“Man lives from nature, i.e., nature is his body, and he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if he is not to die. To say that man’s physical and mental life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.” (Karl Marx)
The harmony of human and nature is the prerequisite for human survival. Since the Industrial Revolution, human have utilized the nature more than protecting it, which increases the conflicts of human and nature and leads to various environmental problems. As a result, human now is in a crisis of survival and development. Climate change, and the planetary ecological crisis as a whole, which is much bigger, is the greatest material threat that civilization, and indeed humanity, has ever confronted. We are facing, if we don't change course, the demise of the earth as a habitable planet for most of today's living species.
The mid-18th century gave rise to industrial capitalism, made possible by the accumulation of vast amounts of capital under the merchant phase of capitalism and its investment in machinery. Industrial capitalism, which Karl Marx dated from the last third of the 18th century, marked the development of the factory system of manufacturing, characterized by a complex division of labor between and within work process and the routinization of work tasks; and finally established the global domination of the capitalist mode of production. In the years after World War II, capitalism was moderated and regulated in several ways. Keynesian economics became a widely accepted method of government regulation; meanwhile, countries such as the United Kingdom experimented with mixed economies in which the state owned and operated certain major industries. By the early 21st century, capitalism has become a widely pervasive economic system worldwide, with the collapse of the Soviet bloc in the early 1990s weakening the principal alternative system, communism, considerably. Other aspects of modern capitalism include the rise of financial markets, dependence on free market mechanisms, minimum state and the increasing globalization of production and consumption.
Capitalism is characterized by private ownership of means of production, creation of goods and services for profits, competitive markets and wage labor. The production and extraction of material wealth is the objective of capitalist. Capitalist mode of production is characterized as a system of primarily private ownership of means of production in an economy with legal framework and physical infrastructure provided by the state. With time the objective of profit maximization collided with an inevitable crisis of sales realization, which Marx said was the fundamental crisis of Capitalism.
Karl Marx’s ideas about economic crises addressed the circumstances of 19th century capitalist development. In his critique, he identified an inherent contradiction in capitalism: a situation in which exploited and underpaid workers are unable to consume everything that is being produced. Marx foresaw that this state of affairs would lead to insufficient profits for business and insufficient revenue for the state, and, thus, a terminal crisis of overproduction. In this way, from a Marxist perspective, capitalism carries the seeds of its own destruction. This was referred to as the fundamental crisis of capitalism.
An economic crisis of this nature is highly unlikely to occur in a world of easy consumer credit and globalised trade, and in circumstances where many liberal states intervene (to a greater or lesser extent) in employer-employee relations and in financial markets. Furthermore, capitalism has been infinitely creative in restructuring itself in order to alleviate or sidestep all sorts of potential crises. Such innovations extend from technological revolutions such as IT, to strategic corporate alliances. These adaptations have allowed economic growth to be broadly maintained since the early 1950s. With the expansion of trade and commerce capitalists were able to defuse its crisis to a certain extent but off late as said by Marx, capitalism has created an 'irreparable rift' in the 'metabolic interaction' between human beings and the earth, the everlasting nature-imposed conditions of production.
Marx's concept of the metabolic rift is the core element of this ecological critique. The human labour process itself is defined in Capital as 'the universal condition for the metabolic interaction between man and nature, the everlasting nature-imposed condition of human existence'. It follows that the rift in this metabolism means nothing less than the undermining of the 'everlasting nature-imposed condition of human existence'. Further there is the question of the sustainability of the earth – i.e, the extent to which it is to be passed on to future generations in a condition equal or better than in the present.
Metabolic rift in the most general sense refers to a disruption in the exchange between social systems and natural systems, which is hypothesized to lead to ecological crisis. While Marx never employed the term itself in his writings, he did write of an "irreparable rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism" created by the rise of capitalism, and developed a systematic critique of capitalist "exploitation" of the soil (in the sense of robbery, i.e., failing to maintain the means of reproduction). This rift, between human social systems and non-human natural systems, in particular the socio-ecological contradiction of the town-country division of labour, was seen as the origin of modern ecological degradation.
