Part I
SYMPOSIUM
THE SECOND CONTRADICTION
OF CAPITALISM
The thesis of the "second contradiction of capitalism" was
put forth in James O'Connor's "Capitalism, Nature, Socialism: A
Theoretical Introduction," CNS One, Fall 1988, and developed in
"The Second Contradiction of Capitalism: Causes and
Consequences," Conference Papers (Santa Cruz: CES/CNS Pamphlet 1)
and "On the First and Second Contradiction of Capitalism," CNS
Eight (2,3), October, 1991. Economists in Italy, Spain, Mexico,
India, the U.S., Canada, and other countries were asked to
prepare comments on this thesis for the first European meeting of
Capitalismo, Natura, Socialismo (Italy), Ecologia Politica
(Spain), Ecologie Politique (France), and CNS Editors and
Editorial Consultants, held in Valencia, Spain, on March 26-27th
of this year. Interventions at the European conference, as well
as other contributions to the debate, will appear in the next
issue of CNS.
The Absolute General Law of Environmental
Degradation Under Capitalism
By John Bellamy Foster
James O'Connor has asked us to consider the relationship
between what he has termed the "first and second contradictions"
of capitalism. I would like to refer to the first contradiction,
following Marx, as "the absolute general law of capitalist
accumulation."[1] The second contradiction may then be designated
as "the absolute general law of environmental degradation under
capitalism." It is characteristic of capitalism that the second
of these "absolute general laws" derives its momentum from the
first; hence it is impossible to overthrow the second without
overthrowing the first. Nevertheless, it is the second
contradiction rather than the first that increasingly constitutes
the most obvious threat not only to capitalism's existence but to
_________________________
[1] "Like all other laws," Marx wrote of this absolute general
law, "it is modified in its working by many circumstances, the
analysis of which does not concern us here." See Capital I (New
York: International Publishers, 1967), p. 644. The term
"absolute" is thus used, as Paul Sweezy notes, "in the Hegelian
sense of `abstract'..." See The Theory of Capitalist Development
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1942), p. 19.
1
the life of the planet as a whole.
The first contradiction, O'Connor tells us, "expresses
capital's social and political power over labor, and also
capitalism's inherent tendency toward a realization crisis, or
crisis of capital over-production."[2] It finds its expression in
the limitless drive to increase the rate of exploitation. This
"absolute general law of capitalist accumulation" results in the
amassing of wealth at one pole and relative human misery and
degradation at the other. It reflects an "oscillation of wages"
that is "kept penned within limits satisfactory to capitalist
exploitation" by the continual reproduction of a relative surplus
population of the unemployed/underemployed. Today the "field of
operation" of this law is the entire world.[3]
The second contradiction of capitalism or the "absolute
general law of environmental degradation" is more difficult to
characterize since bourgeois political economy (together with its
classical Marxist critique) has -- for reasons related to the
functioning of capitalism itself -- never incorporated what Marx
termed the "conditions of production" (natural, personal and
communal) into its internal logic.[4] Nevertheless, this
contradiction can be expressed as a tendency toward the amassing
of wealth at one pole and the accumulation of conditions of
resource-depletion, pollution, species and habitat destruction,
urban congestion, overpopulation and a deteriorating sociological
life-environment (in short, degraded "conditions of production")
at the other.
Under capitalism "the greater the social wealth, the
functioning capital, the extent and energy of its growth," the
greater are capital's ecological demands, and the level of
environmental degradation. While the second law of
thermodynamics guarantees that there will be an increase in
"entropic degradation" with the advance of production, the
existence of a capitalist mode of appropriation, with its goal of
promoting private profits with little regard for social or
environmental costs, guarantees that this entropic degradation
will tend globally toward maximum economically feasible levels at
any given historical phase of development. Worse still, the
contemporary structure of commodity production, with its built-in
dependence on pesticides, petrochemicals, fossil fuels and
nuclear power generation, and its treatment of external habitats
as a vast commons, tends to maximize the overall toxicity of
production and to promote accelerated habitat destruction,
creating problems of ecological sustainability that far outweigh
the general entropic effect.[5]
_________________________
[2] James O'Connor, "On the Two Contradictions of Capitalism,"
CNS 8 (2,3), October, 1991.
[3] Capital I, op. cit.,, pp. 645, 769; Harry Magdoff and Paul
M. Sweezy, Stagnation and the Financial Explosion (New York:
Monthly Review Press, 1987), p. 204.
[4] James O'Connor, "Capitalism, Nature, Socialism: A
Theoretical Introduction," CNS 1, Fall, 1988, pp. 16-17.
[5] See Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, "Afterward," in Jeremy
2
Although the "absolute general law of environmental
degradation" in this sense relates primarily to the realm of
natural-material processes and use value rather than exchange
value, the costs borne by the environment rebound on the economic
realm in multiple unforeseen ways, reflecting what Engels called
"the revenge" of nature that follows every human "conquest over
nature." "Labor," Marx observed, "is not the only source of
material wealth, of use-values produced by labor. As William
Petty puts it, labour is its father and the earth its mother."
Capitalism grows, Marx contends, by exploiting the former and
"robbing" the latter.[6]
It stands to reason that such a freebooting relation to
ecological systems cannot long persist without disastrous
consequences for the economy itself. Thus we have witnessed the
emergence of what has come to be known globally as "the
environmental crisis" in the second half of the twentieth
century (beginning with the onset of the nuclear age) -- at a
point in the development of the system when the scale and extent
of its operation is in danger of overwhelming the major
ecological cycles of the planet. This new awareness of
environmental degradation, moreover, has forced itself on the
consciousness of society primarily through its economic effects.
