Andreas Malm: “ecological” rhetoric in defense of the capitalist state (Part 2)

In the first part of this article (ICConline, July 2024), we showed that the self-styled “Lenin of ecology”, Andreas Malm, is in fact defending a completely bourgeois conception of this question, and in reality serves as an agent of state capitalism, which he aims to propagate to the working class. In this second part, we will show how much his approach is based on a fundamental distortion of the marxist vision of the capitalist mode of production and its relationship with nature.

At first glance, Malm claims to be a marxist, which provides him with a seemingly radical posture, but he then proceeds to completely distort marxist theory. The shameless use of double-speak, typical of the Trotskyist current, which says one thing to defend its opposite in reality, as well as other falsifications, allows him the extraordinary sleight-of-hand of both eliminating the responsibility of the capitalist system for the gravity of the ecological crisis and obscuring the only perspective which could allow humanity to emerge from this nightmare: communism, which is the historical project of the exploited class, the proletariat, the gravedigger of capitalism.

In this section, we show why and how capitalism is incapable of solving the ecological crisis, why and how the revolutionary class of our time, the proletariat, alone holds the key, and why the social question and the ecological question can only be solved at the same time by destroying capitalist relations of production and replacing the capitalist system with a society free of exploitation, communism.

 

I) The Trotskyist distortion of marxism

Denying the capitalist mode of production's responsibility for the climate crisis

Malm seems to rely on marxism. He states that: “Capitalism is a specific process that unfolds as a universal appropriation of biophysical resources, because capital itself has a unique, unquenchable thirst for surplus value derived from human labor by means of material substrates. Capital, one might say, is supra-ecological, a biophysical omnivore with its own social DNA.” [1]

Similarly, he refers to Marx himself: “Volume III of Capital shows how capitalist property relations ‘cause an irremediable hiatus in the complex equilibrium of the social metabolism composed by the natural laws of life’; the theory of metabolic rift -of hiatus- allows us to explain a great many phenomena, from imbalances in the nitrogen cycle to climate change.” [2]

But it soon becomes clear that this is just a pretense. Indeed, as the pages turn, a shift occurs. It becomes clear that Malm's anti-capitalism is not aimed at capitalism as a whole, but is reduced to questioning certain of its components - particularly the fossil fuel production sector, oil and gas, which he blames for global warming. In the end, he never incriminates the capitalist system as such in the ecological disaster (which he reduces to global warming). By targeting only certain sectors of the bourgeoisie or certain states (those that dominate the planet), and by denouncing as the central problem only the “business as usual” attitude of the ruling class in the face of the climate emergency, he in fact absolves capitalism as a mode of production of responsibility for the climate crisis.

Thus, Malm castigates the outrageous cynicism and lack of concern for the planet and humanity of Exxon boss Rex Tillerson, who declares: “My philosophy is to make money. If I can drill and make money, that's what I want to do.” But here, by focusing on Tillerson alone, Malm conceals (knowingly for a self-styled marxist!) that Tillerson's ‘philosophy’ is in fact that of the ENTIRE ruling class! The illusionist Malm throws a veil over the exploitative nature and unbridled pursuit of maximum profit inherent in capitalism as a whole. [3] Ascending the heights of hypocrisy and dissimulation, and in typical Trotskyist fashion, Malm admits (and ultimately defends!) the existence of an “admissible” capitalist exploitation of nature!

Furthermore, Malm also agrees with: “the two reports published for COP21 [which] underlined the extent to which CO2 emissions are inseparable from such a polarity. The richest 10% of humanity is responsible for half of current consumption-related emissions, while the poorest half is responsible for 10%. The per capita carbon footprint of the richest 1% is 175 times that of the poorest 10%: the per capita emissions of the richest 1% in the USA, Luxembourg or Saudi Arabia are 2,000 times greater than those of the poorest inhabitants of Honduras, Mozambique or Rwanda.” [4] Malm concludes that: “if there is a global logic of the capitalist mode of production with which rising temperatures will be articulated, it is undoubtedly that of uneven and combined development. Capital develops by drawing other relations into its orbit, while it continues to accumulate, people caught up in external but integrated relations - think of the herders of northeastern Syria - who derive little or no benefit, and may not even come close to wage labor. Some amass resources while others, outside the extortion machine but in its orbit struggle for a chance to produce them”. [5]

To sum up, according to Malm, the world is simply divided between 'rich' and 'poor', between 'beneficiaries' and 'victims' of the system according to an 'unequal' geographical distribution between a rich North and a poor South. In other words, this is the commonplace of the dominant bourgeois ideology, which runs from UN reports to the entire bourgeois media, via... the columns of the Trotskyist press! Malm's position is even identical to that of the Chinese government, for whom “the climate crisis is the result of a highly unequal model of economic development that has spread over the last two centuries, enabling today's rich countries to achieve the income levels they have, in part because they failed to take into account the environmental damage that today threatens the lives and lifestyles of others.” [6] An approach based on China's defense of the concept of “common but differentiated responsibility” requiring global climate governance to respect the development needs of the poorest countries: Malm is now an apostle of Chinese imperialism!