The concept of “Metabolic rift” was developed in the context of the second agricultural revolution (1830–1880), a period which was characterized by the development of soil chemistry and the growth of the use of chemical fertilizer. The general idea is that disruptions, or interruptions, in natural cycles and processes creates a “metabolic rift” between nature and social systems which leads to a buildup of waste and in the end to the degradation of our environment. In its original formulation, it refers to the crisis in soil fertility generated by urbanization, in that nutrients from the soil were exported to cities in the form of agricultural products, but not returned to the land—becoming, instead, waste in urban centers. In particular, human excrement, a natural fertilizer, was identified as becoming a public health threat in cities, even though it had been a valuable resource in rural regions, having been used as fertilizer. In Volume 1 of Capital, explaining the rift, Marx (1967: 504-505) wrote:
“Capitalist production collects the population together in great centres, and causes the urban population to achieve an ever-growing preponderance… [I]t disturbs the metabolic interaction between man and the earth, i.e. it prevents the return to the soil of its constituent elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; hence it hinders the operation of the eternal natural condition for the lasting fertility of the soil…”
The term “metabolic rift” was coined by John Bellamy Foster (1999, 2000). The concept of a metabolic rift, according to Foster, is the development of Marx’s earlier work in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts from 1844 on species-being and the relationship between humans and nature. Metabolism is Marx’s "mature analysis of the alienation of nature," and presents "a more solid—and scientific—way in which to depict the complex, dynamic interchange between human beings and nature, resulting from human labor."
As people moved into cities they lost the contact with nature, and as a result they became less likely to consider how their actions and decisions affected the environment. The income for the workers in the cities increased, capitalists searched for a cheaper workforce outside of the city. Today when half of the world’s population lives in cities this is happening on a larger and more global scale. And instead of companies and corporations looking for cheaper workers from the countryside they now look outside the nation’s borders, mainly in developing nations. The developed world is performing a “brain drain” where they are literally stealing the higher educated students and people from poorer and undeveloped nations. This is turn is fueling “a vicious downward cycle of underdevelopment” in the countries affected.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has concluded that the observed 0.6 °C temperature increases in global temperatures since the middle of the 20th century is a result of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities such as fossil fuels. So we humans have with our overdependence on fossil fuels disrupted the natural carbon cycle and earth’s climate system. We are now accumulating more and more waste emissions into our atmosphere, 23 billion metric tons of CO2 every year. Even after the C.O.P – 17 (seventeenth Session of Conference of Parties) in Durban (Nov. 2011), there is no end of this in sight. With devastating effects this accelerating buildup of greenhouse gas waste emissions is warming up our planet and changing our climate. Because capitalism promotes the accumulation of capital on a never-ending and always expanding scale, it cannot be sustainable. So the manmade climate change we are seeing now is, according to Brett Clark and Richard York (2005), a result of a metabolic rift created by the capitalistic world system. To be able to address and solve this carbon rift and stop the worst effects of climate change metabolic rift theory shows us that a complete transformation, or revolution, of our society is needed. If we don’t, the carbon rift will continue to expand and we will race faster and faster towards the burning cliff.