For it is only at this stage in the system's development that
general physical barriers increasingly translate into specific
economic barriers to capital's advance.[7]
The reordering of capitalism that occurred with the rise of
its monopoly stage in the twentieth century resulted in the
enlargement of the first contradiction, making it more and more
essential for capital to expand the circle of consumption while
keeping the basic relation between capital and labor intact.[8]
Thus, the penetration of the sales effort into production,
already perceived by Veblen, has become increasingly evident,
undermining capitalism's claim to conform to the necessary
conditions of production in general.[9] An ordinary English
muffin, for example, has been shown to pass through 17 "energy
steps" following the growth and harvesting of the wheat, with the
result that nearly twice as much energy is now utilized to
_________________________
Rifkin, Entropy (New York: Bantam, 1989), p. 305; Narindar Singh,
Economics and the Crisis of Ecology (New Delhi: Oxford, 1976),
pp. 20-24, 30-35.
[6] Friedrich Engels, The Dialectics of Nature (New York:
International Publishers, 1940), pp. 291-92; Capital I, op.
cit., pp. 43, 505-06.
[7] Paul M. Sweezy, "Capitalism and the Environment," Monthly
Review, 41, 2, June 1989, pp. 1-10; Michael Lebowitz, "The
General and Specific in Marx's Theory of Crisis," Studies in
Political Economy, 7, Winter, 1982, pp. 5-25.
[8] Karl Marx, Grundrisse (New York: Vintage, 1973), p. 408.
[9] See Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy, Monopoly Capital (New York:
Monthly Review Press, 1966), pp. 131-39; Thorstein Veblen,
Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Modern Times (New
York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1923), pp. 284-319.
3
process the muffin as to grow it.[10] Supply-price therefore no
longer conforms to rational principles of cost-containment.
Instead, ever more baroque "commodity chains" are emerging, with
each link in the chain deriving its justification from the
increment of profit that it provides together with its
contribution to the salability of the final commodity.[11]
Synthetic products, poisonous to natural and human environments,
have become intrinsic to the development of the system.[12] It
was an understanding of this problem (together with the expansion
of armaments) that led Joan Robinson to insist that "the second
crisis of economic theory" (the question of the content as
opposed to the level of production) is now paramount.[13]
Since the early 1970s, the world economy has been suffering
from relative stagnation (or a decline in the secular growth
trend) accompanied by rising unemployment and excess capacity.
Capital has responded to this crisis in its usual fashion through
supply-side "restructuring," or the opening up of the system to a
more intensive exploitation (and superexploitation) of labor and
the environment. Many regulations previously put into place to
protect the conditions of production are now being cast aside --
as Polanyi leads us to expect -- under the ideological mantle of
the "self-regulating market."[14] At the same time, the system's
core has been shifting away from the production of the goods and
services that constitute GNP and toward the speculative
proliferation of financial assets. One result of both of these
processes has been an acceleration of the pace of environmental
degradation. Hence, it is no accident that the last two decades
have witnessed a speed-up in the destruction of the remaining
natural forest ecosystems throughout the world, which by Wall
Street criteria are viewed as non-performing assets to be
liquidated as quickly as possible.
The second contradiction of capitalism therefore is rapidly
gaining on the first -- partly due to measures taken to
compensate for the first-- without the first ever abating. The
result is a "hyper-capitalist" disorder in which the system is
obsessed with both enlarging markets and finding ways around
rising environmental costs.[15] Since only a tiny proportion of
environmental costs have thus far been internalized by capital
and the state, it is a foregone conclusion that the economic
repercussions of the second contradiction will grow by leaps and
_________________________
[10] Rifkin, op. cit., pp. 148-49.
[11] On "commodity chains" see Immanuel Wallerstein, Historical
Capitalism (London: Verso, 1983), pp. 15-16.
[12] See Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle (New York: Bantam,
1971), pp. 138-75.
[13] Joan Robinson, Contributions to Modern Economics (Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1978), pp. 1-13.
[14] Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon,
1944).
[15] James O'Connor, "The Second Contradiction of Capitalism:
Causes and Consequences," Conference Papers (Santa Cruz: CES/CNS
Pamphlet 1), p. 10.
4
bounds -- partly under the pressure of social movements --
marking nature's ultimate "revenge" on the accumulation process.
From a movement perspective the implications seem clear.
Any struggle that attempts to combat only one of capitalism's
"absolute general laws" while perpetuating the other will prove
ineffectual. The future of humanity and the earth therefore lies
with the formation of a labor-environmentalist alliance capable
of confronting both of capitalism's absolute general laws. The
forging of such an alliance would mark the rise of socialist
ecology as a world-historical force, and the onset of the
struggle that is likely more than any other to define the course
of the twenty-first century.
A Note on the Depreciation of the Future*
By Samir Amin
Environmental problems have become so important that a
systematic effort is underway to integrate this dimension into
conventional economic analysis. Dominant neo-classical economics
has assigned itself the objective of integrating the
environmental dimension in economic calculation. In this regard,
I would like to start off by saying that there are two distinct
problems here: First, the integration of the environmental
dimension into economic calculation; and, second, the
construction of decision-making systems capable of implementing
the logic of this calculation in actual management of economic
and social life. The confusion that has been fostered about the
market allows for positions that, in my opinion, have no
scientific foundation and constitute the basis of what I call the
ideology of market alienation and the utopia of a social
organization built on submission to the supposed "rationality of
the self-regulating market." The treatment of environmental
questions by conventional economics should be criticized in this
general perspective. Dominant neo-classical economics conceives
of society as a collection of individuals and of the market as
the meeting-place of their desires, as consumers, sellers of
their labor power, and owners or organizers of production. The
social relationships that define the true rules of the game and
the real margins of choices and possibilities are therefore
eliminated straightaway from the field of the questions posed to
specifically economic analysis, which is separated from the other
areas of social life. The social, cultural, and political status
of the individual in question, who is reduced to being sometimes
a consumer, sometimes a worker and/or property owner, is excluded
from the problematics of economics properly speaking.
