Eco-socialism

Question 1

3 key words to describe Fraser’s eco-socialism

Answer 1

1. Trans-environmental (environmental degradation is not a standalone problem, but connected to social and political crises)
2. Anti-capitalist (fundamental contradiction in capitalism creates environmental, social, and political crises)
3. Counter-hegemonic (going against the grain)

Question 2

How does Fraser anticipate the objection that not only capitalism creates environmental crises?

Answer 2

She agrees that non-capitalist socieites can generate environmental harm, but are not structurally compelled to do so as they do not have the contradiction that capitalism has

Question 3

According to Fraser and eco-socialists, can capitalism be greened?

Answer 3

No

Question 4

What is capitalism, according to Fraser? (2 defs)

Answer 4

1. System of economic production and exchange predicated on growth and accumulation
2. System for organizing the relationship between economic production and exchange and its supporting, non-economic conditions and materials

Question 5

What is the contradiction that is inherent to capitalism?

Answer 5

Capitalism divorces economy (which is value-creating) from non-economy (which is not value-creating) and therefore invites the economy to free-ride on non-economic sources (since they are given no value) without paying attention to their ability to self-replenish or regenerate

This corrodes and degrades the non-economic resources that the economy depends on, thus chipping away at the things it itself needs to survive

Question 6

What 3 things do capitalism need but free rides and corrodes?

Answer 6

1. Environment as a tap for inputs (using resources) and a sink for waste (dumping things after production) - assumes these will regenerate perfectly, leading to overaccumulation
2. Society for care-work of human labor and care-work of human cooperation (to sustain the human body and cultivating social bonds that make cooperation possible) - but no value is seen in care-work or social reproduction, letting participants free-ride on human resources and corroding the human energy needed to produce it
3. Politics is needed for security, legal protection of private property, and policies that enable accumulation, but sees on value in politics and incentivizes people to chip away at the state, avoiding taxes and regulation, and turning public goods into private

Question 7

By designating each as “non-economic”, capitalism encourages the economy to free-ride on and corrode

Answer 7

Environmental, social, and political resources

Question 8

What does the corrosion of environmental, social, and political resources lead to?

Answer 8

Crises in each area

Question 9

How is this corroding of environmental, social, and political resources an opportunity for solidarity?

Answer 9

Because a crisis in one domain is likely to lead to crises in others, which opens up opportunities for solidarity and coalition-building as people can unite against one shared enemy: capitalism

Question 10

How is capitalism’s tendency to undermine its own conditions related to race?

Answer 10

The build-in tendency to create environmental crises is connected to its tendency to create racialized crises, e.g. depletion of resources often happen in racially segregated groups -> those committed to environmentalism should also care about racial justice

Question 11

What are 2 critiques that Fraser makes of single-issue environmentalism?

Answer 11

1. It bypasses opportunity for coalition-building (by not connecting to wider contradictions)
2. It accepts capitalism’s separation of economy and environment

Question 12

How does capitalism’s contradiction play out in history?

Answer 12

When crises come to a head, the existing period of capitalism (“accumulation regime”) will be replaced by a new period with a new way of generating resources, encouraging growth, handling waste etc. But this new period will eventually create new crises and the cycle repeats

Question 13

Will climate change end the pattern of capitalism’s crises?

Answer 13

Maybe if things get bad enough, but Fraser does not take a specific stand

Question 14

Definition: Metabolic rift

Answer 14

Disruption of society’s ability to turn inputs into energy needed for self-replication - capitalism esp. vulnerable to this because of “non-economy” values

Question 15

Definition: ecological imperialism

Answer 15

Taking resources from capital’s periphery to compensate for metabolic rift at capital’s core - a way to “fix” metabolic rifts by displacing the problem

Question 16

What characterized the Libera-Colonial period, according to Fraser?

Answer 16

Metabolic rift created by transition to coal:

Mass agriculture shipped from countryside to cities -> food produced and consumed in different places leads to decline in soil fertility -> food supplies in Global North threatened -> metabolic rift -> displacing issue by extracting resources from South America

Question 17

How did the metabolic rift in the North create an environmental crisis in the South?

Answer 17

Capitalized agriculture depletes soil fertility in North -> interest in Guano (fertilizer) from South America -> mass extraction and export to Europe -> destruction of unique geography of islands + Guano-producing birds driven away and slaughtered

Question 18

How did the export of Guano to the West lead to poor working conditions and slavery in South America?

Answer 18

High demand -> labor shortage in Peru -> immigration law subsidizing import of contract laborers -> Chinese laborers brought through coercion and deception -> employed on plantations, railroads etc. under slave-like conditions -> inhumane, racialized exploitation of labor

Question 19

How did the metabolic rift in the Global North lead to war?

Answer 19

Nitrates in high demand because of soil depletion -> Peru monopolizes nitrates and expropriates foreign private investors -> raises taxes on nitrate exports -> War of the Pacific aka. The Nitrate War 1879-1883

Question 20

How did the Nitrate War end?

Answer 20

Chile backed by UK wins and claims all nitrate zones held by Peru and Bolivia + guano, and British investors can buy nitrate certificates and gain control over Peruvian nitrates

Question 21

Ecological imperialism allows the Global North to…

Answer 21

Overburden its own environment by taking from environments of others in the Global South

Question 22

For Fraser, what is the only adequate prescription for environmental harm?

Answer 22

Trans-environmental bloc organized around rejection of capitalism