#productivism

László Moholy-Nagy EM 1 Telephone Picture. 1923. Industrial vitreous enamel on steel: 95 × 60 cm (37 × 24 in).

Over the long 20th century, mainstream Marxism tended to neglect ecology, if not been downright hostile towards it. From Marx and Engels’s belief in the progressive nature of technological development under capitalism to the extractivist zeal of the Soviet Union, the mainstream of the Marxist historical tradition would seem to make for unlikely environmentalists. In a famous passage from his Critique of the Gotha Program (1875), Marx argues that, for example, after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, [it is then that] the narrow horizon of bourgeois right [can] be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs! The logic seems clear: if technological development under capitalism is inherently progressive—by his own account, a “historical necessity”—and if humans need to dominate nature in order to bring about “a higher phase of communist society,” then the critique from environmentalists is certainly warranted. Saito pins this “ecomodern” Marxism back to the idea that technological development under capitalism is a necessary and progressive stage in history—a precondition for emancipation as capitalism falls under the weight of its own contradictions. But when Marx wrote those words, it was at least reasonable to suggest that productive capacity was premature for the advent of socialism. It is harder to say that now: in terms of aggregate capacity, we produce enough food to end world hunger, generate enough energy for everyone to use a sufficient amount, and have enough wealth to end poverty. And yet, 150 years after Marx penned Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, we are no closer to global socialism than when our collective productive capacity was a fraction of what it is today. There, too, we are deadlocked. In fact, as Andreas Malm has argued in Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming (2016), or Timothy Mitchell in Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil (2013), the transition from hydropower to fossil fuels or coal to oil was a means of concentrating power in the hands of capitalists, concrete evidence that a transition from an “older” technology to a newer one does not, as such, represent definitive historical progress (especially when that technology threatens to undermine earth’s life-supporting systems or functions to intensify power over workers and the rest of nature). Too many Marxists still suffer from the same scarcity mindset, believing we lack the productive capacity and resources to provide everyone a good life within the means of the planet. But while we can’t fault Marx and Engels for not knowing more about climate change—or for not having the kind of ecological consciousness the 21st century has gifted us with—today’s ecomodern Marxists have no such excuse.

tracteur et vibroculteur, rang des bas-étangs, la présentation

Elizabeth King

— Robert Cardinal Sarah: The Day Is Now Far Spent

Cara New Daggett, The Birth of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics, and the Politics of Work

tracteur, montée lanthier, sainte-justine-de-newton

tracteur et herse, montée lanthier, sainte-justine-de-newton