According to dominant neo-classical economics, the
generalized "market" of products and factors of production
_________________________
*Translated by Jay L. Caplan
5
(labor, nature, capital) fulfills the optimal choices regarding
growth, technological options, distribution of income and
satisfaction of needs. Walras in a first formulation, followed
especially by his French disciple Maurice Allais, proposed
(formal and rigorous) demonstrations of the "theorem," which have
the advantage of clearly displaying the axioms of the paradigm on
which it depends as well as its conditions of validity. Among
these conditions, one forms the subject of my critical note,
namely, that all economic agents depreciate the future and that
this depreciation is quantitatively measurable.
The depreciation of the future seems to be an obvious
"psychological law." What is not obvious is whether the
existence of such a depreciation can be extended to all areas of
society. Whether a depreciation rate of the future be low (one
percent) or high (15 percent), it immediately reduces the scope
of calculation to the very short term -- five to 30 years at
most. For at a rate of only four percent, at the end of 30 years
the total amount under consideration will have lost two-thirds of
its initial value, opening a margin of almost total uncertainty
regarding the validity of choices. But if the 30 years may seem
like a respectable period on the scale of human life, what do
they represent in the history of nations and humanity?
A great number of collective (social), and even individual,
decisions must therefore necessarily escape the "depreciation of
the future." A first example can be found in the ("individual")
behavior of a landowning farmer. If he depreciated the future,
it would be in his interest not to completely reconstitute his
land holdings, and even less so to improve their long-term
potential, so that he might benefit from the extra income gained
from their gradual exhaustion. Yet, he does not do so, and
considers these advantages illusory. Why? Because he wants to
bequeath to his children a means of subsistence that is equal to
(or even better than) his own. A second example is provided by
national decisions concerning defense and military research. In
this area, no government will accept the constraint of the "short
term." The decision will therefore be guided by the principle
that, if not for eternity (a concept that has no political
meaning), at least for all the foreseeable future, the nation
must be in a given military position, equal or superior to that
of the presumed adversary. The cost of achieving this objective
will be deduced, to determine whether or not adequate programs
can be implemented. This kind of rationality is entirely
different from that which is implied by any observations
concerning the depreciation of the future that are essential
whenever the environmental dimension of problems is considered.
For numerous effects of modern economic activity operate on a
long or even very long term (exhaustion of natural resources,
greenhouse effect, ozone layer, etc.). Here economic choice must
integrate an absolute fact, and completely abandon the concept of
depreciation of the future. In the language of conventional
economists, this kind of choice is not longer "economic." This
futile distinction (since it clearly entails a social choice)
conveys the impasse into which economists have been driven by
their unrealistic philosophy, which separates that which is
6
economic from that which is not.
The Ecological Crisis: A
Second Contradiction of Capitalism
By Victor Toledo
Today, humankind is facing a planetary-scale ecological
crisis, which, it seems, will reach its highest point in two or
three decades. The biosphere, or global ecological system, which
encompasses all planet life and the space inhabited by it, is now
under siege, threatened by human actions. This situation,
without precedent in human history, seems to be the consequence
of two ongoing main processes: the complete global integration of
all human societies through communications, transport,
technology, and economic trade; and the total colonization of the
earth's spaces as a result of human population growth and
expansion. Can we explain this global ecological crisis from a
Marxist perspective? If so, which elements of the Marxist theory
can be used as a coherent framework to develop an appropriate
theoretical explanation?
James O'Connor proposes we attempt it through a basic
economical approach: "The point of departure of `ecological
Marxism' is the contradiction between capitalist production
relations and productive forces and conditions of production."1 A
similar idea was proposed by Skirbekk almost two decades ago.2
According to O'Connor, conditions of production "...are things
that are not produced as commodities in accordance with the laws
of the market (law of value) but which are treated as if they are
commodities. There are three conditions of production: first,
human laborpower, or what Marx called the `personal conditions of
production'; second, environment, or what Marx called `natural or
external conditions of production'; third, urban infrastructure
and space, or what he called `general, communal conditions of
production'..."3 He calls this the "second contradiction of
capitalism" since it has as its basic cause "...the capitalist
self-destructive appropriation and use of laborpower, space, and
external nature or environment."4
O'Connor's proposition leaves me in a sea of doubts: Is the
ecological crisis solely a consequence of an economic
_________________________
1 James O'Connor, "Capitalism, Nature, Socialism: A
Theoretical Introduction," CNS 1, Fall, 1988, p. 23.
2 G. Skirbekk, "Marxisme et ecologie," Esprit, 440, 1974, pp.
643-652. CNS will publish a translation of this classic article
in the next issue.
3 James O'Connor, "Is Sustainable Capitalism Possible?"
Conference Papers (Santa Cruz: CES/CNS, Pamphlet 1), p. 12.
4 James O'Connor, "The Second Contradiction of Capitalism:
Causes and Consequences, ibid., p. 4.