Unless you consider the People's Republic of China as an expression of the proletarian and marxist avant-garde, this gives you an idea of the validity of what Malm wants to pass off as marxism!

This concordance of views between the official ideology of the Chinese state and Malm owes nothing to chance. The conception of a capitalist world divided between ‘dominated’ and ‘dominators’, where the scourges that plague society are attributable solely to the big imperialists who ‘victimize’ the small, is in line with Trotskyist thinking. It constantly draws a distinction between different states, of which only the big ones are imperialist. As if there were a fundamental difference between the big underworld bosses who dominate the scene and the neighborhood pimps; in practice, the only difference is in the means at their disposal!

The ever-increasing concentration of capital by its very nature conditions an imbalance within the capitalist world and has as its corollary and consequence the existence of marginalised peripheries. This is a permanent historical fact of capitalism, written in its genes. It is concretised in the existence of states capable of exercising global hegemony, while others are deprived of it. The bewitching Malm hypnotises the audience by focusing on the appearance and surface of things, in order to create the illusion that, in the end, a solution exists within each national state, provided it is better managed and seeks greater ‘harmony’ between nations!

In this way, Malm succeeds in removing from the field of reflection the key points which alone can really provide a solid basis from which to correctly pose the question of the effects of the capitalist mode of production on nature:

• the reality that capital is a social relation that transcends the borders of each national state and exists on a global scale; whose main “polarization” (to use his own smoky terminology) is expressed in the fundamental and irreducible antagonism between the two main social classes that make up capitalist society, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. As Marx points out: “just as production based on capital produces universal industry … on the one hand, so does it on the other produce a system of universal exploitation of natural and human qualities.” [7]
• At the same time, Malm overlooks the fact that: “In order to produce, they enter into definite connections and relations to one another, and only within these social connections and relations does their influence upon nature operate – i.e., does production take place.” [8] Put another way, it is through the intercession of different forms of social organisation throughout history that the relationship between humankind and nature is established. To understand the origins of today's ecological-climate crisis, we need to consider the existence of the capitalist mode of production and its effects on nature.

For Malm, the working class is no longer the subject of history

The other level on which Malm rejects marxism is that of the alternative to the capitalist system. For Malm, in the central countries of capitalism, it is the individual who must act through sabotage to influence the policies of the capitalist state: “In a scientifically founded reality, Ende Gelände [9] is the type of action whose number and scope would have to be multiplied by a thousand. Within the advanced capitalist countries and in the most developed areas of the rest of the world, there is no shortage of suitable targets: just look around for the nearest coal-fired power station, the oil pipeline, the SUV, the airport and the expanding suburban shopping mall... This is the terrain on which a revolutionary climate movement would have to rise in a powerful and ever-accelerating wave.” [10] In other words, Malm is simply proposing a more radical version of a citizen's movement, one that is no longer content simply to take action on a legal terrain, and will not refrain from going beyond it to take action against the barons or sectors of capitalism identified as responsible for global warming, by attacking their companies or the products they put on the market.

More generally, to fight against the “drivers of the climate crisis”, Malm multiplies references to various social movements in history (apartheid, abolition of slavery... without bothering about their class nature! ) into a magma in which it's impossible to recognise the specific social force we can rely on to find a way out of the nightmarish situation caused by capitalism: “Insofar as current capitalism is totally saturated with fossil energy, virtually everyone who takes part in a social movement under its reign is objectively fighting global warming, whether they care about it or not, whether they suffer its consequences or not. The Brazilians protesting against the rising cost of bus fares and demanding free transport are in fact raising the banner of the fifth measure in the program set out above, while the Ogonis evicting Shell are dealing with the first. [11] Similarly, European car workers fighting for their jobs, in keeping with the type of union consciousness they have always possessed, have an interest in reconverting their factories to the production of the technologies needed for the energy transition - wind turbines, buses - rather than seeing them disappear for a low-wage destination. All struggles are struggles against fossil fuel capital: subjects just need to become aware of it.” [12]

Malm's bloated claim of updating marxism to face the realities of climate change by establishing new “polarisations” that govern the capitalist world, and which replace the fundamental antagonism between the two main classes of capitalist society - the exploited class (the proletariat) and the exploiting class (the bourgeoisie) - has only one aim: to deny the revolutionary nature of the proletariat. Dedicated to demonstrating that communism can in no way represent a realistic, credible alternative to environmental catastrophe, and that the proletariat's struggle is incapable of playing any role whatsoever against the climate crisis, Malm simply glosses over the existence, role and revolutionary perspective of the working class. If he refers here and there to the proletariat or its history, it's only as an exploited class or as a simple sociological category of capitalist society, drowned in the undifferentiated whole of the people. In sum, he reserves for it a role as an irrelevant extra or dilutes it in composite interclass movements, which actually constitute a mortal danger for its ability to act as an autonomous class with interests distinct from those of other social categories.

