Marxism, social theory and ecology

Part VIII

Marxism, the Second Contradiction,
and Socialist Ecology

By Stuart Rosewarne

1. Introduction

One of the enduring features of James O’Connor’s work is the endeavor to build an anti-economistic political economy. This has been most forcefully articulated in his theoretical writings on crisis in contemporary capitalist formations.^[1] In formulating a Marxist-type understanding of the place of nature and ecological crises, O’Connor also broadens the purview of, and breathes new life into, historical materialism. In conceptualizing the notion of a second contradiction of capitalism, he seeks to redress some of the failings of Marxist scholarship and to acknowledge that there are natural barriers (and possibly limits) to expanding production. His work also seeks to respond to post-Marxist critiques, to the effect that historical materialism does not sufficiently appreciate the place and meaning of the new social movements. The import of ecological crisis and a socialist politics for charting the path towards an ecologically sustainable future are also on O’Connor’s agenda.

In identifying the pressures that capital imposes on the reproduction of the constituent elements of the labor process, including those elements not produced as commodities (the “conditions of production”), O’Connor provides an insightful development and recasting of the Marxist problematic. The articulation of the second contradiction provides a vehicle for considering how the conditions of production are formed and how the accumulation process subjects these conditions to increasing pressures, undermining the integrity and the reproduction of labor, families and communities, of the natural elements of capital and ecological systems more generally, and the built environment broadly defined. A crucial ingredient in O’Connor’s theory of a second contradiction is an appreciation of the social forces that are thrown up in the process, forces that may respond to and resist the assault by capital. The articulation of the notion of a second contradiction provides a methodological framework for incorporating an appreciation of the place of more broadly defined social struggles — including environmental struggles and other social forces that are not defined wholly in class terms — in shaping the character and dynamic of social formations. At the same time, while acknowledging the social complexion of the productive forces, inclusive of the conditions of production, we are reminded not to overlook Marx’s observation “that these (productive) forces are natural as well as social in character,” that there are ecological barriers and limits which define the physical boundaries of capitalist development.^[2] In this recasting of Marxism, the dynamics of capitalist development have to be understood as embracing a more complex range of socio-economic and political processes, including the constitution of the production conditions, socially as well as ecologically.

In formulating a method that embraces the panorama of social forces and ecological constraints and thus providing a fuller and more complex appreciation of capitalism’s contradictory character, O’Connor is determined to avoid the tendency among post-Marxists to focus only on the particular, or the respective constituent elements within a social system, and the failure of post-Marxists to conceptualize how these elements are combined and articulated within the social formation. In opposition to a method that is viewed as essentially relativistic in character, O’Connor reiterates the historical materialist method’s preoccupation with the idea of “determination.” O’Connor appeals to a dialectical materialist method to elucidate a notion of determination that is bound up in the idea of a “telos of crisis.” Because the way in which accumulation proceeds undermines the conditions necessary for the production and realization of value, as well as those conditions necessary for the reproduction of the conditions of production, the contradictory character of capitalism is viewed more broadly than in the classical conception. This serves as a basis for understanding how a more diverse array of social forces, namely, the new social movements, moved to challenge the authority of capital and possibly forge the foundations for constructing a ecologically sustainable socialist future.

The idea of a telos of crisis is crucial to the articulation of O’Connor’s formulation of a socialist ecology. Yet, there are some paradoxes in the construction of this thesis. The desire to locate the conception of the second contradiction firmly within the framework of an historical materialist method tends to inject an economistic element into the analysis. The desire to inject an unambiguously socialist character into charting an ecological future tends to rob the complex array of non-class social forces of any agency in effecting the transformation of the social formation. The consequence is, I suggest, a tendency to reiterate some of the very shortcomings identified in the post-Marxist and green critiques of historical materialism and the associated socialist politics which the formulation of the second contradiction is so keen to redress.

There are at least three ways in which I think that this is evident and are worthy of critical reconsideration. The first relates to the material foundation of the second contradiction and the telos of crisis, or to how the physical manifestations of ecological crises impact upon the accumulation process and the production of value. The second follows from O’Connor’s qualified appreciation of the place of the new social movements thrown up by capitalism’s contradictions, an appreciation which acknowledges the potency of these new movements, but then downplays them in a determination to celebrate the place of the working class. Finally, there is a tendency to represent the telos of crisis in terms of a unilinear trajectory, thus tending to undermine the status of the specifically social. There is also a tendency to see environmental movements as spawned by the appearance of ecological crises, in a way that uncritically uses the concept of the “natural.” These will be explored in turn.

2. Nature, Value and Capitalist Contradictions

The second contradiction is premised on the argument that the production of value is contingent upon access to (among other things) natural resources and ecological systems. Ecological constraints are construed as a physical obstacle to capital accumulation. Ecological crisis presents capital with a material or economic crisis in the form of an underproduction of capital because capital must devote some of the surplus to redressing the obstructions to accumulation thrown up by environmental degradation. Viewed in this way, the inherent tendency for capital to degrade the natural environment is viewed as an alternative basis for engendering an economic crisis, a crisis in profitability that contrasts with the traditional crisis of overproduction. However, O’Connor’s argument is somewhat problematic in terms of the way in which it represents the necessity to redress environmental degradation as a diminution in the production of value for capital in general.

