http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/images/pb4413.jpgToday, as István Mészáros has argued, and as Hugo Chávez was prepared to argue on a world stage, we need a New International. The only force that can combat imperialism today is a worldwide struggle of workers (what I like to call an emerging "environmental proletariat," reflecting the extended material struggles of our time) through which human solidarity is globalized. In my book Naked Imperialism I argued that the present, "potentially most dangerous phase of imperialism" (as Mészáros calls it) was brought into being by the demise of the Soviet Union, which allowed the United States as the sole remaining superpower -- though relying also on NATO -- to initiate regime change in parts of the Middle East, Central Asia, northern Africa, parts of Eastern Europe, and elsewhere. Thus began what the Council of Foreign Relations in the United States (the main think tank of U.S. imperialism) has called a "New Thirty Years' War." Any mere standing back and letting this happen without resistance -- for example under the delusion that this is simply "anti-terrorism" or "humanitarian intervention" -- is to sign over the world to the global forces of destruction. Local struggles against imperialism will always occur; the global struggle means that the world's people as a whole must link to these local struggles and come to the aid of them, creating an unbreakable chain. Fortunately, again, there are contradictions, in the economic, political, and ecological realms, that are driving people together. Today's imperialist intervention might even be seen as a desperate effort by the powers that be to prevent the emergence a more unified global revolt, by seeking to drive a wedge in between.

More... (http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2016/jbf200416.html)

The first part is good...


Mohsen Abdelmoumen: Can we consider you a modern Marxist?

John Bellamy Foster: What is meant by "modern" nowadays is always a complex topic, but setting that aside I would answer Yes, in the concrete sense that I am engaged in the development of historical materialism in the present and see my analysis as part of a broad revolutionary intellectual heritage and scientific tradition going back to Marx. I am particularly concerned with the reunification of Marxism in theory and practice, transcending the Cold War divisions, which split apart Marxism as well, and building on the classical historical materialist tradition. Central to this reunification is the challenge represented by the ecological crisis -- along with the political-economic crisis of our time, and the new fissures opening up in contemporary imperialism. The left has to be open to new strategies for the development of socialism reflecting the changing conditions of the present as history. Western Marxism needs to free itself from Eurocentrism and put imperialism at the center of its analysis.

Is Marx an ecologist?

He certainly deserves to be considered one. In 2000 I published a book called Marx's Ecology. The original working title was Marx and Ecology but as a result of my research it was clear that nothing but the more affirmative form of the title would do. Although the term "ecology" was introduced by Ernst Haeckel in 1866, the year before the publication of volume 1 of Marx's Capital, it did not receive much attention until the very end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. Marx, influenced by his friend, the communist physician Roland Daniels, as well as the prominent chemist Justus von Liebig, adopted the concept of metabolism (Stoffwechsel). Based on the revolution in physics, associated with the development of thermodynamics, Daniels in his manuscript Mikrokosmos, which Marx read, extended the concept of metabolism to explain the interdependencies between plants and animals. Influenced by this, and later by the work of Liebig, Marx introduced the concept of "social metabolism" to define the labor process, which he described as the metabolism between human beings and nature. The social metabolism, in his conception, was part of what he called the larger "universal metabolism of nature."

Under the alienated conditions of capitalist commodity production, Marx argued, a metabolic "rift" developed in the human relation to the earth (the social metabolism), which he illustrated in terms of the loss of soil nutrients, which were shipped to the city in the form of food and fiber under an increasingly industrialized system of agriculture. Marx argued that capitalism thus tended to disrupt the eternal, nature-imposed conditions of production itself. This demanded the "restoration" of the metabolism between humanity and nature, which could only be achieved through the rational regulation of the metabolism between nature and society by the associated producers. Marx thus saw ecological crisis as what he called an "unconscious socialist tendency." He went on to provide what was perhaps the most radical conception of sustainability of his time, or perhaps anytime, arguing that human beings do not own the earth, that not even all the people on the earth own the earth, that they were merely responsible for maintaining and improving it for future generations as good heads of the household.

Marx's ecological understanding grew out of his earliest works, including his doctoral dissertation on the Epicurean philosophy of nature. He followed developments in natural science quite broadly throughout his lifetime, connecting these to his critique of political economy. As Kohei Saito has shown, Marx's ecological notebooks, written during his last two decades, demonstrate that he was more and more concerned with ecological contradictions in the context of what has come to be known as his theory of metabolic rift. For example, Marx took detailed notes on the shifts in isotherms and their relation to species extinction -- a crucial issue today in the context of climate change.