Here again, Malm makes his contribution to bourgeois campaigns to prolong the proletariat's difficulties in recognising itself as the driving force behind the transformation of society, as the revolutionary class of our time, which the advent of capitalism has historically raised up as its gravedigger.

 

II) The capitalist mode of production and nature

Malm's bourgeois falsifications of the nature of capitalism and its responsibility for environmental destruction oblige us to re-establish some fundamental acquisitions of marxism that Malm denies, obscures or abandons (according to the various needs dictated by the ideological role he plays for the benefit of the bourgeois state). First and foremost, the Communist Manifesto itself.

The global character of the capitalist mode of production

Malm sees capitalism only as the sum of its individual components, and denies that beyond the reality of a capitalist world by definition marked by competition and division between nations lies the unity of the capitalist system as a mode of production, as well as the universal terrain of its existence and domination.

As the Manifesto says: “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 connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country ... it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new Industries ... 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.” [13]

And as Rosa Luxembourg points out, this has meant that: “From the very beginning, the forms and laws of capitalist production aim to comprise the entire globe as a store of productive forces. Capital, impelled to appropriate productive forces for purposes of exploitation, ransacks the whole world, it procures its means of production from all corners of the earth, seizing them, if necessary by force, from all levels of civilization.”

To satisfy its insatiable need for profit: “it becomes necessary for capital progressively to dispose ever more fully of the whole globe, to acquire an unlimited choice of means of production, with regard to both quality and quantity. The process of accumulation, elastic and spasmodic as it is, requires inevitably free access to ever new areas of raw materials. ... Since capitalist production can develop fully only with complete access to all territories and climes, it can no more confine itself to the natural resources and productive forces of the temperate zone than it can manage with white labour alone. Capital needs other races to exploit territories where the white man cannot work. It must be able to mobilise world labour power without restriction in order to utilise all productive forces of the globe…” [14]  

Contrary to Malm's assertion, this is the starting point for any reflection that seeks to establish capital's responsibility for the ecological crisis: not the narrow, local framework of the nation and its state, but the international and global level.

Capital's destructive effects on nature and the workforce.

In the historical phase of the ascendancy of its system: “The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together.” [15] As such, it has played a historically progressive role. But the development of productive forces in mud and blood by the capitalist system of production is founded, both socially and environmentally, on devastation, with the most frightening consequences.

For the exploited class: “The first few decades of unrestricted operation of large-scale industry produced such a devastating effect on the health and living conditions of the mass of working people, with tremendous mortality, disease, physical crippling, mental desperation, epidemic disease and unfitness for military service, that the very survival of society seemed deeply threatened.” [16]

As with nature. In the Americas, for example: “...tobacco cultivation exhausted the land so quickly (after only three or four harvests) that in the 18th century production had to be moved from Maryland to the Appalachians. The transformation of the Caribbean into a sugar monoculture led to deforestation, erosion and soil exhaustion. Sugar cane plantations introduced malaria to the American tropics. ... As for the fabulous silver mines of Mexico and Peru, they were exhausted within a few decades, leaving intensely polluted environments. ... We could also mention the virtual disappearance of the beaver, the American bison or the bowhead whale at the end of the 19th century, in connection with industrialisation, as bison leather provided excellent transmission belts and whale oil an excellent lubricant for the mechanics of the industrial revolution." [17] Elsewhere in the world, the same causes had the same effects: “The gutta percha tree disappeared from Singapore in 1856, then from many Malaysian islands. At the end of the 19th century, the rubber rush took hold of the Amazon, causing massacres of Indians and deforestation. At the beginning of the 20th century, rubber trees were transferred from Brazil to Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Sumatra and then Liberia, where British and American companies (Hoppum, Goodyear, Firestone...) established huge plantations. The latter laid waste to several million hectares of land. The latter are destroying several million hectares of forest, depleting the soil and introducing malaria.” [18]

In Capital, Marx denounces the fact that “capitalist progress”, which means nothing other than the generalised plundering of both worker and soil, leads to the ruin of natural resources, the land and the working class. Drawing on the scientific work of his time, he argues that the effects of capitalist exploitation and accumulation are equally destructive for the planet and for the labor power of the proletariat: “In modern agriculture, as in the urban industries, the increased productiveness and quantity of the labour set in motion are bought at the cost of laying waste and consuming by disease labour-power itself. Moreover, all progress in capitalistic agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the labourer, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time, is a progress towards ruining the lasting sources of that fertility. The more a country starts its development on the foundation of modern industry, like the United States, for example, the more rapid is this process of destruction. Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the labourer." [19] From the outset, capitalism has asserted itself as the destroyer of both nature AND the labour power of the proletariat.