There can be no questioning the argument that capital is forced to devote more resources to maintaining its productive existence, but it seems questionable that this should become manifest as the underproduction of capital for capital in general. The concept of underproduction of capital seems to hinge on an assumed finiteness of the resource base. Facing environmental pressures, capital will have to devote more productive energy to secure natural resources or to maintain ecological processes, if only to ensure the continuity of production. Fewer natural resources, or more generally forces of production, will be available for the production of commodities (or, more crucially, the production of value). The proposition that an increase in the resource intensity of a given production of value is increased because of the needed to devote resources to sustaining nature is a useful way of illuminating the consequences of the ecological crisis upon the production of our material well-being. But the increased resource intensity of a given production does not necessarily translate into a diminution in the production of value. O’Connor regards the production of value principally in terms of natural resource requirements, but this depreciates what is one of the significant aspects of his contributions to political economy, namely that production has to be regarded as much a social process as one that is built upon the transformation of natural elements.^[3]

The distinctive feature of Marx’s critique of classical political economy was to represent the production of value as a product of social labor, reflecting the socially necessary labor time required to produce commodities in a given social formation. In seeking to incorporate the ecological as a material dimension of the production of capital, O’Connor has not provided a critical elaboration of the nature of the production of value. The historical materialist method surely requires that the production of value not be regarded as a physically invariable process or as simply a functional requisite of the natural inputs.^[4]

The focus on the conditions of production provides an opportune way of embracing ecological considerations as pivotal to capitalist production and to engendering the second contradiction. But another way of understanding the processes at work is to regard the changes in the production of value, in the context of environmental constraints or regulations requiring producers to meet certain standards, as entailing the economic incorporation of elements that had hitherto not assumed a capitalized form, i.e., natural resources or encroachments on ecological systems having hitherto been treated as “free” goods. As capital responds to the problems thrown up by environmental degradation, production will assume a more circuitous form entailing an augmentation of the socially necessary labor time required to produce a given amount of value.

This transformation in the character of production, based on the capitalization of some elements of nature, should not necessarily be regarded as a drawing down of surplus value. On the contrary, the increasing capitalization of nature may well entail an expansion of the total value produced.^[5] The development of new environmental industries will tend to augment the sphere of commodity production and to provide expanded opportunities for capital accumulation.^[6] This is not to say that those sectors which bear the brunt of environmental regulations will not experience profitability problems. But this is essentially an empirical question that depends on how the augmented socially necessary labor time required to produce the particular products in these sectors is reflected in relative market prices.^[7] Furthermore, as Altvater has argued, there is the possibility that this capitalization of nature — the transformation of production to address the problem of the underproduction of capital — may go some way towards resolving the overproduction of capital.^[8]

The formulation of the second contradiction of capitalism to highlight why it is that natural elements (and also even some efforts to maintain the viability of ecological processes) are being capitalized provides a rich appreciation of the character of value production within capitalist formations. However, the determination to locate the second contradiction within an historical materialist framework that stresses the primacy of economic contradictions and then to systematically couple this with other manifestations of capitalist crises, as these are expressed in the first contradiction, seems to diminish the import of the social in understandying ecological crisis. This tends to rob the articulation of ecological crises of the import of the social foundations of production by down playing the role of social forces in determining how nature is capitalized and the force of social labor in nature’s transformation.

3. The Ontology of Class and the New Social Movements

At the heart of O’Connor’s notion of a second contradiction is the articulation of a telos of crisis that is captured in the contradictory character of capitalist accumulation and the social struggles these contradictions engender. A noteworthy feature is the embrace of new social movements as crucial ingredients in the struggles against capitalist hegemony. In dissecting the labor process and identifying its constituent elements, O’Connor points to the way in which the reproduction of those elements crucial to capital accumulation (but not produced as commodities) is jeopardized by the accumulation process itself. The maintenance and reproduction of people, of families, and of community is undermined; the built environment is degraded; and the complexity and sustainability of natural environments are threatened by the accumulation process. These impositions impel social groups defined in whole or part in terms of these different sites to defend the integrity of the sites. The engagement of the new social movements in the struggle against capitalist rule is systematically based, structurally determined. O’Connor endows the new social movements with authenticity, life and agency; they are seen as active agents contributing to the transformation of the social formation and possibly fashioning an alternative path towards a socialist future.

This embrace of the new social movements provides a challenging response to those critics of Marxism who assert that socialist discourse fails to consider the political force of social groups other than the working class as agents of change. Yet, having instilled life into these new social movements, O’Connor then proceeds to point to their limits as torchbearers for a radical future. He seeks to defend and develop Marxism against post-Marxist critiques to the effect that Marxism and socialism are bankrupt, that the working class movements are a spent political force, and that new social movements are the more likely heralders of a new era. He seems inclined to retain the classical preoccupation concerning the primacy of the revolutionary potential of the working class, and has a predilection to place too much emphasis on the shortcomings of the new social movements.

There are several ways to explain the tendency to privilege working class struggle over other social struggles. The tendency arises partly from the object of study, namely, the identification of the origins of the first and second contradictions of contemporary capitalisms. O’Connor argues that the essence of crisis (both economic and ecological) is the contradictions associated with capitalist accumulation, in the sphere of production, in the process of realization, and in the production and reproduction of the conditions of production. This lays the foundation for a broader conceptualization of class concerns than Marxism is accustomed to, broadening the class struggle, and defining capital as organized around a wider range of interests than is usually the case in Marxist thought. The problematic confronting capital is the challenge associated with the valorization of the immediate conditions for capital accumulation, as these are normally conceived, and also of the conditions of production. Capital must continue to be able to draw upon the population for wage labor, to ensure that built environments remain viable foundations for capitalist development, and to secure ongoing access to the material services of ecological systems to sustain production. For capital, the class struggle knows no boundaries, which is a perfectly reasonable and legitimate proposition.

