André Gorz - Ecology as Politics

Andr Gorz

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Translated by Patsy Vigderman and Jonathan Cloud

SOUTH END PRESS, BOSTON

Copyright 1980 by Andre Gorz

First published as Ecologie et politique by Editions Galilee, Paris, France.

Copyright 1975, 1977, Editions Galilee.

Copyrights are still required for book production in the United States. However, in our case it is a disliked necessity. Thus, any properly footnoted quotation of up to 500 sequential words may be used without permission, so long as the total number of words quoted does not exceed 2000. For longer quotations or for a greater number of total words, authors should write for permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Card Number: 79-64086 ISBN 0-89608-088-9 paper ISBN 0-89608-089-7 cloth

Translated from the French by:

Jonathan Cloud (Part I)

Patsy Vigderman (Parts II, III, and IV)

Cover design by Ann L. Raszmann/Boston Community School

Coordinated by Billy Pope

Design, typesetting, and paste up were done by

South End Press Box 68 Astor Station Boston, MA 02123

UK Distributor: Pluto Press Limited Unit 10 Spencer Court/ 7 Chalcot Road London NWI 8LH

Introduction: Two Kinds of Ecology

I. Ecology and Freedom

1. Ecological Realism

2. Political Economy and Ecology: Marx and Illich

3. Ecology and the Inversion of Tools

4. Ecology and the Crisis of Capitalism

5. The Poverty of Affluence

6. Equality and Difference

7. Social Self-Regulation and Regulation from Outside

8. Seven Theses by Way of Conclusion

A Possible Utopia

II. Ecology and Society

1. Reinventing the Future

2. Affluence Dooms Itself

3. The Social Ideology of the Motorcar

4. Socialism or Ecofascism

5. Twelve Billion People?

III. The Logic of Tools

1. Nuclear Energy: A Preeminently Political Choice

2. From Nuclear Electricity to Electric Fascism

3. Boundless Imperialism: The Multinationals

4. Labor and the Quality of Life

IV. Medicine, Health and Society

Introduction

1. Medicine and Illness

2. Health and Society

3. Science and Class: The Case of Medicine

Epilogue: The Continuing American Revolution

It is inadequate to answer that this question is secondary, and that the main thing is not to botch up the planet to the point where it becomes uninhabitable. For survival is not an end in itself either: is it really worth surviving in a world transformed into a planetary hospital, planetary school, planetary prison, where it becomes the principal task of spiritual engineers to fabricate people adapted to these conditions? (Illich)

To be convinced that this is the world which the technocrats are preparing for us, one has only to consider the new brainwashing techniques being developed in the U.S. and Germany. 1 Researchers attached to the psychiatric clinic of the University of Hamburg, following the work of American psychiatrists and psychosurgeons, are exploring ways of eliminating the aggressiveness which prevents people from accepting the most total forms of frustrationthose of the prison system in particular, but also those of the assembly line, of urban crowding, of schooling, red tape, and military discipline.

We should do well, therefore, to define at the outset what we are struggling for, as well as against. And we should do well to try to understand how, concretely, capitalism is likely to be affected and changed by ecological constraints, instead of believing that these will, in and of themselves, bring about its disappearance.

To do this we must First grasp what an ecological constraint means in economic terms. Consider the gigantic chemical plants of the Rhine valley: BASF in Ludwigshafen, AKZO in Rotterdam, or Bayer in Leverkusen. Each of these complexes represents a combination of the following factors:

natural resources (air, water, minerals) that until now were considered without value and were treated as free goods, because they did not need to be reproduced (i.e., replaced);

means of production (machines, buildings, etc.), i.e., fixed capital, which eventually become obsolete and must conse

quently be replaced (reproduced), preferably by more efficient and more powerful ones so as to give the firm an advantage over its competitors;

labor power, which must also be reproduced (the workers must be housed, fed, trained, and kept healthy).