The destruction of nature at its peak in the decadence of capitalism

The main manifestation of the capitalist system's entry into decadence, once the world market has been 'unified', is war and capitalism's permanent state of war, with profoundly ecocidal consequences. If “the two world wars, the Cold War confrontations and the decolonisations caused ecological destruction on a planetary scale ... the preparation of conflicts, and in particular the development, testing and production of armaments, produced effects no less massive. ... But these direct impacts are far from summing up the importance of the war phenomenon in the relationship between human collectives and their environments.” [20].

“The wars of the twentieth century were also decisive in shaping the political, technical, economic and cultural logics that governed the exploitation and conservation of resources, on the scale of nations but also of the planet as a whole ... The effects of the two world wars on economies and ecosystems ... were decisive in globalizing and intensifying ... extractions on a planetary scale, and catalyzing increased control of these resources by state powers (in the North) and Western firms (in the South) ...The Second World War was a decisive break. ... [It] catalyzed the emergence of major extractive activity, crystallized during the conflict and perpetuated ... after the war. ...) [The] large-scale reconfiguration of economies of exploitation, transport and ‘use’” concerns “a wide range of materials elevated to the rank of ‘strategic resources', from wood to rubber to fossil fuels ... The supply imperative of a war economy leads to duplication of productive infrastructures and, ultimately, to industrial overcapacity.” [21]

As the ICC has pointed out, in this period: “capital’s ruthless destruction of the environment takes on a different scale and quality .... This is the epoch in which all the capitalist nations are forced to compete with each other over a saturated world market; an epoch therefore, of a permanent war economy, with a disproportionate growth of heavy industry; an epoch characterised by the irrational, wasteful duplication of industrial complexes in each national unit, by the desperate pillaging of natural resources by each nation as it tries to survive in the pitiless rat-race of the world market. ... The rise of megacities, ... the development of forms of agriculture that have been no less ecologically damaging than most forms of industry.” [22]

The “great acceleration” of the ecological crisis in recent decades is one of the manifestations of the historical crisis of the capitalist mode of production in its period of decadence, pushed to its climax in its ultimate phase of decomposition. Its severity now represents a direct threat to the survival of human society. Above all, the ecological consequences of decaying capitalism are interwoven and combined with the other major phenomena of the dislocation of capitalist society - economic crisis and imperialist war - interacting and multiplying their effects in a devastating spiral whose combined repercussions are far greater than the sum of their individual parts.

Capitalism's irremediable incompatibility with nature

As early as the middle of the 19th century, Marx was already highlighting the fact that capital, driven by the need to accumulate more and more, affects the very natural basis of production, dangerously unbalancing the interaction between humankind and nature by causing an irremediable breakdown in its metabolism. “Capitalist production, by collecting the population in great centres, and causing an ever-increasing preponderance of town population, on the one hand concentrates the historical motive power of society; on the other hand, it 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.”[23]. “Large landed property reduces the agricultural population to a constantly falling minimum, and confronts it with a constantly growing industrial population crowded together in large cities. It thereby creates conditions which cause an irreparable break in the coherence of social interchange prescribed by the natural laws of life. As a result, the vitality of the soil is squandered, and this prodigality is carried by commerce far beyond the borders of a particular state. Large-scale industry and large-scale mechanised agriculture work together.” [24] Marx could already discern that capitalism was compromising the future of subsequent generations and, potentially, endangering the future of mankind. As we have seen, these predictions have been amply confirmed after more than a century of capitalism's decadence.

Why is this so?

Capitalism did not inaugurate the plundering of nature. But unlike previous modes of production, which were more limited in geographical scope and local impact on the environment, this plundering changes scale with capitalism. It takes on a planetary dimension and a predatory character that is qualitatively new in human history. “For the first time, nature becomes purely an object for humankind, purely a matter of utility; ceases to be recognized as a power for itself; and the theoretical discovery of its autonomous laws appears merely as a ruse so as to subjugate it under human needs, whether as an object of consumption or as a means of production.” [25]

For capitalism, which enshrines the reign of the commodity, and presents itself as a system of universal commodity production, driven solely by the frenzied pursuit of maximum profit, EVERYTHING becomes a commodity, EVERYTHING is for sale. Thus, since modern times, with the construction of the global market: “industrialisation involves the transfer of control over nature into the hands of a handful of major capitalists;" [26] “a growing number of natural objects have been transformed into commodities, meaning above all that they have been appropriated, disrupting environments as well as economic and social relations. ... The appropriation of natural entities, the privatisation of living beings, has major environmental, economic and social consequences. All kinds of natural beings become property and commodities ... The objects of nature, in fact, are not spontaneously commodities: commodities are the result of a construction, an appropriation (sometimes violent) coupled with a transformation that makes it possible to make the object conform to market exchanges." [27]