The corollary of this, and contra post-Marxism, is that the boundlessness of capital’s purview inscribes a class dimension to all social struggles around environmental concerns, the built environment, and familial and other welfare concerns, that is, around the conditions of production.^[9] It follows that the new social movements must necessarily confront the power of capital in the course of their struggles.

It is also appropriate to locate the working class within this panorama of social struggle. There are three ways in which this inclusion is secured. The first is through the almost polemical assertion of the interests of the working class. While the conditions of production may be regarded as “more than class issues,” the interest of the working class is secured because “most problems of the natural and social environments are bigger problems from the standpoint of the poor, including the working poor, than for the salariat and the well-to-do.” This rhetorical intervention is teased out more systematically with a representation of class formation in broader terms, not only in terms of developments within the sphere of production but also in terms of the conditions of production. The working class is redefined as a social agency that more forcefully and consciously embraces the complexity and quality of the conditions of production, concerned with defending the “viability of the social and ‘natural’ environment as means of life.”^[10] And, if the working class is not actively engaged in struggles around the conditions of production, it is to be expected that the struggles of the new social movements will invariably intersect with the concerns and struggles of the working class simply for (politico-) spatial reasons. The reason is the shared general concern of the new social movements and the working class is with “the [democratic] administration of the division of labor” across the political economy.^[11]

The second means of securing the incorporation of the working class follows from the way in which the “nature” problematic is posed and also the way in which the boundaries of class struggle are consciously redefined. In the first instance, when nature is defined in instrumental terms, i.e., in terms of the place of natural elements and ecological processes in the sphere of production, the history of nature becomes construed in terms of the history of the labor process and class struggle. Capital is defined as the dominant agent seeking to determine the character of interactions with nature, and, by organizing the direct relationship between direct producers and nature, capital situates workers, because of their structural position within the labor process, as necessary actors in environmental struggles.^[12]

Thirdly, the privileging of the working class follows quite naturally from the centrality of class to Marxism and the socialist objective. In O’Connor’s formulation of socialist ecology, socialism is presented as the only substantive social form capable of redressing the fundamental crises of capitalism as these are manifested in both the first and second contradictions. And, because Marxism invests in (or at least entrusts) the working class a responsibility, a purposive role, for the radical transformation of the social formation and building the socialist future, it follows that a socialist ecology that addresses both of capitalism’s contradictions must be founded on the active agency of the working class.

This broader construction of working class interests is necessary because it gets around the problem raised by radical environmentalists that nature is not an essential element shaping the concerns or focus of working class struggle. For O’Connor, the reiteration of the classical Marxist conception of humanity’s material existence and place in nature — drawing on Marx’s distinction of the dialectic at work in labor’s encounter with nature — necessitates not only giving a more active role to nature, to recognizing “the life cycles of organisms and cycles of energy.” It also requires giving more credence to the broader conceptualization and appreciation of working class struggles.

Counterposed to this construction of the working class, the institutional and political shortcomings of the new social movements are held up as obstacles to sustained struggle. They are regarded as being defined in terms of specific issues; they have a strictly limited object and focus on particular aspects of the conditions of production and the associated social division of labor. They can not be expected to survive and struggle beyond their particularist concerns and “will remain at the level of anarcho-communalist and related struggles which are bound to self-destruct.” They cannot be expected to develop the organs and institutions that would seem to be necessary in the struggle against capitalism, and, consequently, could not be expected to carry forth on their own volition the mantle of a broadly-based socialism. For them to be the bearers of a new social order, their struggles must be organized in conjunction with or under the leadership of the working class; their struggles must be organized “through struggles for the democratic state and also by uniting with the labor movement, recognizing what we have in common, cooperative labor, thereby theorizing the unity of social labor.”^[13]

In contrast, with this portrait of the new social movements, the working class is held up as the only protagonist of capital which is endowed with the structural capacity to develop interests that extend beyond immediate and narrowly-defined issues. The different working class communities share a universal attribute: their existence is bound up in the constitution of labor as a commodity and in labor’s exploitation as the basis of capitalist accumulation. This provides the conditions for an extensive community of interests and the structural genesis of a social force that extends beyond individual communities. The working class is thus posed as the only social agent whose purview can confidently be said to chart and sustain the course towards a socialist ecology. Recasting the realm of class struggle thus entails a vision of the working class occupying the ground normally regarded as the domain of the new social movements.^[14] The result is that the working class is elevated to being the champion of a socialist ecology future while the role of the social movements is devalued. The refashioning of class struggle reiterates but also broadens the popular Marxist proposition that casts the working class in the role of the heralders of socialism.^[15]

These are critical interventions in the debate on a socialist ecology. O’Connor’s confidence in the capacity of the working class to exhibit a broader purview than that to which Marxists have historically been accustomed rests on accepting a markedly recast theorizing of class as well as the writing of a different class history. The centrality of the social constitution of class, including within the material domain of the labor process, is the distinguishing feature of this intervention. The starting point is an appreciation that the working classes and other social movements are endowed with an active agency that is not simply the mechanical outcome of material processes. Precisely because it is social, shaped by the way in which people come together as a class or other social movement, formed in relation to some protagonist agent, the form and character of social struggle will necessarily be contingent. But there is a tendency for O’Connor to disavow this contingent character to social process and social struggle. This is evident in two quite important respects.

