change some aspect of the system is deemed a threat, the armed power of the state, its monopoly on violence, and its control of the law and criminal justice systems have been used time and again to crush groups that threaten the existing order. Sometimes the groups attacked are fighting for truly revolutionary change, while in many others they are just trying to improve their immediate situation within the system. Movement groups in the U.S. have been relentlessly attacked by the government or their surrogates: socialist and communist parties, anarchists, civil rights organizations, Native Americans, unions, the Black Panthers, environmental activists, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter. This can take many forms: infiltration by agents provocateurs, spreading of disinformation, passing laws that attack a group’s membership or activities, physical disruption of peaceful demonstrations, frivolous but costly legal cases, arrests to slow momentum and consume scarce resources, and targeted assassinations of leaders.

The great fear of authorities everywhere is that, as social movements grow and people expand their political horizons and begin to generalize from their situation, reform may spill over into revolution. In a re-run of the nefarious activities of the FBI and CIA during the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war era, activists are increasingly likely to be targeted by law enforcement agencies and labeled as “domestic terrorists.” Whistleblowers on the activities of the state, such as Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, are vilified and, whenever the opportunity presents itself, imprisoned.

We have seen in recent years with Occupy Wall Street that even relatively minor attempts to challenge the power of the ruling class and reverse ever-growing inequality are met with a robust, uncompromising, and coordinated reaction from the 1% and those identifying with the wealthy, a group that goes all the way to the White House. This is an indication of a very low threshold of tolerance for active signs of discontent.

We can therefore anticipate that in order to replace the entire social-economic system of capitalism—with its financially and politically powerful corporations and institutions arrayed against us from economic, political, and legal spheres, and with a monopoly on the use of force—a truly gigantic movement will be required, one that mobilizes all sectors of society, as we saw briefly during the Arab Spring. In a very real sense, therefore, James Baldwin’s observation is applicable: if even reforms within the system, such as civil rights legislation, will be fought with the utmost tenacity and brutality, the reaction of the ruling class to attempts to overturn the entire system will be ferocious.

Ultimately, therefore, we need to help create a movement large and formidable enough to challenge the entire power structure of capitalism, a movement so economically and politically powerful that it is capable of bringing society to a halt and in doing so win over large sections of the army and portions of the population that up to that point had been passive, ambivalent, or even antagonistic.

The struggle to completely transform society is not for the faint of heart. There are of course no promises of victory, but building for the long-term, constantly seeking to construct in every locality lasting revolutionary organizations that act against all forms of oppression and exploitation, no matter how small, is the only solution that presents itself with hope for the future of the biosphere and a humanized socio-ecological society.

It is the job of everyone who wishes to see a better world, one we have demonstrated is eminently possible, to take up the fight. How that looks will be different in every city, town, and country. But the common thread will be the objective of building the strength of our side, thereby weakening their side. Whenever people move into individual struggles, we must be with them and seek to expand, deepen, and connect what appear to many as separate struggles into one unified fight against capitalism. Whether the issue is police brutality, the building of new oil or gas pipelines, the vilification of Muslims, immigrants or refugees, sexism in the workplace or elsewhere, or some other battle, such as going on strike or supporting a strike through solidarity actions, we must take it on.

We must remember that the individual struggle is really about the need to change the balance of forces in our favor as we continue to educate others and ourselves about what is needed and what is possible. Always having a strategic approach, we fight to win a particular battle in order to improve people’s lives and their confidence to recognize that it is one battle in a longer war.

The struggle will continue even after instituting a new society. The current system’s deep-seated ideologies and ways of thinking and behaving will remain. After a revolution, a new society “emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges.”[endnoteRef:613] Unless this issue is understood and proactively approached, old ways continue or creep into the new system, potentially overwhelming it and leading to the reintroduction of some form of class rule. A long transition is to be expected—even after the power to make decisions is in the hands of the people—to reach a fully developed society based on social equity and ecological principles. [613: Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875), https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm. ]

Toward a revolutionary transformation

The ultimate goal—one that needs to be preserved in consciousness through thick and thin, victories and defeats—must be to replace the system of capital with an economic-political-social system designed for the purpose of enabling all people to reach their human potential in ways that respect and preserve a healthy, stable biosphere. And from there, people will need to plan, vote, and decide how to best implement or modify the social, infrastructure, and ecological changes outlined in earlier chapters. Revolution is a continuous process, one that doesn't end with triumph in an individual country or even in all countries, but continues for generations, even after people are born who have no direct knowledge of a social system based on class inequality, racism, sexism, war, competition, and greed.

