3. Ecology and Marxism
The ecological question arises in almost all debates. This is understandable given that the scale of ecological disasters is now clearly visible. Yet these debates rarely get beyond confusion. Only a minority of movements understands that a response to the challenge demands leaving behind the logic of capitalist accumulation. The established powers quickly understood the danger and expended major, supposedly scientific, efforts—which in reality are purely ideological propaganda—to demonstrate that a green capitalism was possible. I talked about this in my analyses of the question of “sustainable” development.7 I also, in contrast, contended that the works of Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees, to which I referred, illustrate the possibility of calculating (I emphasize the word calculating, that is, a quantified measure) use values, on the condition of breaking away from capitalism. François Houtart’s book (2010) dissects the hoax of “green capitalism.” John Bellamy Foster (2000) has given a masterful analysis of Marx as an ecologist.8 For these reasons, I believe it might be useful to the reader of my memoirs to know what my viewpoint is on these questions, one that I have tirelessly advocated in many debates. The text that follows is drawn from my book The Law of Worldwide Value (2010).
The viewpoint of the dominant currents in environmentalism, particularly in the fundamentalist variety, is certainly not that of Marxism, although both rightly denounce the destructive effects of “development.”
Environmentalism attributes these destructive effects to the Eurocentric and Promethean philosophy characteristic of “modernity” in which the human being is not part of nature, but claims to subject the latter to the satisfactions of its needs. This thesis entails a fatal culturalist corollary. It inspires a call to follow another philosophy that emphasizes humanity’s belonging to nature, its “mother.” With that in mind, supposedly alternative and better philosophies, such as one derived from a particular interpretation of Hinduism, are praised in opposition to so-called Western philosophy. This is ill-considered praise, which ignores the fact that Hindu society was not (and is not) different from so-called Western societies, neither concerning the use of violence (Hindu society is anything but as nonviolent as it claims to be) nor the subjection of nature to exploitation.
Marx develops his analysis on a completely different terrain. He attributes the destructive character of capital accumulation to capitalism’s logic of rationality, which is governed exclusively by the pursuit of immediate profit (short-term profitability). He demonstrates that and draws the explicit conclusions in volume 1 of Capital.
These two methods of interpreting history and reality lead to different judgments on “what must be done” to meet the challenge—the destructive effects of “development.” Environmentalists are led to “condemn progress” and thereby join the postmodernists in viewing scientific discoveries and technological advances negatively. This condemnation leads, in turn, to a method of envisaging what the future might be, which is, at the very least, not very realistic. Thus projections are made in which a particular natural resource will be exhausted (fossil fuels, for example), and then the validity of these—fatally alarmist—conclusions is generalized by the assertion that the planet’s resources are not infinite, which is certainly correct in principle, but not necessarily in terms of what can be deduced from it. Thus possible future scientific discoveries that might counter a particular alarmist conclusion are ignored. Of course, the distant future remains unknown and there will never be any guarantee that “progress” will always make it possible to find solutions to unknown future challenges. Science is not a substitute for the belief in eternity (religious or philosophical). In this context, situating the debate on the nature of the challenges and the ways to deal with them would lead us nowhere.
On the contrary, by placing the debate on the terrain cleared by Marx—the analysis of capitalism—we are able to advance in analyzing the challenges. Yes, there will still be scientific discoveries in the future on the basis of which technologies for controlling the riches of nature might be derived. But what can be asserted without fear of contradiction is that as long as the logic of capitalism forces society to exercise its choices on the basis of short-term profitability (which is implied by the valorization of capital), the technologies that will be implemented to exploit new scientific advances will be chosen only if they are profitable in the short term. Consequently, this implies that such technologies will carry an increasingly higher risk of being environmentally destructive. It is only when humanity has designed a way of managing society based on prioritizing use values instead of the exchange values associated with the valorization of capital that the conditions for a better management of the relations between humanity and nature will come together. I do say “better management” and not “perfect management.” The latter implies the elimination of the limitations to which all human thought and action are subject. The early critique of Eurocentrism that I advanced (taken up in the second and expanded edition of my book Eurocentrism) continues the work started by Marx as a counterpoint to the culturalist, postmodernist, and supposedly environmentalist, discourse.9
Environmentalists’ choice to debate these questions in a flawed theoretical context traps them, not only in theoretical, but above all in political impasses. This choice allows the dominant forces of capital to manipulate all the political proposals that result from it. It is well known that alarmism allows the societies of the imperialist triad to preserve their privilege of exclusive access to the planet’s resources and prevent the peoples of the peripheries from being able to deal with the requirements of their development—whether for good or bad. It is ineffective to respond to “anti-alarmist” views by pointing to the (incontestable) fact that they are themselves mere fabrications of the lobbies (for example, the automobile lobby). The world of capital always operates in this way: the lobbies that defend particular interests of segments of capital endlessly confront one another and will continue to do so. Lobbies for energy-intensive choices now oppose lobbies for “green” capitalism. Environmentalists will only be able to get out of this labyrinth if they understand that they must become Marxists.
1
THE ARAB WORLD
Nationalism, Political Islam, and the Predicted Arab Revolutions
I am prefacing this chapter on the Arab world with five introductory documents: 1) the contemporary Arab world’s historical trajectory; 2) the failure of the Nahda; 3) modernity, democracy, secularism, and Islam; 4) the deployment of the United States military project; and 5) the Palestinian question.
These documents should allow the reader to pinpoint my position within the larger context of the Arab debates I am going to summarize. The Arab scene is the site of an ongoing conflict between three groups of political positions that, in turn, leads to three different future possibilities: 1) bourgeois modernism, certainly comprador, but nevertheless motivated by the intention to build “modern” though not necessarily democratic Arab states; 2) reactionary political Islam propagated by the archaic monarchies of the Gulf, the Muslim Brothers, and the Salafists; and 3) a possibly universalist Arab left, which would be part of a movement toward socialism.
We need to examine first what the real reasons are for such fault lines before looking at how they are manifested in current debates. These underlying positions recur with nagging frequency in all Arab debates.
1. THE HISTORICAL TRAJECTORY OF THE CONTEMPORARY ARAB WORLD
The Arab world has gone through three important stages over the past halfcentury. Nasser’s Egypt, Baathist Syria and Iraq, and Boumediene’s Algeria were, from 1955 to 1975, major participants in the nonaligned movement and its expansion into Africa. The first conference of African liberation movements took place in Cairo in 1957; it led to the establishment of the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The proposed New International Economic Order—the swan song of the non-aligned movement—was drafted in Algiers in 1974. None of these are chance occurrences.
But while the socially positive effects of the “Arab revolutions,” which I have called “national populist,” were exhausted in the brief time of a decade or two, rising oil profits became dominant after 1973 and encouraged the illusion of an easy modernization.