7
contradiction or, on the contrary, does it emerge from a highly
complex set of causes -- technology, demography, geography,
culture, ideology and forms of property? Can we accept the
ecological crisis as proof of the self-destructiveness of
capitalism? Are we facing a mere crisis of the economic system
or a crisis of civilization (which implies a challenge not to an
economic rationality, but rather a challenge to a "mode of
life")?5 Frankly, it is very difficult to qualify a proposition
so general (and abstract) as O'Connor's idea of a "second
contradiction." Although the environmentally destructive
character of a market-oriented economy is more or less evident,
there is, at hand, innumerable evidence that refutes O'Connor's
general hypothesis about the ecological guilt of capitalism. For
instance, industrialization made whole towns and surrounding
areas practically uninhabitable as long as a hundred and fifty
years ago, and there is evidence of the depletion of natural
resources in ancient civilizations such as Greece and Rome.6 The
problems of pollution, energy, and the destructive use of natural
resources are also present, in the same proportion, in most of
the countries of the ex-socialist block. There are, finally,
ecologically successful (short-term?) experiences in market-
oriented economies, and also environmental deterioration caused
by demographic changes. On the other hand, the so-called
ecological crisis includes a myriad of different phenomena. There
are at least ten different processes provoking global
environmental conflicts: deforestation, soil depletion,
desertification, ocean and freshwater pollution, loss of bio-
diversity, toxic wastes, urban contamination, destruction of
marine resources, greenhouse effect, energetic misspending, and
destruction of the ozone layer. Thus, how is it possible to
attribute to capitalism the responsibility for every
environmental problem?
I am afraid that while trying to relate Marxism and ecology,
we a priori impute every recognized ecological problem to
capitalism, creating commonplaces, not theory, and perpetuating a
black tradition of dogmatism. In that sense, O'Connor's "second
contradiction" could be useful as a general work hypothesis to be
tested for future research, but not as a theoretical assumption.
_________________________
5 The idea that the ecological crisis is a crisis of
civilization has been accepted by various authors such as A.
Toffler, E. Tiezzi, E. Laszlo, G. Gallopin, M. Berman, and M.
Grinberg. In a recent publication (Victor Toledo, "Modernidad y
ecologia," Nexos, 169, 1992), I have examined in some detail this
idea, and I have postulated six main principles of Western (or
modern) civilization, which should be theoretically and
politically challenged by green movements: centralization,
specialization, inequality, homogenization (eco-geographic,
biological, genetic, cultural, and behavioral), (industrial)
depredation (of rural and natural spaces), and autocracy (CNS
will publish an English-language version of this article in a
future issue).
6 J. D. Hughes, Ecology in Ancient Civilizations (New Mexico:
University of New Mexico Press, 1975).
8
Is it, for instance, valid to put such ingredients as urban
environment, health, forests, transportation, energy or pollution
together? I think the provocative proposition of O'Connor should
encourage an intensive and deep review of what could be called
the "ecological thought" of Marx, which is yet an unexplored
source of inspiration for the development of theories to explain
the current environmental crisis and to offer political
principles to the green movements. I understand this enormous
challenge must be conceived as an original exploration of all
that the Marxist tradition (and Marx) can offer to the
comprehension of these new phenomena. The task should imply the
review of an already important set of earlier works.7 Needless to
say, this challenge implies the review, with a new vision, of
many of Marx's own texts. For instance, Parsons compiled more
than 100 pages of selections from the writings of Marx (and
Engels) on ecology.8 Essential to this perspective is the review
of the concept of nature in Marx, philosopical research into
which was brilliantly initiated by Alfred Schmidt three decades
ago.9 Schmidt's book showed how Marx's thought, rooted in the
nineteenth century naturalist tradition, took as the theoretical
keystone of his economic theory the basic principles of
metabolism (Stoffweschsel) between nature and society. By doing
that, Marx considered the human work process as an expression of
the more general, eternal, pre-social phenomenon of material
exchange between human beings and earth.10 He also viewed the
course of history as an increasing separation or conflict between
nature and society (reaching its peak with capitalism), and the
_________________________
7 See S. Moscovici, "Le Marxisme et la question naturalle,"
L'Homme et la Societe, 13, 1969, pp. 59-109; Skirbekk, op. cit.;
E. Romoren and T.I. Romoren, "Marx und die Okologie," Kurbusch,
33, 1974, pp. 175-187; J. P. Lefevre, "Marx et la nature," La
Pensee, 198, 1978, pp. 51-62; J. Juanes, Historia y Naturaleza en
Marx y el Marxismo (Mexico: Universidad Autonoma de Sinaloa,
1980); and E. Leff, "Alfred Schmidt y el fin del humanismo
naturalista," Anthropologia y Marxismo, 3, 1980 (also reproduced
as the first chapter in his book, Ecologia y Capital [Mexico:
Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, 1986]). See also the
articles by M. Sacristan and J-G. Villancourt, CNS, 9, 1992 and
E. Leff, "Marxism and the Environmental Question" in the next
issue of CNS.
8 H.L. Parsons, ed., Marx and Engels on Ecology (Greenwood
Press, 1977).
9 A. Schmidt, The Concept of Nature in Marx (London: New Left
Books, 1971).
10 This is a theoretical assumption I made in order to
postulate a basic difference between ecological and economic
exchanges, and to develop an ecological-economic conceptual
framework of rural productive process. See V. Toledo,
"Intercambio ecologico e intercambio economico en el proceso
productivo primario," in E. Leff, Biosociologia y Articulacion de
las Ciencias (Mexico: UNAM, 1981); and V. Toledo, "The
Ecological Rationality of Peasant Production" in M. Altieri and
S. Hecht, eds., Agro-ecology and Small-Farm Development (CRC
Press, 1990).