That is the vision of a world worth fighting for. It gives meaning to one’s life. Our watchwords must remain:

The struggle continues

La lucha sigue

CITATIONS

1960.0409999999999 1960.1257000000001 1960.2049 1960.2896000000001 1960.3715999999999 1960.4563000000001 1960.5382999999999 1960.623 1960.7076999999999 1960.7896000000001 1960.8742999999999 1960.9563000000001 1961.0410999999999 1961.126 1961.2027 1961.2877000000001 1961.3698999999999 1961.4548 1961.537 1961.6219000000001 1961.7067999999999 1961.789 1961.874 1961.9562000000001 1962.0410999999999 1962.126 1962.2027 1962.2877000000001 1962.3698999999999 1962.4548 1962.537 1962.6219000000001 1962.7067999999999 1962.789 1962.874 1962.9562000000001 1963.0410999999999 1963.126 1963.2027 1963.2877000000001 1963.3698999999999 1963.4548 1963.537 1963.6219000000001 1963.7067999999999 1963.789 1963.874 1963.9562000000001 1964.0409999999999 1964.1257000000001 1964.2049 1964.2896000000001 1964.3715999999999 1964.4563000000001 1964.5382999999999 1964.623 1964.7076999999999 1964.7896000000001 1964.8742999999999 1964.9563000000001 1965.0410999999999 1965.126 1965.2027 1965.2877000000001 1965.3698999999999 1965.4548 1965.537 1965.6219000000001 1965.7067999999999 1965.789 1965.874 1965.9562000000001 1966.0410999999999 1966.126 1966.2027 1966.2877000000001 1966.3698999999999 1966.4548 1966.537 1966.6219000000001 1966.7067999999999 1966.789 1966.874 1966.9562000000001 1967.0410999999999 1967.126 1967.2027 1967.2877000000001 1967.3698999999999 1967.4548 1967.537 1967.6219000000001 1967.7067999999999 1967.789 1967.874 1967.9562000000001 1968.0409999999999 1968.1257000000001 1968.2049 1968.2896000000001 1968.3715999999999 1968.4563000000001 1968.5382999999999 1968.623 1968.7076999999999 1968.7896000000001 1968.8742999999999 1968.9563000000001 1969.0410999999999 1969.126 1969.2027 1969.2877000000001 1969.3698999999999 1969.4548 1969.537 1969.6219000000001 1969.7067999999999 1969.789 1969.874 1969.9562000000001 1970.0410999999999 1970.126 1970.2027 1970.2877000000001 1970.3698999999999 1970.4548 1970.537 1970.6219000000001 1970.7067999999999 1970.789 1970.874 1970.9562000000001 1971.0410999999999 1971.126 1971.2027 1971.2877000000001 1971.3698999999999 1971.4548 1971.537 1971.6219000000001 1971.7067999999999 1971.789 1971.874 1971.9562000000001 1972.0409999999999 1972.1257000000001 1972.2049 1972.2896000000001 1972.3715999999999 1972.4563000000001 1972.5382999999999 1972.623 1972.7076999999999 1972.7896000000001 1972.8742999999999 1972.9563000000001 1973.0410999999999 1973.126 1973.2027 1973.2877000000001 1973.3698999999999 1973.4548 1973.537 1973.6219000000001 1973.7067999999999 1973.789 1973.874 1973.9562000000001 1974.0410999999999 1974.126 1974.2027 1974.2877000000001 1974.3698999999999 1974.4548 1974.537 1974.6219000000001 1974.7067999999999 1974.789 1974.874 1974.9562000000001 1975.0410999999999 1975.126 1975.2027 1975.2877000000001 1975.3698999999999 1975.4548 1975.537 1975.6219000000001 1975.7067999999999 1975.789 1975.874 1975.9562000000001 1976.0409999999999 1976.1257000000001 1976.2049 1976.2896000000001 1976.3715999999999 1976.4563000000001 