When a young associate professor at Tokyo University, published Marx in the Anthropocene, he captivated Japan with a post-capitalist, green manifesto. In Saito’s view: capitalism’s demand for unlimited profits is destroying the planet and only “degrowth” can repair the damage by slowing down social production and sharing wealth.
In practical terms, that means an end to mass production and the mass consumption of wasteful goods such as fast fashion and chocolated coffee. Saito also advocates decarbonisation through shorter working hours and prioritising essential “labour-intensive” work such as caregiving.
We need to see capitalism’s relation to its natural environment as that of a robbery system, leading to an irreparable rift in the metabolism between humanity and nature. This concept of ‘metabolic rift’ (Stoffwechsel) lies in the understanding on circulation of soil nutrients between countryside and town thereby contributing to human disharmonies from the natural world, (Kohei Saito).
The rampant disfiguration upon nature can be seen arising from sure abuse of resources for commercial exploitation whether they are in Lynas rare earth production, Mamut copper mining or from the gold mining in Pahang.
Thus, the expansive degradation of Malaysian natural resources is not just mere deforestation to acquire 1,547 lots of land in Kelantan needed for phase one of the East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) project that eventually defrauded the national treasury in the 1MDB heist nor rakyat² taken for a ride constructed as the Pan-Borneo Highway robbery, but a continuous extension of its neoliberalism economic expression to support capitalism in an alignment connecting to neo-imperialism monopoly-capital domination, (read Magdoff and Sweezy, 06/06/2023, The tragedy of capitalist rule).
One needs to re-learn from Marx on how to develop an ecological critique of capitalism. This is an urgent practical and theoretical task in today’s left initiatives, as for humanity is facing a critical global ecological crisis under neoliberal capitalism.
Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything has provided a rather convincing analysis of how the regeneration of the Marxist idea of metabolic rift can open up new imagination for an ecosocialist project during this millennium.
She further advocates ecosocialism, “a new form of democratic eco-socialism, with the humility to learn from Indigenous teachings about the duties to future generations and the interconnection of all of life, appears to be humanity’s best shot at collective survival.”
The existing Ecological-Epidemiological-Economic crisis can be related to “the global ecological rift,” where the disruption and destabilization of the human relationship to nature on a planetary scale, emerging from the process of capital accumulation without end, (Foster, Clark, and York, The Ecological Rift, 14–15, 18). In The Return of Nature, Foster has explored how socialist analysts and materialist scientists of various disciplines, first in Britain, then the United States, from William Morris and Frederick Engels to Joseph Needham, Rachel Carson, and Stephen Jay Gould, sought to develop a dialectical naturalism, rooted in a critique of capitalism. In the process, Forster delivers a far-reaching and the fascinating exploration in reinterpretation of the radical and socialist origins of ecology.
This theme is, of course, nowadays reinforced by Japanese Marxist-author, Kohei Saito who has shown from researching on Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) Volume IV/18, that the nature-human interaction and Marx pointed critique of the ecological harm produced by capital accumulation.
Saito will be speaking at the
July 1 - July 2, 2023, when
Cheong Huei Ting -
Coordinator for the Environmental and Climate Crisis Bureau for the Socialist Party of Malaysia - shall be one of the speakers, too.
Here's a write-up from greenleft on Kohei Saito:
According to Japanese Marxist writer and academic Kohei Saito, the keynote speaker at the Ecosocialism Conference 2023 in Naarm/Melbourne over July 1-2, there are five important reasons why we need to move beyond capitalism to deal with the ecological and social crises besetting the world today.
First, capitalism (even an imagined one running on 100% renewable energy) will continue to expand production, endlessly trying to maximise profits.
The entire economy will remain distorted in favour of producing and distributing whatever commodities can make the owners of capital the biggest profits and pursuing infinite and sustainable growth.
“Products that are not essential for social reproduction or that are destructive of humans and the environment — for example, SUVs, fast fashion and industrial meat — are mass produced, as long as they sell well,” Saito explains in his book, Marx in the Anthropocene.
“At the same time, goods and services that do not make a profit are under-produced, no matter how essential they are.”
Only a new social system that breaks from the pursuit of profit can be freed from the constant pressure of infinite economic growth and reallocate resources to sectors that are desperately under-developed, even in some of the wealthiest countries.
For instance, we can see that even in wealthy Australia more resources are urgently needed to provide truly affordable and better housing, hospitals, quality and free education, public transportation and arts and culture.
Much essential work cannot be fully automated, but remains labour intensive, Saito said and, consequently, the capitalist system treats these as “unproductive” compared with other industrial sectors that have become more and more capital intensive through mechanisation.
So, the more society shifts towards really essential work, the slower the entire economy is likely to become.
Secondly, an alternative system that can be recognised by the majority of people as truly liberating needs to radically shorten the work week, not just to share the work around equitably but also to liberate human creativity, build social solidarity and enable true democratic engagement.
Society has gone through decades of rapid technological change in history yet, as Saito explains, “no matter how much capitalism develops productive forces, work hours did not decline during the 20th and 21st centuries ... On the contrary, the increasing number of precarious and low-paid jobs compels people to work longer hours”.
More are forced to do “bullshit jobs”, that is, jobs that even workers themselves know are meaningless for society if not destructive.
“Well-being can even improve because spending a large part of one’s life in meaningless jobs is harmful for mental health and these jobs also create meaningless products such as excessive advertisements, intimidation lawsuits and high-frequency trading,” Saito notes.
This kind of meaningless labour consumes a lot of energy and resources, as well as the support of care workers, and the elimination of bullshit jobs would dramatically reduce environmental impacts.
Third, an ecosocialist society would not only mean a shorter work week but it would make the content of the work we do more attractive and fulfilling. This could happen in part by breaking down the alienating divisions of labour imposed by the capitalist profit drive. The separation of mental and physical labour can be broken down and workers given back more control over their own labour.
Fourth, a system that is no longer based on the race and competition for profits will also be a slower economy.
Degrowth proponents have argued that decarbonisation simply cannot be accomplished fast enough to reach zero emissions in time to stay under 1.5° or 2°C, if high-income nations continue to grow at their usual rate of around 3% per year.
Climate is not the only issue, as the pursuit of unlimited growth is also driving the species extinction, waste and pollution and resource depletion.
An ecologically sustainable society would need to have a “steady-state economy”.
Fifth, only by liberating the majority from the “despotism of capital” can we gain the freedom to make choices about what we produce collectively and how we do it. Understanding what needs to be done for the sake of social justice and ecological sustainability, but having the power to democratically decide our collective course, requires a radical expansion of democracy into the workplaces and local communities, well beyond the narrow bounds of deeply corrupted parliaments.
The need for system change is urgent, Saito argues.
“As far as the logic of capital’s accumulation is being estranged from human life and the sustainability of the ecosystem, the capitalist system might continue to exist, even if all the planetary boundaries are exceeded, but many parts of the earth will be unsuitable for civilisation.”
In other words, capitalism will keep pursuing profit, capital accumulation and destructive economic growth for a long time yet, and even to the point of imperiling the planet’s ability to sustain human and other life, unless it is overthrown.
RELATED ECOLOGY QUARTET by csloh :
Economy, Ecology and Ecosocialism
Existential Ecological Extinction
ECOSOCIALISM for EXISTENTIAL ECOLOGICAL
Financiaslisation Capitalism of Biodiversity
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