Lecture 5

Question 1

Multiplicity of environmental politics

Answer 1

• Environmental politics or eco politics currently takes many different forms. (Fraser)
  o E.g. youth activists, environmental feminists etc.
  o Each form has different diagnosis prescription about what’s causing environmental degradation and what would be needed to correct it.
  o But this moment of political confusion is also one of possibility (nothing is settled, it is a fragmented world -> coalition building).

Question 2

Fraser’s ecosocialism

Answer 2

Anti-capitalist
Trans environmental
Counter hegemonic

Question 3

Counter hegemonic

Answer 3

o In a world organized by capital, an anti-capitalist position is definitionally counter hegemonic.

Question 4

Anti-capitalist

Answer 4

o Capitalism is common driver behind environmental, special and political crises.
o A fundamental contradiction within capitalism means it creates crises in all three domains.
o Therefore, shared rejection of capitalism could unite them.

Question 5

Trans environmentalism

Answer 5

o Environmental crises linked to social and political crises.
o Environmental issues bound to non-environmental issues.

Question 6

Anticipated confusion clarified

Answer 6

o Capitalism non-accidentally creates environmental crisis doesn’t mean that only capitalism creates environmental crises.
o Non capitalist societies can but aren’t structurally compelled to generate environmental harm.
o By contrast, capitalism can’t help but generate environmental harm because of a contradiction baked into its structure.
o For eco socialists, unlike for green Keynesians, capitalism cannot be made adequately greener.

Question 7

What is capitalism

Answer 7

o System of economic production and exchange predicated on growth and accumulation.
o System for organizing the relationship between a) economic production and exchange and b) their supporting of non-economic conditions and materials.

Question 8

The capitalist contradiction

Answer 8

o Capitalism organizes the relationship between economy and non-economy in a contradictory and self-undermining way.
o Capitalism divorces economy which is value creating from non-economy which isn’t value creating.
o Therefore, capitalism invites economy to free ride on non-economic resources.

Question 9

Capitalism non-economic contradictions

Answer 9

o Capitalism needs
 Environment as a tap for inputs and a sink for waste.
 Society for carework of human labour and carework of human cooperation.
 Politics for security, legal protection of private property and policies that enable accumulation.
o But by designating each as non-economic, capitalism encourages economy to free ride on and corrode.
 Environmental resources, social resources and political resources.
o This means capitalism simultaneously needs and trashes.
 Environment, leading to environmental crises (capital’s ecological/environmental contradiction).
 Society, leading to social crises (capital’s social contradiction).
 Politics, leading to political crises (capital’s political contradiction).

Question 10

Non-economic is interconnected

Answer 10

o Environmental, society and polity interconnected. Therefore, crisis in one domain is likely to mean crisis in others. This analytical complexity is an opportunity for solidarity and coalition building (i.e. those concerned about seemingly different crises actually have a shared enemy).

Question 11

Capitalism is often both unjustly and irrational

Answer 11

 E.g., environmental crises are often also political concerns and crises because states manage the boundary between environment and economy, making environmental decisions also political decisions.
 Capitalism acts as both unjustly and irrational.
 Non-economic interconnected diagram. Past and present destruction (colonialism and neocolonialism). Capitalism is racialized, continuities in constantly expropriating the ‘other’.

Question 12

Eco socialism challenges single issue environmentalism

Answer 12

o Interconnection of non-economic domains and their racialization, challenges single issue environmentalism.
 As strategy (shallow critique); single issue environmentalism bypasses an opportunity for coalition building.
 As ideology (deeper critique); single-issue environmentalism accepts capitalism’s separation of economy and environment.

Question 13

Capital’s contradiction in history

Answer 13

o The history of capitalism demonstrates systematic creation of interconnected environmental, social and political crises.
o When crises come to a head, one accumulation regime will be replaced with another.
o But each new period (cycle) will eventually create new environmental, social and political crises of its own.
o Because it too will segregate economy from non economy, generating environmental, social and political freeriding.
o The history of capitalism is a cyclical pattern of accumulation regime, crisis, new accumulation regime, new crisis.
o Fraser is agnostic about whether climate change will put an end to this.

Question 14

Metabolic rift

Answer 14

disruption of society’s ability to generate energy needed to sustain and regenerate itself. Eco socialists see capitalism as especially vulnerable to metabolic rifts because of how it relates to its non-economic bases.

Question 15

Ecological imperialism

Answer 15

taking resources from capital’s periphery to compensate for metabolic rift at capital’s core. Eco socialists see this as capitalism’s standard fix to metabolic rifts. Unsustainable growth at center of system or core is propped up and sustained via material pillaging and degradation at capitalism’s periphery.

Question 16

Fraser’s liberal colonial period -> characterized by a metabolic rift in global north

Answer 16

o Mass agriculture shipped from countryside to cities to feed newly concentrated factory laborers.
o Food produced and consumed in one place returns nutrients to the soil, but food produced and consumed in different places doesn’t, leading to declining soil fertility.
o Newly industrialized global north experiences soil nutrient crisis threatening food supplies.
o Industrial capital creates a metabolic rift within capitalist society.
 Ecological imperialism at the periphery fixed this.

Question 17

Guano

Answer 17

o Fertilizer traditionally used by indigenous people of SA.
 As industrial agriculture depletes soil fertility in global north, interest in global south guano deposits growth.
 Peru was a key guano exporter to global north, guano revenue makes up large part of state revenue by late 1800s.
 Guano trade was profitable but environmentally taxing.
* Unique geography and aesthetic of guano islands erased by extraction.
* Guano producing birds driven away and slaughtered.
* Metabolic rift in North creates environmental destruction in South.

Question 18

Guano and labour

Answer 18

 Early 19th century Peruvian labour shortage leads to immigration law subsidizing import of contract labourers. European merchants import Chinese labourers through coercion and deception under horrific transport conditions. Chinese labourers employed on plantations, railroads and in guano business under slave like conditions (Guano mining was the worst). Compensation for metabolic rift in global north via ecological imperialism leads to inhumane, racialized exploitation of labour (social crisis) in global south.
o This example illustrates the capital problem.

Question 19

Nitrates, another must have natural resource

Answer 19

o Nitrates: a second fix for capital’s depletion of soil fertility in the Global North Found in Peru and Bolivia. Nitrates start to rival guano as the export fertilizer of choice -> Peru monopolizes nitrates, expropriates private investors, many of whom are foreign (especially British). -> Bolivia raises taxes on nitrate exports. -> Monopolization and taxation anger foreign investors -> War of the Pacific, AKA The Nitrate War, 1879-1883.

Question 20

The nitrate war

Answer 20

 Chile backed by Britain vs. Peru and Bolivia.
 Chile, victorious, claims all nitrate zones held by Peru and Bolivia. British investors also win big.
 They buy up nitrate certificates issued by Peru during monopolization.
 After the war, Chile recognizes these certificates as proof of ownership.
 Meaning British stake in South American nitrates balloons on the heels of war.
 Nitrate War seen at the time as a “case of British -instigated, Chilean -executed aggression” motivated by the quest for fertilizer.
 Metabolic rift in Global North creates not just environmental and social crises but here also political crisis in the form of war.

Question 21

Takeaways

Answer 21

o Ecological imperialism allows the Global North to overburden its own environment by taking from environments in the Global South.
o Capital’s contradictory relation to the environment is sustained by ecological imperialism.
o E.g., soil nutrient crisis in North displaced via environmental, social, and political crises in South.
o Fraser: hope for trans-environmental bloc organized around rejection of capitalism, for her the only adequate prescription for environmental harm.