1976.5382999999999 1976.623 1976.7076999999999 1976.7896000000001 1976.8742999999999 1976.9563000000001 1977.0410999999999 1977.126 1977.2027 1977.2877000000001 1977.3698999999999 1977.4548 1977.537 1977.6219000000001 1977.7067999999999 1977.789 1977.874 1977.9562000000001 1978.0410999999999 1978.126 1978.2027 1978.2877000000001 1978.3698999999999 1978.4548 1978.537 1978.6219000000001 1978.7067999999999 1978.789 1978.874 1978.9562000000001 1979.0410999999999 1979.126 1979.2027 1979.2877000000001 1979.3698999999999 1979.4548 1979.537 1979.6219000000001 1979.7067999999999 1979.789 1979.874 1979.9562000000001 1980.0409999999999 1980.1257000000001 1980.2049 1980.2896000000001 1980.3715999999999 1980.4563000000001 1980.5382999999999 1980.623 1980.7076999999999 1980.7896000000001 1980.8742999999999 1980.9563000000001 1981.0410999999999 1981.126 1981.2027 1981.2877000000001 1981.3698999999999 1981.4548 1981.537 1981.6219000000001 1981.7067999999999 1981.789 1981.874 1981.9562000000001 1982.0410999999999 1982.126 1982.2027 1982.2877000000001 1982.3698999999999 1982.4548 1982.537 1982.6219000000001 1982.7067999999999 1982.789 1982.874 1982.9562000000001 1983.0410999999999 1983.126 1983.2027 1983.2877000000001 1983.3698999999999 1983.4548 1983.537 1983.6219000000001 1983.7067999999999 1983.789 1983.874 1983.9562000000001 1984.0409999999999 1984.1257000000001 1984.2049 1984.2896000000001 1984.3715999999999 1984.4563000000001 1984.5382999999999 1984.623 1984.7076999999999 1984.7896000000001 1984.8742999999999 1984.9563000000001 1985.0410999999999 1985.126 1985.2027 1985.2877000000001 1985.3698999999999 1985.4548 1985.537 1985.6219000000001 1985.7067999999999 1985.789 1985.874 1985.9562000000001 1986.0410999999999 1986.126 1986.2027 1986.2877000000001 1986.3698999999999 1986.4548 1986.537 1986.6219000000001 1986.7067999999999 1986.789 1986.874 1986.9562000000001 1987.0410999999999 1987.126 1987.2027 1987.2877000000001 1987.3698999999999 1987.4548 1987.537 1987.6219000000001 1987.7067999999999 1987.789 1987.874 1987.9562000000001 1988.0409999999999 1988.1257000000001 1988.2049 1988.2896000000001 1988.3715999999999 1988.4563000000001 1988.5382999999999 1988.623 1988.7076999999999 1988.7896000000001 1988.8742999999999 1988.9563000000001 1989.0410999999999 1989.126 1989.2027 1989.2877000000001 1989.3698999999999 1989.4548 1989.537 1989.6219000000001 1989.7067999999999 1989.789 1989.874 1989.9562000000001 1990.0410999999999 1990.126 1990.2027 1990.2877000000001 1990.3698999999999 1990.4548 1990.537 1990.6219000000001 1990.7067999999999 1990.789 1990.874 1990.9562000000001 1991.0410999999999 1991.126 1991.2027 1991.2877000000001 1991.3698999999999 1991.4548 1991.537 1991.6219000000001 1991.7067999999999 1991.789 1991.874 1991.9562000000001 1992.0409999999999 1992.1257000000001 1992.2049 1992.2896000000001 1992.3715999999999 1992.4563000000001 1992.5382999999999 1992.623 1992.7076999999999 1992.7896000000001 1992.8742999999999 1992.9563000000001 1993.0410999999999 1993.126 1993.2027 1993.2877000000001 1993.3698999999999 1993.4548 1993.537 1993.62190 00000001 1993.7067999999999 1993.789 1993.874 1993.9562000000001 