ArhivaMarch 2013

Ljubodrag Simonović: Capitalist exploitation of soil

L

Ljubodrag Simonović
E-mail: comrade@orion.rs
Download text

CAPITALIST  EXPLOITATION  OF  SOIL

             Marx’s analysis in Capital of the capitalist exploitation of the soil indicates his understanding of the relationship of capitalism to nature. Marx: “Capitalist production, by collecting the population in great centers, and causing an ever-increasing preponderance of urban population, on the one hand, concentrates the historical driving force of society; on the other hand, it disturbs the circulation of matter between man and the soil, i.e., it prevents the return to the soil of those of its elements consumed by man in the form of food and fabric; it therefore violates the conditions necessary to the continued fertility of the soil. By so doing, it at once destroys the health of the urban laborer and the intellectual life of the rural laborer… In modern agriculture, as in the manufacturing industries, the increased productivity and output of labor are bought at the cost of pathologically laying waste to labor-power, itself. Moreover, all progress in capitalistic agriculture is a progress in the art not only of robbing the laborer, but of robbing the soil, as well; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a period of time is progress towards ruining the lasting sources of that fertility. The more a country bases its development on the foundation of modern industry, as does the United States, for example, the more rapid is this process of destruction.”

            Marx does not relate to nature in terms of its possible obliteration as a life-generating whole, but as an object of labor, and he criticizes capitalism for its excessive exhaustion of the soil, which deprives it of fertility. The same critique can be applied to previous historical periods: exhaustion of the soil and the working people is typical of both slavery and feudalism. What is the specificity of capitalist exploitation of nature and man? Departing from Marx’s critique of capitalism, the key difference between capitalism and previous social-economic formations is that production under capitalism is aimed at making profit and not at meeting human needs. Rather than the “ever-increasing preponderance of urban populations”, itself, it is the intensified process of agricultural production aimed at profit that results in the increased exhaustion of the soil, regardless of its potential for fertility and people’s real needs. In addition, capitalism increases the fertility of the soil by ruining the soil as the “lasting source of that fertility”. Marx realized that the problem is not primarily in the limited potential of the soil, but in the capitalist method of soil cultivation, which deprives it of its most important quality – natural fertility. However, Marx does not understand that the specificity of the capitalist method of soil exploitation is that it ruins the natural fertility of the soil through artificial fertilization, which means by turning the soil into a technical space and man into a technical vehicle for ruining nature. Moreover, contemporary food production indicates that capitalism does not even need the soil. In the food industry, raw material is obtained artificially and the whole process of production is carried out in technical conditions, by technical means and in a technical manner. The ultimate result of capitalism’s ecocidal barbarism is that capitalism obviates not only the soil, but also the very planet on which we live, as well as man as a natural and human being. Capitalistically degenerated scientists and their “sponsors” from the world of capital and politics have discarded the Earth as man’s cosmic home, along with “traditional humanity”.

              Marx’s critique of the capitalist exploitation of nature is presented within the context of the critique of hyper-production. For Marx, capitalism is not an ecocidal, but an exploitative order. The issues are taken at the level of production and consumption. Marx overlooks the fact that capitalist production implies not only the consumption of raw materials, energy and human labor, but also the destruction of nature as a life-generating force and man as a natural and human being. For Marx, rather than implying the ecocidal nature of capitalism, and, in that context, the endangered survival of humanity, ruining the soil is one of the harmful effects of industrialization. At the same time, Marx overlooks the fact that the exhaustion of natural resources does not only have a mechanical and quantitative character, but also a qualitative character, which means that it conditions the concrete nature of capitalist progress, the nature of the bourgeoisie and the working class, the nature of the class struggle and socialist revolution, the relationship to the future and even the possibility of a future… As far as the working process is concerned, by developing technical means intensively to cultivate of the soil, capitalism magnifies the productivity of labor and reduced the amount of physical labor and, thus, the physical exhaustion of workers.