Capitalism sees the Earth and nature only as a “free gift” (Marx), a reservoir of resources “providentially” placed at its disposal, from which it can draw without limit, to make it one of the sources of its profits. “In today's economic order, nature does not serve humanity, but capital. It is not the clothing, food or cultural needs of humanity that govern production, but capital's appetite for profit, for gold. Natural resources are exploited as if reserves were infinite and inexhaustible. The harmful consequences of deforestation for agriculture and the destruction of useful animals and plants expose the finite character of available reserves and the failure of this type of economy. Roosevelt recognises this failure when he wants to call an international conference to review the state of still available natural resources and to take measures to stop them being wasted.” [28]

It is therefore not only from the exploitation of the main commodity, the labor power of the proletariat, that capitalism derives its wealth, but also from the exploitation of nature. “Labour is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power ... And insofar as man from the beginning behaves toward nature, the primary source of all instruments and subjects of labor, as an owner, treats her as belonging to him, his labor becomes the source of use values, therefore also of wealth.”[29]

The cause of the climate crisis lies not in 'human activities' in general or in certain sectors of capitalism's economic activity, but in the existence of the capitalist mode of production itself. It is because capitalism derives its wealth from two sources: the exploitation of nature and the exploitation of the labor power of the proletariat, both transformed into commodities, that it has no solution to the ecological crisis. It can only exploit both to the point of exhaustion and destruction. This is why the social question and the ecological question go hand in hand, and can only be solved at the same time and by the proletariat, the only class with an interest in abolishing all forms of exploitation.

 

III) Communism, the only prospect for humanity

This is precisely what Malm denies, as usual, peremptorily and without any real argumentation, when he declares that: “In a warmer capitalist world, the extortion machine can do no more than extract the same amount of surplus value by squeezing out every last drop of sweat from the workers. But beyond a locally determined tipping point, this may simply no longer be possible. Is a victorious workers' revolution waiting in the wings? Probably not. ... Extraction of surplus value probably remains the central extortion machine, but the explosive effects of climate change are not transmitted directly along this axis.” [30]. For him, the climate crisis and the social question belong to completely separate spheres with no connection or relationship between them. And since the proletariat's struggle does not develop specifically against the effects of the ecological crisis, but on the terrain of the conditions imposed on it by capitalism, Malm concludes that nature and ecology do not fall within the scope of the proletariat’s struggle for emancipation on a historical scale, and that it is not capable of integrating the ecological question, the relationship between humankind and nature, into its revolutionary perspective.

Scientists and environmental specialists generally identify production based on commodity exchange, the “commodification” and over-exploitation of nature, and the system of private property as the central factors responsible for the ecological crisis, and stress the need for a solution on a universal scale. The diagnoses they put forward undoubtedly condemn the capitalist mode of production and point indisputably in the direction of the communist social project carried by the proletariat. But what do they do in practice? Blindly, or as more or less willing accomplices of the ruling class, all they do is propose dead-ends or aberrations with no prospects by way of a solution: they ask the state to improve laws and regulations, better regulate; or they may claim to draw inspiration from the (idealised!) relationship with nature of primitive societies or they may advocate a return to small-scale, individual, parcel-based farming, call for producing locally, etc. In any case, they all converge in seeking solutions within the conditions of present-day society, while ignoring and blacking out the prospect of communism, which is precisely the ONLY social project that proposes to rid the world of commodity exchange and exploitation, which they all see as the root cause of the climate crisis. Here again, Malm is no exception, [31] joining the chorus of bourgeois campaigns with his Trotskyist background.

Only the proletariat can abolish exploitation and the reign of the commodity

Capitalism has simultaneously created the premises of material abundance - revealed in the existence of crises of overproduction which point to the possibility of overcoming exploitation - and the social forms necessary for the economic transformation of society: the proletariat, the class destined to become capital’s gravedigger.

The generalisation of the commodity by the capitalist mode of production has, first and foremost, affected the labour power employed by human beings in their productive activity. The proletariat, the class that produces all goods, deprived of the means of production, has no other commodity to sell on the market except its labour power – a sale to those who own these means of production, the capitalist class. Only those subject to collective exploitation, to the sale of their labor power, can have an interest in revolting against capitalist commodity relations. Since the abolition of exploitation is essentially synonymous with the abolition of wage-labour, only the class that suffers this specific form of exploitation, the product of the development of these relations of production, is capable of providing itself with a perspective for overcoming them.

Hence the fact that: “Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product. The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history.” [32].