The necessary pre-conditions of productive industry are (i) the natural environment; (ii) the physical, mental and emotional well-being of workers and their families; and (iii) the infrastructure and social capital of the communities in which workers live. Any damage to these pre-conditions threatens capitalism’s productive capacity and, therefore, profits. James O'Connor (1998) argues for a "second contradiction" of underproduction, to complement Marx's "first" contradiction of capital and labor. However, James O’Connor maintains that it is in the very nature of capitalism to exploit, impair and even destroy them, this is what he calls the ‘second contradiction of capitalism’. The generalised ecological degradation brought on by pollution, overexploitation of natural environment, etc, progressively destroys the natural resource base that business relies upon for production. O’Connor predicts this will generate an ecological crisis that will impact on business as it leads to underproduction and insufficient profits. While the crisis stems from a failure of the state to exert its power to restrict resource use and control polluting activities, it would be regarded more significantly as a failure of the state to maintain economic growth. While the second contradiction is often considered a theory of environmental degradation, O'Connor's theory in fact goes much further. O'Connor argues that capitalism necessarily undermines the "conditions of production" necessary to sustain the endless accumulation of capital. These conditions of production include soil, water, energy, and so forth. But they also include an adequate public education system, transportation infrastructures, and other services that are not produced directly by capital, but which capital needs in order accumulate effectively. As the conditions of production are exhausted, the costs of production for capital increase. For this reason, the second contradiction generates an underproduction crisis tendency, with the rising cost of inputs and labor, to complement the overproduction tendency of too many commodities for too few customers. Like Marx's contradiction of capital and labor, the second contradiction therefore threatens the system's existence. In addition, O'Connor believes that, in order to remedy environmental contradictions, the capitalist system innovates new technologies that overcome existing problems but introduce new ones.
The recent development experience of the third world nations unerringly transpires these issues. Citing only the tip of the iceberg, let us take up the example of the factory (bottling plant) of Hindustan Coca Cola Beverages Ltd at Meenakshipuram, located in one of the driest parts of Palakkad district in Kerala. The factory ever since its inception in 1999 had sunk fifty bore-wells (energized wells) which work round the clock to extract about 25 lakh litres of water per day. The wells and ponds within a 3 km radius have either dried up or have become saline. Around 750 to 1000 tribal families, belonging to Eravalar and Malasar Tribes reside in colonies situated around the factory. Such intense exploitation of water had poised great threat on availability of water for drinking as well as agricultural purposes in the vicinal areas. Added to this, production effluents are polluting water sources downstream from the factory. Skirting the question of whether soft drinks are more important than drinking water, the issues of unjust allocation of resources, skewed priorities and unsustainable production and consumption loom large. (Lead India, 2002).
The case of large dams is a further extension of the said “rift”. India today has about 3600 large dams taming almost all her major rivers and 700 more proposals are under consideration. There was no provision of EIA for projects like large dams prior to 1985. By the provision of EPA 1986, MoEF in 1994 made environmental clearance mandatory for large dams, although records reveal that, in 90% cases the environmental conditionalities under which clearance was obtained have not been fulfilled by the project authorities, mainly the global construction companies and multinationals. While it has been widely accepted that large dams are more than often economically, socially, technically unviable, alternatives to large dams do exist. Such project decisions are totally non-participatory in nature and incurring huge human and environmental costs. The creation of reservoirs in more than 1500 river valley projects have flooded more than 5000 sq. kms of forestland and several species of wild animals and plants are either extinct or have become threatened. The extent of environmental costs incurred, simply due to the loss of biodiversity still remains a matter of sincere and passionate research. Water logging and/or salinisation affects grasped half of the canal-irrigated land. Resurgence of Malaria in the last decade or so has become a familiar phenomenon, especially in the command areas of irrigation projects. Without a single exception, large dams have delivered much below the promised level of benefits and moreover, the benefits and costs are asymmetrically distributed in favour of the richer community. Activist and writer Arundhuti Roy said, “..Big dams are a brazen way of taking water, land and irrigation away from the poor and gifting it to the rich.” (Arundhuti Roy, The Greater Common Good, 1999). Over 4 crore people, on an average, more than 60% of whom are Adivasi & Tribes , were displaced, not to consider the so-called Backwater Effect (rising of water level in dam-reservoirs due to siltation and thus displacing more). Taking into consideration the fact that the Govt. of India admits that only 25% of the project-affected-people (PAP) could be minimally resettled, the human costs of constructing large dams take astronomical proportions.