The first is related to the way in which the structural conditions of the working class are redefined, as outlined above. The implication is that securing viable living conditions, including the conditions of production, is a crucial element in working class life and that this endows the working class with an essence that will undergird social and political struggles to secure these conditions of existence. I do not think that this is problematic except insofar as the interests of the working class tend to be represented in such a way as to suggest that they will necessarily be key actors, if not the pivotal political adversaries, in any struggles around the conditions of production. Yet highlighting the structural bases of working class interest in securing these conditions does not establish an active agency of the working class, merely the bases for a possible engagement in such struggles. Working class involvement necessarily has to be regarded as no more than contingent.

It is in a second, more significant, respect that working class involvement in struggles around the conditions of production is secured. In giving life to the social force of the working class, O’Connor asserts that this will be a determined engagement, structurally determined, thrown up by the contradictions of capitalism. Certainly, compared with a Marxist tradition that seeks to emphasis the social, and especially when compared with the work of such socialist humanists as E.P. Thompson and Raymond Williams, O’Connor tends to place more emphasis on the determination of class and social movements in terms of the contradictions engendered by material processes. Moreover, this drawing back from an appreciation of the force of the social and its contingent character is reinforced by the argument that the working class is defined by a particular ontology, a broadly-defined essence not shared by other social forces. This tendency among Marxists who acknowledge the import of the new social movements but continue to privilege the working class is not unique to O’Connor.^[16] But I think that the big difference with the articulation of the second contradiction, and the associated appreciation of new social movements, on the one hand, and these other Marxist endeavors that acknowledge the import of these movements, on the other, is that O’Connor provides an analytical framework for establishing the vitality of these “new” social forces as actors on the social and political stage of the social formation. The paradox is that, in deprecating their place on this stage, I think the epistemological pendulum is swung unnecessarily too far back into the methodological arena of the classical (economistic) historical materialist, and does a disservice to how we conceptualize the part that the new movements might play in progressive transformations. Both of these constructions are problematic and deserve critical consideration.

The point to be stressed here is not that working class organizations are inimical to struggles around conditions of production, but that the engagement is not at all assured let alone predictable. The comparative dearth of campaigns by working class organizations in defense of the environment is testimony to this. In part, what is required is a more critical scrutiny of the nature of working class ontology. For example, it can be argued that the formulation of the telos of crisis, and the associated assumptions regarding the ontology of the working class, expects far too much from this class. One can, for instance, point to the structural constraints upon working class struggles beyond what has been their traditional orientation, and one can also imagine that the ontology of a class whose existence is defined within capitalism (the way in which the working class is so defined) may have difficulty in incorporating ecological concerns within its purview in the way in which O’Connor envisages. The concrete organization of capitalist production underwrites labor’s estrangement from nature. The organization of production, based on capital’s endeavor to commodify labor; the assertion of capital’s authority over the organization of production; and the way in which labor power is directed to transform the other commodified elements of the production process, including the natural elements, provides a structural basis for this estrangement.

History seems to suggest that the overwhelming preoccupation of class struggle has focused on a more narrow conception of struggles largely within or around the sphere of production and over the general conditions of labor’s existence as wage labor. The organization of capitalist production and the distribution of the proceeds of that production largely defines the oeuvre of the working class movement. The endeavor to recover the subjectivity of human labor may well assume a part in this. But there is no immediate imperative for labor to address the nature question while, structurally at least, external nature remains an object of labor in the sphere of production. What Marx refers to as the symbiotic relation between labor and nature may well become an issue of concern in the process of labor’s efforts to reconstitute its subjectivity. But, as some deep ecologists and ecofeminists have argued, this does not necessarily follow; furthermore, nature possesses no subjectivity and can exercise no voice or social presence in the unfolding social ferment defined around class struggle.

By way of contrast, the specificity of the new social movements lies in their conscious organization around particular issues associated with securing the conditions of production. The defense of these conditions are these particular movements raison d’être. This, of course, introduces the vexed issue of the ontological force of the different social movements, which is a little too readily dismissed in the endeavor to elevate the force of working class struggle. A more carefully elaborated appreciation of these movements is warranted, one that acknowledges the possibility of organizational forms developing that can be sustained and that do take up global agendas.

The crucial point to be drawn here is not one of celebrating the working class vis-à-vis the new social movements but rather one of recognizing the contingent character of social struggle. In some respects, the problem of drawing the conclusions that inform O’Connor’s conception of the telos of crisis, based on propositions regarding the respective teleology of different social forces, arises because of the desire to defend historical materialism against the post-Marxist critique. What seems to inform the analysis is a collapsing of two objectives — the critical consideration of social struggle and how this might contribute to our ecological future and the critique of post-Marxist epistemology — with the result that there is a tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The privileging of the working class vis-à-vis the new social movements in the construction of a socialist ecology may not be so easily justified. The deprecation of these movements seems to be a somewhat unnecessary step in the defense of historical materialism and tends to diminish the force and appeal that O’Connor’s construction of a socialist ecology might otherwise have.