Marx's approach to metabolism anticipated much of modern ecology. Ecology in the modern sense only really took off with the development of the ecosystem concept, which was modeled on the basis of the concept of metabolism. We now speak of the earth metabolism in ways that are closely related to Marx's approach. In the social sciences Marx's concept of social metabolism and his concept of the metabolic rift have become crucial to our understanding of the ecological problem. Indeed, Marx's theory of metabolic rift coupled with what is known today as his ecological value-form analysis (building on the dual conceptions of use value and exchange value) -- both of which were integrated within his overall critique of political economy -- provides us with the only truly comprehensive social-ecological critique of capitalism available to us today.

The capitalist system has failed. In your opinion, what are the consequences?

Eric Hobsbawm's magisterial history of the short twentieth century was called The Age of Extremes. What many people don't realize is that one of these extremes was monopoly capitalism (today this is taking the form of monopoly-finance capital, more commonly referred to in terms of its ideology of neoliberalism). From an early age my work has focused on three dimensions of the structural crisis of monopoly capital: imperialism, the crisis of accumulation, and the ecological emergency, which together represent the failure of capitalism. No one can say what the consequences of this structural crisis will be. As Georg Lukács wrote, "[t]he . . . heterogeneity of natural [and social] beings means that every activity is continuously affected by accidents."

What we do know is that under "business as usual" (to adopt the term used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to refer to our present structural reality) the world is in the midst of a Great Climacteric that can either lead to cascading catastrophes or to a new sustainable order -- and that the more positive outcomes require a movement toward socialism. Right now, without such a shift, the outcomes are primarily negative. Imperialistically, we are seeing the emergence of a more polarized global order, only partly disguised by the shift of actual production increasingly to the global South (with monopolies of capital, technology, finance, trade, and military power concentrated in the global North). Militarism, military intervention, war, and the use of force in the widest sense are now extremely difficult to track, since continual, occurring on a day-to-day basis, and crossing all boundaries. Economically, at the center of the world economy monopolization, stagnation, and financialization dominate, with the global working class suffering from the kind of precariousness that Marx associated with the industrial reserve army of labor. Ruling over all of this and consolidating it is a kind of surveillance capitalism, which is the means of domestic control under monopoly-finance capital. Ecologically, the crossing of planetary boundaries, most notably climate change, points to the almost inevitable collapse of human civilization under business as usual. To speak of the failure of the system when it displays such deep contradictions is an understatement.

Fortunately, in the Marxian conception, history moves by way of contradictions, and we always have to wait for the other shoe to drop. In the Great Climacteric of the present that can only mean -- if humanity is to retain its forward movement -- an acceleration of history such that humanity enters a new phase of ecological revolution.


Not so much for the rest.

That last paragraph brings to mind punctuated equilibrium, and it seems to me that socialism in general and Marxism in particular are survival attributes which must come into play for the continuance of our species.

socialism in general and Marxism in particular are survival attributes which must come into play for the continuance of our species.

This is dead right.

The piece is a good read, even if there are parts that are questionable. Foster connects the dots very well; the problem comes with trying to set out a program that "leads to development of socialism reflecting the changing conditions of the present as history." A program that pulls the "Eurocommies" heads out of the bourgeoisie's ass. I see that as a nonstarter. Of course conditions change, constantly, but viewing the change in the last one hundred years and then categorically declaring that "old" ideas of class struggle no longer pertain is not only analytically wrong, but toweringly presumptive, as well. Before someone can say , "Marxism-Leninism is no longer viable!" That someone must lay out the analysis and the supporting evidence to backup that assertion. I have read nothing that even comes close to meeting these requirements. Commentators simply make the assertion as though it were common knowledge.

Sorry for the sermon, it just popped out. The ecological crisis is becoming THE crisis and will over shadow all others. And this crisis, too, is laid at the doorstep of capitalism - I haven't heard even an attempt to deny it.

This is dead right.