9
desirable future as its resolution.11 In conclusion, while
showing skepticism (or at least a cautious position) to
theoretical generalizations such as those proposed by O'Connor in
his postulation of the "second contradiction," I suggest
exploring more intensively the connection between Marxism and
ecology by reviewing the "ecological thought" of Marx (and
especially his so-called "utopian" or "idealistic" propositions).
Thus, we can perhaps contribute to the formation of a new
political philosophy: a new revolutionary theory urgently needed
by a growing worldwide green movement in order to justify its
political actions.
The Second Contradiction of Capitalism:
Some Reflections.
By Kamal Nayan Kabra
The set of conference papers by James O'Connor shows how
socialist scholars respond or should respond to emerging crises
and, in this process, modify and enrich the theoretical framework
and tools of analysis for understanding and interpreting reality.
It appears that, for a variety of reasons, in many countries
where "socialism" ruled the roost until recently, the dialectical
interaction between theory and reality was substantially
weakened. Thus, most of the postulates about socialism were
taken as rigid and axiomatic, e.g., "socialist central planning
subserves long-term social interests." In the immediate run, it
may appear that a heavy price in the form of retreat of
"socialism" had to be paid for these lapses and departures. But,
in a more durable sense, one would tend to think that what
socialism is undergoing is a catharsis -- a catharsis both in the
reality and knowledge.
What O'Connor presents as the second contradiction of
capitalism in the form of "massive externalization of social and
ecological costs of production," which intensifies as a result of
the pursuit of "efficiency" and cost-cutting by firms and leads
to under-production of capital, may well be regarded as one of
the basic tendencies common to real capitalisms of various types
and vintages. The case for regulation, planning, and a public
sector has always been based on a recognition, howsoever indirect
and implicit, of this kind of tendency. By explicitly
formulating it in the forms of a contradiction arising from the
commodification of nature, O'Connor has provided a systemic basis
_________________________
11 In 1844 (Paris Manuscripts) Marx wrote: "Communism as a
fully developed naturalism is humanism and as a fully developed
humanism is naturalism. It is the definitive resolution of the
antagonism between man and nature, and between man and man. It
is the true solution of the conflict between existence and
essence, between objectification and self-affirmation, between
freedom and necessity, between individual and species."
10
for understanding the process and forces responsible for the
ecological crisis and linking it with economic crisis and newly
emerging social movements. I find myself broadly in agreement
with the conclusions, particularly with the "totalistic approach
to social theory and political struggles," on the basis of which
O'Connor arrives at his formulations, suggesting that "there is
even less justification for an economistic theory of the second
contradiction of capitalism than there is for the traditional
Marxist theory of the first contradiction."
An important point emergent from this analysis is that the
way capitalism fragments life is reflected in, or conditions the
character of, social sciences under capitalism.
Conceptualization of the economy as a disembedded category, and
portrayal of capitalist private property as natural rather than
historical, may well be regarded as the quintessence of the
economistic approach. The influence of this objective feature of
capitalism is so powerful that it persists even in that hitherto
most systematic and powerful critique of capitalism called
Marxism. As O'Connor points out, abstraction of the discussion
of the social division of labour from culture and nature,
excessive concern with material abundance leading to fetishism of
the growth of productive forces, and the exposition of the theory
of accumulation without a theory of the state and analysis of the
conditions of production are examples of the persistence of
economistic/productionist approaches. Despite the different
nature of the Marxist project, it could not escape this
intellectual trap, and neglected the incorporation of local
spaces and cultural identities into the concept of class and
class consciousness and conditions of production and
reproduction.
Similar to the economistic fixation, there may prevail a
tendency to be excessively state-centric. O'Connor's analysis of
the second contradiction of capitalism proceeds in terms of the
role of the state for providing/regulating the three conditions
of production which cannot be produced as commodities and hence
cannot be provided by capital. He seems to imply that there is
no alternative to the state as the sole, non-private agency which
can take care of this task. Without adopting the anarchist
strategy of "rejecting the state and developing counter-
authorities," it can be maintained that historical experience
shows that in many countries during many periods, non-state
common, collective or group social institutions, such as caste,
tribal, local traditional organization like Panchayats in village
India, and various non-governmental voluntary agencies, including
political parties, trade unions, crafts or trade associations,
and so on, including new organizations spearheading feminist and
ecological movements and programs, can make their modest
contribution to production, regulation and preservation of the
conditions of production. Not only is O'Connor's position on
this issue empirically doubtful, but its implications for social
action, mobilization and movements are also ignored. If, for
example, conditions of production are not provided by the state
to informal sector or non-documental workers, one way of helping
the unorganized poor and disadvantaged groups could be non-state
11
social organizations and movements, both fighting for the
provision of such conditions of production, and also undertaking
direct, self-help, self-reliant collective provision of such
conditions.
The analysis of the conditions of production, the central
basis of the position evolved by O'Connor, helps us understand
the increasing externalization of costs of production,
particularly those arising from the use of natural resources.
However, the emphasis on urban space as a component of the
"communal, general conditions of production" seems very narrowly
focused, i.e., highly specific in time and space. In the South,
it is not "urban space" as such which can be regarded as the
relevant spatial resource for a large majority of the rural
people. It is space as such, and unequal command over or access
to it in the rural areas, including that under forest cover,
which is the relevant condition. The difficulties arising from
O'Connor's emphasis on urban space become acute when we find that
even with respect to Africa, he refers to the deterioration of
nature and urban life in that continent, as the result of class,
gender, and racial struggles. Africa has seen relatively limited
urbanization and deterioration of nature and real life in rural
Africa is no less a critical aspect of various struggles
connected with the second contradiction of capitalism.