1994.0410999999999 1994.126 1994.2027 1994.2877000000001 1994.3698999999999 1994.4548 1994.537 1994.6219000000001 1994.7067999999999 1994.789 1994.874 1994.9562000000001 1995.0410999999999 1995.126 1995.2027 1995.2877000000001 1995.3698999999999 1995.4548 1995.537 1995.6219000000001 1995.7067999999999 1995.789 1995.874 1995.9562000000001 1996.0409999999999 1996.1257000000001 1996.2049 1996.2896000000001 1996.3715999999999 1996.4563000000001 1996.5382999999999 1996.623 1996.7076999999999 1996.7896000000001 1996.8742999999999 1996.9563000000001 1997.0410999999999 1997.126 1997.2027 1997.2877000000001 1997.3698999999999 1997.4548 1997.537 1997.6219000000001 1997.7067999999999 1997.789 1997.874 1997.9562000000001 1998.0410999999999 1998.126 1998.2027 1998.2877000000001 1998.3698999999999 1998.4548 1998.537 1998.6219000000001 1998.7067999999999 1998.789 1998.874 1998.9562000000001 1999.0410999999999 1999.126 1999.2027 1999.2877000000001 1999.3698999999999 1999.4548 1999.537 1999.6219000000001 1999.7067999999999 1999.789 1999.874 1999.9562000000001 2000.0409999999999 2000.1257000000001 2000.2049 2000.2896000000001 2000.3715999999999 2000.4563000000001 2000.5382999999999 2000.623 2000.7076999999999 2000.7896000000001 2000.8742999999999 2000.9563000000001 2001.0410999999999 2001.126 2001.2027 2001.2877000000001 2001.3698999999999 2001.4548 2001.537 2001.6219000000001 2001.7067999999999 2001.789 2001.874 2001.9562000000001 2002.0410999999999 2002.126 2002.2027 2002.2877000000001 2002.3698999999999 2002.4548 2002.537 2002.6219000000001 2002.7067999999999 2002.789 2002.874 2002.9562000000001 2003.0410999999999 2003.126 2003.2027 2003.2877000000001 2003.3698999999999 2003.4548 2003.537 2003.6219000000001 2003.7067999999999 2003.789 2003.874 2003.9562000000001 2004.0409999999999 2004.1257000000001 2004.2049 2004.2896000000001 2004.3715999999999 2004.4563000000001 2004.5382999999999 2004.623 2004.7076999999999 2004.7896000000001 2004.8742999999999 2004.9563000000001 2005.0410999999999 2005.126 2005.2027 2005.2877000000001 2005.3698999999999 2005.4548 2005.537 2005.6219000000001 2005.7067999999999 2005.789 2005.874 2005.9562000000001 2006.0410999999999 2006.126 2006.2027 2006.2877000000001 2006.3698999999999 2006.4548 2006.537 2006.6219000000001 2006.7067999999999 2006.789 2006.874 2006.9562000000001 2007.0410999999999 2007.126 2007.2027 2007.2877000000001 2007.3698999999999 2007.4548 2007.537 2007.6219000000001 2007.7067999999999 2007.789 2007.874 2007.9562000000001 2008.0409999999999 2008.1257000000001 2008.2049 2008.2896000000001 2008.3715999999999 2008.4563000000001 2008.5382999999999 2008.623 2008.7076999999999 2008.7896000000001 2008.8742999999999 2008.9563000000001 2009.0410999999999 2009.126 2009.2027 2009.2877000000001 2009.3698999999999 2009.4548 2009.537 2009.6219000000001 2009.7067999999999 2009.789 2009.874 2009.9562000000001 2010.0410999999999 2010.126 2010.2027 2010.2877000000001 2010.3698999999999 2010.4548 2010.537 2010.6219000000001 2010.7067999999999 2010.789 2010.874 2010.9562000000001 2011.0410999999999 2011.126 2011.2027 2011.2877000000001 2011.3698999999999 2011.4548 2011.537 