“Our epoch … possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other – Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.” [33]. It is from the specific place occupied by the proletariat within the capitalist relations of production that it derives the ability to assert itself as a social force capable of developing a consciousness and a practice capable of “revolutionising the existing world, of practically attacking and changing existing things.” [34]. The proletariat's struggle against the effects of exploitation and the conditions imposed on it by capitalism can only truly succeed if it sets as its goal the abolition of exploitation itself and the establishment of communism. This is why “Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.” (35)

The material foundations of communism as a solution to the ecological question

The buying and selling of produced wealth can only disappear if society's wealth is appropriated collectively. “The appropriation [by the proletariat of all the means of production] can only be achieved by a union which is in turn necessarily universal, because of the character of the proletariat itself, and by a revolution which will overthrow, on the one hand, the power of the previous mode of production and exchange and the power of the previous social structure, and which will develop, on the other hand, the universal character of the proletariat and the energy which is necessary for it to carry through this appropriation, a revolution in which the proletariat will also strip itself of all that remains of its previous social position.” [36] With the seizure of the means of production by society, the collective appropriation by society of the wealth it produces, commodity production is eliminated, and with it, exploitation in all its forms.

The abolition of commodity exchange presupposes the abolition of its very foundation: private property, which means the end of the right to possess and appropriate nature: “...Land, being the prime raw material for all human labor and the basis of human existence, must be made the property of society, together with the means of production and distribution. At an advanced stage of development society will again take possession of what it owned in primeval days. At a certain stage of development all human races had common ownership of land. Only by the rise and development of private property and the forms of rulership connected with it, has common property been abolished and usurped as private property, as we have seen, not without severe struggles. The robbery of the land and its transformation into private property formed the first cause of oppression. This oppression has passed through all stages, from slavery to ‘free’ wage-labor of the twentieth century, until, after a development of thousands of years, the oppressed again convert the soil into common property.” [37] The end of private property means the end of the monopoly exercised by a few capitalists “over determined parts of the earth's surface [38], [and] as exclusive spheres of their private will to the exclusion of all others.”[39]

“With the seizing of the means of production by society production of commodities is done away with ... Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organisation. The struggle for individual existence disappears. Then for the first time man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of existence into really human ones. The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of nature because he has now become master of his own social organisation. ... Only from that time will man himself, with full consciousness, make his own history – only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him.”[40]

The communist mode of production revolutionises mankind's relationship with nature

This new stage in the history of humankind, a veritable leap from the reign of necessity to freedom, from the government of men to the administration of things, ushers in a new era: communism will first have to tackle the priority of feeding, clothing and caring for the whole of humanity, as well as beginning to repair the damage caused by the ravages of capitalist production on the environment. The generalisation of the condition of producer to all members of society, and the liberation of productive forces from the limitations and constraints of capitalist production and profit-making, will lead to an explosion of creativity and productivity on a scale unimaginable under current social conditions. By instituting a new and higher relationship between humankind and nature, it will be the beginning of a unified world humanity, conscious of itself and in harmony with nature: “Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature.” [41]

The development of the communist mode of production will introduce a totally different type of equipment for the soil and subsoil; it will aim for a better distribution of human beings across the globe and the elimination of the opposition between town and country.

With a view to “systematically establish (the metabolism between man and the earth) in regulatory law of social production,” [42] communism cannot do otherwise than reappropriate and critically integrate the best contributions of past societies, starting with a better understanding of the more harmonious relationship between humankind and nature that prevailed during the long period of primitive communism, while integrating and transforming all the scientific and technological advances developed by capitalism. [43]

Communism puts an end to the predatory and plundering relationship that has featured in class societies, replacing it with “conscious rational cultivation of the soil as eternal communal property, an inalienable condition for the existence and reproduction of a chain of successive generations.” [44]

In conclusion, against all the bourgeois falsifiers such as Malm [45], we reaffirm, with Marx, that by placing the satisfaction of human needs at the center of its mode of production, by overturning the relationships between human beings as well as those of the whole human race to nature, “Communism” represents the “the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man.” [46] It is the only door that leads to the future of humanity.

Faced with the urgency of climate change, the urgency of communist revolution

Communism has been the order of the day since the capitalist mode of production entered its period of decadence at the turn of the twentieth century, when bourgeois relations of production, which had become too narrow, collided definitively with the development of productive forces they could no longer contain.

Unlike the revolutionary classes of the past, all of which created new systems of exploitation and were able to develop their new relations of production within the old, now obsolete relations of production, before finally sweeping them away, the proletariat, the first class in history to be both exploited and revolutionary, lacking any material support within capitalist relations of production, must first break the political power of the ruling class in order to establish itself as the ruling class. Since it only has its consciousness and capacity for organisation as weapons of combat, only once the destruction of the bourgeois state -of all states- has been achieved, and the seizure of revolutionary power on a global scale has been secured, can it advance its project for a new society, inaugurating the communist transformation of the world.