             According to Marx, capitalism transforms nature by turning it into useful objects and thus increases the certainty of human survival and expands the borders of human freedom through material goods and the development of man’s creative powers. At the same time, Marx indicates the danger in exploiting the soil to such an extent that it is robbed of its natural fertility and the survival of future generations is threatened, because a future society should be based on a rational cultivation of nature that involves its regeneration. Marx relativizes the importance of the truth that capitalism threatens the survival of future generations. He criticizes capitalism for its exhaustion of the soil, but the consequences are projected into the future, which acquires an abstract dimension. Given the fact that capitalism creates possibilities for artificial fertilization of the soil and manages increasingly to penetrate the Earth and thus provide new raw materials and energy resources, and their more efficient exploitation, the question of the soil’s exhaustion is being relativized. Indeed, capitalism has been threatening the survival of future generations by increasingly ruining nature ever since its beginning. What was perceived by Marx as a possible existential danger, unless in the meantime the working class abolishes capitalism and establishes a qualitatively different relation to the soil, has actually been in place since the emergence of capitalism (which was indicated by Fourier in early 19th  century and, half a century later, by the chief of the Seattle tribe), reaching its peak in the “consumer society“. What appears in Marx as a potential existential threat to future generations, in the form of excessive exhaustion of the soil, has turned today into a real threat to the survival of humankind, in the form of the destruction of nature as a life-generating whole. At the same time, capitalism threatens humankind’s survival not only by robbing the soil, but also by robbing man of his own fertility. As a totalitarian destructive order, capitalism will make future generations face in an increasingly dramatic way not only a fatal ecological crisis, but also their own biological degeneration. The capitalist mode of developing the productive forces has doomed man to biological demise not only by cutting the organic link between man and nature, but also by robbing nature of its natural qualities and man of his human qualities. This comes about by the de-naturalizing of nature and the de-humanizing and de-naturalizing of man, turning nature into a technical space and man into a technical object.
Read the text to the end»

Ljubodrag Simonović: Dialectics and history

L

Ljubodrag Simonović
E-mail: comrade@orion.rs
Download text

DIALECTICS AND HISTORY     

              Dialectics is an authentic and genuine force for social development, delineated in the laws of dialectics that represent the logic of history and are, therefore, the self-consciousness of the historical development of society. As a method, dialectics is a vehicle for determining, by means of the laws of dialectics, the nature of social phenomena, or more precisely, it is a vehicle for their “transformation” from abstract into concrete historical phenomena. By means of the laws of dialectics, the bare facticity of the past turns into the historical development of society. Within that context, dialectics can be comprehended as the supreme regulating historical principle that opens wide on the horizons of the future: it represents the basis of society’s historicity. By means of dialectics, man emerges from the obscurity of the past and steps into the bright light of history, becoming a self-conscious historical being. Only upon dialectical self-consciousness can man base a position on the world that will enable him to create a future.

          According to Marx, “into the positive comprehension of the existing status, dialectics, at the same time, also introduces understanding of its negation, its necessary downfall; for it comprehends all generated forms in the course of motion, that is,  in its transient aspect; because it cannot be tutored by anything and because it is, in its essence, critically analytical and revolutionary.” This quotation points out the fact that dialectics asserts moving forward, which means that capitalism, as a historical order does not close but opens the space of the future. Indeed, not all downfalls mean, at the same time, a negation. More precisely, a downfall represents not only a possibility for creating something new, but also the opportunity for the destruction of everything that exists. The nature of what is negated conditions the nature of the negation and, therefore, the concrete possibility and the nature of the novum. In order to represent a concrete historical principle, the principle of totality has to take into consideration the specificity of the capitalist totality, and that goes not only for the emancipatory possibilities but also for the destructive potential of capitalism. “The negative dialectics” (Adorno), which means that dialectics as a method of critical changing and as a libertarian practice, has significance solely if it is developing in relation to the process in which capitalism develops into capitalism – turns into a totalitarian destructive order. While criticizing Hegel, and having in mind fascism, Bloch rightfully indicates that not every negation in history concomitantly represents a step forward. However, he does not realize that the capitalist negation does lead toward the destruction of the world. He never refers to capitalism as a destructive order, and, in that context, there is no perception of the possibility of the obliteration of life as a crucial content of the revolutionary conscience. Marx fails to notice that capitalism acts in advance by annihilating life – by generating consequences which question the very possibility of the future and not only in the essential, but also in the existential sense. “Temporariness“ does not imply solely moving forward, but also the development of the destructive processes that threaten the very survival of mankind. This is what Fourier asserted by his claim that mankind was in a state of “material regression” because (capitalist) “progress“ was devastating forests, mountain slopes, natural fountains… Marx fails to notice that capitalism has a destructive potential and overlooks the fact that negation also implies the possibility of its realization, which means that the downfall of capitalism at the same time implies the possibility of the obliteration of life on the planet. Related to this possibility, a concrete possibility arises for attaining man’s creative, libertarian and life-creating abilities. Turning the objective possibilities of freedom into realistic possibilities of man’s liberation stands against the more and more likely probability of the annihilation of the world.