2011.6219000000001 2011.7067999999999 2011.789 2011.874 2011.9562000000001 2012.0409999999999 2012.1257000000001 2012.2049 2012.2896000000001 2012.3715999999999 2012.4563000000001 2012.5382999999999 2012.623 2012.7076999999999 2012.7896000000001 2012.8742999999999 2012.9563000000001 2013.0410999999999 2013.126 2013.2027 2013.2877000000001 2013.3698999999999 2013.4548 2013.537 2013.6219000000001 2013.7067999999999 2013.789 2013.874 2013.9562000000001 2014.0410999999999 2014.126 2014.2027 2014.2877000000001 2014.3698999999999 2014.4548 2014.537 2014.6219000000001 2014.7067999999999 2014.789 2014.874 2014.9562000000001 2015.0410999999999 2015.126 2015.2027 2015.2877000000001 2015.3698999999999 2015.4548 2015.537 2015.6219000000001 2015.7067999999999 2015.789 2015.874 2015.9562000000001 2016.0409999999999 2016.1257000000001 2016.2049 2016.2896000000001 316.58 317.25 318.02999999999997 319.14999999999998 319.67 319.04000000000002 317.67 315.76 314.16000000000003 314.08 315.22000000000003 316.36 317.22000000000003 317.87 318.62 319.75 320.31 319.73 318.39 316.52999999999997 314.95999999999998 314.91000000000003 316.08999999999997 317.27 318.14999999999998 318.81 319.56 320.67 321.20999999999998 320.60000000000002 319.23 317.32 315.7 315.62 316.77 317.92999999999961 318.77999999999997 319.42999999999961 320.16000000000003 321.26 321.79000000000002 321.16000000000003 319.77999999999997 317.85000000000002 316.23 316.14999999999998 317.31 318.48 319.33999999999997 319.98 320.74 321.83999999999997 322.33 321.67 320.26 318.31 316.68 316.58 317.72000000000003 318.86 319.70999999999998 320.33999999999997 321.08 322.2 322.75 322.16000000000003 320.82 318.95 317.39 317.38 318.62 319.87 320.81 321.52999999999997 322.33 323.51 324.08999999999997 323.5 322.14 320.23 318.62 318.56 319.75 320.94 321.83 322.48 323.23 324.35000000000002 324.89 324.26 322.86 320.94 319.32 319.27 320.48 321.69 322.58999999999997 323.27999999999997 324.08 325.24 325.8 325.2 323.83999999999997 321.95 320.39999999999998 320.39999999999998 321.67 322.94 323.91000000000003 324.66000000000003 325.49 326.70999999999998 327.33 326.77 325.42999999999961 323.52999999999997 321.92999999999961 321.89999999999998 323.12 324.35000000000002 325.26 325.95999999999998 326.73 327.89 328.46 327.84 326.44 324.49 322.85000000000002 322.77999999999997 323.97000000000003 325.16000000000003 326.02999999999997 326.68 327.42999999999961 328.56 329.11 328.48 327.07 325.12 323.48 323.42999999999961 324.64999999999998 325.88 326.81 327.51 328.34 329.54 330.14 329.57 328.25 326.39999999999998 324.89 324.97000000000003 326.33 327.69 328.74 329.57 330.46 331.75 332.42 331.87 330.53 328.6 326.95 326.88 328.07 329.25 330.11 330.76 331.5 332.62 333.16 332.5 331.06 329.06 327.38 327.31 328.53 329.76 330.68 331.38 332.17 333.37 333.96 333.35 331.95 330 328.35 328.31 329.56 330.82 331.75 332.45 333.26 334.44 334.99 334.34 332.92 330.95 329.33 329.33 330.63 331.94 332.95 333.75 334.64 335.92999999999961 336.61 336.08 334.74 332.84 331.26 331.27 332.59 333.91 334.9 335.66 336.5 337.74 338.36 337.76 336.36 334.39 332.73 332.7 333.97 335.25 336.21 336.96 337.79 339.03 339.66 