In the current historical situation of decomposition, the ultimate phase in the decadence of capitalism, and faced with the spiral of destruction it has set in motion and which threatens the future of civilization, and even the survival of humanity, time is no longer on the side of the working class. But it alone, as the revolutionary class of our age, holds the key to emerging from this nightmarish situation. It retains all its potential to bring its historic project to fruition. The only alternative, the only valid one, for those seeking a way out of capitalist calamities is, without panicking in the face of the immediate situation, to work determinedly to bring about the conditions for the advent of communism, to hasten the process leading to this act of world liberation, by joining the struggle of the oppressed class in its effort to develop awareness of its action and its movement towards the fulfillment of its historic mission.

 

Scott

 

[1] Andreas Malm, L’anthropocène contre l’histoire, Editions La Fabrique, 2017, page 137.

[2] Andreas Malm, Avis de Tempête, Nature et culture dans un monde qui se réchauffe, Editions La Fabrique, 2023, p.155 (Edition en anglais: Andreas Malm, The Progress of This Storm, Verso, 2017).

[3] “Capital eschews no profit, or very small profit, just as Nature was formerly said to abhor a vacuum. With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent certain will produce eagerness; 50 per cent., positive audacity; 100 per cent will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 per cent., and there is not a crime at which it will scruple.” TJ. Dunning, quoted by Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I, footnote to page 538. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-I.pdf

[4] Andreas Malm, Avis de Tempête, Nature et culture dans un monde qui se réchauffe, Editions La Fabrique, 2023, p.164-65 (Edition en anglais: Andreas Malm, The Progress of This Storm, Verso, 2017).

[5] Andreas Malm, L’anthropocène contre l’histoire, Editions La Fabrique, 2017, p.190-91.

[6] Sha Zukang, “Foreword”, in Promoting Development and Saving the Planet, page VII, quoted by C. Bonneuil, J.B. Fressoz, L’événement Anthropocène – La Terre, l’histoire et nous, Seuil, 2013, p.252; This approach was championed by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the 2019 Climate Action Summit and by Chinese Premier Li Kequiang at the 2019 Global Commission on Adaptation.

[7] Karl Marx, New York Daily Tribune, 1853. Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft of 1857-58) [First Instalment], III. Chapter on Capital, Section Two, ‘Circulation Process of Capital’ (Collective Works no. 28, page 336). https://www.hekmatist.com/Marx%20Engles/Marx%20&%20Engels%20Collected%20Works%20Volume%2028_%20Ka%20-%20Karl%20Marx.pdf

[8] Marx, Wage Labour and Capital, 1847. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/wage-labour-capital.pdf

[9] “Ende Gelände (In English: "here and no further") is a civil disobedience movement occupying coal mines in Germany to raise awareness for climate justice.” (Wikipédia)

[10] Andreas Malm, L’anthropocène contre l’histoire, Editions La Fabrique, 2017, page 210.

[11] See the points of Malm's 'green transition programme', in part one of this article, section headed "A thoroughly bourgeois method"

[12] Andreas Malm, L’anthropocène contre l’histoire, Editions La Fabrique, 2017, p.206.

[13] Marx-Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1947. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf

[14] Rosa Luxemburg, Accumulation of Capital, III : The historical conditions of Accumulation, 26: ‘The Reproduction of Capital and its Social Setting’. https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1913/accumulation-capital/accumulation.pdf

[15] Marx-Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1947. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf

[16] R. Luxemburg, Introduction to Political Economy, 1907. https://tilde.town/~xat/rt/pdf/luxemburg_1925_political_economy.pdf

[17] C. Bonneuil, J.B. Fressoz, L’événement Anthropocène – La Terre, l’histoire et nous, Seuil, 2013, p.260.

[18] Ibid, p.267.

[19] Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I, Part 4: ‘Production of Relative Surplus Value’, Section 10: ‘Modern Industry and Agriculture’. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-I.pdf

[20] J.B. Fressoz, F. Graber, F. Locher, G. Quenet, Introduction à l’histoire environnementale, Ed. La Découverte, 2014, page 92-93.

[21] Ibid, p.96-97.

[22] Capitalism is poisoning the earth, International Review n°63 (1990).

[23] Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I, Part 4, Chapter 15, Section 10,: ‘Modern Industry and Agriculture’ https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-...

[24] Karl Marx, Capital, Volume III, Chapter XLVII ‘Genesis of Capitalist Ground Rent’, ‘V. Métayage And Peasant Proprietorship Of Land Parcels.’ https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-III.pdf

[25] Karl Marx, Grundrisse, ‘Transition from the process of the production of capital into the process of circulation’, page 336. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/grundrisse.pdf

[26] .B. Fressoz, F. Graber, F. Locher, G. Quenet, Introduction à l’histoire environnementale, Ed. La Découverte, 2014, page 61

[27] Ibid, page 56-57.