               Hegel’s dialectics implies the likelihood of a future based upon existential certainty.  Life is an a priori quality that is not being questioned, and it represents the foundation of his dialectic pyramid of freedom. With Hegel existential certainty represents the basis for the libertarian optimism (reasonable freedom) upon which faith in the future is founded. Within his thought there is a contradiction between mind and senses, between intellect and nature, subjective and objective…, but not between life and non-life (destruction). Hegel’s “abolition” (Auflösung) and “overcoming” (Aufhebung) imply the existential certainty and the improvement of life based upon it. The dialectic course, as a process by which life becomes life through its own mind-pervading, occurs on an unquestionable existential level. The identity of essence (idea) and of existence (reality) has been determined: “All that is real is reasonable, and all that is reasonable is real“ (Hegel). Reasonable life implies existential certainty, and genuine reality represents full implementation of its own developmental potential. Until it does not realize its own developmental potential, reality does not exist in a concrete sense – it is an abstraction. When reality becomes what it might be, only then does it becomes real in the veritable sense. The dogmatism of Hegel’s dialectics is based upon the assertion that the abstract (non-historical) idea of the phenomenon represents the basis for determination of its concreteness (historicity). In other words, the essence of the phenomenon was determined before it became a concrete historical phenomenon, which is, before its developmental potential was realized, thus creating a new reality with new developmental potential that surmounts the very idea that represents a criterion for determining the genuineness (historicity) of the phenomenon. When matters are perceived in relation to capitalism as a totalitarian destructive order, in Hegel the real does not encompass the destructive potency, and the reasonable does not indicate its destructive intention.

                  In Marx, just like in Hegel, the openness of the future is dominant, implying existential certainty. This represents the basis for his notion of progress:  “in the bosom“ of capitalism possibilities are generated for “leaping from the reign of necessity into the reign of freedom” (Engels). This connotes that capitalism marks the end of “the prehistory of human society” (Marx). Marx does not raise the issue of existence, but that of true history, which means of the society in which man has achieved freedom. In Marx’s concept of the historical development of society, libertarian optimism is dominant, and existential optimism deriving from it.  It is based upon faith in man as a universal creative being of freedom and upon the emancipatory potential of the productive forces. At the same time, within capitalism, the sprout of the new world is being generated, which means that capitalism possesses historical fecundity. The specificity of capitalism as a historically fecund order, in comparison to the preceding historical periods, is that with it ends the prehistory and commences the true history of mankind. Unlike the bourgeois theorists, who perceive capitalism as the completion of history, thus sterilizing its change-creating possibilities, Marx perceives the true values of capitalism in the fact that within it possibilities are generated for a step forward into the new society that will represent the achievement of the supreme humanistic endeavors of mankind. Despite its cessations and sidesteps, capitalism creates the historical time that streams forwards.

              Marx was a dedicated advocate of Hegel’s dialectics of history. He envisaged the specific dialectics of the development of capitalism, or, more precisely, he sacrificed the dialectics of capitalism for the dialectics of pre-capitalist history. The development of capitalism is being perceived through a prism of the dialectics of the previous historical periods and, deriving from this, the issue of its development and temporariness is being raised. The specificity of capitalism, as a concrete socio-economic formation, does not represent an integral part of that history upon which the dialectics of history is derived. Based on Marx’s most significant methodological postulate, that the last actual form in the development of society represents the key for decoding the essence of the preceding forms, there is being imposed a conclusion that the nature of the laws of dialectics cannot be determined by an analysis of pre-capitalist history, but that capitalism, as the most developed historical order, represents the mirror in which the dialectics of history can be discerned. In other words, if history represents the starting place and the confirmation of the veracity of dialectics, then capitalism, as the highest form in the development of society, represents the starting point for the determination of the veracity of dialectics, that is, of the historical nature of social development.
Read the text to the end»

Noviji tekstovi

Poslednji Komentari

Arhiva

Kategorije

Meta Linkovi

Pratite Ducijev rad i na fejsbuku