The piece is a good read, even if there are parts that are questionable. Foster connects the dots very well; the problem comes with trying to set out a program that "leads to development of socialism reflecting the changing conditions of the present as history." A program that pulls the "Eurocommies" heads out of the bourgeoisie's ass. I see that as a nonstarter. Of course conditions change, constantly, but viewing the change in the last one hundred years and then categorically declaring that "old" ideas of class struggle no longer pertain is not only analytically wrong, but toweringly presumptive, as well. Before someone can say , "Marxism-Leninism is no longer viable!" That someone must lay out the analysis and the supporting evidence to backup that assertion. I have read nothing that even comes close to meeting these requirements. Commentators simply make the assertion as though it were common knowledge.

Sorry for the sermon, it just popped out. The ecological crisis is becoming THE crisis and will over shadow all others. And this crisis, too, is laid at the doorstep of capitalism - I haven't heard even an attempt to deny it.

You are very right about the deficiencies of Foster, and truly the more I read him it seems that the only thing he gets right is the place of ecology in Marx's thought and the need for Marxist perspective to solve these problems.

Environmental issues cannot supersede the class struggle as they are part of it. The ruling class attempts to have their cake and eat it too, as usual, exploiting humans and everything else with no repercussions to themselves. Impossible, but their hubris is so great...

You often see some environmental types wishing some natural catastrophe destroy civilization, kill off most of humanity(except them!), and we know there is a racist rationale underlying. Well fuck them, humans are undeniably part of nature and I think they should be careful what they wish for. This is a class problem and we got a class solution. Good thing we're the agents of Gaia. ;>)

You are very right about the deficiencies of Foster, and truly the more I read him it seems that the only thing he gets right is the place of ecology in Marx's thought and the need for Marxist perspective to solve these problems.

Environmental issues cannot supersede the class struggle as they are part of it. The ruling class attempts to have their cake and eat it too, as usual, exploiting humans and everything else with no repercussions to themselves. Impossible, but their hubris is so great...

You often see some environmental types wishing some natural catastrophe destroy civilization, kill off most of humanity(except them!), and we know there is a racist rationale underlying. Well fuck them, humans are undeniably part of nature and I think they should be careful what they wish for. This is a class problem and we got a class solution. Good thing we're the agents of Gaia. ;>)

Yeah, the solution is the working class. The problem with climate change (a benign sounding phrase for habitat destruction - ours) is that the bulk of the hardship will be borne by the working class, as usual. When these progressive eco-warriors talk about destroying civilization and most of humanity - that's us and our children's children they're talking about - they are telling us who they blame. That is one of the things that is so infuriating about this whole mess - we are painted as the offenders. The industrial/capitalist destruction of our habitat is somehow the working class' fault! I remember one of our members, here, who said if anyone wanted her to clean-up after the corporations they'd need to pay her. She didn't make the problem, the corporations did - let them clean it up! The thing is that it no longer possible to "clean it up", now we just have to survive and that means over turning capitalism - everywhere.

Yeah, the solution is the working class. The problem with climate change (a benign sounding phrase for habitat destruction - ours) is that the bulk of the hardship will be borne by the working class, as usual. When these progressive eco-warriors talk about destroying civilization and most of humanity - that's us and our children's children they're talking about - they are telling us who they blame. That is one of the things that is so infuriating about this whole mess - we are painted as the offenders. The industrial/capitalist destruction of our habitat is somehow the working class' fault! I remember one of our members, here, who said if anyone wanted her to clean-up after the corporations they'd need to pay her. She didn't make the problem, the corporations did - let them clean it up! The thing is that it no longer possible to "clean it up", now we just have to survive and that means over turning capitalism - everywhere.

Observed objectively, it is an impressive misdirection. They make the shit but we're responsible for it. They say "You asked for it!", but it ain't so. Only things we asked for is the means of sustenance and enjoyment of life. Never asked for 27 brands of toothpaste, HumVees or mountaintop removal. There is much talk about how much food gets wasted and that's our fault too. But the amount of wastage 'up-stream' is not mentioned. And the amount of labor that is rendered valueless by the operation of the market is stupefying. The organization of society for the profit of the ruling class is, contrary to their propaganda, the most inefficient use of labor and resources imaginable. The myopia induced by this social environment makes the potential efficiency of a planned economy damn near unimaginable.
Which brings me back to my previous suggestion that we need a WITBD for the 21st century...