[28] Anton Pannekoek, ‘Destruction of Nature’, 10 juillet 1909. https://www.marxists.org/archive/pannekoe/1909/nature.htm

[29]. Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_Critque_of_the_Gotha_Programme.pdf

[30] Andreas Malm, L’anthropocène contre l’histoire, Editions La Fabrique, 2017, page 190-91.

[31] Similar elucidations can be found in another ‘genius thinker’ of ‘critical ecology’, Fabian Scheidler, who is also praised by many: “You don't design a new society on a drawing board in the same way as you do a new interior, a machine or a factory. New forms of social organisation are the result of persistent conflicts and processes of convergence between different groups. What emerges in the end can never, in principle, be the result of a single plan, but only the consequence of many plans, contradictory or convergent. (...) Major system changes are not the result of a slow, gradual transition from one mode of organisation to another, nor of a deliberate break with the past on the model of the October Revolution in Russia. (...) What there is effectively is no master plan for building a new system to replace the previous one. Not only is there no such plan, but there are not many people left who think one is needed.” (F. Scheidler, La Fin de la mégamachine. Sur les traces d'une civilisation en voie d'effondrement, Chapitre 11 ‘Possibilités, sortir de la mégamachine’, Ed. Seuil, 2020, page 445-50).

[32] Marx-Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1947. Ibid. “The peasants, although they are exploited in all sorts of ways, and can sometimes wage very violent struggles to limit their exploitation, can never direct these struggles towards the abolition of private property because they themselves are small owners, or, living alongside the latter, aspire to become like them. And, even when the peasants do set up collective structures to increase their income through an improvement in productivity or the sale of their products, it usually takes the form of cooperatives, which don't call into question private property or commodity exchange. To sum up, the classes and strata which appear as vestiges of the past (peasants, artisans, liberal professions, etc) and who only survive because capitalism, even if it totally dominates the world economy, is incapable of transforming all the producers into wage laborers - these classes cannot be the bearers of a revolutionary project. On the contrary, the only perspective they can dream about is the return to a mythical 'golden age' of the past: the dynamic of their specific struggles can only be reactionary.” Quoted in ‘Who can change the world? (Part 1): The proletariat is the Revolutionary Class’, International Review no. 73)

[33] [32] Marx-Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, 1947.

[34] Marx-Engels, German Ideology, 1946. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_The_German_Ideology.pdf

[35] Marx-Engels, German Ideology, 1946. Ibid

[36] Marx-Engels, German Ideology,1946. ibid

[37] August Bebel, Woman and Socialism, Chapter XXII ‘Socialism and Agriculture, 1. Abolition of the Private Ownership of Land’. https://www.marxists.org/archive/bebel/1879/woman-socialism/ch22.htm

[38] “As soon as these have reached a point where they must shed their skin, the material source of the title, justified economically and historically and arising from the process which creates social life, falls by the wayside, along with all transactions based upon it. From the standpoint of a higher economic form of society, private ownership of the globe by single individuals will appear quite as absurd as private ownership of one man by another. Even a whole society, a nation, or even all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the globe. They are only its possessors, its usufructuaries, and, like boni patres familias, they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition.” (Karl Marx, Capital – Volume III, Chapter 46. ‘Building Site Rent. Rent in Mining.Price of Land’) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-III.pdf

[39] Karl Marx, Capital, Volume III, Part VI. Transformation of Surplus-Profit into Ground-Rent, Chapter 37. Introduction.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-III.pdf

[40] F. Engels, Anti-Dühring, Part III: ‘Socialism, II. Theoretical.’ https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/anti_duhring.pdf

[41] Karl Marx, Capital, Volume III, Part VII. ‘Revenues and their Sources’, Chapter 48. ‘The Trinity Formula’.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-III.pdf

[42] Marx, Capital, Volume I, ‘The development of capitalist production’, section IV, ‘production of relative surplus-value’, Chapter XV. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-I.pdf

[43] “After the mighty advances made by the natural sciences in the present century, we are more than ever in a position to realise and hence to control even the more remote natural consequences of at least our day-to-day production activities. But the more this progresses the more will men not only feel but also know their oneness with nature, …” (Friedrich Engels, Dialects of Nature, The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man) https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/sw/progress-publishers/sw-v3.pdf.)

[44] K. Marx, Le Capital - Livre III, Chapter XLVII ‘Genesis of Capitalist Ground Rent’, ‘V. Métayage And Peasant Proprietorship Of Land Parcels’. ibid

[45] Or à la Scheidler.

[46] Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, ‘Private Property and Communism’. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm