Guest lecture @ Workers and Punks University, Ljubljana, february 2014.

1. CAPITALISM AND THE
ECOLOGICAL CRISIS
Teppo Eskelinen

2. The Left condition
Political life, theoretical marginalisation
Lack of vocabulary: from nouns to adjectives ->
liberalism with a flavour (fair trade, human
development, social rights). ”Social dimension”,
”public”
Ecological concerns have been forced to be framed
on liberal vocabulary (green growth, left vs green etc)
Recurrent crises of capitalism are also turning points
for liberal theory, also for its capacity to address
ecological problems

3. Ecological crisis
A simultaneous shortage of: resources, sinks, certainty
From problems to crisis: Often discussed merely as
temporary shortage of particular resources or a shortage of
a particular sink (such as climate absorbtive capacity)
Coupled with financial crisis as a general crisis of
contemporary capitalism
”Peak everything”, crisis of accumulation
Limits impossible to impose within capitalism
Any attempt on decreasing production will lead to a social
crisis given the current system

4. Addressing the ecological
crisis
Consumer awareness and other economic
incentive changes
”Immaterial turn”
Degrowth
Ecological investment strategy

5. Consumer awareness
Neoclassical strategy of locating the essence of
the economic system in the act of consumption
Well-being theory, here also theory of
responsibility
Neoclassical economics: marginalist logic
(consumption and production), conservatism,
continuity, lack of system analysis

6. Immaterial turn
Ever more “green economy”: services, culture etc
(the creative class etc)
The "immaterial turn" can result in being only an
expansion of capitalist relations and relocation of
production, not “greening” of the economy
What the immaterial turn consists of: exploitation of
flexible labour in the service industries, international
tax avoidance, patents on life-saving medicines,
biopiracy, closing down systems of co-operation such
as free software or science in general

7. Degrowth
Strategy of decreasing / stable GDP
Why care about the GDP so much? The growth
is not a process, its an outcome (by-product of
accumulation)
Says nothing about the productive relations, for
example financial capitalism is a degrowth
strategy, just a very bad one

8. Ecological investments
The state undertakes investments in new energy
production and distribution, transport
infrastructure etc
Can affect the capital-labour relations in a variety
of ways, also positive ways in full employment
Necessary rebound effect on accumulation
regime: premised on increasing consumption
Leaves capitalist relations intact

9. Neoclassical economics
A specific understanding of “well-being”.
Addressing ecological concerns by marginalist
economics… (equilibrium, continuity vs conflict,
revolutions)
Conservatism: the main point in continuity, especially
in modern financial economics
Equilibrium: ontology of classical cosmology
Any ecological problem is interpreted as pricing
problem, externality to be priced…

10. Marxism
Two key Marxist analytical ideas:
The form of the society derives from its form of
reproducing its social and productive relations
The form of the society derives from its
“underlying revolution”
Ecological society: how can a society maintain its
reproducing ecological relations longer, what
kind of revolution would be the revolution of
sustainability?

11. Expansion of capital (1)
Rosa Luxemburg: capitalist expansion = colony,
demand
For whom are new products made for? Why
imperialism prevails?
Not ”map colouring”, but economic imperatives
This new imperative is not raw materials, but demand
Have to force the ”natural economy” to demand (or
the correct currency, also loans)
Capital needs politics, and can always move ahead
from area of exploitation to another

12. Expansion of capital (2)
The key difference to Marx: capitalism is not a
closed system, but needs non-capitalist terrains
Capitalism is not similar everywhere
Capitalist dominance vs capitalist self-destruction
Constant struggle between capitalist and non-
capitalist forms
Not growth of efficiency, but growth of capitalist
dominance

13. The green economy (1)
No shift, but a new area of exploitation (quite like energy
sources)
An analysis of growth: ”normal accumulation” vs crisis
when new areas are needed in which to detach the
producer and tools of production (comp. Scientific
revolutions)
Also creation of demand: new social necessities (”radical
monopoly”)
New areas of exploitation not only geographic, but also
cultural etc
As in all capitalist expansion, government power is needed
(commodification, patents)

14. The green economy (2)
At the same time as capitalism expands to new
terrains, it cannot live without its ecological basis
(resources, dumping)
Planetary ecology is the limit from which
capitalism cannot escape: necessarily destroys
its own conditions of reproduction
”The cancer stage of capitalism”

15. Strategies (1)
Struggle at the borderlines of capitalism
Commons, co-operatives, alternative economic
systems, open software…
To what extent the ecological, cultural and
temporal terrains are analogous to colonies in
Luxemburg's time?
Ever more significance of struggle: capitalism
can create its own terrains of exploitation

16. Strategies (2)
Re-inventing an economy of use-value
No commodification, abundance vs scarcity
Eco-efficiency redefined

17. Strategies (3)
Using the self-fulfulling logic of contemporary
capitalism
In financial capitalism, value is restored
fundamentally not in money, but in collective
psychological beliefs (Keynes’ beauty contest
generalised)
For example, value of oil

18. Strategies (4)
Using government power to gain ever more
control
Can or cannot work in green transition, but limits
must be imposed
Combining profitability and ecological concerns
might be a dead-end
Would implicate gradual socialisation of the
banking system