4. The “Natural” Origins of the Telos of Crisis

In signalling the salience of the conditions of production — conditions seemingly “external” to the production process — O’Connor points to how the historical materialist method provides a foundation for integrating the dynamic force of ecological processes into a more critical understanding of the material organization of capitalism. Identifying the place of ecological crisis within capitalism points to the dialectical character of development and, framed in the context of the telos of crisis, to the throwing up of social and political forces which challenge the authority of capital. However, in seeking to chart a determinant path of development, the distinctive feature of the teleology of social struggle as it is formulated is the tendency for it to be posed in terms of a unilinear progression: ecological crisis engenders economic crisis and environmentalism, including a concern with ecological processes within the working class, which, in turn, creates opportunities for the emergence of social forces that canvass the possibility of a future socialist ecology.

Clearly, O’Connor would not want his thesis to be represented in this simple mechanistic way. But this seems to be the consequence of representing social struggle as a reactive process with the agents of change responding to the contradictory effects of the accumulation process — a process manifest in the first and the second contradictions. This formulation is quite problematic and tends to cut across O’Connor’s long-standing objective of injecting the human element, or social and political forces, into a critical political economy. Such a teleology tends to rob the social forces of any initiative, to cheat the working class and new social movements of any active agency in effecting change and imposing barriers to accumulation.

The thrust of O’Connor’s project, of ensuring that social forces are integral ingredients shaping the character and dynamism of social formations, can be consolidated by drawing upon another tradition within historical materialism which emphasizes the place of human agency, the agency of the working class and other social forces, as critical and essential elements in the never-ending process of capitalism’s construction. Emphasizing the agency of the working class and other social forces does not contradict one of the crucial propositions embodied in the idea of a telos of crisis. Crisis, as this is manifest in the first contradiction and/or the second contradiction of capitalism, may engender a more robust spirit to the struggles of the working class and the new social movements. But acknowledging the ongoing agency of class and other social movements that exercise a collective will that is not simply reactive, impelled by the appearance of material crises, points to a more complex path of determination, one in which the material foundations of capitalism are the subject of continual contestation.

In articulating this alternative conception of struggle the possibility of a number of causal paths can be envisaged. Campaigns seeking the extension of environmental regulations may well reflect pressures generated by evidence of environmental degradation. But equally, such campaigns might also reflect the efforts of environmental movements, community groups and workers to contain capital’s relentless encroachment upon the commons, and to recapture communal space. In these instances, the social and political pressures brought to bear to limit and regulate our interactions with nature may well prove effective in obstructing the endeavors of capital to accumulate in some realms, and these actions, and not the degradation of the environment per se, herald the “underproduction of capital.” What capital may seek in turn is expanded regulated access to nature. It is these struggles which signal the onset of the second contradiction of capitalism rather than any substantive material, viz., ecological, obstacles to accumulation.

What constitutes an ecological crisis and, within capitalist social formations, a crisis in the underproduction of capital, is very much a social construction. It is a social construction in the sense that a range of class and social forces contest the different ways in which our relationship with nature is defined and organized. The imminence of the second contradiction within capitalism may well reflect the emergence of very real and tangible material impediments to accumulation, but it may also reflect the will of the social forces that assert their collective will to define the parameters of humanity’s encounters with nature. Arguing that present modes of interacting with nature are not sustainable does not establish that capitalism is experiencing an ecological crisis and, therefore, a crisis of second contradiction proportions, as O’Connor would agree. But such an argument, in giving force to and reflecting the ascendant authority of environmental movements and a more environmentally conscious working class, and in persuading legislators to more tightly regulate our encounters with nature, may well trigger the second contradiction. To restate one of O’Connor’s methodological starting points, the social element should be accorded greater status within historical materialism without deprecating the significance of the material (ecological) constraints. In emphasizing the material to forge a socialist ecology, we cannot afford to lose sight of the potency of the social. The environmental constraints governing accumulation are as much social constructions as they are natural, insofar as capital’s access to nature is regulated and governed as a result of social struggle and determinations. Conceiving capitalism in terms of a social construction, as a never-ending process of social production, provides a different insight into the teleology of an ecologically bound capitalism.

There is another quite different sense in which the identification of an ecological crisis can be regarded as a social construction, and certainly one that is more problematic. The idea of an ecological crisis is usually identified in terms of the challenge that humanity has posed to the regenerative capacities of ecological systems defined, however loosely, in terms of some self-organizing principle of reproduction and regeneration, irrespective of the status of these ecological systems in relation to human ends. The idea that the integrity and viability of an ecological system is threatened has to be premised on a particular conception of ecological process. Marxists have taken radical environmentalists to task for posing the idea of an ecological crisis in terms of the assault on the essence of nature. Yet arguing that this idea of an essence of nature is both romanticist and idealist begs the question as to how socialist discourse establishes the state of the environment and the concreteness of ecological crisis.

This problem is evident in the articulation of the second contradiction with the assertion of natural limits (or “barriers to overcome”) to accumulation processes. O’Connor seems to be aware of the problematic character of the category nature — his designation “nature” seems to signal that there is not an essential nature — but this is not articulated, and the telos of crisis is premised on a fairly firm commitment to the natural as bounded by physical or biophysical barriers and limits. O’Connor’s concern is, of course, with the crisis in the transformation of nature, with the ability of capital to sustain the transformation of natural elements. But it is nevertheless premised on the idea of natural barriers and limits. To better comprehend the different levels of concern that inform this appreciation of ecological crisis, it is helpful to draw upon the distinction that Marx makes between “first nature” and “second nature.”

