Foster John Bellamy - What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism: a citizens guide to capitalism and the environment

What Every Environmentalist Needs

to Know about Capitalism

What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism

A Citizens Guide to Capitalism and the Environment

Fred Magdoff andJohn Bellamy Foster

Copyright 2011 by Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Magdoff, Fred, 1942

What every environmentalist needs to know about capitalism : a citizens guide to capitalism and the

environment / Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-58367-241-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-58367-242-6 (cloth : alk. paper) 1.

Environmental economics. 2. Capitalism. 3. EnvironmentalismEconomic aspects. 4. Environmentalism

Political aspects. 5. Environmental policy. I. Foster, John Bellamy. II. Title.

HC79.E5M329 2011

330.122dc23

2011021515

Monthly Review Press

146 West 29th Street, Suite 6W

New York, New York 10001

www.monthlyreview.org

www.MRzine.org

5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Preface

Wealth, if limits are not set for it, is great poverty.

EPICURUS

Ecological economist Herman Daly is well known for emphasizing what he has called the Impossibility

Theorem of unlimited economic growth in a limited environment. Put concretely, an extension of a U.S.-style

high consumption economy to the entire world of 7 billion peoplemuch less the 9 billion-plus world

population projected for the middle of the present centuryis a flat impossibility. In this book we are

concerned with extending Dalys Impossibility Theorem by introducing what we regard to be its most important

corollary: the continuation for any length of time of capitalism, as a grow-or-die system dedicated to unlimited

capital accumulation, is itself a flat impossibility.

We are constantly being told by the vested interestsand even by self-designated environmentalists and

environmental organizationsthat capitalism offers the solution to the environmental problem: as if the further

growth of capital markets, green consumption, and new technology provide us with miraculous ways out of our

global ecological dilemma. Such views are rooted in an absolute denial of reality, or what John Kenneth

Galbraith has called a system of innocent fraud. In this make-believe, Through the Looking Glass world, the

wondrous workings of markets, perhaps tweaked here or there by regulations and incentives, make miracles

possible. In the process, the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, and ecologyas well as the limits of the earth

are simply conjured away. Fundamental changes in our mode of existence and our lifestyle are not required:

another world is not necessary.

All of this raises questions about what constitutes environmentalism. Today, more people than ever are

convinced that the degradation of the earths life support systems is leading us toward catastrophe. Whether

they are environmental activists or not, growing numbers of people are concerned about the environment and

are taking small steps, and willing to do much more, in order to protect the planet. For all those concerned with

the fate of the earth, the time has come to face facts: not simply the dire reality of climate change and other

forms of environmental destruction, but also that there is a pressing need to change the basic relationships

between humanity and the earth. Put simply, it is essential to break with a system based on a single motive

the perpetual accumulation of capital, and hence economic growth without end. Such a break is a necessary, if

not sufficient, condition for the creation of a new ecological civilization.

This book grew out of an article with the same title, originally published in the March 2010 issue of Monthly

Review. Interest in our article was so great that we were encouraged to expand it into a short book. This brief

work thus is a product of its origins. We have not tried to present a systematic discussion of the entire planetary

ecological crisis, though many aspects of that are touched on here. Rather our goal is to provide a useful introduction to the issue laid out in our title: What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism.

What every environmentalist needs to know, of course, is that capitalism is not the solution but the problem,

and that if humanity is going to survive this crisis, it will do so because it has exercised its capacity for human

freedom, through social struggle, in order to create a whole new worldin coevolution with the planet.

Our personal and intellectual debts in relation to this work are too vast to acknowledge in full. However, we

would like to thank especially Hannah Holleman and Jan Schultz, who aided and assisted us in the preparation

of the present manuscript at various stages of completion.

We would also like to acknowledge the political and intellectual support of those at Monthly Review, Monthly

Review Press, and MRzine, without which this work would have been inconceivable, including: Scott Borchert,

Brett Clark, Susie Day, Yoshie Furushashi, John Mage, Martin Paddio, John Simon, Victor Wallis, and Michael

Yates.

Some of our close friends, colleagues, and students have contributed to our understanding of ecological

issues in ways that have impacted this book: including Matthew Clement, Cade Jameson, R. Jamil Jonna, Brian

Tokar, Ryan Wishart, and Richard York.

During the last two years, while working on the ideas in this book, we have traveled to Bolivia, Brazil,

China, Venezuela, and Vietnam to discuss ecological issues. We are thus constantly reminded that the ecological

movement is a planetary one. We would like to thank the many individuals from many different cultures that

we have encountered in these journeys.

Finally, we would like to offer our heartfelt thanks to Amy Demarest and Carrie Ann Naumoff, with whom

we share our lives on this earth and our struggles for a sustainable future.

JUNE 5, 2011

FLETCHER, VERMONT

EUGENE, OREGON

1. The Planetary Ecological Crisis

Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For

each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the

results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only

too often cancel the first .

FREDERICK ENGELS

Environmental degradation is not new to todays world but has occurred throughout recorded history with

profound negative consequences for a number of ancient civilizationsmost notably Mesopotamia and the

Maya, which experienced major collapses due to what are believed to be ecological causes. Problems with

deforestation, soil erosion, and salinization of irrigated soils were present throughout antiquity. Commenting on

the ecological destruction in ancient Greece Plato (c. 427347 BCE) wrote in Critias:

What proof then can we offer that it [the land in the vicinity of Athens] is now a mere remnant of

what it once was? You are left (as with little islands) with something rather like the skeleton of a body