In fact, one can say that there is relatively limited
awareness of the problem of the South in O'Connor's papers and
talks; even the examples of ecological movements and struggles
seem to be based on limited information personally available to
him. For example, sustainability of capitalism seems to have
been perceived from the point of view of early industrialized
capitalist economies. Sustainability in societies with limited
and lopsided development of capitalist productive forces along
with distorted and combined development of capitalist production
relations has to be seen, among other things, as the capacity to
generate or produce the means to meet the essential survival and
cultural needs of the impoverished masses. The capacity of
capitalism to sustain itself consistent with its self-expanding
drives has to meet this litmus test over a reasonably long period
of time. But, in many writings, the concern with meeting the
needs of the poor masses seems to receive a relatively lower
order of priority. For example, O'Connor speaks of ecological
socialism as one that "plays close attention to ecology plus the
needs of ordinary human beings." Anyone familiar with problems
of the South and, of course, the problems of ecological balance,
would easily reverse the order in this formulation and say "the
needs of ordinary human beings plus ecology." One is aware that
these may well be inadvertent nuances of emphasis rather than
being reflective of O'Connor's basic approach, understanding or
concerns. However, since O'Connor's exercise is not only an
exposition of the second contradiction of capitalism, but also an
attempt to clear up many methodological and values-related
cobwebs, these small shades of differences in emphasis may send
wrong and unintended signals.
It is also important to see that some of the contradictions
12
under capitalism arise from the fact that while no law of value
or of market-based allocation can apply to the supply of human
labor power (a component of the conditions of production), under
capitalism, labor is commodified and becomes a commodity.
Capital deals with labor as such. This means that although
generally the conditions of production cannot be produced as
commodities, human labor power (the supply of which is only to a
small extent affected by narrow economic considerations) becomes
a commodity. In other words, while labor is demanded as a
commodity, it cannot be supplied as a commodity. This, in fact,
is one of the important bases for various contradictions
afflicting capitalism.
I have one final point regarding the chasm between social
and natural sciences to which O'Connor makes a reference,
reminding one of C.P. Snow's distinction between two cultures.
One can say that if nature has to be understood and treated as an
important condition of production and social existence, natural
sciences have to be socially-oriented and social sciences have to
be nature-oriented.
In brief, I have little doubt that the issues raised by
James O'Connor in this set of papers are of immense value and
provide some basis for systematic research into many contemporary
problems, including those concerning the paradigm shifts in
social sciences which are slowly taking place.
Capitalism: How Many Contradictions?
By Michael A. Lebowitz
As James O'Connor continues to remind us, capitalism is
subject to crises not only because capital spontaneously proceeds
as if its realization requirements are independent of the rate of
exploitation but also because it similarly appropriates the
natural conditions of production without regard for their
requirements for reproduction. Thus, he proposes, there are not
only crises characterized by capital's tendency for
overproduction of capital (manifested in inadequate demand) but
also those which reflect its tendency to underproduce (manifested
in rising costs). Two contradictions -- and both face capital at
this point.
There is in all this the critical recognition of "the second
contradiction," the understanding that capitalism's destructive
appropriation and use of labor-power, space and environment flows
from its very nature. And, yet, it is appropriate to ask, first,
whether the symmetry which O'Connor finds in the two tendencies
toward crisis is what should be stressed and, second, whether
there are two separate contradictions of capitalism or,
alternatively, two forms of one contradiction.
Consider the first issue. Whereas it may be argued that
13
realization crises have their proximate cause in the unintended
consequences of individual capitals all pursuing cost-cutting
measures, is it appropriate to focus (as O'Connor does) upon the
efforts of individual capitals to "externalize costs on to
conditions of production" as the basis for the liquidity crisis
characteristic of the second contradiction? What is thereby
emphasized in both cases is the destabilizing actions of
individual capitals, i.e., the contradiction between actions of
individual capitals and the requirements of capital as a whole.
Yet, while a hypothetical (but chimerical) single capital
might avoid a realization crisis insofar as it is sufficiently
far-sighted never to drive the rate of exploitation higher than
its own planned consumption and investment expenditures warrant,
the same thought-experiment conducted with respect to the
appropriation and use of the conditions of production does not
preclude the emergence of the second contradiction. That single
capital may indeed deforest, pollute, congest, and destroy health
and environment, i.e., degrade the conditions of production
without any regard for their restoration. There is no reason to
assume that this single capital (or a state which "looks out for
the interests of capital as a whole") would regulate itself in
such a way to ensure the "right" balance of appropriation and
reproduction.
And why? Simply because there is no inherent and necessary
reason for that single capital to bear the costs (whether they
are the costs of functioning under such impaired conditions or
the costs of repair). As long as it is able to shift those costs,
capital (except in some hypothetical last instance) can ignore
them. In this respect, the focus on the unintended consequences
of the actions of individual capitals is misplaced.
To be sure, to the extent that individual capitals
externalize their costs on to the conditions of production, they
do increase the costs for other capitals. Similarly, since the
strength of some capitals must appear as the weakness of others,
local observation will support the position that falling profits
and liquidity crisis are the result of shortages (of land, air,
space, appropriate labor power, etc.) stemming from excessive
appropriation of the conditions of production. Indeed, individual
states (acting upon behalf of local capitals) may seek means of
regulating them to aid them in the battle of competition. Yet, to
understand capital, we need to consider capital as a whole rather
than its appearance in competition. All these phenomena
characteristic of the competition of many capitals should not
detract from our understanding of either the inherent
destructiveness (not self-destructiveness!) of capital as a whole
nor its tendency to evade the costs of its destruction of the
conditions of production.