339.07 337.69 335.75 334.14 334.16 335.5 336.84 337.87 338.67 339.58 340.86 341.49 340.89 339.5 337.55 335.92 335.92 337.21 338.5 339.47 340.21 341.02 342.23 342.82 342.18 340.74 338.73 337.06 337.04 338.33 339.64 340.62 341.36 342.19 343.4 343.99 343.34 341.89 339.86 338.17 338.13 339.44 340.77 341.79 342.6 343.51 344.83 345.53 344.99 343.64 341.7 340.08 340.09 341.44 342.78 343.79 344.56 345.45 346.7 347.31 346.68 345.25 343.25 341.6 341.61 342.94 344.27 345.28 346.06 346.91 348.17 348.79 348.16 346.71 344.67 342.97 342.92 344.21 345.52 346.5 347.25 348.1 349.36 350 349.39 347.97 345.96 344.29 344.28 345.62 346.97 348 348.8 349.7 351.02 351.73 351.19 349.84 347.92 346.34 346.42 347.86 349.3 350.41 351.28 352.26 353.61 354.3 353.73 352.33 350.35 348.71 348.73 350.08 351.42 352.42 353.18 354.02 355.27 355.89 355.24 353.77 351.72 350 349.96 351.28 352.61 353.6 354.36 355.2 356.46 357.09 356.45 355 352.97 351.29 351.3 352.68 354.06 355.1 355.9 356.77 358.05 358.67 357.99 356.48 354.37 352.6 352.52 353.82 355.12 356.09 356.81 357.67 358.89 359.44 358.72 357.16 355.02 353.24 353.15 354.42 355.7 356.65 357.37 358.19 359.42999999999961 360.04 359.37 357.88 355.82 354.1 354.1 355.49 356.9 357.97 358.8 359.71 361.05 361.74 361.15 359.72 357.7 356.04 356.08 357.5 358.92999999999961 360.02 360.86 361.78 363.13 363.82 363.23 361.79 359.76 358.07 358.09 359.49 360.9 361.96 362.77 363.7 365 365.62 364.95 363.44 361.33 359.57 359.53 360.86 362.19 363.18 363.92999999999961 364.78 366.06 366.71 366.08 364.62 362.59 360.92999999999961 361.01 362.51 364.02 365.2 366.15 367.17 368.63 369.42999999999961 368.92999999999961 367.56 365.59 363.92999999999961 363.99 365.42 366.84 367.89 368.67 369.53 370.79 371.4 370.7 369.15 366.99 365.19 365.13 366.48 367.83 368.84 369.61 370.51 371.81 372.44 371.78 370.28 368.2 366.49 366.51 367.92 369.31 370.36 371.16 372.04 373.35 374.01 373.37 371.87 369.78 368.05 368.06 369.5 370.94 372.03 372.88 373.82 375.2 375.94 375.37 373.95 371.94 370.28 370.37 371.88 373.38 374.54 375.42999999999961 376.41 377.82 378.57 378 376.55 374.49 372.78 372.8 374.24 375.67 376.74 377.55 378.49 379.81 380.44 379.75 378.22 376.1 374.36 374.4 375.86 377.34 378.47 379.37 380.35 381.79 382.55 381.99 380.55 378.5 376.8 376.86 378.34 379.82 380.94 381.8 382.74 384.11 384.8 384.16 382.65 380.53 378.76 378.77 380.21 381.65 382.74 383.58 384.52 385.9 386.61 385.98 384.48 382.37 380.61 380.63 382.08 383.52 384.61 385.44 386.41 387.78 388.46 387.82 386.32 384.2 382.46 382.49 383.95 385.4 386.5 387.34 388.29 389.68 390.4 389.78 388.3 386.21 384.49 384.56 386.08 387.61 388.79 389.71 390.71 392.15 392.89 392.28 390.78 388.65 386.88 386.89 388.34 389.79 390.88 391.7 392.62 393.99 394.69 394.05 392.53 390.4 388.64 388.67 390.16 391.66 392.8 393.68 394.7 396.13 396.87 396.26 394.79 392.71 391.02 391.13 392.69 394.24 395.42999999999961 396.36 397.36 398.82 399.58 398.98 397.48 395.36 393.59 393.62 395.12 396.62 397.75 398.62 399.58 400.99 401.71 401.07 399.53 397.36 395.56 395.58 397.07 398.57 399.71 400.6 401.58 403.03 403.8 403.22 401.76 399.7 398.04 398.22 399.9 401.59 402.94 404.04 405.27 406.92999999999961