The category first nature is something of an heuristic construct in Marx. It refers to two quite distinct concerns. In the first instance, first nature represents that historical ecological epoch that preceded the development of humanity’s transformative powers. This is “pristine nature,” which is the focal point of much of the concern of deep ecologists. In the second sense, first nature is represented as a proxy to signal ecological systems or processes, the biological and physical interactions which constitute an ecological system. An understanding of nature in this second sense, i.e., an understanding of how ecological systems function, is necessary for labor to more effectively secure the natural elements, or the raw material inputs, to engage in production. Once humans intervene in nature to effect production, (and no species, including ours, can use nature without changing it), first nature (as pristine nature) disappears because nature has been transformed. The biological and physical processes that hitherto constituted first nature as a sovereign realm distinct from humanity have been modified, their sovereignty necessarily abolished by human interventions. Nature has been humanized, transformed into second nature, although it remains necessary for direct producers to develop their understanding of first nature in the second sense (as ecological process) in order to facilitate the transformation of the natural elements in the process of production.

O’Connor’s concern is, of course, with the crisis of second nature, with the ability of capital to sustain the transformation of natural elements. But it is nevertheless premised on the idea of some natural limits; or, expressed somewhat differently, it is based on the second notion of first nature. Indeed the idea of the sustainability of second nature advanced in socialist discourse and, for that matter, in most economic and political discourse, is generally posited with reference to biophysical processes, to the integrity of distinct ecological systems for which Marx’s notion of a first nature is a proxy. And, as noted, this distinction between first and second nature arises not only in the debate on ecological crises; a conception of the functioning of the “natural world” is required to inform effective interventions in this world, before production (or the physical transformation of the [now human-modified] biophysical world) can proceed.

However, while the distinction between the constructs first nature (in the second sense) and second nature provides some direction to developing a critical understanding of “nature,” and illuminating the material character of an ecological crisis (i.e., a crisis in first nature), it is not unproblematic. A conception of the workings of ecological systems, of precisely what is meant by first nature, has to be formulated, and the conception of first nature cannot be anything but a human construct. Defining the constituent elements, or the parameters, of the eco-system and hypothesizing the nature of interactions and conduct within this system is the object of scientific inquiry. The science of ecology has developed to conceptualize and accord ecological processes with an ontological status that is represented as objectively determined. But this is simply methodological maneuvering and cannot endow nature with an authenticity. The scientific specification of ecological process always remains a social construct, and the identification of first nature embodies an intellectual transformation, the production of an authentic nature, of second nature as it were. Ecological processes are material processes that can only be revealed by socially constituted techniques or methodologies for eliciting the dynamics of “natural” processes. It is, therefore somewhat intellectually disingenuous for Marxists to dismiss radical ecologists’ constructions of nature as idealistic and then appeal to the more formally constructed conceptions of ecological system advanced by ecological scientists in order to explain ecological crisis. The science of ecological science is always socially constituted and is, in effect, based on a comparable epistemological premise, viz., the authenticity of first nature, to that which informs the radical environmentalist’ idealism. Both second nature and first nature have to be regarded as social constructions.

The import of this distinction suggests a more complex character to the appearance of the second contradiction. In articulating the second contradiction, at one level it is evident that O’Connor is concerned with theorizing the constraints imposed on the accumulation process by the ecological crisis. But, on another level, we have to go beyond this reckoning because the “ecological crisis” and, more particularly, how this crisis is manifested concretely, reflects a particular expression of “the idea of nature.”^[17] O’Connor is mindful of this, as we have noted, but in failing to elucidate the significance of this designation, his analysis tends to proceed as though there is one nature, and that the ecological crisis reflects a crisis in first nature (in the second sense). The theorization of the second contradiction has to be reconciled with the actual process of defining the material (natural) foundations of a social formation as one step in a larger process of social construction and social contestation. This is crucial because ideas of nature reflect and shape the social practices and social movements that determine our human encounters with nature. A socialist ecology has to critically embrace this epistemological problematic. Accordingly, it seems appropriate to qualify the projectory of the social and political processes that are embodied in the telos of crisis to embrace an appreciation of the force of the social, to elucidate a critical social construction of first nature. In sum, to elaborate on the distinction that “the productive forces are natural,” it is essential to recognize that they are always social.