As Marx commented, capital "takes no account of the health
and the length of life of the worker, unless society forces it to
do so."1 So it is with all the conditions of production. Just as
_________________________
1 Karl Marx, Capital, Vol.I (New York: Vintage, 1977), p.381.
14
it was only the struggle of industrial workers to satisfy their
own needs (at its core, "the worker's own need for development")
which checked capital's tendency to appropriate the whole of
their lives, so also is it the struggle (and that alone) of the
modern multifarious proletariat to satisfy its needs for adequate
health, education, environment, etc., which checks capital's
tendency and shifts the costs of impairment to capital.2
Rather than the unintended consequences of the actions of
individual capitals, at the core of "the second contradiction" is
that it is of the very essence of capital to determine the nature
and extent of production without regard for human needs. But,
then, that is true as well with respect to the conditions
underlying the "first contradiction." In the one case, there is
the tendency to produce without regard for natural conditions; in
the other, to produce without regard to social conditions.
Rather than two contradictions, there is indeed only one -- that
between the needs of capital and the needs of human beings. It
takes (at least) two separate forms, and these forms interact in
significant ways. But, understanding the unity of those two forms
is an important step in mobilizing people to do away not with the
anarchy of individual capitals but with capital as a whole.
The System of Capitalized Nature
By Martin O'Connor
Prisse le profit, pourvu que la reproduction de la
forme du rapport social soit sauve.
-- Jean Baudrillard, L'change symbolique et la mort.
Many individual capitalists, small and large, would
undoubtedly prefer to continue to treat nature and society as
open-access terrains to be mined and trampled upon without
providing recompense for the services rendered. However, this
primitive extractive and cost-shifting mentality is becoming
increasingly difficult to sustain. Attempts at state-sanctioned
restructuring of the conditions of supply of needed raw materials
and services (of nature, labor, society as socialization force,
and infrastructure), so as to reduce private costs to capital,
usually involve overt exploitation and fairly obvious cost-
shifting onto local communities, "the taxpayer," and future
generations. Social conflicts therefore are made both more
visible and more acute. Faced with this obstacle, a more far-
sighted program for capital is to co-opt community and
environmental interests into a larger capitalist game. This
means pushing through as far as possible the process of
capitalization of the conditions of production, and instituting a
regime of reproduction of the resultant enlarged system of
_________________________
2 Ibid., p. 772. See the discussion in Michael A. Lebowitz,
Beyond Capital: Marx's Political Economy of the Working Class
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992).
15
capital.
Abstract capital effects, says James O'Connor, the
ideological production of "capitalist nature," where this term
denotes "everything which is not produced as a commodity but
which is treated as if a commodity."1
Capital's response to environmental crisis is to extend its
hegemony over erstwhile "uncapitalised" aspects of the physical
environment (nature) and of civil society (infrastructure,
households, and human nature). Following Jean Baudrillard, we
can think of this process as the expansion of capital as a
semiotic system, the maturation and generalization of the
political/ideological process by which "exchange value" is
instituted as a mode of coding and controlling social relations
-- the commodification and pricing in the market of all this
hitherto external domain.2
The capitalization process is not an expansion in the
magnitudes of the elements of a vector of commodities, nourished
through an intake of raw materials from outside. Rather it is an
enlargement of the number of dimensions of the commodity vector,
through a process of colonization. The penetration of capital
around the globe involves not just an invasion, plunder and
despoliation, but a semiotic conquest, a sort of outgrowth, as in
a tumor, that progressively envelops its surroundings. In this,
the ecological phase of capital, henceforth -- and this seems
only too natural -- we speak of human capital, natural capital,
cultural capital, genetic capital: there is no longer (in
concept) any domain external to capital. The relevant image is
no longer of man acting on nature to "produce" value; rather it
is of nature (and human nature) codified as capital incarnate,
reproducing cumulatively through the miracle of market exchange
through space and time. This is nature conceived in the image of
capital; this is the true (imaginary) capitalization of nature;
a representation of nature that, increasingly, is instituted
violently in political fact. The bottom line for capitalism is
no longer accumulation, but rather the conservation, as an end in
itself, of the whole semiurgy of exchange-value: reproduction of
the global system of capital as a self-referring totality.
All of this accounts for why, post-Brundtland, capitalism
finds it so easy (despite obvious hypocrisies) to be green. If
capital is nature and nature is capital, the terms become
virtually interchangeable; one is in every respect concerned
with the reproduction of capital, which is synonymous with saving
_________________________
1 James O'Connor, "Capitalism, Nature, Socialism: A
Theoretical Introduction," CNS, 1, 1988, p.7.
2 The gist of Baudrillard's hypothesis is found in the essay
"Design and Environment, or How Political Economy Escalates into
Cyberblitz," in For a Critique of the Political Economy of the
Sign (Telos Press, 1981, French original 1972), pp.185-203; and
amplifications are found in Part I of L'Echange Symbolique et la
Mort (Gallimard, Paris, 1976, untranslated).
16
nature. The planet itself is our capital which must be managed.
As Baudrillard put it, in these upside-down dialectics of
bourgeoisified environmentalism: "Man no longer even confronts
his environment: he himself is virtually part of the environment
to be protected."3
In practice, cost-shifting and predation go hand-in-hand
with the rhetoric of environmental preservation and heritage
conservation. The prime political task of capital is to stave
off its latent "bankruptcy" as a modality of social organization
which is evidenced by the immanent presence and menace of
insolvency, debt, catastrophe and breakdown, and by the various
forms of social resistance it encounters. In this task, it
relies on putting everyone to work articulating "values," getting
them to believe in, and participate in the capitalization
process. Capital expands its hegemony through actually feeding
off -- vampire-like -- and "managing" the continued articulate
resistance from the elements of human nature which, along with
their habitats, are being liquidated and commodified
(rationalised and reshaped, as in corporate take-overs). The
conquered human elements are to be seduced, induced into
redefining themselves as proprietors (or stewards) of themselves
and their habitats as capital; the social movements of
resistance are to be co-opted and suborned, through making them
stewards of various capitals (themselves as human capital, and
also of environmental, community, cultural assets), which they
may choose to conserve or to proffer in the marketplace.