parts per million

% D

E C

R E

A S

E IN

M E

A N

S

P E

C IE

S A

B U

N D

A N

C E

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

YEAR 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2010

TE M

P E

R A

TU R

E 


A N

O M

A LY

• C

-0.30

-0.10

0.10

0.30

0.50

0.70

YEAR 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2010

SURFACE TEMPERATURE

% L

O S

S (

A R

E A

)

5

10

15

20

25

30

YEAR 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2010

TROPICAL FOREST LOSS

A TM

O S

P H

E R

IC C

O N

C .,

P P

M

290

310

330

350

370

390

410

YEAR 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2010

CARBON DIOXIDE

A TM

O S

P H

E R

IC C

O N

C .,

P P

B

250 260 270 280 290 300 310 320 330

YEAR 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2010

NITROUS OXIDE

TERRESTRIAL BIOSPHERE DEGRADATION

H U

M A

N N

F LU

X , 


M TO

N Y

R -1

10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

YEAR 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2010

COASTAL
 NITROGEN

H Y

D R

O G

E N

IO N

, M M

O L

K G

-1

6.5

7.0

7.5

8.0

8.5

YEAR 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2010

OCEAN ACIDIFICATION

M IL

LI O

N T

O N

S

20

40

60

80

YEAR 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2010

MARINE FISH CAPTURE

EARTH SYSTEM TRENDS

A TM

O S

P H

E R

IC C

O N

C .,

P P

B

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

1800

YEAR 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2010

METHANE

% L

O S

S

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

YEAR 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2010

STRATOSPHERIC OZONE

M IL

LI O

N T

O N

S

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0

3.5

4.0

YEAR 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2010

SHRIMP AQUACULTURE

% T

O TA

L LA

N D

A R

E A

0.05

0.10

0.15

0.20

0.25

0.30

0.35

0.40

YEAR 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2010

DOMESTICATED LAND

%

D

E

C

R

E

A

S

E

I

N

M

E

A

N

S

P

E

C

I

E

S

A

B

U

N

D

A

N

C

E

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

YEAR

175018001850190019502010

T

E

M

P

E

R

A

T

U

R

E

A

N

O

M

A

L

Y

•

C

-0.30

-0.10

0.10

0.30

0.50

0.70

YEAR

175018001850190019502010

SURFACE

TEMPERATURE

%

L

O

S

S

(

A

R

E

A

)

5

10

15

20

25

30

YEAR

175018001850190019502010

TROPICAL FOREST

LOSS

A

T

M

O

S

P

H

E

R

I

C

C

O

N

C

.

,

P

P

M

290

310

330

350

370

390

410

YEAR

175018001850190019502010

CARBON DIOXIDE

A

T

M

O

S

P

H

E

R

I

C

C

O

N

C

.

,

P

P

B

250

260

270

280

290

300

310

320

330

YEAR

175018001850190019502010

NITROUS OXIDE

TERRESTRIAL

BIOSPHERE

DEGRADATION

H

U

M

A

N

N

F

L

U

X

,

M

T

O

N

Y

R

-

1

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

YEAR

175018001850190019502010

COASTAL

NITROGEN

H

Y

D

R

O

G

E

N

I

O

N

,

M

M

O

L

K

G

-

1

6.5

7.0

7.5

8.0

8.5

YEAR

175018001850190019502010

OCEAN

ACIDIFICATION

M

I

L

L

I

O

N

T

O

N

S

20

40

60

80

YEAR

175018001850190019502010

MARINE FISH

CAPTURE

EARTH SYSTEM TRENDS

A

T

M

O

S

P

H

E

R

I

C

C

O

N

C

.

,

P

P

B

800

1000

1200

1400

1600

1800

YEAR

175018001850190019502010

METHANE

%

L

O

S

S

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

YEAR

175018001850190019502010

STRATOSPHERIC

OZONE

M

I

L

L

I

O

N

T

O

N

S

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0

3.5

4.0

YEAR

175018001850190019502010

SHRIMP

AQUACULTURE

%

T

O

T

A

L

L

A

N

D

A

R

E

A

0.05

0.10

0.15

0.20

0.25

0.30

0.35

0.40

YEAR

175018001850190019502010

DOMESTICATED

LAND

TR IL

LI O

N U

S D

O LL

A R

S

10

20

30

40

50

60

YEAR 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2010

E X

A JO

U LE

( E

J)

150

300

450

600

YEAR 1750 1860 1890 1920 1950 1980 2010

TH O

U S

A N

D K

M 3

0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5

YEAR 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2010

M IL

LI O

N S

T O

N S

20 40 60 80

100 120 140 160 180 200

YEAR 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2010

B IL

LI O

N

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

YEAR 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2010

B IL

LI O

N

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0

3.5

4.0

YEAR 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2010

TH O

U S

A N

D D

A M

S

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

YEAR 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2010

B IL

LI O

N M

O TO

R

V E

H IC

LE S

.2

.4

.6

.8

1.0

1.2

1.4

YEAR 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2010

URBAN POPULATION

PRIMARY ENERGY USE

FERTILIZER CONSUMPTION

B IL

LI O

N

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

1.2

1.4

1.6

YEAR 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2010

WORLD POPULATION

REAL GDP FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT

M IL

LI O

N S

T O

N S

50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450

YEAR 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2010

LARGE DAMS WATER USE PAPER PRODUCTION

B IL

LI O

N P

H O

N E

S

U B

S C

R IP

TI O

N S

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

YEAR 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2010

B IL

LI O

N A

R R

IV A

LS .1 .2 .3 .4 .5 .6 .7 .8 .9

1.0

YEAR 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2010

TRANSPORTATION TELECOMMUNICATIONS INTERNATIONAL TOURISM

SOCIO-ECONOMIC TRENDS

T

R

I

L

L

I

O

N

U

S

D

O

L

L

A

R

S

10

20

30

40

50

60

YEAR

175018001850190019502010

E

X

A

J

O

U

L

E

(

E

J

)