Elucidating the social construction of nature returns us to the issue of the telos of crisis and the possible paths it projects. Mindful of the problem of drawing distinctions between and labelling the different social actors, struggles and arguments over the conditions of production are as much the province of “other,” non-class (defined) forces as they are of the working class. It is not immediately apparent that the global impacts of environmentally degrading capitalist labor processes will necessary exercise the attention of working people constituted as classes.^[18] On the other hand, the new social movements may be seen as offering more radical alternatives to our encounters with nature, alternatives that entail the radical transformation of the social system precisely because they exist outside the capitalist labor process — or, perhaps more correctly, are not constituted within this process. Thus, the “natural” origins of the telos of crisis may well reflect the challenges that the new social movements present to a particular capitalist order and a particular received notion of natural order. The ecological crisis or, more particularly, the second contradiction, may well reflect the success of environmentalists in canvassing an alternative idea of nature, one that seeks to defend a socially constructed notion of first nature from a capital-determined future. They may be organized around idealist and romanticized conceptions of an authentic nature (of first nature), but at least they are consciously occupied with posing an alternative conception of nature. However much these idealist conceptions might be criticized for being caught in the illusion that they have moved beyond an anthropocentrically and instrumentally defined conception of nature, it has to be acknowledged that such movements do seek to represent a self-consciously defined conception of nature that will serve as the basis for exploring radically different modes of organizing production. While Marxists must take issue with this idealist project, because first nature as we have seen cannot be anything but a social construction, a socialist ecology cannot avoid conceptualizing ecological processes and the place of humans within the “natural world” as a first step towards envisaging an ecologically benign future. This demands that we appreciate the different levels at which social interventions will contribute to forming the telos of crisis. What is essential is that we do not take as a given the ruminations of ecological scientists as the one and only word on the state of our place in nature. They have their own agendas shaping their work, and their ideas often get promoted simply to serve the interests of particular social forces, by those already in a position to exercise influence in the production and marshalling of ideas.^[19]

5. Conclusion

The theorization of the second contradiction represents an insightful contribution to the development of socialist ecology. The essence of O’Connor’s thesis is that capitalism should be regarded as a contradictory social system that undermines both the social and the physical foundations of its existence. In the process, capitalism generates an array of social and political forces that have the potential to develop the will and the fortitude to contest this social system. Building the conditions of production into this schema considerably enriches the force of historical materialism because it highlights the pervasive impact of capital on all arenas of human existence (i.e., human life outside of the circuits of capital). It represents a substantial contribution to the critical appreciation of the place of class struggle and the import of other social struggles. In appreciating the force of capital in terms of capital’s endeavors to assert its will over nature, and in highlighting the material constraints that the consequent environmental degradation imposes on accumulation, manifest in the “underproduction” of capital, O’Connor elaborates a constructive way of incorporating nature as an object of study. Importantly, the pivotal position of capital as a force whose authority and preeminence must be challenged by progressive forces if a more ecologically benign future is to be secured is elucidated. Thus, whether we charge the working class with the responsibility for carrying the mantle for the radical transformation of production and the social formation more generally, or whether the new social movements are entrusted with the task of informing how we should set the conditions of production on a sustainable basis, capital and the capitalist system, and not just the capitalist labor process, will be the axes around which these progressive forces must wage their struggles. And the ultimate object must be the building of a socialist ecology.

The rejection of the conventional economistic formulation of class practices and struggles is a meaningful intervention in debates on the place of the working class in struggles around nature. Whatever one may think of the merits of the thesis that the struggles of the working class promise a brighter ecological future, it is absolutely crucial that the direct producers — workers who execute capital’s ambitions to exercise its will and mastery over nature — must be active agents in effecting any worthwhile transformation in systems of production. O’Connor, and one thrust of the Capitalism, Nature, Socialism project more generally, highlight the ways in which a more sympathetic and critical consideration of Marxist theorizations of class and class and social struggles around ecology can be undertaken. I have suggested that there are a range of problems with the way in which O’Connor tends to privilege the working class in this struggle. The endeavor to locate the working class at the fulcrum of the dialectical development of capitalist formations provides a solid foundation for moving beyond a narrowly defined notion of this process, one that is largely constructed in terms of an economistic political economy, to one that embraces the full force of the social. But the idea of capitalism sowing the seeds of its own destruction through the second contradiction, as it has been formulated around the telos of crisis, concedes too much ground to more functionalist tendencies within historical materialism. This also tends to erode the social forces of the initiative with which O’Connor seeks to endow them when wanting to relocate these forces on the historical and above all political stages. The robustness of social struggle is transformed into a largely reactive process, one that deprecates the force of the social. And this is exaggerated by the way in which the new social movements are elevated to the political stage in one gesture and then their authority revoked in another, when O’Connor defends the working class and historical materialism against post-Marxist critiques. The perhaps unnecessarily provocative dismissal of the post-Marxist concerns tends to close off the opportunity for sustaining the critical encounter with the new social movements.^[20]

The positing of a “social theory of crisis,” one that is built on the appreciation of the contradictions associated with the capitalist production process and one that signals the salience of those conditions “external” to the production process, provides a methodological foundation for integrating the dynamic force of not only ecological processes, but also the processes shaping the daily and intergenerational reproduction of human beings and labor power, as well as those shaping the social and urban infrastructure of the built environment. Above all, O’Connor’s schema enables a much richer appreciation of the range of social forces capable of challenging the authority of capital and contributing to the formulation of a socialist future.

^[1]The Fiscal Crisis of the State (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1974), Accumulation Crisis (Oxford: Basis Blackwell, 1983), and The Meaning of Crisis (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984) are O’Connor’s “crisis books” written before he became a self-defined “eco-Marxist.”

^[2]James O’Connor, “Socialism and Ecology,” CNS, 2, 3, October, 1991, pp. 9-10.

^[3]It is also surprising, given the difficulty of defining what is meant by “natural limits” as will be considered below.

^[4]This is not an argument that dismisses the import of the value of natural elements in the process of production. As Marx notes in The Critique of the Gotha Programme: “Labour is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use value (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labour, which is itself only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labour power.” For a recent exposition of this issue and the distinction between use-value which is likely to embody some appreciation of environmental standards and exchange value, see, James Devine “The Law of Value and Marxian Political Ecology,” in Jesse Vorst, Ross Dobson, Ron Fletcher, eds., Green on Red: Evolving Ecological Socialism (Halifax: Society for Socialist Studies, Fernwood Publishing, 1993), pp. 135-36.