Today, it is believed by millions that, the globalization agenda is the newest mode of transferring the crises of capitalism off-shores; although, the main motive is enveloped with very attractive packages of consumerism, equity, democracy, equal rights and above all, mutual inter-dependence of the nations leading to growth and prosperity. By the end of World War II, the incarnation of World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and GATT which was later succeeded by World Trade Organization (WTO), were cornerstones of the institutional arrangements to carry out the globalization process which was primarily meant for defusing the said crises of capitalism. Although seemingly neutral institutions, in practice, the IMF and World Bank end up in serving powerful interests of western countries. Before the IMF grants a loan to a third world nation aspiring for economic development, it imposes conditions on that country, requiring it to make structural changes in its economy. These conditions are called ‘Structural Adjustment Programs’ (SAPs) and are designed to increase money flow into the country by promoting exports so that the country can pay off its debts. Structural Adjustment Programs generally implement "free market" programs and policy. These programs include internal changes (notably privatization and deregulation) as well as external ones, especially the reduction of trade barriers. These conditionalities are imposed in the name of better economic management of these UDCs, equity and efficiency through free competition and consumer sovereignty. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was originally created (came into being in 1948) by the Bretton Woods Conference as part of a larger plan for economic recovery after World War II. The GATT’s main purpose was to reduce barriers to international trade. This was achieved through the reduction of Tariff barriers, quantitative restrictions and subsidies on trade through a series of different agreements. Through the clauses like TRIPS, TRIMS, GATS and RECIPROCITY, GATT was designed to make way for the Capitalist world to expand trade. As the under-developed nations, being in need for scarce funds are forced to accept the harsh terms and condition. By accepting these conditions the LDC’s are forced to open up their markets and the capturing of the domestic markets by the MNC’s (directed through FDI) leads to the closure or acquisition of the domestic infant industries those cannot withstand the cut-throat competition with the global giants, which further results in unemployment and perpetual dependency in the long run for the domestic country. The GATT was replaced by the World Trade Organization on 1st January under the Marrakesh Agreement. The WTO acts as a successor of GATT and is entitled to perform activities akin to the GATT, but in a more stringent and binding fashion. The growing garbage trade and trade in hazardous wastes in the ambience of free trade under the auspices of WTO and others is unidirectional. It flows from the rich industrialized nations to the poor third world. The trade has bloomed primarily to cut the costs of disposal of wastes by evading stringent and expensive environmental regulations in developed nations. In the name of earning scarce foreign exchange, the UDCs rush to open up the gates and thus the third world (and east European nations as Poland) has become the dumping ground of wastes from the western industrial nations. The hotly debated Pollution haven theory posits that foreign investors from industrial countries are attracted to weak environmental regulations in developing countries and thus would want to relocate the polluting industries in a country with the lowest environmental standards. Hindustan Lever Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of US MNC Unilever Co. Ltd. was instrumental in such a relocation of a Thermometer factory from Watertown (near New York) to Kodaikanal. As raw materials to the factory, Unilever used to import toxic mercury wastes to Indian coasts resulting in mercury pollution 800 times higher than the permissible limit at Kodi Lake and the surrounding forest area. Such instances of defying the Principles 12 & 16 of Rio (1992) Declaration of internalizing eco-costs, by the global trading giants are no rare phenomena. These are all acerbating the global environmental rift.
John Bellamy Foster (2009) speaks of an "elementary triangle of ecology," derived directly from Marx, which takes the struggle to a deeper level. This can be defined as: (1) social use, not ownership, of nature; (2) rational regulation by the associated producers of the metabolism between human beings and nature; and (3) the satisfaction of communal needs - not only of present but also future generations. The only real solution is to get rid of capitalism and put an egalitarian, sustainable society, run by the associated producers [As Marx called it, community of freely associated individuals, is a kind of relation between individuals where there is no state, social class or authority, in a society that had abolished the private property of means of production. Once private property is abolished, individuals are no longer deprived of access to means of production so they can freely associate themselves (without social constraint) to produce and reproduce their own conditions of existence and fulfil their needs and desires] in its place. But we have to face the fact that the environmental problem, including climate change, is accelerating, that this is a question of survival for humanity and most species on the earth. The time in which to act if we want to avoid irreversible environmental decline is incredibly short, with only a generation or so in which to implement a drastic change of course. That at least is what science is telling us at present. Under these circumstances we need both short-term radical responses and a longer-term ecological revolution.