This bit from latest from Steppling touches on this 'neat trick':

This demand for accepting blame (whether it is racialist or something else) is often concealed by what Jakobsen and Pellegrini (2003) called the *tolerant middle*. This is a subject position that voices a bland plea for balance, reasonableness, and tolerance, and yet such pleas disguise a demand for the status quo. All extreme opinions or emotions are accused of being unreasonable and somehow harmful. The need for this tolerance in this case masks intolerance to the extent that the hierarchies and values of the tolerant middle are those of the dominant class. In the liberal and left today, in the West, there is almost a secondary subject formation that is closely related except that is expanded to labels that accept a certain kind of activist critique. The activist middle. And environmentalists often harbor this subject position, a kind of self image based on highly instrumental thinking and a deep belief in the authority of science. Now, I mention this because this secondary version of the *tolerant middle* is closely related to the new antisemites who present themselves as concerned about Israeli violence yet harbor a deeper need to scapegoat. The reality of colonial history (including Zionism) is deflected and this new voice of tolerance enters the discourse to allocate blame in appropriate percentages. The system recedes ever further in the rear view mirror. There is, then, something in the 21st century Western liberal and leftist (the new faux left I should say) that compulsively demands *others* atone for the sins they see around them. Violence, inequality, environmental degradation — it is all a search for the perfect scapegoat. And this scapegoat, to be the appropriate one must be containable conceptually. This is the cunning of Capitalism. A system of domination and coercion that operates according to a rationale of containment, in fact, produces subject positions that can criticize everything except their own experience of containment.
It strikes me that there has been a loss of true melancholia today. One cannot experience rejection — the loss of something by any means except death — if one has nothing that one desires to master or control. By which I mean when the subject position wants to see in others all the qualities, both good and bad, that normally (sic) one would see in oneself, the idea of rejection recedes in that same rear view mirror. Sadness itself is pathologized now. Grief is acceptable, and there is even a pretty flourishing grief industry, but melancholia is either reduced to a variety of depression, and medicated, or it simply is projected out as part of this scapegoating mechanism. The Israeli question again is relevant, for there is an approved sadness and concern for the victims of settler state violence (Palestinians) but that becomes the alibi to demand atonement by SOMEONE ELSE. All those Jews not in Israel must speak up. It is utterly irrelevant that many in fact do. For this is the presumed guilt one sees in the exact same way in the new Islamophobia.

Presumed guilt is now projected onto the legal systems as part of the victim’s right movement. No justice without guilt. The boundaries of this guilt apportioning become ever blurrier. Now, to return to Girard a moment; the formulation of coveting that which belongs to my neighbor seems to be shifting. The desire for your neighbor to lose what he has, rather than getting it yourself. This also allow for this false concern. It is not quite that simple, of course, for the desire for your neighbor to lose must be repressed.

“We congratulate ourselves on having within us a desire that “will last forever,” as Baudelaire put it (“l’expansion des choses infinies”), but we do not see what this “forever” conceals: the idolization of the neighbor. This idolatry is necessarily associated with the idolization of ourselves. The more desperately we seek to worship ourselves and to be good “individualists,” the more compelled we are to worship our rivals in a cult that turns to hatred.”
Rene Girard

I suspect the digitally shaped unconscious of Capitalism today is one in which the production of the good individual is mediated with the ambivalence of the neighbor’s losing the desired possession. Collectively the bourgeois West today is constantly self congratulating. Hollywood is a factory of self congratulation. And yet, that self congratulation takes, increasingly — because of this streak of environmental narcissism — a kind of false modesty and humility. And that false modesty is the reincarnation of the suppression of appetite. Loss is good, if its not actually our own loss. Loss is the reduced environmental footprint. This is the accelerating cottage industry of green guilt. Environmental responsibility becomes part of a character production where less and small is transferred to the person; the subject starts to fade and dissolve into an environmentally responsible phantom. The constant celebrity diets and health advice is part of an economy of resentment. It is also paternalism, and that is also, or has some linkage I think, with the residual white supremacist values of eugenics. The ruling class ideal, expressed in corporate media, is passionless even tempered and physically fit. The aerobicized overlords, mildly autistic and superficially tolerant.

http://john-steppling.com/2016/04/i-cant-see-the-back-of-my-head/

But if he thinks melancholia is dead then he ain't reading Suchan or El Murid...

But if he thinks melancholia is dead then he ain't reading Suchan or El Murid...

No shit. Reading those guys makes me fight back tears.

I don't know if it is the subject matter or what, but this is the first time reading Steppling that I actually understood practically everything he had to say. Good piece.