^[5]What Martin O’Connor has referred to as the colonization (capitalization) of nature. See, “The System of Capitalized Nature,” CNS, 3, 3, September, 1992.

^[6]Stuart Rosewarne and Peter Kell, “Capitalist crisis and the environment,” Australian Political Economy Conference, October 1994, Sydney.

^[7]The distinction between the interests of individual capitals and capital in general being made here mirrors the contributions of Michael Lebowitz to the “Symposium on the Second Contradiction.” See, Michael Lebowitz “Capitalism: How many Contradictions?” CNS, 3, 3, September, 1992.

^[8]Elmar Altvater, The Future of the Market: An Essay on the Regulation of Money and Nature after the Collapse of “Actually Existing Socialism” (London: Verso, 1993), pp. 221-22.

^[9]This is the case because, although these may “appear as non-class issues, and...the agents define themselves as non-class actors,” and although “the issues cut across class lines...there is a class dimension to all struggles over conditions” and because, at the very least, because it will invariably be capital that is seen standing most firmly against the progressive enhancement of the various “conditions of production.” See, James O’Connor “Capitalism, Nature, Socialism: A Theoretical Introduction,” CNS, Issue 1, Fall, 1988, pp. 37, 27.

^[10]Ibid., p. 34. The general intent of this contention is reinforced by Lebowitz’ consideration of the political economy of labor. He argues that one can posit a rationale among the working class for resisting the degradation of the environment simply in terms of the class’s desire to meet its social needs. See, Michael Lebowitz Beyond Capital: Marx’s Political Economy of the Working Class (London: Macmillan, 1993), esp. Ch. 4.

It might also be represented in terms of labor’s struggles to assert its subjectivity within the labor process. This might be organized around labor seeking to re-construct an affinity with nature in the way in which Benton has argued building on Marx’s observation of labor’s dialectical relation with nature, one that entails the humanization of nature and the naturalization of labor. See, Ted Benton “Marxism and Natural Limits: an Ecological Critique and Reconstruction,” New Left Review, 178, September-October, 1988.

^[12]In class formations, O’Connor argues, “the history of nature becomes the history of exploitation and resistance to exploitation by the producing classes.” See, “Socialism and Ecology,” CNS, Issue 2, Summer, 1989, p. 7.

^[13]Thus, O’Connor observes: “In fact, no way exists for diverse social struggles defending the integrity of particular sites to universalize themselves, hence win, and at the same time, retain their diversity...” (O’Connor, 1988, op. cit., pp. 34-35, 39).

^[14]The epistemological significance of this should not be underestimated. The construction of class in terms of the second contradiction represents a noteworthy epistemological break from the classical Marxist tradition insofar as it inscribes quite a different ontology to the working class. Historical materialism has generally located the essence of the working class almost wholly in terms of the struggle against exploitation. The nature and focus of class relations and struggle within Marxism has been quite specific and quite limited. It has been premised on a one-dimensional portrait of the key social actor, labor, whose essence is defined in relation to the sphere of production.

^[15]Concretely, according to O’Connor, this has been manifested in a reorientation of working class struggle — a redefining and broadening of “the class struggle beyond any self-recognition as such.” But O’Connor also signals that it is appropriate to regard the struggles over “capitalist threats to the reproduction of production conditions...[as] not only threats to profits and accumulation, but also to the viability of the social and ‘natural’ environment as a means of life.” See, O’Connor, 1989, op. cit., pp. 34-35. This both contrasts with and complements the conception of what constitutes working class needs and what shapes the parameters of class interests and class struggles advanced by Lebowitz. See, Lebowitz, 1993, op. cit.

^[16]Witness the recent work of Ralph Miliband.

^[17]An expression advanced by Raymond Williams and more recently taken up by David Harvey. See Raymond Williams Problems in Materialism and Culture (London: Verso, 1980); David Harvey “The Nature of the Environment: The Dialectics of Social and Environmental Change,” in Ralph Miliband and Leo Panitch, eds., Real Problems and False Solutions: Socialist Register 1993 (London: Merlin, 1993).

^[18]The veracity of O’Connor’s contention of an expanded working class ontology will, of course, be reflected in the capacity of working class movements to challenge dominant constructions of nature. This capacity may be constrained by the degree to which labor’s ideas of nature are formed within the sphere of the capitalist labor process.

^[19]It is appropriate to be reminded of the place of science and technocrats in cementing particular power relations, and as Gorz has noted, the current appeal to science and technocrats with a view to abolishing the “political in favour of the expertocracy.” See, Andre Gorz “Political Ecology: Expertocracy versus Self-Limitation,” New Left Review, 202, 1993. See also, Stanley Aronowitz, Science and Power: Discourse and Ideology — Master Science (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988), and Ashis Nandy, ed., Science, Hegemony and Violence: A Requiem for Modernity (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), especially the “Introduction: Science as a Reason of State.”

^[20]In a communication with the author, O’Connor writes: “I framed the problem the way I did in order to develop a specifically Marxist-type approach, in turn, with the aim of ‘greening’ Marxists. A different approach to the whole problematic of history and nature would be necessary to ‘Marxize’ greens.”