150

300

450

600

YEAR

1750186018901920195019802010

T

H

O

U

S

A

N

D

K

M

3

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0

3.5

4.0

4.5

YEAR

175018001850190019502010

M

I

L

L

I

O

N

S

T

O

N

S

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

200

YEAR

175018001850190019502010

B

I

L

L

I

O

N

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

YEAR

175018001850190019502010

B

I

L

L

I

O

N

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0

3.5

4.0

YEAR

175018001850190019502010

T

H

O

U

S

A

N

D

D

A

M

S

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

YEAR

175018001850190019502010

B

I

L

L

I

O

N

M

O

T

O

R

V

E

H

I

C

L

E

S

.2

.4

.6

.8

1.0

1.2

1.4

YEAR

175018001850190019502010

URBAN

POPULATION

PRIMARY

ENERGY USE

FERTILIZER

CONSUMPTION

B

I

L

L

I

O

N

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

1.2

1.4

1.6

YEAR

175018001850190019502010

WORLD

POPULATION

REAL GDP FOREIGN DIREC T

INVESTMENT

M

I

L

L

I

O

N

S

T

O

N

S

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

YEAR

175018001850190019502010

LARGE DAMS WATER USE PAPER

PRODUCTION

B

I

L

L

I

O

N

P

H

O

N

E

S

U

B

S

C

R

I

P

T

I

O

N

S

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

YEAR

175018001850190019502010

B

I

L

L

I

O

N

A

R

R

I

V

A

L

S

.1

.2

.3

.4

.5

.6

.7

.8

.9

1.0

YEAR

175018001850190019502010

TRANSPORTATION TELECOMMUNICATIONS INTERNATIONAL

TOURISM

SOCIO-EC ONOMIC TRENDS

 Energy-­‐rich  compounds    produced   by  photosynthesis  s4mulate   organisms  close  to  roots  

 Soil  organisms  help  supply  of   needed  nutrients  and  produce   compounds  that  s4mulate  plant   growth  and  defenses  to  diseases  

 oxygen,    

 rainfall   infiltrates   into  soil  or   flows  to  

wetland  or   stream  

   

Water  vapor  from  plant   transpira4on  and  

evapora4on  from  soil  

CO2  from  soil   organisms  and  

plant   respira4on  Nutrients  

from  soil   Nutrients  and   organic  maDer   from  crop   residues  

Chart  1.  Soil-­‐Plant-­‐Atmosphere  Metabolic  Interac4ons  

sunlight  

CO2    u4lized  in   photosynthesis    oxygen  

produced    during   photosynthesis  

Energy-rich compounds produced

by photosynthesis smulate

organisms close to roots

Soil organisms help supply of

needed nutrients and produce

compounds that smulate plant

growth and defenses to diseases

oxygen,

rainfall

infiltrates

into soil or

flows to

wetland or

stream

Water vapor from plant

transpiraon and

evaporaon from soil

CO

2

from soil

organisms and

plant

respiraon

Nutrients

from soil

Nutrients and

organic maer

from crop

residues

Chart 1. Soil-Plant-Atmosphere Metabolic Interacons

sunlight

CO

2

ulized in

photosynthesis

oxygen

produced during

photosynthesis

Circular  mass  transporta/on  loop  Mass  transporta/on    spoke  

Farms,  gardens,   wetlands,  bike  paths    

Housing,  recrea/on,   distribu/on  buildings,  and   light  factories  in  walking   distance  to  mass  transit  

sta/on  

Housing,  recrea/on,   distribu/on  buildings,  and   light  factories  in  walking   distance  to  mass  transit  

sta/ons  

Urban  hub  

Farms,  gardens,   wetlands,  bike  paths    

Farms,  gardens,   wetlands,  bike  paths    

Farms,  gardens,   wetlands,  bike  paths    

Farms,  gardens,   wetlands,  bike  paths    

Farms,  gardens,   wetlands,  bike  paths    

Mass   transporta/on  

sta/on  

Circular mass transportaon loop

Mass transportaon

spoke

Farms, gardens,

wetlands, bike paths

Housing, recreaon,

distribuon buildings, and

light factories in walking

distance to mass transit

staon

Housing, recreaon,

distribuon buildings, and

light factories in walking

distance to mass transit

staons

Urban hub

Farms, gardens,

wetlands, bike paths

Farms, gardens,

wetlands, bike paths

Farms, gardens,

wetlands, bike paths

Farms, gardens,

wetlands, bike paths

Farms, gardens,

wetlands, bike paths

Mass

transportaon

staon