The end result is that, in the mature system of capitalized
nature, the cost-shifting is not onto a domain exterior to
capital, but rather it takes on the appearances of a reciprocal
(but uneven) cannibalism of capitals: the proprietor of one
capital making illicit -- or at any rate contested -- use of the
capital of another. Under the signs of "best-value use," "taking
everything into account," and "ecological balance," this is dog-
eat-dog at its worst. But for capitalism ecologized, what does
it matter if a previously ignored environmental "value" surfaces,
compelled into being by the immanent threat of its negation; it
is nonetheless profitable (to some) so long as it can be re-
presented as a capital, to be profitably conserved and used.
What does it matter if some genes, Indians, tropical forests,
urban environments and their inhabitants are lost in the rush, as
long as the decisions can be re-presented as the rational use of
the available capital: that is, at some moment in time, by
somebody's calculus, allocated to their highest-value-on-the-
margin use.
_________________________
3 Ibid., p.203. This essay written twenty years ago,
foreshadows rather accurately the cybernetic "management" drift
of much "sustainability" discourse. See in particular the
Brundtland Report from the United Nation's World Commission on
Environment and Development, Our Common Future (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1987); and see the critical essay by Wolfgang
Sachs on "Environment," in The Development Dictionary (London:
Zed Books, 1992).
17
Behind the kaleidescopic facade of exchange values is the
fact and immanence of annihilation for the less fortunate beings
who, along with their habitats, are the "used" and abused.
Alongside, feeding the accumulation/conservation zest, is the
fear on the part of the "users" of losing their privileged place,
and becoming themselves so much trash in the bulldozer's way
(redundant, unemployed, de-skilled, bankrupt, un-useful to
society, to be atomized and reconstituted). The upshot is a
terrible, abject competitiveness on all counts -- the effort by
the haves and the have-nots alike to lay hands on scarce
resources, to be a user and not a loser in the grand game of life
and death.
This abject scramble is only the dark face of instrumental
reason, the dialectics of utility properly understood. Consider
what Hegel wrote nearly two centuries ago. Everything is useful,
he said, but in an implacably reciprocal sense. Each thing that
exists does so through making use of what surrounds it; yet
everything is at the mercy of everything else, finds itself being
used or lets itself be used by others and exists, in this sense,
for them.
Just as everything is useful to man, so man is useful
too, and his vocation is to make himself a member of
the group, of use for the common good and serviceable
to all. The extent to which he looks after his own
interests must also be matched by the extent to which
he serves others, and so far as he serves others, so
far is he taking care of himself: one hand washes the
other. But wherever he finds himself, there he is in
his right place; he makes use of others and is himself
made use of."4
This "right place" and "vocation" is the simple correlate of
material and social existence (my respiration helps to nourish
the famous greenhouse effect), and is miles removed from any
beatific vision of ecological cycles in eight-part harmony. When
an individual or social group pretends that an "other" -- any
other, a human individual, another society, Nature as a whole,
another species or a non-living thing, now or in the future --
should properly be reconciled to its particular desires and
designs, this amounts to a simple denial or refusal of this
larger (Hegelian) reciprocity (depending on how you look at it,
this constitutes Enlightenment's power-as-knowledge ambition, or
symbolic matricide and psychosis). Today, this refusal haunts us
all, and also capital as a self-referring whole, in the facts of
planet-wide ethnocides and ecological destruction. It haunts us
also on a local scale, for example where NIMBYism is practised in
a bigoted and self-centred way, or a particular class or
ethnically based "rights" movement displays aggressive
intolerance of those of the wrong class or color.
_________________________
4 G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (1807); English
translation by A.V. Miller, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977),
pp.342-343.
18
The piecemeal defence of "rights" does not aggregate into a
workable "solution principle." The defensiveness would need to
be transmuted into a challenge to capital, a refusal of its
domination, an assertion of willingness to be liquidated rather
than be co-opted in the capitalist game. This is utopian, of
course, but not a false utopia in which scarcity is abolished
through the infinite development of the forces of production,
with the realization of "to each according to his [her?] need"
premised on the abundance thus unleashed and under socialist
control. What has to be abolished is not material scarcity as
such (which, despite real questions of famine and land
degradation, is nonetheless both socially constructed and
socially distributed). Rather it is the meanness and abjection
of spirit, the terrible insecurity which feeds the "accumulation"
drive in the first place, and which is made axiomatic by the law
of contract in the marketplace. Rather than rely on the too-
visible hand of the market to define for us our "right place" in
capital's reproduction project (each of us to be used and used up
like the fishes in protein-rich paste for cows), we might do well
to give a new active sense to the existential vocation Hegel
attributes to us. What new forms and meanings could we give to
the fact of life of each being, ineluctably, in the service (or
disservice!) of another, that each individual and human society
be a member of the group, "of use for the common good and
serviceable to all?" Somewhere this means an ethic of
hospitality, a willingness to make a place for the other, to
enjoy their company. Capitalism is wholly autistic and
inhospitable; it is for us who are left out in the cold to be
hospitable amongst ourselves, and to challenge and defy its
value-monologue.
19